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?"

Comments

I hope they clone a Neanderthal

[nizo]

From wikipedia: Also, while they [Neanderthals] had weapons, they were not used as projectile weapons. They had spears in the sense of a long wooden shaft with an arrow head firmly attached to it, but spears were first used as projectiles by Homo sapiens.

Three guesses why they are gone and we aren't? It would be truely ironic if we did indeed clone a Neanderthal and thus bring back a sentient species that most likely was wiped out in large part because of us.

Re:I hope they clone a Neanderthal

[meringuoid]

It would be truely ironic if we did indeed clone a Neanderthal and thus bring back a sentient species that most likely was wiped out in large part because of us.

They're extinct because of us, but probably not because our ancestors murdered them all, in character for H. Sapiens though that would certainly be. At the Skhul cave in Israel there's pretty good evidence for moderns and Neanderthals living alongside each other for thousands of years in the same cave system.

More likely the Neanderthals were just outcompeted for resources by our ancestors, as the ice ages came and went, and gradually went extinct. Not that I'd be surprised if someone found a mass grave of Neanderthals with distinctly modern-looking arrowheads in their skulls... after all, our species does enjoy killing.

Re:I hope they clone a Neanderthal

[cheesybagel]

That is one theory for the extinction, that homo sapiens killed them. Here is another theory which I think may have some merit:

One of prehistory's big questions is: Why did the Neanderthals become extinct at roughly the same moment that Homo sapiens arrived from Africa? At Sopena we may learn if there were significant differences in behaviors that gave an edge to modern humans. Could it have been diet or the way they processed food?

Yes. We look for remains like bones, charcoals from their fires and tools. From this we can learn how their diet changed over time. It's like we're digging through prehistoric domestic waste. Isotopic analysis of Neanderthal bones shows that they were almost entirely carnivores.

They mostly ate meat. And you need carbohydrates. We're finding that modern humans, coming from Africa, had a diet much more variable than Neanderthals. It's always been thought about the Neanderthal extinction that Homo sapiens appeared in Europe and outcompeted Neanderthals. But it's not so easy. Forty thousand years ago was the last ice age. In that time, many animals became extinct. If Neanderthals survived on mammal meat, and those animals were nowhere to be found, they were in trouble. And then you had modern man coming in from Africa, where there weren't seasons. They were eating seafood and vegetables and grasses, even fat extracted from bones by boiling them. It is possible this gave them an edge. We may find out.

In short, we survived because we had a more varied diet than they had. It may also explain why Neanderthals were taller than we are (they ate more meat), and why people have been getting taller from the XXth century onwards contrary to what was expected (inexpensive meat is more commonly available).

Re:I hope they clone a Neanderthal

[BerntB]

Check out the author William Calvin.

He is a brain researchers that write about (amongs other things) the evolution of human intelligence. (He even wrote a book about Neanderthals.) One of his theses is that throwing might have been a driver for human intelligence.

If I remember correctly...
To hit something you have to send more or less a symphony of nerve signals down the arm without waiting for feedback. Because the exact time of release is shorter than the average time random wait for nerve signals, they even have to go parallell and be averaged in the muscles.

Then there is distance measurements that needs to be done well in the visual system. Etc.

In short, it is a complex problem that needs lots of evolved specialized circuitry.

(I always wondered about fast running animals, here. The way they set their feet down while running should be as complex a problem as throwing? But those that run fast on the planet don't have hands.)

I think I can safely say that Calvin thinks the Neanderthals would have been hard pressed to learn to throw.

Re:I hope they clone a Neanderthal

[WolfWithoutAClause]

I wouldn't like to bet that going head-head up against a tribe of taller, more muscular meat eaters that eat game they catch themselves would end in a good way. You're quite likely to find yourself getting hunted and eaten, or atleast dead, even if you do have better weapons.

It may very well be that humans kept out of their way as much as possible; kinda like the way Cheetahs and Lions do. We'd be like the smaller and more delicate Cheetahs.

Re:I hope they clone a Neanderthal

[lawpoop]

"Even still, the "hunting every last one" concept can be hard for many to swallow."

I think if you look at how modern humans treat each other, which numerous extermination attempts between ethnic groups, I don't think it's too hard to imagine a group of homo sapiens hunting down all Neanderthals, and being relatively successful if they have greater intelligence and/or weaponry.

We have seen genocide all throughout the Bible, mass extermination in early American History, Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and Pol Pot's Cambodia. Humans seem to have this built-in response to de-humanize another ethnic group, comparing them to animals, in order to go to war against them. They pin outrageous crimes on them, and then convince themselves that if anybody from the other group lives, there will always be a threat to the group. In the case of Neanderthals, they technically *were* animals, and Homo Sapiens probably had no problem justifying eating them, or exterminating them wholesale.

Re:I hope they clone a Neanderthal

[mikael]

(I always wondered about fast running animals, here. The way they set their feet down while running should be as complex a problem as throwing? But those that run fast on the planet don't have hands.)


Running gaits in animals are pre-programmed sequences - they have to be, as many of the new-born animals have to be able to stand up within hours of birth.

Given all the possible combinations of limb movements that are possible, only a few match the requirements of maintaining centre of gravity and not having front and back legs hitting each other, or creating bone-jarring shocks.

From various horse breeding sites:

Contrary to popular belief; trotting horses do not "teach" gaited horses to trot. Nor do gaited horses teach trotting horses to gait. Horses inherit the gait they perform best, from one of their parents, or a combination of both and can be taught something different only under saddle.


Basic Gaits

Lateral Gaits

Genome?

[Koiu Lpoi]

So, this only gets the 10% of the DNA considered 'useful', right? I read somewhere the rest is actually more important than what we consider. What's the deal?

Re:Genome?

[Rei]

Our "Junk" DNA is somewhat interesting in that it often contains functionality of our close (and sometimes even distant) relatives that is no longer active. You get neat atavisms when it reactivates.

Yes! Imagine the possibilities....

[The Lynxpro]

I've always thought it was foolish to speculate that modern humans and Neanderthals did not interbreed. Especially considering such people as the late Andre the Giant who actually resembles a Neanderthal. Although the Giant is no longer part of this mortal coil, perhaps this team could compare their findings with the DNA of Andre's American daughter, if her and her mother consented.

I can also see DARPA being interested in the findings. There is value in modifying soldiers of the future with the muscle mass that the Neanderthals enjoyed. And I'm sure the Chinese military would also be interested in such application(s). The question in my mind is which of these two military powers will be the first serious about the subject, either officially or behind closed doors...

And out of curiousity, could the gene sequencing be a project fit for BOINC? I know I'd be interested in donating my spare CPU cycles to the project.

what if....

[rwven]

What if they sequence it and it turns out to be a common ape or something that we already have around here... thing are not always as they seem as lucy and piltdown proved. (both proven "hoaxes." More accurate definition would be "mistake...")

Just playing devils advocate... :-)

Re:what if....

[MightyMartian]

What if they sequence it and it turns out to be a common ape or something that we already have around here... thing are not always as they seem as lucy and piltdown proved. (both proven "hoaxes." More accurate definition would be "mistake...")

First off, where the hell do you get the idea that Lucy was a hoax? Perhaps you would like to tell Dr. Donald Johansen, the man that discovered her. She was very real. Yes, Piltdown was a hoax, but it became ever more a problem for researchers as fossils from other parts of the world were discovered. But I repeat, Lucy was not a hoax, no matter what lying Creationists (some Christians eh?) say.

As to Neandertal, it had a brain slightly bigger than ours, was a tool-user and bipedal. They may not have been human if you take only members of H. sapiens as humans, but they were pretty damn close.

What's left of them?

[Jafafa Hots]

Some scientists believe that homo sapiens replaced Neaderthals, with the Neanderthals dying off completely.
Some believe we interbred with them and "absorbed" them.

This may be able to tell us which is true. I wonder though, if we do find out that we absorbed them through interbreeding, will this eventually lead to discrimination against those of us who still harbor "caveman genes?"

Re:What's left of them?

[jc42]

Asians and especially sub-Saharan Africans would show no Neanderthal genes, while caucasians would, if there was interbreeding.

Some years ago, I read an interesting article on the topic; it's too bad that I don't recall where. It was a takeoff on the old suggestion that if you were to take a typical Neandertal, dress him/her up in modern clothes, and drop him/her down anywhere in Europe, nobody would notice anything at all odd about the visitor.

Part of the article was a list of the major physical features of the Neandertals. Most of these features appear individually in modern humans everywhere, but you find combinations of most of them only in Europeans. This is suggestive of interbreeding, but not convincing. These features could all be adaptive in Europe for reasons we don't fully understand, and the Cro Magnon invaders could have developed them independently for the same reasons.

Anyway, since then I've sorta been on the lookout for individuals that show most of the list of Neandertal features. Since I live in the Boston area, that's mostly where I've looked. I do tend to forget about it most of the time, but when someone with the right features shows up, my subconscious does tend to bring it to my attention. Sort of a subtle (and somewhat silly) social game.

A couple of years ago, while driving down Commonwealth Ave (near Cleveland Circle), while stopped at a light, I noticed an attractive womon in the crosswalk. Nothing odd there. But the "Neanderthal!" flag went off, and I looked closer. She showed pretty much all the features, and might have passed in Neandertal Europe 100,000 years ago (except for the clothes). She even had faint brow ridges, unusual for modern human females. And was she ever sexy. A bit on the "zaftig" side, as one might expect. But well worth a third or fourth look. So much for the "primitive brute" image. And if she had met a Cro-Magnon male 100,000 years ago, I know exactly how he would have reacted.

I was tempted to walk over and introduce myself. But a common Boston problem intervened: There was no parking space visible anywhere. Oh, well; so much for that idea.

Anyway, it's a fun game. Probably not significant of much. But the fact that good matches so far have all been white people is a bit suggestive that it's not totally coincidence when these features come together.

(I do have a couple of friends who match most of the feature set. I haven't told any of them. Maybe I should some day.)

ahhh

[ImaLamer]

There is a big difference between knowing how to do something and doing it well. Monkeys (APES!!!) can throw stuff, but they don't really hit their targets often. For apes, it is more of a bluffing technique - "look, I'm thowing this towards you".

There has been a lot of research into the theory that one reason we made it out of our ancient roots is because we threw so well. Not only could we throw rocks and later spears, but we could actually hit our targets. Of course we weren't always that great, and those who weren't died... you know the rest.

Basically, one author put it like this 'Is pitching an evolved skill?'

Re:ahhh

[maxpublic]

There has been a lot of research into the theory that one reason we made it out of our ancient roots is because we threw so well.

Homo sapiens satisfied 90% of their nutritional needs through gathering and ony 10% through hunting. Overall humans were incredibly shitty hunters.

Neanderthal numbers are switched: 90% of their food was meat, only 10% of it came in the form of fruit and vegetables. This was necessary, due to both their bulk (the weakest could break Arnie in his prime in two) and the environment they lived in. Neanderthals were very, very good hunters - the best the wide human line as ever produced, by a huge margin.

I sincerely doubt the Neanderthals were incapable of mastering the art of 'throwing', especially since it appears they might actually have been a bit smarter than us. And I've never once heard this argument until today, here, on Slashdot, despite a fair amount of research into Neanderthal and other human relatives.

In fact, the prevailing theory concerning Neanderthal extinction has to do with a) the reduction in suitable climate, b) the relative inability to concentrate numbers because they couldn't support themselves on plant matter like homo sapiens did, and c) the inability to drive off homo sapien encroachment for this very reason (e.g., valley X could only support Y members of Neanderthal tribe, but 5Y of H. Sapiens tribe, meaning that Neanderthals were badly outnumbered in conflicts with H. Sapiens. Strength hardly matters if you're outnumbered 5 to 1).

Max

Resurrection?

[solarlux]

A previous slashdot article mentioned a group of scientists who were attempting to resurrect the extinct Tasmanian tiger by inserting recovered DNA into a surrogate mother's egg (of a similar existing species). The latest news is that the project was cancelled due to difficulties, but then was recently restarted.

So this brings up an interesting question... IF the entire Neanderthal genome was recovered, could its DNA be inserted into a human egg and brought to birth by a surrogate human mother? If this is feasible (with current or near-future tech), imagine the implications!

Better link

[Anonymous Coward]

The original webpage for the Neanderthal facial reconstruction is here, and the image is somewhat better.

They probably looked much like modern homo europeanus.

Re:Yes! Imagine the possibilities....

[dan dan the dna man]

Unfortunately genome sequencing projects don't really lend themselves to a BOINC like infrastructure - what you're doing is assembling millions of short strands of DNA into a contiguous sequence. Consequently you need all the avaialable strands close by to compare each other against and fit them into the scaffold. Thats why these things tend to be done on big localised compute clusters and not distributed.

Genome annotation (actually marking out features in the DNA) is a different matter - it would be quite sensible to farm out "chunks" of assembled DNA to multiple machines for various gene prediction algorithms.

If you're interested in doing genome based distributed computation I'm sure Genome@Home w ould be delighted to hear from you.

Re:Genetic material in fossils?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when is there genetic material in fossils?

Recent events suggest the notion is not so far fetched - http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/03 24_050324_trexsofttissue.html

This was covered on slashdot - http://science.slashdot.org/science/05/03/24/20122 56.shtml?tid=14

Thursday Next

[Anonymous Coward]

Those interested in a bizarre literary science fiction take on what it might be like if Neanderthals were clone may be interested in reading the Thursday Next novels by Jasper Fforde. Neanderthals are not the primary subject, but they make a series of interesting appearances.

Re:Taking bets

[Anonym1ty]

The Neanderthals were called Giants.

It will be more important to find out for sure if Neanderthals could interbreed with "modern man". Many believe Neanderthals to be essentially the same as man, and the differences between Neanderthals and "modern man" may be accounted for by simple variation within the same kind.

Even if we could interbreed,... we may not have. Even to this day there are people who will not mix with other races. It may be some similar taboo has kept this group of humans separate from the rest of us.

It is important to note that though creationists may reject evolution, they have no problems with natural selection and variations within a species. They just don't go for the Ape beget a person or a cat beget a dog...

Creationists still have a major argument against evolution too. There is no evidence whatsoever that one species has ever evolved into another one. You can claim all you want that the types of species we have shows evolution but there is no direct evidence. A creationist can dispel any arguments about evolution based on similarity of species simply by similarities, they were all designed by the same creator.

Of coarse creationists can't prove that evolution is false. What creationists can show is that by interpreting the exact same evidence it is possible to draw a completely different -yet scientifically valid explanation of what is happening here.

Evolution is a very good working theory, but there are a lot of holes in it as it is now. You can not use variation or natural selection by themselves to prove evolution as a whole. All experiments to this day to cause mutations have failed to produce a single beneficial mutation.

I, myself am not saying creation or evolution are right. I am looking at this scientifically and both arguments require an aweful lot of faith.

Wrist Structure

[richyoung]

I read somewhere (Sci. Am.?) about someone trying to teach primates flint-knapping and throwing skills. Turns out that they understand the usefulness of the blade fine and try to create them when they need one, but they're hampered by the skeletal structure of the wrist, which is much stouter because of the need to support body weight while walking. They can't get the little wrist flick that we can that ads so much to throwing. The best an ape can hope for is chucking a rock hard against another one, and looking for sharp edges in the resulting random fragments.

So our ability to walk upright gave us the ability to use projectile weapons (i.e., hunt things faster than we are) AND create edged tools/weapons AND spark fires. Not a bad deal, IMO.

Bits and pieces still there in Western Europeans?

[Easy2RememberNick]

No offence meant but I think people in France and the Northen Spain areas have some Neanderthal genes floating around in them.

Just purely going by looks, wern't Neanderthals supposed to have large noses, a stocky build? Their funerals appeared to be elaborate with lots of flowers used, cave paintings, just a generally arsty kind of being.

Basque peoples are supposed to be very different genetically from most other Europeans. Maybe there was some influence there. Basque peoples, if I rememeber my history, used to be known as peaceful and tended to collaborate rather than fight an enemy (e.g. Roman Empire, also the reason for the Basque language not being a Romance language?).

Just a theory! Take it with a grain of salt.

Re:Genetic material in fossils?

[Anonym1ty]

Since when is there genetic material in fossils? Fossils are mineral deposits, not bone.

Not all Neanderthal remains are fossils. In fact even non-fossilized remains of other hominids are found. Also, as reported on slashdot some time back, dinosaur soft-tissue remains have been found. -Brain tissue to be precise.

Most things that die do not become fossils. Many remains in oxygen deprived wet (bogs) can survive for 1000s of years. Critters can also be preserved in tar for some time or even mummified.

Thinking, not throwing

[TFGeditor]

The reason Man became the apex predator was because of the ability to think, reason, and plan. e.g. Homo sapiens figured out how to drive entire herds of herbivores over cliffs, eliminating the need for throwing or jabbing.

Re:Thinking, not throwing

[theguyfromsaturn]

Neanderthal could and did do this. Didn't save them.

Historically, HS wipes out almost all competition

[mveloso]

In general, Homo Sapiens pretty much will wipe out anything that looks like a competitor/threat, including other Homo Sapiens.

This has extended itself to the modern times, though it's been toned down somewhat by the various mores and moralities.

Things wouldn't be any different for our ancestor Homo Sapiens. I'd guess that they'd be even more aggressive towards Neanderthals, due to the larger size and bigger heads (and brains) of the Neanderthals.

If they weren't so big, they probably would've been domesticated or enslaved.

a newscientist article

[Anonymous Coward]

Humans owe their big brains and sophisticated culture to a single genetic mutation that weakened our jaw muscles about 2.4 million years ago, a new study suggests.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4817

Re:back problems

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not taking a side, but am simply saying that seeing evolution in a simple bacteria doesn't mean jack shit about evolution in mammals.

Yes, it does. It's the same process, but the long-term effects are more easily observable in bacteria because mammals don't tend to go through a few dozen generations overnight. As gparent said, stop spreading creationist crap and go learn something about the subject.

Re:back problems

[Dunbal]

And you obviously don't know the difference between creating new information and destroying the genes regulating the production of "anti-antibiotics".

Actually I do. Can you prove to me that methicillin resistance or vancomycin resistance (for example) occured OUTSIDE a hospital or lab setting? Oh sure, those plasmids are out in the wild NOW. But the mutation or "new" information happened in a bug that was eventually exposed to those antibiotics. How much penicillin resistance was reported in the 1950's?

Re:slave labor, duh

[jericho4.0]

There are enough homo sapiens that don't have the intellectual qualifications to do much of our work. And that bar is getting higher, with the information economy and such. How many labours do we need?

Given that the average Neanderthal had a larger brain than your average H. Sapian, maybe they could help us out. The human linked extinction might not have been because the humans were smarter, but because the of the Ns much greater caloric needs.