Did Neanderthals Have Blue Eyes?

Factual Questions
21

Hi Mipsman!

I do start out thinking of a balanced approach, but, you’re right, I’m very interested in OOA. I did say that no money is on the table so far.

MIPSMAN: “… are their no European or Asian archaics up the Hss family tree?” Is it ever measured that way? Asian archaics’ bones are too old to get “good” DNA from - true also of anyone in Europe that we’d call archaic except Neanderthals. Even for Neanderthals it was darned lucky to get it done just that one time.

Should we start a thread on DNA and mtDNA? It might be a blood in tooth and claw topic and I might be able to get fireworkss?

MIPSMAN: "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.”

I don’t think anyone was thinking “albino” when this came up, more a pale skin and light blue eyes - the nordic type? blond hair? So the eye color/pigment would have been present.

I’d vote for fair skin and brown eyes.

(BTW: And what’s so wrong with OOA? ((Don’t listen to Trouts1 (As in, "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!}}} :slight_smile:

Jois

Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley

22

Hi Trouts1!

I’m delighted to be the one to bring Mipsman and trouts1 together in agreement.

I believe I am a “fanatic” and “addict” because I started reading with Cavalli-Sforza a paleoanthologist. Of course, neither of those words are true, I’m reserving judgment a little while longer.

I agree with Trouts1 that there is such a large amount of information out there and not real agreement about locations and tool kits or even whose bone these are.

Trouts1: ““Wiped out” above is not established. Incorporation is still valid.”

This is a tough one, but so far all DNA and mtDNA points in this direction. The reservation seems to be that intermixing may have happened, but if it did, it hasn’t shown up so far.

Trouts1: "That “There is nobody else here but us” says nothing about the mechanics of how. We could be carrying Neanderthal genes within us. "

We may never know the mechanics of what happened to the other varieties of our early relatives.

Even that poor Neanderthal who was tested for mtDNA had a mother! He carried his mother’s mtDNA and that has part of his history. Half of him does not match us…Is that okay to say?

Trouts1: “I’ll agree the MR has taken a hit but there is still the fossil record which is hard evidence.”

::firecrackers::

Trouts1: "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. "

In all seriousness this is what bothers me.

Trouts1: “From the sample I’m seeing there
are only a few hard-core extreme MR’s out there.”

Honestly, I think they are dying out, that camp, probably now headed by Brace (That’s what I’ve read.) I can nearly make a list of the entire group - will send if you want.

Trouts1: “That does not mean that OOA is the
only valid theory. There are lots of takes and variations on OOA.”

Thank you. (Mipsman, remember he said that!)

Cookie break, I’ll be back.

Jois

Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley

23

So, let’s see what’s left:

We probably need to do some mtDNA stuff here and get ourselves on more solid ground about what we can and can’t agree to.

So far, each mtDNA test/sample has pointed in the exact same direction as the ones before it- i.e., we are a young, out of Africa and very alike.

(BTW: They do pick the same area for all the groups being tested for that test. Another group of scientists might pick a different area but will use the same area for person, ape, chimp being tested. Some areas on mtDNA are considered more stable than others so the more stable areas are the ones that are chosen.)

Trouts1: "In egroups there is currently a running discussion of eye color and skin shade. back anything up. "

I think I started that one, too.

Trouts1: “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.”

This particular fully qualified anthro… is the guy mentioned above, Brace, who may well be the last of the original MREH. This is also a group of papers published in memorey of another anthropologist.

Gee, if you want to know the assumptions of that particular study you just need to look at the study itself. They aren’t keeping any secrets, they tell all!

I don’t remember the particulars of that Neanderthal mtDNA study, either (Not the one directly above, but a different one.) So I’ll post that separately.

BTW again: So far mtDNA studies have shown us to be unique among apes, monkeys or chimps for their mtDNA has great diversity–ours does not.

Later.

Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley

24

I’m sorry these posts are turning out to be so long!

Scientists have been trying to get DNA materials out of ancient skeletons without much success. Too dried, too old, too everything. In 1997 a group did manage to get mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from a Neanderthal skeleton.

The researchers (Krings and Paabo, Univ or Munich) finished their work and sent a sample on to a second group (Stone and Stoneking, Penn State U.) who repeated the entire procedure at Penn State and came up with the identical results.

Paabo said, The Neanderthal’s “sequence is very different from (the corresponding region of)modern humans.” While not stating this one individual makes definite proof, the data lend a new kind of support to the now-favored view of Neanderthals: that they were a side branch of the human family tree, not our direct ancestors."

Molecular anthropologist Maryellen Ruvolo of Harvard University commented, “You can’t prove (Neanderthals) were a separate species from just this sequence, but it’s very unlikely they contributed to the modern gene pool.”

The test was done on what is called the “control” region of the mitochondral DNA, and area that has become (over the past 10 years) a crucial tool for infering evolutionary relationships among species and populations–i.e., not a miscellaneous random glob of DNA, but a specific known and previously identified and tested area.

What makes mtDNA so handy for this kind of work is that it itn’t a big long strand like regular DNA but a neat little circle of mtDNA that passes down in mother to child without a great deal of change as power packs for the cells. Changes then should be do to mutations that occur over time at a pretty regular rate.

They ended up with 379 base pairs which were compaired with the same 379 base pairs from 986 living humans.

They said that they found three times more difference between the Neanderthal and the modern human sequences than they found between pairs of modern humans.

They said that pairs of modern human sequences differed at an average of 8 positions. But modern human sequences to Neanderthal differed at an average of 25.6 positions.

Next they said that the range only barely overlapped: the most divergent modern humans differed in only 24 base pairs while the closest modern-Neanderthal pair had 20 differences.

Finally, they said, the type of base pair substitutions and their locations were different.

“These data put the Neanderthal sequence outside the statistical range of human variation and, says Paabo, make it ‘highly unlikely that Neanderthals contributed to the human mtDNA pool.’”

This material and quotes are from: The American Association for the Advancement of Science.

How’s that? Take care of the rest of Trouts1’s post? I’ll check back later.

Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley

25

Given the context I’m not sure what you meant by the above. That “Wiped out” was the case as in violent?
Your going to have to put up some evidence of your claims as the mtDNA claims have been refuted over and over in this area.

This is not a valid argument. Its its the same as the Elephants have not shown up in Central Park so (some conclusion here). Your addicted to the mtDNA studies and reading Cavalli-Sforza is going to make you more convinced.

I assume your saying this as a result of the mtDNA study. No, its not ok because the conclusion is not justified. If you want to say half of him does not match us then you’ll have to explain that in detail. Who’s got the pattern for Neanderthal for the comparison match? I’m sure you would not be so callus as to represent Neanderthals total
mtDNA by the single sample study of .7% segment. So where does the validated pattern come from? And please do not argue that the subsequent studies have validated the 1997 study because they have not. Its unfortunate that so much distortion has come of the great mtDNA study. It was a triumph of mechanics in DNA technology. Beyond that the study is looking like a S. J. Gould voice calling to the crazies to mis-interpret the evidence.

Then explain what this section is responsible for. As far as I know MtDNA chromosomes carry information that’s involved with making material that causes reactions for the rest of our 46 chromosome group. Its not like Neanderthal mtDNA differences will cause a thumb to spring out of a moderns forehead. The study says nothing about mixing at
all.

Some random thoughts:
polymorphic - more than one allele at a locus allele frequencies can change due to chance alone. This is called genetic drift. Sharp drops in population size can change allele frequencies substantially. When a population crashes [like Neanderthal], the alleles in the surviving sample may not be representative of the pre crash gene pool.
[related]This change in the gene pool is called the founder effect, because small populations of organisms that invade a
new territory (founders) are subject to this. Many biologists feel the genetic changes brought about by founder effects may contribute to isolated populations developing reproductive isolation from their parent populations. In sufficiently small populations, genetic drift can counteract selection.
http://www.psu.edu/ur/NEWS/news/Neandertal.html
While the results indicate that Neandertals did not contribute mitochondrial DNA to modern humans, it is still possible that they contributed other genes.
http://www.archaeology.org/9703/newsbriefs/h.erectus.html
Some scholars, including Jean-Jaques Hublin of the Musée de l’Homme, Paris, support a milder version of the replacement model in which different scenarios could have occurred in different regions. Some areas, such as Western Europe, would have experienced a total or almost total replacement. In other places, and possibly in the Far East, some
level of gene flow could have occurred between local archaic populations and modern humans. [I think the senario for Western Europe may be completely different for Asia].

Kate Wong Scientific American Jan 1998 http://www.sciam.com/1998/0198issue/0198scicit3.html
Simon Easteal, a geneticist at the Australian National University, observes that chimpanzees and other primates display
much more within-species mtDNA variation than humans do. Taking that into account, he says, “The amount of diversity between Neanderthals and living humans is not exceptional.” Moreover, many scientists think that too much
has been made of this very short segment of mtDNA, which came from a single individual. The evolutionary history of mtDNA, a lone gene, is only so informative. “You can always construct a gene tree for any set of genetic variation,” says Washington University geneticist Alan R. Templeton. “But there’s a big distinction between gene trees and
population trees,” he cautions, explaining that a population tree comprises the histories of many genes. In fact, examinations of modern human nuclear DNA undermine the out- of-Africa model by suggesting that some genes have non-African origins. University of Oxford geneticist Rosalind M. Harding studies variation in the betaglobin gene, certain mutations of which cause sickle-cell anemia and other blood diseases. Harding found that one major
betaglobin gene lineage, thought to have arisen more than 200,000 years ago, is widely distributed in Asia but rare in Africa, suggesting that archaic populations in Asia contributed to the modern gene pool.

And studies of the Y chromosome by Michael F. Hammer, a geneticist at the University of Arizona, indicate that prehistoric population dynamics were much more complicated than simple replacement. His results reflect migrations both out of and back into Africa. Both Hammer and Harding think the overall picture emerging from the seemingly
inconsistent genetic data best fits one of the “intermediate” models of human evolution, such as the assimilation model engineered by Northern Illinois University paleoanthropologist Fred H. Smith. According to Smith’s model, the patterns visible in the fossil record suggest that both expansion out of Africa and genetic interchange among populations were at work.

**The mtDNA contains a mere 37 genes compared with the 50,000 to 100,000 genes in nuclear DNA. And these few mtDNA genes are devoted largely to the mitochondria’s principal job of producing chemical energy for the thousands of second-by-second chemical reactions in a cell. **
Taking a minute sample study of mtDNA and projecting wild assumptions the OOA camp has distorted events of Western Europe and made sweeping assumptions about all of evolution for the rest of the globe. The OOA camp has
created a monster of distortion.

26

What happened to the various H_______ prior to Hss is a topic for discussion, that’s true. But “wiped out” means gone. Whether their ends were violent at Hss hands or became extinct because of changing conditions with which they could not cope, they are gone. Extinct. How about replaced?

“…May have happened, but if it did, it hasn’t shown up so far…” Trouts1, what’s wrong with that? That’s pretty standard language. There are arguments about tool kits
and who made what and when. It is always possible that whatever it is you are looking for - might show up some day. Even the elephant in Central Park - infact there probably already have been elephants in Central Park.

I recommend Cavalli-Sforza (CS from now on, that name is too odd) to any and everyone who is interested in this topic. He’s number one in human genetics today! Of course, reading CS is going to make me more convinced. When you want to know what’s going on you go to the expert.

The DNA chair that is now being studied in the Human Genome project will someday tell us each chromsome does (or the studies from the HGP will). We only know a few of places where certain actions or activities happen right now.

Example: Albinoism, they know.
Example: Pygmy stature, they know.
Example: Down’s, they know.

But for most characteristics, they don’t know, they are figuring that out. Eye color is my favorite and I’ve posted info for it a couple of times here.

BTW: You mentioned fingers or toes or some other small body parts - The genetic people have been workingon fruit flies for decades- they can move the wings to almost any place on the fly’s body. IIRC the fruit fly has only 4 chromosomes so working with them is much easier than working with human DNA.

MtDNA is very different that DNA. It is a power pack, it doesn’t make fingers and toes. While regular DNA comes from both parents and has a two stage genetic dividing and recombining pattern to make our DNA and produced an almost infinate variety of sperm and eggs; mtDNA is made from a single stage pattern of dividing.

So the changes seen in mtDNA are true changes not just re-combinations that you might see in regular DNA.

So when you take a sample of mtDNA from this Neanderthal you have a sample of his mother’s history. (So from here I can say we have a sample of half of his history, if you don’t like that it’s okay with me.)

For years now, they have been making DNA karyotypes for years, know what each chromosome looks like. They can pick out #19 and #20 each and every time.

The same applies for mtDNAm it is recognizable in its parts. And it is just as well because the matching to two different people for the entire strand of mtDNA is not done. (too big) They always just use parts and have ways of picking which parts to use.
I’d be delighted to be so callas to represent this Neanderthal’S mtDNA on the basis of this very special section!

Quote Trouts1: “It’s not like Neanderthal mtDNA differences will cause a thumb to spring out of a modern’s forehead.”

Which is, of course, exactly why this section is used for studies like this one. It should do the same job for the Neanderthals as it does for us. What would be the use of comparing the foot part of a Neanderthal’s genes to our arm parts?

This is a genetic area that has been used over and over in the past decade to test mutation rates. It is not an unknown.

I’m skipping the random thoughts, no need to share, I have enough of my own, thanks.

Your quote from Jean-Jaques Hublin of Musee de l’Homme, Paris says that,“Some areas, such as Western Europe, would have experienced a total or almost total replacement.” What’s your argument here? This is what I’m saying and what the Neanderthal’s mtDNA has said.

But I will take exception to this quote from Templeton. That poor devil said that after the very first gene tree was constructed in 1987. And it get’s tossed willy-nilly into
every salad. After he said that, he used the same data to construct a population tree. But it is past history. Using that quote now as if it applied to the mtDNA study under our discussion is invalid.

Even the Simon Easteal quote - might be a little too clipped, I’m not familar with it, but are you sure he isn’t saying that the difference between Neanderthals and humans is similar to the differences seen between humans and chimps, chimps and apes? I.E., another species?

Remember, please, that there are stil anthropologists alive today who do think Neanderthals are another species. I’m not quoting, you must be finding them, too.

I’ve seen the various sickle-cell anemia studies used OOA and MREH and it is a whole other block of information. Let’s do that later…

Tsk, tsk, OOA has created a monster of distortion. That’s low. Is it OOA, or is it the genetics people? What do the genetic guys have to lose in this work? (Did I stick a grant section into the post above? The $$$ is going to flow now matter what, just finishing up the HGP.) What do the paleoanthropologists have to lose?

Since you tossed in that quite elderly Templeton quote, gee, I can’t think of anything nasty enough. Mmmm, nope you’ll have to wait.

Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley

27

And here I thought this thread was going to be about the James Tiptree, Jr. novella “The Color of Neanderthal Eyes”…

…but when you get blue, and you’ve lost all your dreams, there’s nothing like a campfire and a can of beans!

28

::test post::

Please ignore this post. If you see multiposts above, please ignore them, too.

Change Your Password, Please and don’t use HTML, as it has been disabled, but you can learn about superscripts here

29

Jois:

I have not found a single reference that the exalted strand section has been defined. As far as I know it has not. Please produce your reference that defines what this section does. Please include the implications for mating i.e. your justification why this piece negates the fossil record. The strand is probably used for its ease of locating across samples allowing study.

Fact: Sharp drops in population size can change allele frequencies substantially. When a population crashes [like Neanderthal], the alleles in the surviving sample may not be representative of the pre crash gene pool.

I referenced Jean-Jaques Hublin to indicate that OOA as perverted by through mtDNA is undefined for Asia or anywhere other than Western Europe - that is given that its valid for WE which it probably is not.

Your forgot to address:
In fact, examinations of modern human nuclear DNA undermine the out- of-Africa model by suggesting that some genes have non-African origins. University of Oxford geneticist Rosalind M. Harding studies variation in the betaglobin gene, certain mutations of which cause sickle-cell anemia and other blood diseases. Harding found that one major
betaglobin gene lineage, thought to have arisen more than 200,000 years ago, is widely distributed in Asia but rare in Africa, suggesting that archaic populations in Asia contributed to the modern gene pool.

and:

Taking that into account, he says, “The amount of diversity between Neanderthals and living humans is not exceptional.” Moreover, many scientists think that too much has been made of this very short segment of mtDNA,
which came from a single individual.

In answer to “arn’t your finding anthropologists who…” Yes, I am, but not many. The vast majority of paleoanthropologists are not jumping on any mtDNA bandwagon on such slim evidence. The unwarranted evidence your citing may prove out to be the case. A point of view could be that its undefined at the moment as there are no fixed answers. But that view denies the fossil record. Just say the mtDNA evidence was more convincing. There would still be the fossil record to contend with. There is too much to ignore.

Explain to me how differences in mtDNA prohibit nuclear DNA from mixing.

30

Quoting Jois: I’ve seen the various sickle-cell anemia studies used OOA and MREH and it is a whole other block of information. Let’s do that later…

Quoting Trouts1: You forgot to addres…

See, I didn’t forget that! You just did not, as I have suspected for a long time, read my posts. Should I write them if you don’t read them? My typing skill have improved so much since typing lessons years ago I’m sure I’d get a better grade now then I did then. But I’m not doing this to improve my typing skills.

I’m really interested in this area of human life and history and if you are, too, read.

A few days ago you asked Dr. Brace his opinion of the Neanderthal mtDNA study. And he gave you the only answer a man in his position could give. Why not ask CS? He’s the top guy in the other camp? Not Stringer, stringer was in the same area of expertise as Brace and changed over to OOA BEFORE and without the mtDNA.

Isn’t this usually done by turns, you know, my turn, your turn, his turn, and so on!

Could you respond to this?

Jois said:
But I will take exception to this quote from Templeton. That poor devil said that after
the very first gene tree was constructed in 1987. And it get’s tossed willy-nilly into
every salad. After he said that, he used the same data to construct a population tree.
But it is past history. Using that quote now as if it applied to the mtDNA study under
our discussion is invalid.

Can you comment on this:

Jois said:
For years now, they have been making DNA karyotypes for years, know what each
chromosome looks like. They can pick out #19 and #20 each and every time.

Unless you are willing to acknowledge that genetic researchers know what they are doing nothing I say or quote will have any meaning for you, will it?

Care to comment on this, you should, you know, he was one of the very first in the what now is called MREH crowd:

Jois said: 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 is NOT quite the direction that either Neanderthals or Cro Magnon were supposed to have used to enter Europe, is it?

I particularly like this idea/map because it makes for a very tough MREH arguement. All the mixing of humans goes one way. In order for the MREH to work the mixing of humans has to go both ways, not just southeast.

Coon may be dead but his map still exists in CS big paperback abridgment of “The History and Geography of Human Genes.”

And I think this needed some comment from you - you asked and I answered.

Jois Said regarding the mtDNA study by Paalo and all: They said that they found three times more difference between the Neanderthal and the modern human sequences than they found between pairs of modern humans.

They said that pairs of modern human sequences differed at an average of 8 positions.

But modern human sequences to Neanderthal differed at an average of 25.6 positions.
(three times! the difference.

Next they said that the range only barely overlapped: the most divergent modern
humans differed in only 24 base pairs while the closest modern-Neanderthal pair had 20
differences.

Finally, they said, the type of base pair substitutions and their locations were different.

“These data put the Neanderthal sequence outside the statistical range of human
variation and, says Paabo, make it ‘highly unlikely that Neanderthals contributed to the
human mtDNA pool.’”

And BTW: every article that describes Paalo’s work describes: “The test was done on what is called the “control” region of the mitochondral DNA, and that area that has become (over the past 10 years) a crucial tool for inferring evolutionary relationships among species and populations” in one way or another–i.e., not a miscellaneous random glob of DNA, but a specific known and previously identified and tested area.

This material and quotes still are from: The American Association for the Advancement of
Science.

That same articles tell what the “control region” does.

Also, in that same study, before we open some other can of worms, the variation between the Neanderthal mtDNA and human mtDNA in that test was the same no matter whether the human mtDNA was African, European, Native American, Australians or Pacific Islanders. Not closer to the Europeans.

Jois

Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley

31

So what is it?

You’ll have to be specific.

I don’t have a clue here. I did not interact in any way with Brace about mtDNA. Your making this up.

???

You’ll have to take issue with Kate Wong. Are you even reading the cites? If you want to attack Kate Wong, a staff writer for Scientific American then to it. I don’t think she was misrepresenting Templeton at all. She sets up for the reference by talking about the evolutionary history of mtDNA, then quotes Templeton. “But there’s a big distinction between gene trees and population trees,” he cautions, explaining that a population tree comprises the histories of many genes. If as you say he said this in 1987 it would be somewhat misleading as you get the impression
she had just asked him. But content wise and in the “evolutionary history” context it makes no difference at all when she asked him.

She’s laying the ground work for the next paragraph and has not distorted anything. The next paragraph has two sections 1. the sickle-cell which you want to drop. and 2. a section which you want to probably ignore:

The above is confusing. What does he refer to ?? Templeton. Anyway, yes I’m questioning the strand and what it represents. Given it does something or is responsible of something then how does that affect nuclear DNA. I keep asking you about this and you don’t answer them.

Vague and without context. When?? What are you talking about and what point are you making? Are you saying Coon made a map of skin color pre 60,000 years that shows Neanderthal movement referenced to skin color? I have not hear about any hard evidence about skin color for Neanderthal.

There are all sorts of references for movement back into Africa. The oldest I quoted in the other thread was 2 M years ago. Its been going on for a long time.

I view my take on the range given above as more telling. I’ve yet to find more detail on this study. Do you have the original Cell article?

No kidding - its extent.

Paabo doesn’t have a clue what the “statistical range of human variation” between Hss and N. None.

And for the last few sentences:

I have not found a single reference that the exalted strand section has been defined. As far as I know it has not. Please produce your reference that defines what this section does. Please include the implications for mating i.e. your justification why this piece negates the fossil record. The strand is
probably used for its ease of locating across samples allowing study.

Explain to me how differences in mtDNA prohibit nuclear DNA from mixing.
Its been asked on two threads and asked 4 times?

32

oops, I can see you are getting confused, lets drop this into smaller pieces.

This thread is about Neanderthals and blue eyes. Some of the posters here mentioned skin color as well. Some people like Anne Gilbert have written that they suspect Neanderthals were fair skinned and blue-eyed and connect this to the Europeans’ genetic connection to the Neanderthals. I. E. Europeans inherited their fair skin and blue eyes from Neanderthals.

So:

Care to comment on this, you should, you know, he was one of the very first in the
what now is called MREH crowd:

Jois said: A researcher named Coon in 1956 published a map 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 is NOT quite the direction that either Neanderthals or Cro Magnon were supposed
to have used to enter Europe, is it?

I particularly like this idea/map because it makes for a very tough MREH arguement. All
the mixing of humans goes one way. In order for the MREH to work the mixing of humans has to go both ways, not just southeast.

Coon may be dead but his map still exists in CS big paperback abridgment of “The
History and Geography of Human Genes.”

Notice I blocked of this section to mark it as a section of its own. Read the whole block and then comment. Please.

Jois

Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley

33

Boy, I hate it when you’re right!

Yes, I made up that part about Dr Brace.

It was your talk with Anne Gilbert on or about 8 March that I was thinking of - please, allow me to beg your forgiveness!

Anne told you that she thought the Paalo study researchers probably neither knew nor cared what those particular genes did.

Again this a paleoanthropologist site (where Anne Gilbert posts along with Dr Brace and a few other paleoanthropoligist types (and me) hang out.

You can’t expect these people to be too forthcoming about genetics. Not only is it not their field, it is also mashing the devil out of the MREH theory.
---------change of topic--------

It isn’t as if the genetics people are hiding any deep down dirty secret from you. This work is highly technical.

This site will be a starter site:
mitochondrial DNA starter site

This is the map site:
Map Site

And this is the “Control Region” of mtDNA, press any blue colored “references” to get references of the research done on this exalted strand section.

The references tell you what the strand does.

Control Region mtDNA

You see, THEY can really pin down these genes for SOMETHING.

Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley

34

Jois, I always assumed that the fair skin, blonde hair and blue eyed people were intrusive into Europe starting 5-5.5 thousand years ago.

There seems to be a continuity of late Paleolithic cave painters into Neolithic megalith builders who, sharpening up Occam’s razor, would be the descendants of the original Hss OOA invasion (after, forgive me, absorbing a few archaics genes). This would be the root stock of the classic Mediterranean physiologic type. (There was another “invasion” from the Near East 4-5 thousand years ago up the Danube and across the rest of Europe by early farmers as well as intrusions into the western Mediterranean again from the Near East but these were also Mediterranean, probably related peoples.)

My postulation is that there was a “racial” homogeneity from North Africa to the North German Plain and from Ireland to Iberia and to the Near East. They were probably darker complexioned and gracile, long headed with little in the way of brow rideges. They and their descendants made the cave paintings and built the early Stonehenge.

Scandinavia was under ice until 8000 years ago. I do not see how anyone can postulate that that was the original home of the Nordics, too short of time to make a recessive mutation dominant. Besides, Europe would be too small to allow an recessive gene group to develop in isolation away from the probably more numerous Mediterranean group.

My favorite theory is that the Nordic physiologic group developed in the the North Eurasian steppes, out there along the Urals. (These would be the descendants of some of the OOA people you mentioned who turned right after leaving Africa.) A nice glacial environment to give the fair skin an advantage and probable genetic isolation for blue eyes and blonde and/or red hair hair mutations to develop and become dominant in the population (even though recessive).

Starting about 4K BC, their descendants (my guess), the Kurgan people, began a series of migrations into Europe, over the Caucasus into the Near East and Peria and probably farther into Asia (the Xian (?) mummies).

Early historic reports of their descendants (Thracians, Celts, Germans, Sycthians) speak of ferocious physical aspects. This might be expected if they had absorbed a little more robust, brow ridged archaic genes out there on the steppes.

In summary, “racial” continuity for most of Western Europe except for the Basques and maybe the Lapps (reindeer hunting was THE big industry in Europe 10K years ago) and excepting the remnant genetic component in Iberia, Brittany, Ireland, Wales and east Scotland is not strong enough to say that blue eyed Neanderthals passed that trait on to Nordic Europeans. Although maybe there were blue eyed archaics out in the Urals, ya never know.

35

Trouts1, here’s the link for the entire Paalo does mtDNA article:

mtDNA via Paalo and Co

Jois

Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley

36

Here is a good description of DNA testing and mtDNA, too.

[ul=http://www.ajc.state.ak.us/Reports/dna1main.htm#Description of Forensic DNA Testing]Forensic DNA for Beginners

Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley

37

Okay, Mipsman, I had to find maps.

  1. Physical Map of Europe
  2. A pumpkin shaped map of the world with Africa in the center
  3. “Europe Showing Barbaric Migrations in the 4th & 5th centuries”
  4. And the paperback Cavalli-Sforza (CS)

So, your postulation is that all Europe (as given above) was populated by a homogenious group with dark complexions, gracile, long headed with little in the way of brow ridges.

That’s okay with me, sorry that you killed off all those Neanderthals, (and anyone else who might have been there,too) sometimes these things can’t be helped.

They and their descendents started the cave paintings sometime after 35 KYA, the most important cave art being done between 15 and 11 KYA. The cave paintings were in southwestern France and Spain.

The megalithic monuments are same thing as early Stonehenge? (Is that right?) And megalithic monuments are located on 3 of 4 of Spain’s coasts? Westward parts of Great Britain? Most of France? Southwestern Sweden? Denmark and a bit more? Islands in the Mediterranean Sea? The heel of the boot of Italy? North German Plain? Okay?

Skip the Alps, skip the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea, skip the Jura and eastward? Okay?

So we have taken care of the Late Paleolithic and Neolithic megalith builders, all OOA with a few archaic Homo sapiens and their genes tossed in. Very few.

And we can say they were Mediterranean physiologic type.

Early farmers, well, can you agree that most “things” start at a center and spread out in concentric circles from that center?

By radio carbon dating, the spread of agriculture in Europe and arrival of Neolithic farmers went something like this, according to CS and all. Agriculture was fanning out from an area between Iraq and Turkey – the areas east of the Mediterranean Sea by 9000 BC, half way around both sides of the Black Sea by 7500, past the Black sea by 7000 BC, through most of Spain, half of France through the Great Plains of Europe, and the remainder 6000 BC or slightly later.

So, this radiocarbon dating makes the invasion from the Near East earlier than your estimated 4-5 thousand years ago.

The estimate for this travel and change to agriculture progress at the rate of 1 Km/year. (Also CS and all)

And these are all the same type of people?

Scandinavia still too cold. Nobody there to turn blond and allow the gene to overcome all the darker skinned people around them, and there isn’t enough time.

So the place to look for these blue-eyed blonds is in North Eurasian Steppes, out there among the Urals. Way out there? That’s a long way to go. And then travel through the Neolithic farmers without leaving much of a trace until they got to the Baltic Sea where they decided to settle down. But they split off so some crossed the Caucasis and went into Asia Minor?

Coon-who I cited above had mapped fair hair and eyes to start (center) south of the Baltic sea. He had mapped out how hair and eyes colors darkened out in a circle from that center.

Is this right so far? Either way I don’t see time for skin, eye, and hair color to become light/fair?

(I haven’t found Kurgan people yet, or those others (Historic reports of their descend…)
haven’t had time to look.)

Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley

38

Trouts1, can you explain this part of one of your posts above?

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.

Thanks,
Jois

Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley

39

Humans have variation. There is a high and low end to the variation. The point was that the high end range of the Hss variation overlapped with Neanderthal’s low end range. This has been conceeded by Paabo’s team baised on the 1997 Cell study and readmitted in the CS edited study as occuring in the 1997 study. See also the concession at: http://www.unl.edu/rhames/neander/neander.htm

=========================================
For the 1998 study:
Although its not stated in the 1998 study I believe they are not assigning a range to Neanderthal. This is reasonable as this variation is found in humans and primates. I do not see this variation assigned to the Pabbo statistics. Do you see where they are factoring in a range variation for Neanderthal?

How reliable are their stats to begin with? The last study came up with a Hss variation between moderns of 8 to 8.5 places. The new study a year later comes up with a Hss varaiation of 10.9 for the same group. How did Hss change over 1 year. Personally I don’t trust CS or Paabo.

==========================================
About ranges:::

You do the math: Look at the 2nd study, Table 1. The range between Hss is from 1-35 for 663 Hss. The average is 10.9 ±5.1 Hss to Hss.

Between Hss and Neanderthal the average difference is 35.3 ± 2.3 with a range of 29-43).

The lower end of the range is 29 differences, Hss to Neanderthal The higher end of the range between humans is 35.3. Do Hss to Hss differ more than Hss to Neanderthal? What does that say about any possible overlapping range?

If you applied a real range to the Neanderthal numbers the differences in the range would be even greater and on the low end that would put N and Hss closer. What does that do for overlapping ranges?

40

Hi Trouts1!

Trouts1 quote: “Humans have variation. There is a high and low end to the variation. The point was that the high end range of the Hss variation overlapped with Neanderthal’s low end range.”

So this must be part of the Paabo study?

Trouts1 quote: "This has been conceeded by Paabo’s team baised on the 1997 Cell study and readmitted in the CS edited study as occuring in the 1997 study. See also the concession at: http://www.unl.edu/rhames/neander/neander.htm "

I don’t see any concessions made to anyone in the site above (rhames).

Paabo says of the Neandethal sequence it is, “very different from (the corresponding region of) modern humans.”

The article also says that the data lends a new kind of support to the now-favored view of Neanderthals: that they were a skide branch of the human family tree, not our direct ancestors.

It also quotes Maryellen Ruvolo of Harvard University (A well-published geneticist isn’t she?) “You can’t prove (Neanderthals) were a separate species from just this sequence, but it’s very unlikey they contributed to the modern gene pool.”

I don’t see concessions here.

Trouts1 quote: " For the 1998 study:
Although its not stated in the 1998 study I believe they are not assigning a range to
Neanderthal. This is reasonable as this variation is found in humans and primates. I do not see this variation assigned to the Pabbo statistics. Do you see where they are
factoring in a range variation for Neanderthal?"

There is no 1998 study is there? You are talking about the 1998 re-publication of the of the study in a different publication, right? This re-published paper is sited in one of my posts above - I think I provided the link and named it “Paalo Study” or “Paabo Study” please check.

Didn’t they give a range for the humans because there 633 modern human mtDNA samples and just used the Neanderthal info because
there was only one Neanderthal?

Trouts1 quote: “How reliable are their stats to begin with?”

This isn’t a new proceedure as such. Getting Neanderthl mtDNA is the new part of this study. Studies on mtDNA have been going on for a long time and in one of the other site I stuck in this thread - probably called “Maps” or something, gives the designations for the parts of mtDNA and the reference section lists the studies done on that section of mtDNA.

The stats and all the rest of the math are now as standard as the proceedures. They aren’t breaking ground in this area.

And why shouldn’t these guy be very good at the statistical side of this kind of work?

Trouts1 quote: “The last study came up with a Hss variation between moderns of 8 to 8.5 places. The new study a year later comes up with a Hss varaiation of 10.9 for the same group. How did Hss change over 1 year. Personally I don’t trust CS or Paabo.”

There is only one study. The title is “DNA sequence of the mitochondrial hyper variable region II from the Neanderthal type specimen.” Is it the “region II” part that leads you to think there are two studies a year apart? Only one study.

Just before the FOOTNOTES setion of the report it lists the ABBREVIATIONS - they used HVRI and HVRII as abbreviations for the first and second hypervariable region (on the mtDNA), is that why you are thinking of here?

As soon as the Paabo group finished their tests in their lab in Munich, a separate group from the USA did the same tests in their own lab in the USA. This is not an unusual proceedure. There are commercial companies that are paid to duplicate the tests performed by others (usually the original scientist) in the commercial companies’ labs. It’s simply a double check.

I’m going to sign off and go look at Table 1.

Jois

Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley