The Neanderthal--a comprehensive introduction to the fossil record

Originally posted by NarcolepticBuddha
I'm not sure, but have always wondered, when and where we dropped the fur in favor of sweat glands etc. Maybe Byrd knows a little more about this one.

No one knows, actually. We may be able to find out through genome studies, but there's no preserved skin of older hominids so there's no telling.

An interesting recent theory is that we kept the fine body hair after losing the coarser body hair because it was useful for detecting skin parasites. It's an intriguing thought, but, as I said, until we get more thorough information on our own genome (perhaps by studying the "wolf people" (people with hypertrichosis) we really won't be able to estimate when we lost our full coat of hair.

(I am not suggesting that these people are throwbacks, but they do have a genetic mutation that creates a dense growth of body hair.)

ok so I got some sleep and found another source for the neanderthal genocide VS merge with cro-magnon theory.

So basically the fact that we have so very little neanderthal DNA suggests that neanderthal was not very integrated into the advancing cro-magnon populations.

If you have 10000 cromagnon in Europe, with every advance into neanderthal territory you would increase the amount of neanderthal DNA in the total population since they would be integrating into a total population MUCH larger than their limited nmbers. The farther cro-magnon goes, the less of their own pure blood population would remain. This would be true if the advance was peaceful.

If the advancing populations of cro-magnon were killing neanderthal, then you could keep the racial purity that is seen in Europe with very little neanderthal DNA at all.

Also,
since

Because mtDNA passes directly from mother to children. Dad's mtDNA is destroyed when the sperm fertilizes the egg. The Neanderthal mtDNA would be lost but there would be plenty of Neanderthal nuclear DNA around.

there is very little neanderthal DNA in us based of studies on mtDNA , that signifies that that cro-magnon males were the ones impregnating neanderthal women for that 1-5% of DNA to be present. I said earlier that its a sign of violent pairing.

So MAYBE neanderthal died out and we only paired up with wandering female neanderthal....BUT the fact is they died out SLOWLY, and we took over Europe RAPIDLY....so that falls in line with what I am suggesting.

Neanderthal genocide and conquest by cro-magnon......

There are a number of possibilities here. One is that these new people attack and kill everyone in your tribe. They move into your cave and you are forgotten until the 1850's when your bones are found.

Or there's plenty of food so you each mind your own business. As time goes by, there are more and more of these people. Eventually your descendants slowly die out leaving just these African interlopers.

And finally, maybe we all just get along and have kids together. What comes out of this is some hybrid between the Africans and the Neanderthals.

Which idea is right? No one really knows. What we do know is that Neanderthals ruled Europe for hundreds of thousands of years. Then by 30,000 years ago, they were all gone.

We also know that Neanderthals and our predecessors, Cro-Magnon man, overlapped in Europe for thousands of years. And that they may have lived near one another at the same time. So Neanderthal's disappearance was not quick.

So, did Neanderthals die out or did we interbreed? After so much time this is hard to figure out. One way solve this puzzle is to look for Neanderthal DNA in ours.

The most straightforward way to do this is to look at Neanderthal DNA. And compare it to ours.

Until very recently, this wasn't possible with most of their DNA. So scientists looked at the little snippets they could get a hold of. Or compared African and European DNA to look for differences that might suggest mixing. One group even postulated that red hair came from Neanderthals!

All of these studies suffer from the same thing—not enough Neanderthal DNA to compare human DNA to. New technologies are now making more Neanderthal DNA readable.

Neanderthal genocide or assimilation

As I said, around 30,000 years ago there were no Neanderthals left in Europe. Either they integrated with Cro-Magnon or died out.

There is strong genetic evidence that we just replaced the Neanderthals in Europe. This evidence comes from the little bit of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) that scientists have managed to pull from a few Neanderthal fossils.

Why did they want to look at mtDNA? Because they could. There is a whole lot of it in a cell making it relatively easy to get.

This kind of DNA is a cool relic from our evolutionary past (click here to learn more). Instead of just two copies per cell like our chromosomes, our cells have thousands of copies of mtDNA.

Because there is so much of this DNA, we are able to get some from unlikely sources. Like hair or mammoths. Or Neanderthals.

When scientists looked at this DNA, they found that it was pretty different from modern day European mtDNA. Too different for there to have been much more than 25% mixing.

Of course, if we were 25% Neanderthal, that would be a lot of Neanderthal. However, a recent study looking at the same data suggests that mixing was much lower than this.

The paper claims that if advancing Cro-Magnon men assimilated Neanderthals into the population along the way, then there should be a lot of Neanderthal DNA in all of us. Why?

Imagine that you have a group of Africans and they come up against a group of Neanderthals. These two groups laugh and sing and have babies. Or the occasional Cro-Magnon sneaks out for a tryst with a Neanderthal.

After a while, the valley is getting a little crowded. So this mixed tribe moves over to the next valley where more Neanderthals live. The same thing happens. And no new Africans enter Europe.

As this wave spreads across Europe, there would be an awful lot of Neanderthal DNA in the final mixed group. And yet, we find very little mixing to have happened.

The authors conclude that in order to see the level of mtDNA overlap that we see, there had to be 120 matings or less. In thousands of years. Not much at all.

And yet, other groups assume a lot of mixing. One group decided to compare European and African DNA and look for differences. There were plenty. Too many they claimed to be explained simply by the two groups being apart for a long time.

he best explanation for the level of differences was some mixing between Cro-Magnon DNA and other DNA both in Europe and in Africa. In fact, the best way to explain the data was to say that the mixing rate was around 5%. That is 1 in 20.

The difference in the numbers between these two studies is huge. Of course both of these ideas are speculative and not really based on Neanderthal DNA from the nucleus. They are tied up in models that extrapolate the data back 30,000 years to explain our past.

This is very tricky to do and a small change in the model can have huge effects. Now I do want to re-emphasize that the first group did look at mtDNA. But this kind of DNA makes up just 1/300,000th of our DNA and so it is a pretty small bit to look at.

What if Cro-Magnon didn't find Neanderthal women attractive? But the Neanderthal men loved Cro-Magnon women? Then you might end up with a lot of mixing that is invisible to mtDNA. Why?

Because mtDNA passes directly from mother to children. Dad's mtDNA is destroyed when the sperm fertilizes the egg. The Neanderthal mtDNA would be lost but there would be plenty of Neanderthal nuclear DNA around.

genetics.thetech.org...

40.000 years ago there were no large groups of people. Maybe around lakes and big rivers, but not in Europe. There is no evidence yet of cultures around Danube from those times, only from 8.000 BC and nearer.
They could have mixed, Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon, but those could have all disappeared eventually. That was a long Ice Age. We cannot look for anything like national continuity at such small numbers of people. The kind of economy wouldn't allow large numbers. If anybody survived with Neanderthal genes from those times, a new wave which came after the Ice Age, would have assimilated them easily and only traces of Neanderthal genes would be left in modern Europeans or Asians.

We should consider the following fact. Civilization is not "adapting" to nature, it is adapting the nature. In Mesolithic, it was more about adapting to nature, and Neanderthals did that well, as Cro-Magnon and other people did.

There is evidence in South Africa, 70-50.000 years ago there was an attempt to create civilization, also in India, and probably in some other places, but remember, at that time there was a super volcano Toba which almost destroyed humankind. The real savagery appears as civilization falls apart, not before. Before civilization there is a stable adapted way of living in nature. Normally, there was plenty of food, good nourishment. With appearance of agriculture, 10.000 years ago, things changed. Malnourishment became a common thing, because of monotonous food. Numbers grew, ideas of state, slavery and hierarchy, became more important than individual fate. Ideas took over, people were sacrificed to the ideas, until present day. History is all about that. But in Mesolithic, such thing didn't exist. Small groups of people, 10-20 don't have such problems.

Perhaps, Neanderthals were smarter than that. Perhaps, the idea of race being extinguished rather than the idea of being enslaved by this new enemy - idea, was a better choice.

We can boast that we survived, but what is "we"? We are all mortals, we all perish, nobody really survives, except some ideas which create this kind of delusional mind, as is prevailing on Earth today. There is no such thing as survival. There is only a decision whether to be free or not. Life itself is the most efficient tool of enslavement, but not exactly for all of us. Maybe Neanderthals were that smarter than our ancestors, who accepted suffering in civilization, although it was not really necessary to fall for the idea of great numbers and all the troubles it brings with itself?

reply to post by DangerDeath


I agree with everything you just said. Just thought I would tell you.

I see civilization as the dawn of evil in men as well.

have a good one.

reply to post by DangerDeath

The kind of economy wouldn't allow large numbers. If anybody survived with Neanderthal genes from those times, a new wave which came after the Ice Age, would have assimilated them easily and only traces of Neanderthal genes would be left in modern Europeans or Asians.

I think this a is a very good theory. The warmer climates supported a larger population, that simply overwhelmed the smaller numbers that survived in the northern, much harsher climate.

This would suggest considerably more inbreeding. A trickle of people moving into the northern territories would mix more easily, and lead to a warmer reception as more arrived, depending on climate change.


Interesting subject, so many possibilities.

Came across this article, which I find an interesting take/look on the Neanderhaler which states the Neanderthaler was basicly savage, cannibalistic carnivores - top flight predators of the stone age

www.themandus.org...



When you assume they where basicly humans and you reconstruct them in pictures and so on, they could be really realy wrong about how they looked really.

reply to post by Plugin

Yeah I was told that it is entirely bogus. I posted it before.

I thought the guy was a little off, but I didnt know that he had to self publish.

A Byrd told me.....lol
reply to post by Byrd


I didnt watch the videos that are available, I just read through a paper that mirrored what the guys book said.

apparently it is full of errors, and honestly after looking it over some more, it has some very blatant errors that even I can see. It is interesting though.

I hang my head in shame......

EDIT:
one thing that I did find interesting was the comparison of neanderthal eyes with our own



The author implies that being that the eye sockets were larger, which I am sorry byrd they are, and that they are round, he says that they would have vertically aligned eye slit pupils to protect them from strong sunlight. I dont see how he can justify that argument. He says that since they were round, that somehow that would effect the shape of the lens the eye forms. I dont see it. BUT he did make a good point that the eye sockets were indeed more rounded than other hominids. Maybe this trait was what led to the thick overhead eye brow. Maybe the more squared eye sockets provide better protection from light.

I have to partially retract my idea that neanderthal saw better in the dark, though not entirely. Neanderthal COULD have hunted better at night. I am still looking through everything I have read to point out where else I saw this mentioned and if any actual study has been done on this subject since this would still leave the question of how Neanderthal shared food supply with other hominids.

have a good one.

Originally posted by Plugin
Came across this article, which I find an interesting take/look on the Neanderhaler which states the Neanderthaler was basicly savage, cannibalistic carnivores - top flight predators of the stone age

www.themandus.org...

When you assume they where basicly humans and you reconstruct them in pictures and so on, they could be really realy wrong about how they looked really.

edit on 5-3-2013 by Plugin because: (no reason given)

I've seen the video. This guy has made a spectacular sight of "Neanderthals", however, I think he is in for selling to Hollywood

All these stories about adaptation to cold. Did it even occur to people that living in snow white environment means one needs to protect his eyes from blazing white. Eskimos do this with eye covers with tiny slit through which they watch. This tiny slit also serves as a lens... Perhaps mongoloid slanted slit eyes are because of that. And Neanderthals could have such adaptation too.

Originally posted by tadamanapparently it is full of errors, and honestly after looking it over some more, it has some very blatant errors that even I can see. It is interesting though.

I hang my head in shame......

NoNoNoNoNo! Not shame. You did an excellent job of discussing what was presented to you, and you're objective enough to consider the evidence. Never be ashamed of learning something new!

Heck, I'm wrong all the time!

EDIT:
one thing that I did find interesting was the comparison of neanderthal eyes with our own

The author implies that being that the eye sockets were larger, which I am sorry byrd they are,

Only if you assume the skulls are the same height. Click on the link below, which leads to the Wikipedia image that shows a Neanderthal skull facing a Sapiens skull. As you can see, Neanderthal skulls are around 15% larger and have a lower cranial vault. Looked at from the front and without the lower jaw (which would force sizing on the skulls) you can arrange it so that the eyes and nose are monstrously large.


He didn't show the FULL skull matched to size (which would have shrunk both nose and eyesockets.)

Maybe the more squared eye sockets provide better protection from light.

Actually, that has to do with facial features and breeding preference. One of the ways of telling skulls which are AmerInd/Asian, European, and African apart is the shape of the eye sockets. (let me introduce you to a neat and fascinating site: BoneClones -- go browse dem skullz!)

Proportions of Neanderthal and Human skull/face are different.
Human face is split at half at the level of eyes, from chin to eyes and from eyes to top of the skull is same distance.
N. face is 2 thirds height at eye level (well, maybe 3/5), because they had slanted forehead. So, N. face was bigger than human, and their skull was longer.

also, I am not sure about eyes size. N. have thicker bones and their eyes were probably just a little bigger

Originally posted by Hopechest

The fossil evidence shows that they were skillful, innovative, adaptive, and creative.

Apparently not enough to beat out the homosapiens. Survival of the fittest in nature is the rule.

As successful as they were for the million or so years they lived, they never did better. They made the same tools, but never improved on them, like a bird building a sophisticated nest. All instinct, not much insight or inspiration.

My theory is that they tended all to be at the same level of intelligence, and never really produced super geniuses like humans did. So much of human advancement is a result of a small number of exceptional intellects that kind of drag the rest of us forward and upward. Neanderthals never had a Confucius, Imhotep, DaVinci or Newton or Einstein.

reply to post by tadaman


There is a THIRD possibility which neither discussion touched upon -- and that's the interesting idea that a male Neanderthal x female Sapiens does NOT produce the same children as a female Neandethal and male Sapiens. This may seem illogical, but consider interbreeding of other similar species.

Ligers are male lions x female tigers and are the largest felines on the planet. Tiglons are male tigers x female lions and are different than ligers. Ligers are more robust (and healthy, apparently) than tiglons. (horses and donkeys also produce different animals depending on which was the parent animal... zebras and horses also produce different hybrids)

A mechanism like that could account for the DNA... mind you, there is no way of determining this at this time and with the evidence we have. However, it's a third possibility which could be considered.

Originally posted by tadaman
I see civilization as the dawn of evil in men as well.

(evil grin)

Quick -- define evil!

And define it as a behavior that is not found in other living organisms.

(the point being that all our behaviors (when generalized) appear in all living things so either nature is evil or evil is a social construct that we define according to whatever our current beliefs are... and this would be true whether we were living in small family groups or on a giant city that encompassed all the landmasses of an entire planet.)

Neanderthal behavior probably wasn't that much different than ours, at that stage of the game.

Originally posted by Blue Shift

Originally posted by Hopechest

The fossil evidence shows that they were skillful, innovative, adaptive, and creative.

Apparently not enough to beat out the homosapiens. Survival of the fittest in nature is the rule.

As successful as they were for the million or so years they lived, they never did better. They made the same tools, but never improved on them, like a bird building a sophisticated nest. All instinct, not much insight or inspiration.

My theory is that they tended all to be at the same level of intelligence, and never really produced super geniuses like humans did. So much of human advancement is a result of a small number of exceptional intellects that kind of drag the rest of us forward and upward. Neanderthals never had a Confucius, Imhotep, DaVinci or Newton or Einstein.

Agreed - that is the exact same point I made earlier.
However I would add that - it took us a long time before we moved from stone age to bronze age etc etc - so it was not overnight, despite having great 'scholars' such as confucius, Plato, DeVinci etc.

How do we know our cousins the neanderthals did not have genuises in their midst - because if they did, the system / infrastructure in the stone age - well would not support much more then scholarly speculation.

Unfortunately because we have no record of their thoughts as in writings - it is hard to know.

reply to post by HelenConway


The advancement of homa sapiens was not due to a small percentage of geniuses. Sorry, but most technology evolved, and numerous people were in the race as to who got the credit for the tech breakthrough.

For every supposed great genius, there were large numbers of other contributors.

Most tech was developed by annonymous people who never got any credit.

reply to post by Byrd


Great point, gotta wonder how much that might have effected the mix.

Wouldn't that also be a factor on how close our DNA was?

You definitely know more about this than I do.

reply to post by poet1b


Small number of people = no ability for great constructions.

Even if every one of them was a genius, there would be no special consequence, except maybe in mysticism, but that would leave no material traces.

Number of people is well reflected in constructing megalithic temples and later walled cities, and those mark transfer of technology all around of globe. Especially pyramids, which are political factories in the first place, to mark the creation of state and appear all over the globe. Walls were built first to protect from flooding, and later because of war.

War was enabled by bronze technology. Advancement of technology turns people into fuel and that marks the beginning of civilization. Before that, we have some numerous population, but without state, although with complex social structures. But those are called "cultures".

Each one of us can still chose how to live. Whether to avoid excessive wear by feverish struggle to maintain social position with very little time to culturally improve ourselves, or to sacrifice comfort in favor of spiritual advancement. I don't think that prehistoric people, be it Neanderthals or our kind, were handicapped in the latter. But, history don't really consider that as a success

reply to post by DangerDeath


Well, Im not sure how relevant this is.


Living on Dreams


The day slept with the night, and bred disaster.
Small things began to make serious headway in their erosion of my grip on reality,
And I could feel it slipping away.
The beach and the boulevard beckoned to me,
washed out bands, glasses with colored ice, and hungry women, all beckoned to me.
Pursued by the demons of my dreams and fears
Stumbling through my life
Hitites and iron
Mongols and horses
Christ and Zarathrustra
and tombstones for mortal gods.
Someone touches me and brings me awake.
Time is what you make.
These moments are a dream.
These moments are all that exist.
This is all I have to take,
This is all I have to give.
For some reason
Some days
Getting things done
Isn't enough
To keep me
From pursuing
Those first few moments of flight all over again.
And that is why sometimes
It is hard to be good.
But where would we be
Without the passion
Of the day for the night
To carry us from one moment to the next.

reply to post by poet1b


I completely agree - exactly what I was saying earlier.

Mankind's advancement is not just down to a few. Even Einstein didn't just randomly think up everything he knew - he had to build upon past works of past geniuses and pat bodies of geniuses.

Human advancement is not just down to a small handful of people - there are large bodies of past geniuses and past intelligent people who aided along the way.

do ligers and tiglons happen in the wild or is that just man made breeding? what about zebras and horses?