It’s been my theory for quite some time that N5s (the immune system subgroup which are immune to Bubonic Plague) were of partial Neaderthal stock. This would definitely explain a higher modern population in the European ancestry.
I have also long thought that my family had Neanderthal blood lines. We just seem to have an easier time building muscle, and a harder time supporting a high growth rate. (Tall TCs tends to be gimpy TCs.) And we have the aforementioned immune system difference.
That doesn’t make any sense. Especially the last sentence. I don’t even know what that means.
Well, different species have different proteins in their immune systems. Bubonic plague can not infect people with the N5 protein. Blood lines carrying a natural advantage against bubonic plague would have been more successful throughout Europe.
If two groups left Africa, one mixing with Neanderthals, and one not. The line carrying the Neanderthal immune protein (assuming I’m correct about that connection) would be more successful.
That protein which is in the one to four percent genetic material some of us share with Neanderthals was enough to save 1/3 of Europe from the Black Death?
Thats certainly a statistical Hail Mary.
Yes, I understand that. But why would Neanderthals have an immunity to bubonic plague? And what does this mean:
Higher population density when?
The little I’ve read suggests recent data is fairly convincing that at least one out of Africa group contains Neanderthal contribution to the genome; this group may have mixed before it split into European and Asian groups.
My understanding is that Paabo, at least, believes the mixing may have occurred during Paleolithic times; I assume some of this reasoning is based on mitochondrial DNA studies.
It seems to me that there may be some discomfort around the whole Neanderthal-genes-in-Europeans-and-Asians-but-not-Sub-Saharan-Africans thing. There exists a general doctrine of genetic egalitarianism that is based on a monogenetic Adam-and-Eve sort of origin for modern humans. Evidence of injection of “outside” genes, particularly into groups composing a couple or three “race” categories is not going to be a comfortable thing, and I expect fairly rigorous examination of the evidence before it’s widely accepted.
While it’s fun–and commercially successful–to imply that Neanderthals would be a step backward, those popular perceptions have little to do with reality. They could just as easily be advantageous genes. And 1-4% is actually quite a large number; perhaps on order of the difference between humans and chimpanzees, right?
:eek:
You just described me, my father, and his father. Except although I have the frame for big muscles, I never got them, despite trying.
(Did you write “earlier” for “later”?)
Two points:
(1) I think the models used to estimate MRCA and IAP specifically assume no non-sapiens ancestry.
(2) I’m doubtful about the MRCA and IAP estimates in general. Australia and America were fairly isolated. Even allowing for some diffusion, can one be sure diffusion was enough to meet MRCA and IAP estimates? The one MRCA-like estimate I saw that showed its assumptions specifically ignored the difficulty of diffusion parameters (as being unknown) and used instead a very crude diffusion model.
It was a thread at SDMB, I think, which called my attention to the fact that inter-species (but intra-genus) breeding, however rare, does occur. Charles Darwin wrote:
This may help explain my point. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/previous_seasons/case_plague/clues.html The gene I had seen referred to as “N5” is called “CCR5” here. It’s the same gene which seems to provide immunity to HIV infection. Also, I should have used the term “Black Death” instead of bubonic plague.
Why would Neanderthals have an immunity?
We are not referring here to a developed immunity such as results from vaccination, if that’s what you mean. We are talking about a simple misalignment between the disease and host. Much like the way apes can carry HIV but not be made ill by it.
Higher population density when?
Now. There would be a higher number of descendants in Europe of plague resistant vs plague vulnerable populations.
Neanderthals are so easy even a cave man could do them!
One thing to keep in mind is that the modern BSC definition of “species” pretty much rules out significant inter-species breeding in the wild. If there is significant interbreeding, then the populations aren’t considered different species any more. But the term “species” is a human construct.
Don’t be too hasty to criticize Grandma’s habit of sleeping around :
“The analysis of the Neandertal
genome shows that they are likely to have had
a role in the genetic ancestry of present-day
humans outside of Africa, although this role was
relatively minor given that only a few percent of
the genomes of present-day people outside Africa
are derived from Neandertals. Our results also
point to a number of genomic regions and genes
as candidates for positive selection early in modern
human history, for example, those involved in
cognitive abilities and cranial morphology. We
expect that further analyses of the Neandertal genome
as well as the genomes of other archaic
hominins will generate additional hypotheses
and provide further insights into the origins and
early history of present-day humans.” (emphasis mine)
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/328/5979/710.pdf
Sounds like you can blame her for being ugly, though. 
I’ve met a few people who certainly share this phisiognomy. So I was delighted by the news this week that perhaps my flights of fancy weren’t so far fetched, after all.
Love it. One guy always walked into a business meeting late and I could almost see the club he was dragging with him.
I always thought that Milford Wolpoff looked Neanderthal-ish. Oddly enough, he’s the most high profile anti-Out of Africa anthropologists, claiming Europeans are directly descended from Neanderthals. 
You know, the “cavemen are always late” thing is an offensive stereotype, right? I mean, they frequently are late, but it’s offensive if a non-caveman says it.
Thank you! I remembered this guy from TV but had forgotten the name. And I definitely thought he looked the part.
There was a time, not all that long ago, when Out of Africa wasn’t so nearly the consensus view, and you’d see him pop up in documentaries to discuss his hypothesis, which he calls the Multiregional hypothesis. These days, though, I think the Out of Africa hypothesis has won, hands down. I have to wonder if he’s finally given up on that hypothesis since it just doesn’t stand up to the DNA evidence we have.
I think that is a misread of the paper by whichever journalist is reporting this. All extant humans share about 99.9% of our DNA. We share 99.5% of our DNA with Neanderthals and about 98.5% with chimps. These are the numbers I’ve seen most commonly reported. I can’t see that we are suddenly saying that some extant human populations differ by as much as 4% in their DNA.
Oh, and thanks for the link to the paper in Science in your subsequent post. I tried wading thru it, but I think I’ll wait for the PBS *NOVA *special on this subject-- that was a little dense for me.
The main thing I have with the dirty, tangle haired image is the evidence of jewelry in the grave goods. This seems to me to indicate they actually had some form of aesthetics. If you are bothering to put on jewelry, you probably do something about neatening your hair, and probably washing and using minerals and plant substances to decorate your body [look at the guys in the amazon, no clothing worth mentioning other than a gourd or whatever on their nads, but elaborate face painting and hair decorations. ]
I picked up on that as well. I have been reading a lot of Spencer Wells work recently including the book Deep Ancestry. He is the foremost or at least the most famous and influential scholar in this area and he goes out of his way not to be racist but, if you read the DNA evidence even in layman’s terms, it turns out that we aren’t just all one big happy homo sapien family differentiated only by skin tone. There were a number of events during the time of the last Ice Age that made human differentiation fast and furious whether it involved people moving to Northern Europe, the Asian mainland or isolated them as the Australian Aborigines.
Both the blatantly racist and scientific arguments have always been phrased in a backward way it seems to me. Africa has more human diversity than any other place on earth so you can’t just lump even black Africans together as a group. That is true. However, maybe the small groups that moved out of Africa 40,000 - 10,000 years ago were rather small and underwent a Founder effect coupled pushed through a genetic funnel because of harsh circumstances and then got another shift through interbreeding with Neanderthals. That would mean that everything isn’t only skin deep just like most people think intuitively anyway and that there are somewhat distinct human populations no matter how large even though there is always a gradient because of further inbreeding. The proponents of the ‘only skin deep’ hypothesis haven’t stood up well to scientific scrutiny in my opinion but it is career suicide for researchers to state that outright nor should they. The facts speak for themselves so far assuming the research is correct.