Over the years, we have learned many interesting things about the Neanderthals.
- We've learned that they probably could speak as well as we do, because they appear to have had the anatomy for it and technological skills such as advanced tar brewing that suggest it.
- We know they interacted with modern humans. The Chattelperonian tool flaking technology of some later Neanderthals seems to be a hybrid of their own Mousterian technique and the technique then used by modern humans. This suggests trade and even the exchange of skills between the two kinds of humans.
A gene controlling the regulation of brain size that appears in about 70% of living human beings appears to have been injected into our gene pool from a non-Homo Sapiens source approximately 37,000 years ago. That means about 70% of us probably have a little Neanderthal in our blood!
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BBCnews is carrying this report chronicling the latest progress on Neanderthal DNA research. By using a different sequencing technique, scientists have partially reconstructed significant portions of nuclear DNA. This promises to provide much more information about the species than the previously sequenced Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA. However, unlike the recent suggestions of evidence for gene exchange from Neanderthals to modern humans, this team finds no such evidence in their studies. In fact, quite the opposite, as this preliminary findings seem to be pointing toward a human to Neanderthal exchange.
The findings of the other study are near definitive. A non-Sapiens hominid did introduce allele D of the microcephalin sequence around 37,000 years ago. Considering this appears to radiate out of Europe, I can't think of any other close relatives who would have qualified.
I think they are ignoring an obvious angle. The mtDNA that shows the 500,000 year ago split is only passed in a matrilineal way. All that means is that we have no Neanderthal grandmothers. But that does not rule out grandfathers.
And that jives with what a lot of anthropologists observe in living wholly nomadic cultures. Males tend to leave the nest, and enter a new clan. Women tend to remain in the clan of their mothers.
Not only would this fit with a paternal contribution of allele D by Neanderthals, but it also fits with the pattern found in the Neanderthal Genome project. The Homo Sapiens gene that is found in this specimen are in the X chromosome. That means it too was a male contribution.
It is an intriguing thought. Did our kind join a Neanderthal kind and vice versa?
If even one of these two scenarios is true, then it reinforces what I've long believed. Neanderthals were human. If our ancestors mated with them, it would only be because they believed them to be our own kind, and not animals.
I'm quite sure that if Neanderthals on an island somewhere had survived to this day, we would not be calling them "hominids" or "ape men." We would be calling them "people" and according them all the same rights. :-)
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