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Neanderthal Genome to be Sequenced
Aneurysm writes "A project launched by the Max-Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology will sequence the genome of Neanderthal man. The sequencing project may find out important information, such as whether they cross-bred with modern humans. Previous DNA tests have tested this theory, and found it unlikely. Could this be the start of a Pleistocene park?"
The genome is ALL the genetic material, both transcribed genes (which make RNA molecules and then proteins) and the so-called "junk DNA". The latter, it turns out, is not remotely "junk", but contains important regulatory sequences which control gene activation/deactivation and the physical structure of the chromosomes.
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Except that research shows that the human gene pool has a rather significant bottleneck, wherein we all descend from a small set of individuals not to far in the past. There is so little genetic variation in humans that if some of us have Neanderthal genes, then all of us do.
No, the genetic bottleneck occured far before homo sapiens escaped Africa and made contact with Neanderthals in Europe and the Middle East. H. Sapiens only reached Europe around 45,000 years ago. The genetic bottleneck occured 150,000 years ago or so in sub-Saharan Africa when humanity almost went extinct.
Thus, Asians and especially sub-Saharan Africans would show no Neanderthal genes, while caucasians would, if there was interbreeding.
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Andre the giant suffered from a disease called acromegaly, which caused him to continually grow, such that the proportions of his body took a constant toll on it. Near his death he was in constant pain, and eventually died of heart failure because the muscle simply couldn't keep up with the size of his body. Most people who were diagnosed with the disease in his time didn't live to 40. Saying he was like a neanderthol just because he had a funny shaped head is incredibly stupid and closed minded. The man suffered from an illness which gave him a short, painful life. That he was able to capitolize on the outward appearance given to him by the disease to make his life into a positive one is a testament to Andre's spirit.
The problem is that almost everything went extinct when we moved on in. Whether we directly hunted them down or just disrupted the ecosystem/carried disease/etc is a good question, but wherever humans went, large fauna died off in huge numbers. Some of Australia's megafauna may be an exception, but it's just that: an exception. Places where humans didn't get to early on had megafauna last longer - for example, Wrangel Island had mammoths holdouts till the time of the Pharaohs.
Neanderthals were taller than we are
No.
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This seems the most likely explanation. The latest Neandertal remains found, from Gibraltar, indicate a population that had been pushed to the margins, and to such low numbers that they could not be sustained. We can only guess at how well Moderns and Neandertals got along, though my understanding is that, towards the end, there was some innovation in their toolkits, suggesting they may have been very different from us, but still capable of attempting to catch on to the new wave.
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"In the last 50 years or so, Europeans have become on average about 2 cm taller than Americans. I'd guess (though I'm not sure) that Americans eat more meat than Europeans."
I don't believe that such averages can be attributed to diet/nutrition/prenatal/obesity. Compare the level of immigration to the United States over the past 50 years from Asian countries versus how many Asians moved to Europe over that same period of time. There's your explanation.
I mean, just look around and see how "white" Americans, African Americans, and Native Americans are all getting taller than the prior generations. I'm of that first category (and partly of the last) and I'm 2 inches taller than my father, who in turn is 2 inches taller than his father, and the mothers have all been around the same height too.
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the more likely we are to *NOTICE* that it went extinct
We notice animals that survive, too. Smaller animals have higher survival rates, plain and simple.
Very few (no?) large animals survived the extinction
The K-T extinction had only a slightly higher megafauna extinction rate than that wrought during human expansion. The extinction during the last ice age was the largest, among megafauna, in the past 65 million years. The K-T extinction was a lot worse on small animals than the Pliestocene extinction, although it still focused on megafauna.
Even if it is true that many large animals died off around 10K BC
You better believe it; it's about as close to a scientific consensus as you can get.
This is still perfectly consistant with the ice age
That it is not. As mentioned previously:
1) Far worse ice ages have occurred in the past, without anything at all like what we saw at the end of the Pliestocene. This extinction was the worst since the K-T extinction 65 million years prior - a huge amount of time (and ice ages!).
2) The extinction timings varied around the world, and were not timed to regional ice age variations; the only correlating factor was the arrival of humans.
3) There is one place in the world that was strangely unaffected by megafauna extinctions: Africa. The place where humans and the native animals coevolved.
About the only serious evidence-based argument against the "humans did it" line of argument is that there's a paucity of fossil evidence of sudden dieoffs. Yet, it's pretty clear to most that this is a rather weak argument.
For one, you're looking for a single stratum that in most places would last only a decade; you can expect that stratum to not exist in the vast majority of the world. Secondly, it is almost impoissible to find the remains of the thousands of modern elephants killed by poachers and in herd culls in Africa. The simple fact is that fossilization is a very rare event, and the only reason that we have so many fossils total is because they accumulate over geological time periods. The fossil evidence shows what you would expect to find: in each place, the animals abruptly dissapear from the fossil record at almost the same time that humans arrive, irregardless of climate or other such factors in the particular region.
We've even watched this happen in modern times; read up about the Moa of New Zealand, for starters. New Zealand, if I recall correctly, has about the land area of New Mexico, and is incredibly rugged terrain; hardly an "easy" place to cause an extinction. Yet, the Maori did it with extreme skill. The only large quantities of butchered Moa fossils are in relatively small Maori campsites. Odds are miniscule that these campsites would preserve over geological time, let alone preserve and be rediscovered.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."