Trouts, As long as the interrupt isn’t religion or creation, you are forgiven 
trouts1: I’ve been reading (Christopher) Stringer and McKie’s “African Exodus” c 1996 - Is this the same Stringer you are talking about? What’s the book title?
Haven’t you quoted Cavalli-Sforza, too? The Great Human Diasporas?
BTW: In “African Exodus” pp 97 mentions the idea that if a bathed, shaved and dressed in modern clothing Neanderthal were dropped in a New York subway “…it is doubtful whether he would attract any more attention than some of its other denizens.” (Via Wm. Straus and A.J.E. Cave) And then goes on to say others dispute this point and notes that Steve Jones of… delivered the pithy riposte paraphrased above-but now that I’m laughing again here it is: “Most people would change seats if a Cro-Magnon sat next to them on a train,” he says. “They would change trains if a Neanderthal did the same thing.”
I thought the DNA/ mtDNA and “out of Africa 2” were pretty much accepted? The experiments re-done and verified?
Irishman’s 3 populations A, B, & C makes sense and so does Spoke-'s horse & donkey = mule. Aren’t horses and donkeys different species? And the definition of species is reproduce fertile offspring? If that’s right then the question is - Are Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons the same Genus only or the same species?
Jois: The book was Christopher Stringer & Clive Gamble, "In Search of the Neanderthals"
Jois above: “were pretty much accepted,” yes, but its not quite written in stone yet, “DNA dating is based on the assumption (debated by geneticists) that mutations occur at a constant rate.”
The following from some bones from Feldhofer Cave, near Dusseldorf, Germany, in 1856, quoting from,
http://www.archaeology.org/9709/newsbriefs/dna.html
Note: a single sample.
The site below was the starting point for the site above. It has tons of stuff such as:
http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/academic/cult_sci/anthro/exploratorium/hominid_journey/timeline.html
Introducaiton to Genetics
Review of Mendelian Genetics
What is our Genetic Makeup - How Does it Work.
Basic Terminology and Concepts Necessary to Understand Genetics.
Mutations - Source of New Variation.
Basics of Natural Selection
Species and Fuzzy Sets - What Makes Something a New Species?
Fossil Hominid Descriptions and Timeline
Evolution - a General Background
For reference:
You need also to recall that “Neanderthals” is a pretty broad classification – it represents what is either an entire species or an entire subspecies, with nearly the breadth of variation that Homo sapiens sapiens entails. The usual depiction of the Neanderthal is the Classic (late Ice Age European) variant. The Levantine Neanderthals (granted nobody calls the Middle East the Levant anymore, but it’s enshrined as the technical term) were much more like early H. s. sapiens – someone reversed the Neanderthal-on-the-subway line to suggest that professional wrestler Hacksaw Jim Duggan could be sent back in the same time machine and fit right in with a Levantine-Neanderthal tribe, at least as far as appearance goes.
Trouts1: those cites are amazing-esp., the first one in “Cell” with its rigerous peer review and reputation.
Could you go back over the African Diversity question by mipsman? I thought it meant the population used for the study rather than the whole of Africa. Whatever study was underway,
greater diversity was found making it the oldest population or genetic material…
And Polycarp, I like Levant! I’d like to look at a couple of the maps in my books to see just how far afield the Neanderthals went. Further North and a little further East? I didn’t think they went into Asia, but now I have to check.
I’d like to have my books updated with each new find - have to give it a new name… Internet?
Oh, I’m gonna keep using these #%@&* codes 'til I get 'em right.
Trouts1: those cites are amazing-esp., the first one in “Cell” with its rigerous peer review and reputation.
Could you go back over the African Diversity question by mipsman? I thought it meant the population used for the study rather than the whole of Africa. Whatever study was underway,
greater diversity was found making it the oldest population or genetic material…
And Polycarp, I like Levant! I’d like to look at a couple of the maps in my books to see just how far afield the Neanderthals went. Further North and a little further East? I didn’t think they went into Asia, but now I have to check.
I’d like to have my books updated with each new find - have to give it a new name… Internet?
Oh, I’m gonna keep using these #%@&* codes 'til I get 'em right.
Hi Polycarp!
I guess that is why the Neanderthal on the train or bus or street is so funny to me, everyone has tossed in their two or three cents about how he looks.
Oh, I’m gonna keep using these #%@&* codes 'til I get 'em right.
Honestly, that double post wasn’t there until I posted “Hi Polycarp” and then pressed “reload” is this an abandon all hope…thing?
Oh, I’m gonna keep using these #%@&* codes 'til I get 'em right.
Still not sure what the context is but you might be referring to the diversity of genetic material. The greater diversity
here refers to genetic variation. African populations show the greater genetic variation when compared to populations
outside of Africa so are the oldest population. It takes longer to get diverse.
For the birth and head size question I can’t find any more information.
I received one answer to the question:
neoteny: retention of some larval or immature characters in adulthood
The answer this person gave me suggests a method and that it likely held for Neanderthals but I’m trying to verify it.
The implication being that a specific adaptation by Neanderthal females would have taken too much time so Neanderthal and Modern fetus’s did not require more room.
Mipsman asked: “If you had Homo erectus from England to Java, wouldn’t there be
archaic Homo sapiens over at least that much area? Did they go the way of the Neanderthals?”
Everything I’ve read so far says, “…replaced…” Everywhere modern man went he replaced the existing population.
Some pundit said that the biblical model for modern man might better be called “Cain” rather than “Eve” or “Noah.”
Oh, I’m gonna keep using these #%@&* codes 'til I get 'em right.
I think North America would show the greatest genetic variation from randomly sampling members of the poulation. Migration and diverse populations living side by side would confuse and muddy the picture of genetic diversity. That is why I was trying to phrase a question about if the analysis performed identified specific African peoples as the most genetically diverse or if all of Africa was the most genetically diverse. (And, just to make sure, aren’t we talking specifically about mitochondrial DNA diversity?)
It would seem that you would have to consider people like the Tassili of the Sahara and the Bushmen of the Kalahari, people who have probably been where they are for a long, long time, differently than you would consider the Bantu speaking peoples who have expanded from West Africa practically over all of the sub-Saharan continent. Variation in the Bushmen (are you supposed to call them !Kung now?) would likely be from long term secular changes and variations in Bantu speakers would be from assimilation of absorbed peoples.
Polycarp, your observation about Levantine Neanderthals (and how did they know they had big noses anyway?) gets back to the OP. The recent archaeological evidence shows overlapping periods (in time) of occupancy of this area by Neanderthals and Homo sapiens sapiens. The best explanation I heard was that during the minor glacials, the Homo sapiens sapiens retreated south and during the minor interglacials the Neanderthals retreated north. Wouldn’t the more modern appearance of Levantine Neanderthals be the result of genetic mingling with Homo sapiens sapiens while the one was packing up to go and the other was moving in?
With very fuzzy dates note just relative position:
Homo erectus 1,600,000 to 250,000
Possibly Homo ergaster as a period fill for 250,000 to 40,000
Homo sapiens 40,000 which splits to Neanderthals and Homo sapiens sapiens
Put archaic Homo sapiens in with ergaster. Stringer & Gamble " say this guy “is currently in some doubt”. Keep this in mind for what follows.
So the line up for African Homo erectus in the Late Homo, kick off:
1 S.E. Asian Homo erectus
2 Chinese Homo erectus
3 Homo sapiens
3 could be European archaic Homo sapiens and African archaic Homo sapiens, which later gets to Homo sapiens.
Some put erectus as definite for Asia and possible for Europe at 1,000,000 years ago. Even this is fuzzy with the Dmanisi site in Georga possibly at 1.6 for erectus. This even questions whether erectus came out of Africa at all.
At 750,000 there is evidence of erectus in Middle East and Southern Europe but the earliest sites in the Mediterranean have no fossil evidence only tools. So who exactly made the tools is questionable.
At roughly 500,000 erectus is morphing in the West while in the East still fairly erectus like. The Western branch get different brain case shapes, more modern-sized brain and less skull mass. These changes signal to some the beginning of archaic Homo sapiens. Some call this guy a later erectus, others the first sapiens and for less confusion some call him Homo heidelbergensis.
Back to the question. Archaic is not a settled item. If you accept he was there in the West you could probably say he developed into something else and have some support for it. You would probably not think he went in the same dead end manner that Neanderthal went. As for the East there is there less support for archaic than the West which is questionable so having erectus East to West does not imply archaic over the same range.
Everything above is questionable. If you get a book on this stuff and every time the author mentions a site, find or other keyword and search the net I find about 80 to 90 percent of the time there will be very specific information available on the data the author is presenting. Quite a few times I find the authors conclusions very questionable. I find quite a bit of the “evidence” as presented by the authors on tools, skull shape and burials to be very subjective.
If you want to rake over Iberia see below.
http://www.med.abaco-mac.it/articles/doc/006.htm#STRINGER
Basically:
- N is around for a long time and available to learn and mate. Does not prove anything. He was just there and mixing longer than at other places.
- From tool fragments N sticks to Mousterian tools while later modern inflow move on to new tools. N is stupid and does not pick up from moderns.
My overall take is in line with Irishman who I think is valid everywhere but without proof.
From the site:
The extinction of Iberian Neanderthals and Its Implications for the Origins of Modern
Humans in Europe
Which has:
Introduction
The Ebro Frontiera
Unpacking the Upper Paleolithic Package
The evolutionary meaning of Art
An Ecologically Based Model for the Spread of Modern Humans into Iberia
Conclusion
References
by João Zilhão
First! How do you know that Neanderthals had big noses? All of the measurements that go with skulls (modern, old or middling) have been studied in great detail and a study has been made of putting flesh to skulls with clay.
Our skulls (and all of our bones) are marked with openings or attachments for muscles, tendons and other anatomical stuff. An experienced person can figure out from the bare skull how big the noses were, how wide, eye lids, lips, and just about anything else.
Mipsman, From what I’ve been reading (from books I think I have already mentioned here) there is no human being on earth at this time that is very different from us.
The oldest populations have still even now more variety in their DNA, mtDNA, specific chromosomes - you name it, than everyone else. And every study so far says that oldest most varied DNA, mtDNA or specific chromosomes is African.
So if you pick the three most divergent looking or sounding on acting living people from Africa and three of any living people from someplace else and do any test that involves genetic/DNA in any form you get the same answer - more variety from Africa and less from others.
1987-Wilson, C----, and Stoneking from UCal/Berkeley use placental mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from 147 individuals, made a gene tree showing Africans to be most diverse and oldest and modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens or Hss) were in Africa 400,000 years ago. Then immediately said error and changed the 400,000 to 200,000.
There was grumbling.
1991 the same group published the repeated experiment (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 1991 and Science 1991) and still came up with Africa and 200,000.
There was grumbling.
1991 Merriwether of U Pittsburg and Wallace of Emory U/Atlanta and others did mtDNA on 3,000 people and said the native population of Africa have greater diversity consistant with evidence from a variety of sources - Africa.
There was grumbling.
Ruvolo (formerly one of the grumblers) tried was was supposed to be a less mutation prone part of the mtDNA (named COII) and still got 200,000 years ago for the (common) ancestor, and Africa.
Japanese researchers stepped in here - Horai & all…with their research and said 280,000 for common ancestor.
Horai & all then went ahead and sequenced all 16,500 bases of the mtDNA for three humans: a Japanese, a European, and an African; and for 4 apes: an orangutan, a gorilla, a pygmy, and a common chimp.
Horai & all used the apes to calculate the mutation rate among primate populations so they could apply those rates to the human lineages (one of the running argument and cause of grumbling in the past - i.e. how do you know the mutation rate?)
Horai & all ended up with common ancestors at 143,000 years ago. Africans still have greatest diversity.
Grumbling now directed at the continued use of mtDNA, maybe what holds true for mtDNA won’t necessarily be true for the rest of our genes… (Sounds like grasping for straws here, doesn’t it but the old theories die hard and it must have seemed worth wile to them.)
Kidd and Tishkoff of Yale looked for things in DNA that would be variations in populations that would define the populations and their relations to other populations. And they found it on chromosome 12.
You know we have a lot of junk in our DNA that serves no known function - doesn’t make protein or carry any messages. Just hanging around, long strings of bases of meaningless repititions. And THEY come in several forms. Some of us inherit one kind and some of us inherit the other - on DNA not mtDNA. Perfect and the Yale group went with this.
You know the drill now, Africans have the greatest variety of these strings (250 of the AGCT bases) of chromosome 12 and on a second section of chromosome 12 there is a another oddity were there is a stuttering section which repeats “CTTT” but some people don’t carry this repeat(this lack is called a deletion). Sub Saharan African individuals have every variation/variety of deletion and no deletion, stuttering “CTTT” in different numbers of repeats - and the rest? The rest have only one pattern for deletion with 6 times repeat of the “CTTT” ornon deletion and 5 or 10 time repeat of “CTTT” - and do I have to tell you the rest?
I will anyway. Modern people came from Africa 90,000 years ago.
Kidd said, “Our work blows the multiregional hypotheses right out of the water- multiregionalism is utterly incompatable with the facts we have uncovered.”
We are all young and African in origin.
NOTE: The above is from “African Exodus” by Stringer and McKie, pub. 1997 First American Edition. All typos and odd grammar are mine.
Now if you are going to worry about 120,000 and 90,000 and other variations in the Out of Africa (OOA) date, you should try to put that devil behind you. It just shouldn’t make that much difference.
Cavalli-Sforza & all examined chromosomes 13 and 15 and came up with the same - more variations in Africans and OOA in 112,000. His work also called for what is called “Rapid Replacement Model” - that Hss is the same process by which other species spread - rapid radiation from the center.
Nap Attach
From all I read, the interaction of the two must have been minimal. Neanderthals went on using more primitive tools and being pushed to remote corners of Europe while the wimpier cousins with the brains took over.
Yep, Sunbear, that is the way it is beginning to look to me, too. Although (see OP) the question of bones that look like a mix between Neanderthals and Cro Magnon do pop up from time to time.
Polycarp noted that the Neanderthal had been around long enough to have developed some changes in their physical attributes, too.
I think only DNA will resolve these isolated bone questions on a one by one basis.
And there are a few annoying surities in the reading; an author here who tosses in that it takes about a million years before a species becomes so different from one another that they cannot breed and produce fertile young (probably Cavalli-Sforza) and others who insist Neanderthals and Homo sapiens sapiens were all one species and could breed freely.
I do try to check the dates of the authors and their references but think this is an issue for DNA when all is said and done - and so far the answer is no, Neanderthals are not us.
It is interesting that when modern humans came out of Africa they hooked a right and went to Asia and beyond. They didn’t go left because into Europe because of the glaciers or coldness of the weather or because the Neanderthals were there?
When the modern humans finally came into Europe it looks like the came in over the top and came down Europe, finally overcoming the last of the Neanderthals in Spain. (Where those daned bones of the OP were found, yikes.)
Oh, I’m gonna keep using these #%@&* codes 'til I get 'em right.
Who saw Nova last night? They had a very interesting episode on the oldest skeletons in the Americas. It look like the Native Americans might not be the first people to live in the New World! A skull from around 10,000-12,000 years ago (found in the Pacific Northwest, IIRC) has traits that are quite caucasoid in appearance. Specifically, they look most similar the Ainu, the indigenous people of Japan (most Japanese are decended from the Chinese). In South America, other skulls of similar age look more like Australian Aborigenees than anyone else. The mongoloid people that became the American Indians likely came later, after the ice caps had mostly melted. Who else saw this episode? What do you think?
–It was recently discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
Diceman: Great show, I’m going to start another thread.
Well, how about “not us” 90% of the time? The Iberian group is somewhat isolated and likes the now Blond girls who just arrived.
From paper of Erik Trinkaus, João Zilhão and Cidália Duarte who are the kid’s caretakers.
"The Lapedo Child: Lagar Velho 1 and our Perceptions of the Neandertals"
From: http://www.med.abaco-mac.it/home.htm
Snippets & rebuttals follow
Rebuttals by:
António Amorim: Dec 1999:
Says DNA is too different but it could have happened. Main point is Neanderthals did not contribute significantly.
Luís Raposo:
With the this cultural framework in mind, it is easy to conclude that we have no difficulty in accepting that Neandertals and modern humans could perhaps have occasionally mixed. Even the taxonomic lassification of both as distinguished species, increasingly adopted during the past decade, had always seemed to us as irrelevant for the purpose of this debate, since we are aware that the Linean criteria to define “biospecies” or “live species” (which are object, themselves, of many exceptions) are not entirely applied in relation to “morphospecies” or “fossil species”.
In the present case, we are at the extreme limit of data inadequacy: there is no genetic data and only one single individual, a young child, is known.
António Bracinha Vieira:
Need more samples.
Eugénia Cunha:
Need more samples. Child still changing into adulthood so typing not altogether valid. In the history of human paleontology there are some examples of sub-adult skeletons which have been interpreted more conservatively. Most recently, the discovery of an ancient child’s burial on the Nile, the oldest known burial in Africa north of the equator - Taramsa Hill, in the Nile valley -, is a good example. It is a 8-10 YEAR old child, intentionally buried, probably older than 50 000 years (Science News, 1998). The team (Vermeersch et al., 1998) assigned the child to modern sapiens because of the shape of its brain case, the rounding of its forehead and the slenderness of the limb bones. However, the child also has a few Neandertal like traits, such as a relatively large, sloping face and a flattened upper-arm bone shaft, yet no hybridization was claimed.
Does challenge traits as possibly falling within modern’s variation.
In all, since the majority of the features can be refuted, one cannot say that there is an unexpected or “mixed” combination of features in Lagar Velho 1 skeleton. Thus, hybridization has no validity, at least on the basis of the skeletal features they propose.
Also questions variability of available mating time 1000-7000 years.
Nuno Ferreira Bicho:
Genetics not cultural is questionable.
Evidence questioned,rabbit holes juggled bones, questionable dating. A bulldozer raked the site hitting and arm and the skull.
Reply from:
Erik TRINKAUS, João ZILHÃO and Cidália DUARTE November 1999
Dismisss Raposo and Bicho as not scientific.
DNA inbreeding possible between more divergent chimp populations.
Reply to Amorim
Amorim accepts the results reported by Gagneux et al. (1999) on the mtDNA of African hominoids. These results show that contemporary interbreeding populations of chimpanzees are internally more diverse than the ensemble of Late Pleistocene fossil and modern humans, including one Neandertal. At the same time, however, he accepts the
conclusion of Krings et al. (1997, 1999) that the difference between the Neander Valley hominid and present day humans implies their split from a common ancestor some 300,000 years ago.
These two propositions are mutually incompatible. Geneticists compute the time-depth of a split from a common ancestor on the basis of the amount of genetic difference between the two species whose phylogeny they are trying to reconstruct. If the genetic difference between Neandertals and present day humans means that they are two
different species which split 300,000 years ago, the much larger difference between populations of chimpanzees would imply that those populations belonged to different species whose last common ancestor would have lived a lot more than 300,000 years ago. Since that is not the case, there are only two possible outcomes to the contradiction:
either Neandertals and moderns were conspecific populations at the time they co-existed and interbreeding at contact is what one should expect; or the use of genetic variability to predict past phylogenetic processes with the degree of resolution required in the case of the evolution of humans over the last 100,000 years is not warranted.
The fact that Neandertals may have contributed little or nothing to
the genetic makeup of today’s Europeans does not mean that they did not contribute significantly to the genetic makeup of the immediately succeeding European populations of early pleniglacial
So, “Neanderthals are not us,” is true in the larger scheme of things but it looks like there is some room for partying. There may be an attempt to break out a new group of Homo ancestor. It’s an awful lot of speculation from one very important find.