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That’s the LAT headline. For crying out loud, what does it require for them to take cognizance of Red Staters?
The debate about whether there’s a Neanderthal skeleton in our collective closet was revived last week when two groups of scientists reported that they had deciphered DNA from the thigh bone of a Neanderthal man who lived in Croatia 38,000 years ago. From their analysis of genetic material in the bone, the scientists estimated that Neanderthals and the modern people who supplanted them had 99.5% of their genes in common.
LA Woman Held Hostage by Paleocons!
Actually, I think this is some of the most exciting work going on in biology. Our existing cladiogram was developed based on surface features, but this sort of DNA analysis makes it possible to look at the source code itself. It’ll be interesting to see if any species end up beign reclassified because of this.
But is that really saying much?
What B Moe said.
Even with only a 0.5% difference it is generally accepted that homo sapiens and Neanderthals were probably not cross-fertile or at best would produce sterile hybrids.
It’s fascinating stuff—Neanderthal man did a lot of things we consider human: they made fire, they buried their dead with grave goods, they took care of their crippled, and they probably would have realized monkyboy is an idiot.
At the same time, they only used the mouths of caves. Cro-Magnons looked over their shoulders, said, “Hey, I wonder what’s down that way?” and then grabbed a torch to find out. Neanderthals apparently did not. People nowadays do this just for the hell of it.
Can you even imagine behaving like that—living in a cave, and never bringing fire to see what lay beneath? What must they have been like?
Seriously weird stuff.
it can no longer be taken as “generally accepted” that they were not cross-fertile. this has blown that out of the water. the “bone analysis” referenced was gene sequencing analysis…makes it hard to deny what we don’t want to believe. this theory is not new, its just that no evidence like this existed. we always seem to find out that we know less than we thought we did. stay tuned for more.
Well. That finally explains my brother.
It helps to have some context on the sharing 99.5% of DNA business. We share more than 70% of our DNA with yeast, for example.
Plus, reconstructing ancient DNA is notoriously hard, and at present has to be done at several removes of inference. Kind of like re-imagining the floor plans and facades of a house, after it’s been demolished.
I was taught in a two-credit-hour course on evolution that homo sapiens likely interbreeded with neanderthalus and that the subspecies melded. Which is to say that sapient beings screwed the neanderthals into oblivion.
Daryl hannah, sheesh.
Yeah, the idea that Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon interbred causing Neandethal to vanish is one of the two competing theories. The DNA work done so far seems to imply that the species diverged considerably earlier and that viable interbreeding wouldn’t have happened. Cool stuff.
I could have done without the smug editorializing. “The answer may be less interesting than the fact that so many Homo sapiens are fixated on the question…It will take more than a few DNA printouts to dispel the hope (or is it the fear?) that survivors of the “Clan of the Cave Bear” walk among us.” Sheesh.
– As far as the Neadrathal stuff, to the wimmins folk, that particular idea about us was never in doubt. Just ask your lady.
Well, according to an international team of scientists (names not given),
(This of course means that monkyboy must be at least 95% human.) So, like The Sanity Inspector, I’m not particularly impressed by the 99.5% figure, especially since so much of it has to be guesswork from highly-degraded proteins.
Regards,
Ric
I’d guess he’s somewhere between chimp and Neanderthal; maybe 98.5-99.
OTOH, my Turing Word is “served94.” This could be a sign from God, so the correct percentage is probably 94%.
…and yet today another study comes out that humans aren’t as closely related to each other as previously thought.
All the same, there are widespread differences in CNVs according to the three geographical origins of the samples. This implies that, over the last 200,000 years or so, subtle variants have arisen in the genome to allow different populations of humans adapt to their different environments, according to the researchers.
So if we’re not 99.9% related, mayhaps we were close enough to the old ones to interbreed.
Well, B Moe, I copied this for a reason, but I have no idea why anymore. Oh well. I just hope nobody thinks I’m from NYC…
The Real Lost Dog
My guess? It’s a Geico commercial.
”Yeah, the idea that Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon interbred causing Neandethal to vanish is one of the two competing theories. The DNA work done so far seems to imply that the species diverged considerably earlier and that viable interbreeding wouldn’t have happened.”
But interbreeding isn’t necessary; the question is rather, did Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons have sex?
I’ll go along with Nathan. Whenever a journalist tries to add a “social angle” to pure research, it usually just serves to remind everyone that the smart kids never go to J-School.