Lets meet our Hominid family tree.

I love the fact that we were not the first hominids walking about planet earth.
I find it amazing that we Homo sapiens sapiens once walked around with a few types of hominid at the same time.
Plus the fact that we have found a new hominid recently which adds more to our family.



Neanderthal.



Lived 30,000-250,000 years ago have been found mostly in Europe and while only differing from our DNA by about 0.5% they had a bigger brain and used tools and such.

Homo Erectus.



Lived 1.9myo to around 50,000 years ago. Perhaps in time scales the most successful hominid, these are the guys who made tools and probably discovered fire. They had a smaller brain than us and a good job really I think in the battle of the planet it was between us and them to come out on top.

Homo heidelbergensis



Lived 600,000 - 50,000 years ago around the same brain size as us and with recent discoveries may have been the first hominid to bury their dead.

I will add more for you all to say hello later cos I'm tired.
I just find it fascinating that many of the things we think we may have discovered may have actually been discovered by other Hominids like fire and certain tools and maybe we observed and stole the idea.
Anyhow more to come later .

a reply to: boymonkey74

Oh and don't be fooled by Erectus's smile he would beat us all to death...very efficient hunters.

Sorry.

45 years ago, I decided to come to this planet.

I self evolved into the current form I reside in today.

Anyone that witnessed the fact that I have not physically changed in 45 years has been eliminated.

Great post, I love the reconstructed models of homo etc. but where is gods chosen children in all this, surely they are genetically different from us homo heathens,. Just joking. I love the fact that we may have evolved from monkeys apes to what we are now, sometimes I wish we were still apes maybe we would all get on better as apes. I wonder if with out technology if we would evolve further maybe homo Sapian sapian sapian.

a reply to: Cloudbuster

Well we are still classed as great Apes and I am just reading something thats says that our classification of what we are should be Monkey but that is for another thread.

I thought monkeys had tails and apes don't. I would be happy to be classified as either.
a reply to: boymonkey74

a reply to: Cloudbuster

Yeah thats what I thought.
Just reading some stuff thats all.

australianmuseum.net.au...

That neanderthal kind of looks like me. Can't trust your kids, they sneak a picture and send it in for a few bucks.

a reply to: rickymouse

Well we do have a bit of them in us so....
My pals Dad went mad when he heard red hair comes from the neanderthal bit in our DNA...he is Irish and shouted "They are always trying to dumb us paddies down!".
I have the red haired gene also so I have my fair share of Neanderthal in me also .

a reply to: boymonkey74

Red hair is from the neanderthal tree branch ?

Dang... it seems I'm living up to my ancestors' expectations as a redneck country bumpkin afterall.

a reply to: CranialSponge

While not 100% it sure could be.

www.dailymail.co.uk...

I feel pretty proud I have the gene .

a reply to: boymonkey74

I feel pretty proud I have the gene

Me too.

Now pass me a piece of that wooly mammoth rump roast, I'm hungry.

I wonder how many people on this ATS have the red gene in them, perhaps it could be the next survey, there are some who say that the Atlantans had red hair and there are some drawings of ghengis khan as a redhead with Mongolian facial features. There are a few cultures in Australasia that have red hair, maybe not as ginga as those in say Ireland have. Genes can lay dormant then all of a sudden your kids got red hair when no one in your family has been red for generations.a reply to: boymonkey74

a reply to: CranialSponge

No, sorry if I'm raining on everyon's parade. The gene that codes for red hair in Neanderthal is different from the gene that codes for red hair in "us".

a reply to: peter vlar

Yep, I read that somewhere. Different gene. But I too have the red haired gene incidentally.

a reply to: Cloudbuster

I was under the impression that both parents need to be carrying the red haired gene for it to be expressed. My mum always said the red hair came from my dad (my mother is blonde) but it must be on her side as well. After all they were originally an Irish family.

a reply to: boymonkey74

So having somewhat grey hair does that mean i skipped all the evolutionary links and evolved straight from a silverback . Hmmm brain size questionable .

originally posted by: grumpy64
a reply to: Cloudbuster

I was under the impression that both parents need to be carrying the red haired gene for it to be expressed. My mum always said the red hair came from my dad (my mother is blonde) but it must be on her side as well. After all they were originally an Irish family.

The scenario you are describing would be for a recessive gene. The gene for red hair in H. Sapiens is what we call an "incomplete dominant". What this means is that instead of taking over any recessive genes(for example a dark haired father[dom] and a blonde mother[rec], the child will definitely have dark hair. With red hair being an incomplete dom, it, in laymans terms, will always mix the 2. So if your dad had red hair and your mom blonde, you would end up as a strawberry blonde. The amount of redness expressed would depend on how blonde mom was... Dirty
Blonde to Platinum blonde. The lighter the shade of blonde, the more diluted the red would be whereas if both parents carried the gene for red hair you have a much higher chance of being fire engine red like Bozo the Clown or Ronald McDonald. When I drag my lazy ass out of bed in another 5 hours ill pull up some links and a citation or two regarding the different coding genes for Neanderthal and HSS

a reply to: nullafides

Smoking's real cool brah.

Shame you're not.



Anyway, on topic, I often wonder how odd it must have been to see other hominids, how unsettling, what thoughts must have been going through one's mind, etc.

This is a really interesting thread start, a great reminder that we are animal (Kingdom Animalia) and quite humbling that we are, at this point in time, the most successful of our kind (apologies for the appropriation of the word 'kind')...

originally posted by: peter vlar

originally posted by: grumpy64
a reply to: Cloudbuster

I was under the impression that both parents need to be carrying the red haired gene for it to be expressed. My mum always said the red hair came from my dad (my mother is blonde) but it must be on her side as well. After all they were originally an Irish family.

The scenario you are describing would be for a recessive gene. The gene for red hair in H. Sapiens is what we call an "incomplete dominant". What this means is that instead of taking over any recessive genes(for example a dark haired father[dom] and a blonde mother[rec], the child will definitely have dark hair. With red hair being an incomplete dom, it, in laymans terms, will always mix the 2. So if your dad had red hair and your mom blonde, you would end up as a strawberry blonde. The amount of redness expressed would depend on how blonde mom was... Dirty
Blonde to Platinum blonde. The lighter the shade of blonde, the more diluted the red would be whereas if both parents carried the gene for red hair you have a much higher chance of being fire engine red like Bozo the Clown or Ronald McDonald. When I drag my lazy ass out of bed in another 5 hours ill pull up some links and a citation or two regarding the different coding genes for Neanderthal and HSS

Thanks for this info. Actually I am a strawberry blonde but my brother and sister are redheads.