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We Are Not Related
mao che minh writes "From Pravda.ru - German and American geneticists recently discovered that the neanderthal has nothing to do with modern day man's genealogy. I figured that the lack of a genetic relationship between the two species was already well known, especially when you consider the empirical evidence compiled thus far that concludes that cromagnon man and neaderthal coexisited. I suppose that the geneticists aim to put the story to bed with their DNA research."
Well, if the report of this genetic discovery is true, it's not very surprising, as this has been discussed as a possibility for years. That said, given the article goes on to discuss a millenia-old mummy with cyborg implants and the possibility of UFOs as the origin of humankind, I question the authenticity of any information contained within said article.
Why is Slashdot taking seriously a story that includes speculation over whether a mummy found in Mongolia is an ancient cyborg?
The scientists say that during its life, the mummy could have been a cyborg, a creature made by a combination of features of a robot and a hominid.
If we rely upon many statements and the evidence of UFOs or extraterrestrial visits to Earth, we can consider our planet as a space colony. And different space centers are very active here. They send their robots, cyborgs, and hominids to the Earth to collect information and materials, to perform experiments on human beings, including even complex surgical operations. In many cases, these operations resulted in mutilations later treated as abnormalities by pathologoanatomists and archeologists. The experiments were evidently performed with a view to create new cloned creatures. These facts allow one to say talk about the alien origin of Homo sapiens.
While the Neanderthal / Cro-Magnon stuff is probably true (I was under the impression that the question had been decided years ago - they both were around at the same time, Neanderthals died out), the second half of the article doesn't help the credibility of the first half.
Don't the editors read the links that get submitted?
Just for referance there is no such thing as "Cro-Magnon Man". Cromagnon was a site in France where modern human remains were found. Cromagnon man is simply Homo sapien sapien, my wife is an Anthropologist and jumps all over me when I use the term "Cro-Magnon".
Convergent evoloution? Or is the story about my great grandpa and the circus monkey true?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Obviously we aren't all reading the right literature.
It's already been discovered that our ancestors co-existed with cro-magnon man rather than evolved from him. In fact, we likely caused his extinction. We're just lucky we got off the leaf-currency system before we deforested the entire planet and did ourselves in.
"That's traffic control."
So, are we then descended from cyborgs, or was that an untenable offshoot of the main branch of human evolution?
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
This news should really help my forthcoming paternity suit.
Thanks slashdot!
Wow, I didn't realize that pravda had turned into a national inquirer type of paper.
The funny thing about this article is how it starts out plausible enough, albiet not newsworthy, much like a decent troll, before it gets into the nitty gritty of UFO's and cyborg Neanderthals as monitoring devices.
Another headline is "America Wants to Use Biological Weapons on Iraq"
The truly sad part is that there are many people in the world who believe nonsense like this.
p.s. Why is this in "science" category instead of "it's funny, laugh"? Did Hemos fall for the troll?
If Stalin knew that Pravda.ru would be around so long, I think he'd be proud. His propaganda machine has outlived him and continues on even today. It is always fun to check the top stories at Pravda.ru and see what the "Russian slant" is. Best headline I see on there right now: Where Is Stalin When You Need Him?.
Beware, Nugget is watching... See?
Intelligent people observe their surroundings, and one might well notice that a stapler falling off a desk hit the floor before the sheet of paper did.
Intelligent people also test hypotheses; but most of us do not have easy access to a large vacuum chamber.
Not everyone has the advantage of a proper education, so your comment that "you can't take knowledge for granted" is right on the money.
I think homo-sap-sap ate homo-neanderthal.
That the Slashdot editors really really do not read the articles they link to.
For Instance
The mummy isnt from a Pharaoh grave; it was discovered in a block of eternal ice in a mountainous area in Central Mongolia in 1995. It was in the ice within four thousand years. The mummy had long, red hair reaching its shoulders and massive tattooed forearms.
What is especially interesting, it is supposed that some of the internals and several parts of the brain were made of unknown artificial materials. It may be that they were created in a step-wise manner in the course of very complicated operations; the operations were performed on a more perfect level compared with todays operations. Scientists Justin Manners (the USA) and Kent Jennings (England) studied the mummy; they say that the surgical manipulation performed on the mummy was designed for to create a perfect cyborg, which could carry out observations and collect data. The scientists say that during its life, the mummy could have been a cyborg, a creature made by a combination of features of a robot and a hominoid. The notion hominid denotes a representative of the primates class, which includes fossil man as well as contemporary people (dont mix it with a humanoid, an extraterrestrial resembling a human by its appearance).
Yeah right and Al Gore invented the internet.
>
Having neanderthals for ancestors is either not possible for any of the people any of the time or it explains some of the behavior of some of the people all of the time, some of the behavior of all of the people some of the time, or all of the behavior of some of the people all of the time. :P (That or only we wonderful people have neanderthl genes. :{)||
> I figured that the lack of a genetic relationship between the two species was already well known
"We are not related" and "lack of a genetic relationship" greatly overstate the case. Humans "have a genetic relationship" with all species, and exceed 98% identity (depending on the way you measure it) even with chimps, and we are much more closely related to the Neanderthals than to the chimps.
What scientists actually say is that we are not descended from the Neanderthals.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
That's interesting. In Portugal a few years back, a Neaderthal-Homo Sapien hybrid child skeleton was found.
http://www.freeessays.cc/db/4/alx57.shtml
If a known hybrid exists, it is highly unlikely that absolutely no Neaderthal DNA made its way into modern homo sapien DNA. However, it may be extremely limited and require widespread analysis to indicate where modern Neaderthal lineage may still exist.
I don't trust this story because of the bottom, though. If an ancient cyborg was found, it would rock the foundation of modern religion and evolutionary science.
Trolls make great pets. Adopt one today!
Then I saw the other posts here.
I'm actually surprised that hasn't happened yet.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
This article works in the same idiom as the Weekly World News...same tone, same approach to information. Referring to most of the people as simply "scientists," even calling them "famous scientists" at the end of the article. Real journalists don't quote people like this. Real journalists get information from multiple sources. And real journalists don't suddenly start talking about cyborgs and aliens in the middle of an ostensibly serious article. Is this a translation of a Russian article? Is the language used as bad in the original Russian, or is this written in English by someone for whom English is a second language?
"Neanderthal man...was considered to be in the intermediate position between the pithecanthropus and the modern human." Not by most anthropologists. Neanderthal man (Homo Sapiens Neanderthalis--HSN) was considered to have died out about 30,000 years ago. "Died out" as in "leaving no descendents," or "not able to be called the ancestor of jack squat in modern times." They thrived for about 200,000 years. Homo Sapiens Sapiens--HSS--appeared 120,000 years ago. So, for about 90,000 years HSS and HSN shared space.
For those who read the Clan of the Cave Bear series, the first book is about a HSS girl raised by a tribe of HSN.
The Neanderthals were the first group to display abstract thought. They buried their dead, they had rituals, they drew abstract symbols in their artwork. They were not nearly as dumb as previously thought.
There are 2 theories about HSN: that HSS came "out of Africa" and killed/displaced HSN, or that modern HSS are descended from HSN and other hominids in Europe and Asia.
Actually, it occurs to me that all that I wrote about journalists above really relates to editors. This wasn't posted on slashdot as a joke. This was posted under the category of "science," not humor. It doesn't belong in this category at all. It's a joke that the slashdot editors decided to let this one through.
More useful information can be found from lots of other places:
- Neanderthal-modern.com
- Discovery.com
- The Real Eve
- the cyber perspective
- BBC News from 2000
Slashdot is never going to be a "breaking news" site. It's a news consolidation site. Don't try to beat everyone out the door with the news when it isn't really news. Check those sources, guys.If I'm remembering right, there have been recent studies that indicate we do have some genes associated with Neatherals. The idea isn't that we're so much extracted from the speices as there was interbreeding between Cromagnon and Neanderthals. (If they could interbreed, they almost certainly did. That's a fundemental truism for whenever two such species meet.)
One finding I do definately recall (as I just read about it the other night) is that the genes for red hair seem to come to us from Neanderthals.
The moral might just be that genetics and human evolution isn't nice and simple. Perhaps we should stop seeking the sound-bite sized answers (we are/are not descended from X) and accept that things are inherently more complicated.
Hybrids between closely related species are not uncommon but they're often infertile (mules are the best known example).
These hybrids, of course, would not have any living descendants.
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)