Well, DID Neanderthals have blue eyes?
Remember all those pictures of half naked hairy, stooped, brown skinned, brown haired, brown eyed folk?
Roger Lewin - author of many biology related books and articles, said t’was true, fair skinned and blue eyes.
EH?
Going out to buy crayons to fix all those pictures in all those books. Jois
Yes, they had blue eyes!
Research was done on a lone tibia bone (that was the only part recovered) known to belong to such a creature. The researcher, in addition to proving that the “man” had blue eyes, also discovered that he was male, left-handed, had blonde hair, knew 3 languages, loved squash, and although he had 15 children from 5 different females, he was negligent in his parental duties.
I don’t think you can any more assume that Neanderthals looked like Europeans than you can assume that Afrikaners are black or that Jamacans look like Caribbean Indians.
Is this the sort of thing we’ll be able to determine once the human genome is totally mapped?
My first post was obviously a joke…
In all seriousness, my guess would be that when man was first created, he would have had blue eyes, as well as green, brown and all the other eye colors that are around today. All the genetic material, and combinations thereof, that makes eye color today, were probably available back then…
I don’t know how eye or hair color could ever be determined from skeletons.
I’m 99.44% sure this is one of the things we will find out when the Human Genome Project is completed and “fleshed out” as sure at least as I am of the hundreds of other things I’m 99.44% sure of…
Here are some of the sites where the location of eye color is being pinned down:
Eye color info 1
Eye color info 2
Eye color info 3
Not easy to read but you’ll get the idea.
And Jomill, you might not be that far wrong on your original post. There’s nothing that says eye color will stand alone and be connected to absolutely nothing else. In White cats it is connected to hearing - white cats with blue eyes are usually deaf.
I just don’t remember hearing about blue-eyed Neanderthals before.
So did this post or not?
Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley
You have the gall
to scoff neanderthals
among those ol’ folk
is my grandaddy, Paul.
He mauled a dinasoar
and begat my dad Saul
I’m proud o’ dat
I built him a wall
The rest of that poem, if written, would preent evidence of the true color and other characteristics of neanderthals, as the description of the wall would include a kodak portrait of the grandad.
ASPA, I’m NOT asking.
Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley
Well, i would imagine they had blue eyes. The blue eyes trait is a recessive trait, usually mor common in the females then in the malse due to the chromosomes (XY, XX). THe only reason why the are blue is beacause of the amount of Melanin in the eyes (pigment) All of us have brown eyes, but some have more melanin than others, so I would think that yes, they did, some of 'em!
joemill wrote:
You’re making the mistake of assuming that some of our ancestors were Neandertals. The Neandertals appear to have died out when homo sapiens moved in. It’s a debated topic whether they were absorbed into the new population or what seems more likely to me, killed off.
As to whether they had blue eyes, they did have several adaptations to living in Europe during ice age times, such as barrel chests. I would assume their skin color would be lighter than tropical folk, and I’d be surprised if they didn’t have some blue eyes, but we don’t know. Would the Human Genome Project help here? Do we have DNA from Neandertal bones?
Curt C posted: “You’re making the mistake of assuming that some of our ancestors were Neandertals.”
Yes, it seems to be very true that the Neanderthals died out when the Homo sapiens sapiens (Hss) moved in. But the question is so much absorption vs murder (!) it grown to outrageous proportions.
A couple of the paleoanthropology guys decided that maybe <b> all </B> the current living humans were descended from the same group from Africa (named Out of Africa Theory or OOA for short) and this group set out in waves probably and wipe out all the other versions of Homo sapiens.
While we sit here in the 21st century we can think of how this might or not have taken place.
What we can’t think of, IMHO, is the amount of time involved. If we Hss had a 2-3 % advantage over the older versions of Hs - we overtake them in a geological snap. Not a human snap of time.
So every since we found out about the (Neanderthals - Hsn) we’ve been trying to decide if we were parents to, children of, or cousins to them. It’s been a hundered and 30 years or so and we still haven’t gotten put any money down on the table.
Some paleoanthropologicalists say the Hsn are what we would look like if we cold adapted over several thousands of years living like they did and point to the Eskimos as an example. Not for skin and hair BTW: but for bone structure - short legs, flat faces and thick bones. Sort of like you said, Curt C.
A researcher named Coon in 1956 published a mape of Europe showing the flow of light skin from an area from south of the Baltic Sea and going out in concentric circles from that point with increasingly dark skin out to Spain, Italy, and to the east and west of the Black Sea.
This OOA business was only annoying to most of the paleoanth… (I’m not this good a typist) of that time. They were heaving invested in an evolutionary progam that involved multi evolutionary events all over the world all ending up to me us (Hss) even though different places had different varities of early Hs or Hsn or Archaic Hs or He (erectus) or even others I can’t think of…
Then some fools got together and did mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) tests on 147 humans and blasted out to the world that: “Hey! We are all us! There is nobody else here but us!”
This backed up the OOA theory and gave the “Multiple Replacement Theory” a wicked blow to the eye.
All mtDNA tested was so close to being no difference - I think everyone was caught by surprise.
A lot of kicking and screaming (by fully grown adults) has been done since that time. Name calling, hair pulling and even spitting, you name it.
Tests have been redone, new tests done, new mtDNA sites tested. Everyone has learned a lot via this lab work and tests have become more and more refined.
The Multi Regional Eveoltion Theory (MRET might be the abreviation being used right now, I usually just go for MR) seems to belosing ground with every new test, they are the one squeeling like stuck pigs, anyway.
The oldest Neanderhal (I’m 70% sure) was just mtDNA tested and matched to us. Poor match. There’s nothing there to indicate we descended or Europeans descended from him.
The MRET guys are saying, “Yes, but just cause HE didn’t show up in our genes doesn’t mean a different Neanderthal wouldn’t show up…” A great arguement since getting ANY DNA out of old old bones is tough as the dickens. Several labs have tried or are trying to work on it now but the old old bones are so precious that those who have them hate giving up even the little chunks.
Human Genome will, eventually, say where what is located on our 6 feet of DNA strands. But it won’t be any time soon even thought they are ahead of time right now for getting it done.
Sorry this is so long, been on my mind for a while. And you see, no clear idea about old blue eyes!
Jois
Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley
Since you asked (I dedected the word “ask” in your phrase, here: no sir, just kidding.
Sorry bout the typos. Not that you singled that out if you’re calling for an apology.
Joe! Thats funny shit man! 
Joe! Thats funny shit man!
Sorry bout the typos. Not that you singled that out if you’re calling for an apology-
Oh, yes, as if my typing were all above board and reproach. I continually demand apologies! 
The “I’m not asking” meant “Go ahead” no one here can stop you from adding in your poetry anywhere anytime. Go for it!
Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley
Jois, you are an OOA fanatic. In your model, are their no European or Asian archaics up the Hss family tree? I have also heard that pale skin has a Vitamin D adsorption advantage while its disadvantage under sunny climes is blisteringly apparent. So a lack of melanin in the skin of our glacially advantaged Neanderthal cousins is likely. But a lack of melanin in the eyes would produce pink albino eyes. I remember a Bio prof at UCLA mentioning that there is no difference in visual acuity between brown and blue eyes. Thus, I would speculate that blue eyes were just a chance, one time mutation (genetically associated with the pale skin) in some early isolated Homo sapiens sapiens on the north Eurasian steppes. The Han Chinese probably originated in a similar environment but did not develop blue eyes. My guess is that the Neanderthals were fair skinned and brown eyed.
mipsman: I agree, Jois is OOA/mtDNA addict.
I’ve been reading quite a bit and getting fractured. I don’t know exactly where I stand and what dates are valid for types,
locations and tool kits.
But I will rail about Jois’s presentation of mtDNA. The initial reservations in 1997 about the mtDNA work on the Neanderthal bone are still valid.
Jois: A couple of the paleoanthropology guys decided that maybe all the current living humans were descended from the same group from Africa (named Out of Africa Theory or OOA for short) and this group set out in waves probably and wipe out all the other versions of Homo sapiens.
“Wiped out” above is not established. Incorporation is still valid.
That “There is nobody else here but us” says nothing about the mechanics of how. We could be carrying Neanderthal genes within us.
I’ll agree the MR has taken a hit but there is still the fossil record which is hard evidence. MR’s is far from dead. MR at
its extreme seems unfounded i.e. all areas have all the types and in all areas there is a straight line development into Homo sapiens sapiens. From the sample I’m seeing there are only a few hard-core extreme MR’s out there. That does not mean that OOA is the only valid theory. There are lots of takes and variations on OOA.
Jois: says the MR’s say, “just because HE didn’t show up in our genes doesn’t mean a different…etc”. The MR’s don’t say even that because they are not buying that a .7% piece of mtDNA is representative of the whole 100% of mtDNA.
You further mention that they also say that the piece evaluated may not be the same as a new piece that might be analyzed and that’s true. A second study could easily completely overturn the first studies results.
I forget the correct numbers but the base pairs studied were 27 for Neanderthal so fixed at 27. For the modern group there was a range of 8 to 24 so there was a range of 16. Apply that range to Neanderthals 27 and that gives him base pairs of 11 to 45. That’s well within the range of the moderns’ sample. So I don’t see the exclusion of mixing.
mipsman: have you visited egroups @ http://www.egroups.com
There are three groups there on paleoanthropology.
In egroups there is currently a running discussion of eye color and skin shade. The blue eyed fair skin trait does seem to come from northern europe and that was eanderthals range so there may be an association. It would be that the blue eyed mutation mipsman mentions occurred later with Hss. This concept is new to me but seems plausible but I can’t back anything up.
Mipsman - there is a paper coming out by a qualified anthropologist which will be pulling together the fossil record. It
will be refuting the mtDNA study or rather all the assumptions people are making as a result of that study.