The Neanderthal--a comprehensive introduction to the fossil record

Originally posted by Hopechest
It is akin to comparing us to apes.

edit on 3-3-2013 by Hopechest because: (no reason given)

Tinkerbell you are an ape - a great ape to be exact, We all are.
You are an animal you are a mammal you are an ape - surely that does not surprise you ?

Interesting thread thank you.

Do you think if they had survived that they would still be referred to as a sub species, I do not think so.
At most they would just be referred to as a 'race'.

In a way they have continued to survive with Eropeans having 4 % DNA ish - whether due to breeding or common ancestors, the reason does not seem to be clear - but the neanderthals survive in us ?

Originally posted by HelenConway

Originally posted by Hopechest
It is akin to comparing us to apes.

edit on 3-3-2013 by Hopechest because: (no reason given)

Tinkerbell you are an ape - a great ape to be exact, We all are.
You are an animal you are a mammal you are an ape - surely that does not surprise you ?

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I was going to point this out, but sometimes I just give up on a member and forsake the thought of further arguing.

And yes, I'm one of those people that always corrects someone when they confuse monkeys with apes. There IS a difference, folks.

Originally posted by HelenConway
Interesting thread thank you.

Do you think if they had survived that they would still be referred to as a sub species, I do not think so.

Well, it's tough to say. Some even today mistakenly refer to certain ethnic groups as subspecies. (because they're hateful and bigoted.) I even tackle the issue of perceived race (albeit, somewhat clumsily) and the attached myths in another thread.

How would they be viewed socially? Probably as an "us" and "them" paradigm like most humans categorize themselves. Genetically, biologically? Well, now we're just leaving my area of expertise, so I wouldn't even venture a guess.

In a way they have continued to survive with Eropeans having 4 % DNA ish - whether due to breeding or common ancestors, the reason does not seem to be clear - but the neanderthals survive in us ?

It's tough to say whether we split off after say, heidelbergensis or even earlier with H. erectus (probably not.) It is difficult to say whether we had just been genetically separated for a couple hundred thousand years, or not.

DNA evidence does show some distinctiveness between Neandertals and H. sapiens leading one to believe that they were distinguished species. But again, there is evidence of cohabitation. And we know that with cohabitation comes interbreeding. Were they able to interbreed and produce fertile offspring?

So many questions that I would love to see answered

reply to post by Hopechest


And someday when we are gone, what will our ancestors say about us? Much the same I would think "What a bunch of apes!". Survival of the fittest often translates to survival of the luckiest. We got lucky, roll the evolution/survival dice again from day one and I doubt very much you would see anything remotely Human on the planet.

OP, nice thread and good info, thanks for sharing.

reply to post by NarcolepticBuddha


Thanks NarcoB! I loved this summary. In regard to the question of cohabitation, I find it curious that both Neanderthalus and Sapiens practiced the ritual of interment red ochre painting of their dead. I have struggled with this since my days in school and have not fully resolved it in my mind.

The Turner Group of Earthworks from the early 1900's at the Peabody Museum of Antiquity cites numerous cases of North American Clovis descendants practicing the cultural and symbolic red ochre painting of their dead upon burial. Indeed many academic studies cite various culture groups adhering to the human practice of red ochre burials across several continents including Cro Magnon Africa, 100kya.

Yet Andre Leroi Gourhan, (The Hunters of Prehistory) writes about European Neanderthal digs, “Most important, the very fact that so many Neandertal skeletons had turned up over the years indicated that they had been buried intentionally. At Le Moustier in southern France, a young man’s body was found sprinkled with red ochre and buried in a flexed position, as if in sleep.” In fact, an article in Popular Archaeology last year indicated that red ochre was a central part of the spiritual makeup of the Neanderthal way of life, as far back as 250,000 years ago.

The intermingling of this ceremonial use of an iron oxide based pigment is interesting, however not conclusive. The co-speciate DNA fusion does not appear to parallel this implied cultural infusion. One astounding aspect is however, it appears to be a cultural practice that stemmed for 245,000 years. An extraordinarily long time in terms of Homo development, and certainly compared to Neolithic cultures. Now that is extraordinary.

I wonder if blue jeans will last that long?

reply to post by TheEthicalSkeptic


I always love it when other members who are clearly more informed than I can chime in with some great information. This use of the ocher dye in the burial rituals is something I'm hearing for the first time! I will have to research this after I've had my nap

And indeed the intentional burials were a factor in some of the well-preserved samples. Conditions for preserving such ancient remains are very precise and delicate.

Please don't hesitate to add anything else that you feel is relevant or particularly interesting.

I will just do an information dump followed by the links that I have yet to extract relevant data from. I have not yet even written my commentary on it or oriented the information towards my theory. SOOOO....here it is in a very raw form.

basically I wanted to argue a very different pattern for migration for neanderthal. Genetic evidence suggests that they may have had more to do in the Americas. Pre-clovis theories come to mind. I am still reading up on that and trying to compare neanderthal tools to the Pre-clovis evidence available.


But the genetic evidence first.

What did they find?

Any human whose ancestral group developed outside Africa has a little Neanderthal in them – between 1 and 4 per cent of their genome, Pääbo's team estimates. In other words, humans and Neanderthals had sex and had hybrid offspring. A small amount of that genetic mingling survives in "non-Africans" today: Neanderthals didn't live in Africa, which is why sub-Saharan African populations have no trace of Neanderthal DNA.

"It must have been at least 45,000 years ago," says David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School who was involved in the project. That's because all non-Africans – be they from France, China or Papua New Guinea – share the same amount of Neanderthal DNA, suggesting that interbreeding occurred before those populations split. The timing makes the Middle East the likeliest place where humans leaving Africa and resident Neanderthals did the deed.

Archaeological evidence suggests that humans and Neanderthals overlapped for about 10,000 years in Europe and some fossils have even been interpreted as Neanderthal-human hybrids, though not all palaeoanthropologists agree on this.

www.newscientist.com...

Dienekes posted a SNP PCA showing the relative position of a sample of modern human populations from the Harvard HGDP along the axes formed by Chimpanzees, Denisovans and Neanderthals. On the broad-view PCA, the red dot indicates Chimpanzees, the green dot Neanderthals and the blue dot Denisovans. In accordance with earlier studies, in the zoom-in version of the PCA, Eurasians shift toward Neanderthals, Papuans toward Denisovans, while Africans and, especially, San look closer to Chimpanzees.

Among Eurasians, Lahu and Naxi, two Sino-Tibetan populations from China, are the closest to Neanderthals. This is, by itself, is surprising, as Neanderthals must have had more extensive contact with Europeans, not East Asians. American Indians again are not represented in the sample. But if we look at another SNP PCA from Skoglund & Jakobsson’s “Archaic Human Ancestry in East Asia” (2011), we’ll see that it’s American Indians that are noticeably closer to Neanderthals.

Where the Harvard HGDP sample failed, Skoglund & Jakobsson’s sample encompassing HapMap 3, Chicago HGDP and Finnish HapMap data identified the position of American Indians in PC1 and PC2. If American Indians were part of the sample from which Dienekes derived his PCA, they would have fallen in the space between Lahu/Naxi and Neanderthals. Skoglund & Jakobsson’s PCA also suggests some proximity between American Indians and Denisovans. This proximity comes out clearly in their Table S3 (see below in slightly shortened form), where Colombian and Karitiana are right next to Melanesians and ahead of Naxi in terms of frequency of the Denisova allele. Maya and Lahu are further down below but both are ahead of most West Asians, South Asians and West Eurasians. It appears that all easternmost populations, whether Melanesians, East Asians or South American Indians, are shifted closer to the Denisovan pole, while all of American Indians are shifted closer to Neanderthals.

Skoglund & Jakobsson’s map of the distribution of the Denisova allele in modern human populations.

It’s interesting to compare the distribution of Denisovan “admixture” with the distribution of Neanderthal “admixture” in the polymorphisms observed in human X chromosome’s dystrophin gene (ds44). The least derived B006 haplotype was observed in modern humans and in Neanderthals. In modern humans the frequency of B006 was the highest among North American Indians followed by Europeans (see Ziętkiewicz et al. Haplotypes in the Dystrophin DNA Segment Point to a Mosaic Origin of Modern Human Diversity.Am J Hum Genet 2003 November; 73 (5): 994–1015). American Indians also showed other near-basal haplotypes B052, B064 suggesting that the conservation of B006 among them is part of a systemic phenomenon. Applying a formula of sequence divergence to estimate the age of B006 on the Americas, Austin Whittall obtained the figure of 188,000 years, which is roughly the same time (pending molecular clock optimizations) as the emergence of “anatomically modern humans” in the African archaeological record.

B006 has not been reported from the southern areas of Sub-Saharan Africa but one copy was observed in Ethiopia and four in Burkina Faso suggesting gene flow from the north. A map of the worldwide distribution of B006 is shown below (from Yotova et al. “An X-Linked Haplotype of Neandertal Origin Is Present Among All Non-African Populations,” Mol. Biol. Evol. 28 (7), 2011).

Similarities between the New World and Melanesia/Papua New Guinea also transpired in a large-scale analysis of worldwide microsatellite variation by Sarah Tishkoff’s lab.

“The ratio of variance and heterozygosity is the largest in Native American and Papuan and Melanesian populations followed by East Asians, all with values greater than one, intermediate in most Europeans, Middle Easterners, and Indians, with values near one, and with values less than one in most African populations and a few Middle Eastern and European populations” (Tishkoff et al. “The Genetic Structure and History of Africans and African Americans,” Science 324 (5930), 2009, Suppl. Mat., p. 10).

This means that American Indians are Melanesians/Papuans are small populations subject to genetic drift. Tishkoff et al. believe that the highest ratio of variance to heterozygosity also means that American Indians and Papuans/Melanesians went through “a strong bottleneck followed by a recent and rapid expansion,” but the recency of this event is cast into doubt given the “archaic admixture” evidence. Most interestingly, African hunter-gatherers, Hadza and San, have the lowest heterozygosity values among all African populations (Tishkoff et al., Suppl. Mat., p. 10), and on Tishkoff’s Fig. S3 (see above) they are noticeably shifted rightward in the direction of American Indians and Melanesians/Papuans.

Tishkoff et al. attribute this unusual position of African foragers to their “stable small population sizes” (p. 10-11) and not to their recency. What Tishkoff et al.’s data seems to show is that American Indians and Melanesians/Papuans preserve an ancient population structure that’s also the ancient population structure of the Hadza and the San in Africa, but in Africa it’s overlaid by a thick stratum of agricultural and nomadic cattle-breeding diversity.

Going back to “archaic admixture,” higher frequencies of Neanderthal alleles among North American Indians and slightly lower frequencies of Denisovan allelles in South American Indians are very unexpected and don’t fit the “archaic admixture” theory, as there were no Neanderthals or Denisovans in America. There are ways to dismiss the inconvenient facts by attributing them to “ascertainment bias,” “false positives,” or “genetic drift.” But by the same token the proximity of the San to the Chimpanzee pole can be explained away without inferring that the San are basal to all other human populations. Science needs to have a strong theory to account for anomalous facts.

That’s when other disciplines beside genetics come in handy. It may not be a coincidence that the signs of “archaic admixture” are the highest precisely where linguistic diversity is also the highest, namely in the New World and Papua New Guinea. It’s precisely the New World and the Sahul that Johanna Nichols (Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time, 1992) classified as linguistic “residual zones” that preserve grammatical structures suggestive of what the earliest human language may have been like.

Ethnologists and ethnomusicologists find striking similarities between South America and Papua New Guinea in myths, rituals and music (see, e.g., the collection of essays Gender in Amazonia and Melanesia, edited by Thomas Gregor and Donald Tuzin, its review my folklorist Yuri Berezkin in Latin American Indian Literatures Journal 18 (2002), or Victor Grauer’s description of musical parallels).

Haploid genetics (mtDNA and Y-DNA) hasn’t matched the unmistakable cultural and linguistic similarities between the New World and Papua New Guinea with specific haplotypes shared between the two regions. Neither has it matched the discovery of “archaic admixture” with similar “archaic” mtDNA and Y-DNA haplotypes. But haploid systems are subjected to stronger genetic drift and may have simply lost traces of an ancient allelic pattern connecting the New World and Papua New Guinea. If this is the case, then the patterns observed in cultural and linguistic data may be more conservative than some of the patterns detected in haploid genetics.

anthropogenesis.kinshipstudies.org...

I wanted to use the teeth of neanderthal to show how he spread across the globe. People with similar traits are probably related to him. It is also a good way to track their migration. Also cro-magnon had more primitive teeth with projecting canines. He also lacks the neanderthal traits in its teeth that we see in some people today.

migrations, teeth, features

The cornerstone of Turner's hypothesis is this: sinodonty only occurs in northern Asia and the Americas. Sinodonty does not occur among the neighboring Mal'ta people of Lake Baikal or in the Stone Age Ukraine.

Turner's earliest evidence for sinodonty comes from northern China in about 18,000 B.C. He believes, however, that it emerged much earlier, perhaps as early as 40,000 years ago. According to his calculations, the Sinodonts migrated into Mongolia about 20,000 years ago and across the Bering Strait about 14,000 years ago.

European Upper Paleolithic peoples do not display sinodonty. It is Turner's belief that the Sinodont northern Chinese may have evolved from a primeval Southeast Asian Homo sapiens population.

Turner's work with teeth gains support from both genetic and linguistic research. A team of American geneticists has collaborated on a study of the variants (called Gm allotypes) of one particular protein found in the serum portion of the blood. All proteins drift, or produce variants over the generations, and members of an interbreeding population will share a set of such variants. Thus by comparing the Gm allotypes of the two different populations , one can work out their genetic distance which itself can be calibrated to give an indication of the length of time since the populations last interbred.

The research team found that more than 14,000 Central and South American Indians in their samples share the same Gm allotypes. These allotypes are believed to have resulted from a single migration of hunter-gatherers across the Bering Straits 14,000 years ago. Two later migrations brought the present-day Athabaskans and Eskimo-aleuts to North America. Such Gm allotype data as it comes from Asia appears to link all three groups with northeastern Siberia.

The other correlative evidence is from linguistics and is based on the work of Stanford linguist Joseph Greenberg. His argument is that the 300 or so languages in North America at the time of contact are divisible into three language groups: the Aleut-Eskimo on the northern fringe of North America, the Athabascan of Western Canada (with fragments in the American Southwest), and all of the rest are the so-called Amerind family of languages. His belief is that there were three separate migrations into the New World and these language groups are linguistic remnants of these events. It is only fair to mention that not everyone agrees with Greenberg.

III. THE CARABELLI TRAIT

This is the non-metric trait best known to dentists. This dental trait, the tuberculus anomalus, was first described in 1841 by Georg Carabelli, who was court dentist to the Austrian Emperor Franz.

The trait when present is located on the mesiolingual corner of upper first permanent molars and second deciduous molars. The trait is found infrequently in upper second permanent molars

When present as a cusp, that feature is variable in size. The trait may express itself as a pit. The cusp version may rival the main cusps in size. In its pit version, it may appear as a small ridge, pit, or furrow. Sometimes the trait is a sort of lingual cingulum; a similar feature is found amongst the gibbon, chimpanzee, gorilla, and orangutan.

Scoring the trait in a consistent manner was difficult until cast plaster plaques were devised. Before them, it was difficult to compare the work of different researchers. Dahlberg was the first to provide plaques (in the 1940s). Others since have created a series of cast plaster plaques for standardized study. (My note: see Hillson for an excellent discussion on this topic)

The determinants of the Carabelli trait appear early in embryogenesis; some speculate that it is quite 'old' phylogenetically.

There is a demonstrated relationship between the Carabelli trait and distolingual cusp size in upper molars and also between the Carabelli trait and the protostylid of lower molars.

The Carabelli trait has a high incidence of expression in Caucasoid populations with a low level of frequency of shovel-shaped incisors. Conversely, the Carabelli trait is seldom fully expressed in Mongoloid populations, which possess a high frequency of shovel-shaped incisors.

Thus this non-metric dental trait along with others has been used to extimate times of evolutionary divergence between local races, their ancestry, and migration patterns of populations. This was demonstrated in the sinodont narrative earlier in this article.

The highest frequencies (greater than 90%) are found amongst Asians and Native Americans and lowest amongst Europeans. Shovel shaped incisors appear in Homo erectus, suggesting that this is a very ancient trait.

Close View of Shovel-Shaped Neanderthal Incisors

(2) Uto-Aztecan Upper Premolar

In the permanent upper first premolar, the buccal cusp may bulge out to the buccal with a marked fossa in its distal shoulder. The form is known only in Native Americans, with its highest frequencies in Arizona. The name is taken from a regional linguistic division.

www.uic.edu...


chiefio.wordpress.com...

Modern chimpanzees Australopiths Modern humans Canines larger and project out from tooth row Canines slightly larger, but non-projecting Canines of similar size to other teeth and non-projecting

www.antiquityofman.com...

I was going to use the following to show how we inherited our light eyes and different colored hair from neanderthal.

Modern geneticists say that our red hair is a product of a different set of genes. The area of neanderthal territory matches exactly. The same is true for light eyes.

The sheer scope of their migrations across the globe would imply some form of sea fairing culture we do not yet know of. The same know how we are starting to admit may have existed in Africa as well by ancient Africans.





and

www.scripture4all.org...

erectuswalksamongst.us...

bible.cc...

www.colintudge.com...

history.vogels.org...

www.theforbiddenknowledge.com...

www.oldpaths.com...

www.akhnatonsjournal.org...

www.s8int.com...

www.aoi.com.au...

www.antiquityofman.com...

www.s8int.com...

www.crystalinks.com...

wiki.answers.com...'t_Neanderthals_mentioned_in_the_Bible_yet_we_know_they_existed

www.jcs-group.com...

www.bibliotecapleyades.net...

theunknownmoment.blogspot.com.es... SUPPRESSED%20HISTORY

www.stangrist.com...

www.accuracyingenesis.com...

www.nwcreation.net...

www.kingjamesbibleonline.org...

archaeologyinfo.com...

yourtubenews.ning.com...

www.freerepublic.com...

en.wikipedia.org...

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www.newscientist.com...
anthropogenesis.kinshipstudies.org...
chiefio.wordpress.com...
www.uic.edu...

reply to post by tadaman


And yet Homo Sapiens Sapiens is still superior. Regardless of whether the Neanderthal was "intelligent", it would seem (strangely) that some like you are almost "fighting for a cause" - and yet why do you feel so strongly? You do realise that you are Homo Sapiens Sapiens, right?

reply to post by HomoSapiensSapiens


Well basically, I find it interesting to study. What's wrong with that? Aren't we here on this website to absorb information that interests us? Honestly, you are the only one on this thread that seems to have a personal crusade.

Some people study history, others study language, some study art. One of my academic interests is early hominids.

Just because the 2nd World War is over doesn't mean people stop studying it. Just because Latin isn't a prevalent language doesn't mean that people no longer speak it fluently, just because impressionism isn't in its heyday doesn't mean that painters will never paint impressionistic art again.

I really find your position difficult to rationalize

reply to post by HelenConway


Regardless of mankind's ape lineage - there is no question that modern mankind is in a category of its own; so much so, that really, we are set apart from even the great apes themselves.

Do great apes get up in the morning, look at themselves in the mirror, plan ahead for the day, brush their teeth? Do Great Apes sit down and discourse with their fellow apes, pondering over the big questions? Have Great apes created the internet? Do they post on message boards? Do great apes work out complex mathematics? Do they go to school, university? Do they sit quietly in college lectures and take notes? Do they sit quietly and listen attentively to a biology professor lecturing on the complexities of DNA? Can great apes perform complex surgery for hours?

The fact of the matter is, however much we have apes in our lineage; there is no doubt that mankind is in its own category. One only need look at mankind's most advanced modern-day societies - have great apes built planes? Have they built a space station? Have they sent probes into the great unknown? Do great apes listen for extraterrestrial signals from the great unknown?

Mankind is sophisticated and most excellent when at his best - it is ridiculous (and frankly quite foolish) to belittle him as "a great ape", for he is clearly more than that.

Long live humanity! Long live Homo Sapiens Sapiens!

reply to post by NarcolepticBuddha


No, no - you misunderstand me.

Of course I am interested in many things too - I love to study freely and explore many areas.

What I was merely saying was that it almost seemed like a number of you were almost "fighting for the Neanderthal cause" almost as if you were Neanderthals yourselves and had a direct interest - haha, if you get where I'm coming from?

reply to post by tadaman


Erm, OP, I'm just curious - what point are you trying to push?

reply to post by tadaman


OP, in your past thread, you say that Neanderthals had "larger brains" and were therefore cleverer than us. You do realise that a larger brain doesn't necessarily mean more intelligence, right? Did you also know that (for example) Einstein's brain was smaller than average?

Originally posted by HomoSapiensSapiens
reply to post by NarcolepticBuddha

 

No, no - you misunderstand me.

Of course I am interested in many things too - I love to study freely and explore many areas.

What I was merely saying was that it almost seemed like a number of you were almost "fighting for the Neanderthal cause" almost as if you were Neanderthals yourselves and had a direct interest - haha, if you get where I'm coming from?

edit on 3/3/2013 by HomoSapiensSapiens because: (no reason given)

Why do you assume higher Intelligence would lead to a higher survival rate in a world of mixed Intelligent species of man?

Perhaps the most recent out of Africa Migration was just stupid enough (us) to be good at war? To commit crimes? Steal Food?

Think about it

A 40 point avg higher IQ as example

Maybe our stories of a "paradise" are true? They cooperated, lived peaceful shared and didn't war..... lived in the sun, foraged, made love like Bonobos....

Then along comes US... they lets us in, the males of US immediately try to impregnate by intent others mates, dominate the females... an inclination the Neanders don't share, WE steal from them a lot.... they have no laws they share fairly, crimes are committed, Neanders murdered senselessly, outside groups Hunt all the food taking the Neanders ability to eat... leave them nothing. In place WE declare war, whole tribes are killed the women captured the Neanders have no true defenses it's not their nature

Sounds like Human behavior no?

I think Neander was more intelligent and that's why he's not around.

Smart enough to build weapons to kill dumb enough to use them....

reply to post by NarcolepticBuddha


Explanation: S&F!

Ok we are in the Ancient & Lost Civilizations forum and I agree that the Neanderthals are indeed a lost culture and species.

I'd like to focus on their disappearance from the face of the earth and expanding on the current debate I would like to speculate wildy as to why they disappeared and I am going to go way out on a limb and suggest that due to the larger cranial capacity and therefor brain size and several other physiological capacities the neanderthals possesed ...

... made them prime candidates for harvest aka 'abducted', possibly as a slave race of close combat fodder, by an alien species of unknown origins.

Personal Disclosure: Are any of my fellow members interested in exploring such a fantastic concept?