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Did Humans Get Their Big Brains From Neanderthals?
MCTFB writes, "According to CNN, human beings may have acquired a gene for developing bigger brains from Neanderthal man. Apparently, 70% of the world's population has a variant of a gene regulating brain size, with this variant being most common in people of European descent (where Neanderthal man lived alongside ancient humans), and least common in people of African descent (where Neanderthal man was non-existent). While modern day eugenicists might all too eagerly read into these findings to draw their own politically biased conclusions, people such as myself, who happen to be of northern European ancestry, may find it fascinating that somewhere in our lineage ancient humans and Neanderthals decided to make love and not war on the ancient plains of Eurasia."
What's so surprising about this result? People will fuck anything and everything.
From Nerdenthals? Yes.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
I don't know if it's at all related, but some people have a bump on the back of their head, and I've read before that those with the bump are generally more intelligent than those without. It has a name, can't remember, but I think it was some German word. I'm sure some slashdotter out there will be able to expand on this...
Similes are like metaphors
While modern day eugenicists might all too eagerly read into these findings to draw their own politically biased conclusions...
Eugeneticists may use this information to claim the superiority of Europeans, a counterpoint can be made that these people can't be superior because were having sex with sub-humans.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
People have been fired from Harvard for saying less than this.
$30 Off All Plans: Use code TRIPLESAWBUCK
Were right all along
And the Neanderthals got their big brain from Homo Erectus who traded a mule for it.
Apparently, 70% of the world's population has a variant of a gene regulating brain size, with the variant of this gene being most common in people of European descent (where Neanderthal man lived alongside ancient humans), and least common in people of African descent (where Neanderthal man was non-existent).
Oh, great. You just know some wingnut wackjob is going to latch onto this nugget of information and try and use it as "evidence" of racial superiority. Then you'll get the 24-hour news networks milking it for all the ratings as they can.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
There's no evidence whatsoever that the two sub-species fought each other and "we" won - that is an assumption pushed by scientists who simply do not know. There was not a high enough population of either to warrant resources conflict like there is today. And there's every reason to believe, since both sub-species were related via common and geologically recent ancestry that the two interbred. We're not talking man and monkey here - but two types of human that were very similar to each other.
But what if it's true? Should it be withheld on the basis of it being (inherently) racist?
In Sweden where we have laws against "hate speech", such as expressing racist opinions, I wonder what would happen if this turns out to be correct. Would we then not be allowed to discuss it?
Slagborr
According to a study of Neanderthal mtDNA by Svante Pääbo et al Neanderthals and modern humans had a common ancestor 500 thousand years ago, this means Neanderthals and modern humans didn't interbreed.
You ever seen Neanderthals? I propose that the invention of Beer and thus Beer Goggles would be needed before this interbreeding occured!
I recall reading an article in Smithsonian, Discovery or similar stating that Neanderthals and Cro Magnons lived more or less alongside each other for some period ( I think 50,000 years) without intermarrying or otherwise mingling genes.
"decided to make love and not war on the ancient plains of Eurasia" you know how these sorta things start out... they knew each other from somebody else... met at a party and after alot of drinking let there hormones get the best of there barely separated genes and they mixed back together.
Do they realize that they are implicitly suggesting that Europeans have bigger brains than Africans? Even if this is true (and I will not comment one way or another), I think they can kiss your careers goodbye.
Oh, yeah, definitely. Know how I know? My wife.
See, she was an anthropology major in college. Back before we got married, we were hanging out in the living room, post-movie-watching, and having one of those shmoopy "gazing into each other's eyes" moments. She reached up to stroke my hair, then looked startled.
"Hey. Did you hit your head?"
Her hand was on the back of my head, right above the neck.
"Huh? No. Oh, that bump? I've had that forever."
She laughed. "That's an occipital bun." When I looked puzzled, she explained what it meant. Then her eyes widened. "And you... you have a supra-orbital ridge!" I knew what that one was, but I wasn't expecting what she said next.
As if she'd discovered something either fantastic or fantastically gross, she leaned in and whispered, her voice full of wonder: "You're a Neanderthal!
All you geeks can thank me for your big brains. Preferably with cash.
I can already see the racists all over the planet rejoice, after all now it's clear that the white man has to be superior, having the bigger brain.
Food for thought: The largest brain ever measured belonged to an imbecile. Probably one of the "superior" guys...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
somewhere in our lineage ancient humans and neanderthals decided to make love and not war on the ancient plains of Eurasia.
Oceania has never been at war with Eurasia. Everyone knows that.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
While modern day eugenicists might all too eagerly read into these findings to draw their own politically biased conclusions, people such as myself, who happen to be of northern European ancestry, may find it fascinating that somewhere in our lineage ancient humans and neanderthals decided to make love and not war on the ancient plains of Eurasia."
I have a hard time believing that these ancient humans and neanderthals "made love". I would say it's all the more likely that one group forcibly intermingled with the other.
Wait just a second... by definition, to be a different species, interbreeding must be impossible. If the big brain theory is true, that pretty much settles the argument between closely related sub-species of modern humans vs. collateral line of late Homo erectus.
What is this, some kind of government sting to catch racists that reply?
You have tried to support your argument with faulty reasoning! Go directly to jail; do not pass Go, do not collect $200!
humans and neanderthals decided to make love and not war
I vote more for a forced relation.
Err, so I guess this doesn't necessarily have anything to do with brain size OR intelligence. The only really significant result of the finding so far is that Homo Sapien and Neaderthal may have interbread. We don't even know what this "brain gene" does.... just that some people have it. It could make people more prone to schizophrenia for all we know. That is, until somebody actually tests for measurable, statistically significant differences between the 30% with and 70% without...
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Making love and war are not mutually exclusive. Throughout most of history, you made war on your neighbors and stole their women.
I guess the solution is to repeal the first amendment so we can systematically censor any research that might be controversial.
While i have little doubt that Homo Sapiens and their closest cousin in the gene pool Homo Neaderthalensis interbred, the resultant hybrid would be more of a mule, getting some of the best trails of both but also sterile. Chances are niether group would have wanted such a byproduct and the practice would have become taboo and the eventual result being war(if this was not the case already) between the two groups ending in the genocide of one.
I'm thinking that they made war not love and did the whole rape and pillage thing.
I'm no scientist, but from my lay-person perspective it seems far more likely that larger brained homo-sapiens would fair better competing against a rival homonid, and therefore persist on, while dumber homo-sapiens would die out.
/shrug what do i know.
that would make far more sense to me than a larger brain resulting from inter-breeding with an obviously inferior sub-specie.
OMG, you're not trying to censor information on /. are you? Oh never mind, you're allowed to censor info that doesn't feed into the groupthink here.
ancient humans and neanderthals decided to make love and not war on the ancient plains of Eurasia
Nice dream, but assuming that this theory is true, it probably happened when a group of neanderthals met a group of humans, killed most of them, and then raped the women (or humans doing it to neanderthals). Romeo was not a neanderthal searching for his human Juliet.
What does bigger brain really mean anyway?
Sort of as a crude example, does a bigger CPU in terms of size mean anything? It might mean more memory, or more pipelines or maybe just old technology when the fabrication needed to be a little more coarse.
The brain controls all sorts of things in all sorts of region. If one region is bigger, it might be for sensory recpetion in your leg. So, you tickle worse or something.
It's like that picture of Homer with a small brain. If his brain was like that, he wouldn't be able to walk or speak.
So, big FU to MCTFB, you little Hitler.
I don't find much credence to an argument that Europeans tend to have larger or more efficient brains than the rest of the peoples of the world due to interbreeding with Neanderthals, or due to any reason. Neanderthals have gotten a lot of press lately due to the fact that they seem to be "superior" to Homo sapiens in may ways - more muscular, stronger skeletal structure, larger brains.
The fact remains, however, that in the end, they lost the race, and that would point towards some sort of ultimate inferiority. Definitely kinda cool to think that as someone of Northern European decent, I may have ancestors that were not human as we tend to think of it, but these studies have to be done carefully and such claims as pertaining to differences in brain abilities should be made exceedingly hesitantly, especially in such early stages of discovery.
Not only does God definitely play dice, but He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen. -Hawking
I take it they didn't get this gene?
*ducks*
No no, rest assured, the man to which we attribute the transistor was batshit crazy for the idea too, and that was decades later.
I have always felt that the blending of the two humanoid Races is what created modern humans, but it's my feeling the one race brought the ability to organize/socialized and coordinate large groups while the other Neanderthal man, brought tool building and artistic abilities.
Each one on there own wasn't nearly as capable as the hybrid Modern Humans that came forth.
It would stand the reason, that based on current social behavior, that the mixed race groups that blended in physical appearance with the "so call modern humans" but kept the intelligence of the Neanderthals would survive the best.
One of the things I have come to realize is in modern society the ability to organize is far more valued then raw intelligents.
Look at CEO's, company founder etc VS. Scientist and Engineers.
The income of the Organizers is orders of magnitude greater...
I have been starting to wonder of many people with Asperger Syndrome, really have more Neanderthal gene's expressed.
Asperger is supposed to be the lack of being able to read of give off body language and causes a lot of social interaction problems.
From my experience almost all of the 100's of other programmers and engineers I know all could be classified that way.
But what I find interesting is that we all are able to read each other body language just fine, while leads me to believe that it's not that we can't "speak" body language, but we are just using a different body language!
So my theory is that the most hard code super nerdy Engineers are really more Neanderthal then the average population..
Anyhow, it's just a theory...
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
Nothing to see here folks.
henry -- the human evolution news relay
There was a Times article awhile back that involved the mating habits of Neanderthals and humans. It made that assumption from the analysis of the skeleton of a boy found in Portugal that had hybrid characteristics of the two groups.
From the article:
"This skeleton demonstrates that early modern humans and Neanderthals are not all that different," said Dr. Erik Trinkaus, a paleoanthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis. "They intermixed, interbred and produced offspring."
It is a solemn thought: dead, the noblest man's meat is inferior to pork.
...might not be the most intelligent insult you can use.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Better in what way?
Hawkings understands quantum physics better than I.
Kasparov plays chess better than I.
Bush is a better leader than I.
Mother Theresa had a better personality than I.
Jenna Jamesson has better breasts than I.
Do some of these deserve to live more than I?
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
People have no problems with describing certain types of humans as being better than others:
"Scientists have been debating whether Neanderthals, who died out about 35,000 years ago, ever bred with modern Homo sapiens. Neanderthals are considered more primitive, with robust bones but a smaller intellect than modern humans
Although, Neanderthals actually had larger brains than modern humans, and there is no proof they had less intellect than us.
The logic used in the summary is terrible. They argue that simply because Neanderthals had big brains, and some subset of Europeans have a gene for big brains, that the cause for big brains is uniform and was derived from intermingling. Furthermore, we could just as easily posit that Europeans derived whiter/lighter skin, compared to their African counterparts, through intermixing with Neanderthals. But that doesn't seem very likely, does it? It amazes me that this kind of thinking gets anywhere at all.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
I could kiss you man, or your wife anyway! I've always wondered what that lump at the back of my skull was. Nobody I've ever asked about it ever had a clue or had known of someone else with one. And I've got a supra-dupra ridge thing too! I'm a frikkin neanderthal! Wow, I knew I'd learn something if I stuck around here long enough..
Oh yeah, the guy you're referring to was called Göring (or with an incomplete font Goering).
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Rather than a crappy overview from CNN, here's the original article's abstract. In fact, it looks like it's in PNASes open access section, so you can all download the PDF for free.
They're basically studying a haplogroup of the microcephalin gene, and show that this gene probably entered the human lineage before 37KYA. The other haplogroups have coalescent times of circa 100KYA (which is around when Homo sapiens arose).
They then use some statistical magic to show that the early coalescence time for the D haplogroup was probably a result of introgression into the population - i.e. it came from another population. Note that they don't stress that it was Neanderthals, it could have been any archaic Homo lineage.
I'm not sure what to make of this yet, as far as I'm aware there's some very strong evidence AGAINST interbreeding between Neanderthals and Humans (e.g. Svante Paabo's work etc)
henry -- the human evolution news relay
"While modern day eugenicists might all too eagerly read into these findings to draw their own politically biased conclusions," let me just translate that polically correct leftist dribble of a sentence: "It proves the niggers have a smaller brain then the white man" now i'm smart enough to know that actual brain size has NO impact on intelligence, but that's not what the crazy's are going to be saying.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Brain size alone is not entirely indicative of intelligence anyway. What really matters is the surface area, the bumps and ridges on your brain actually serve a purpose. Neanderthals are considered less intelligent, and yet they have larger brains than the average human. Plus, they don't actually know what this gene varient does.. brain size is simply a guess.
More like... nerdular nerdence!
Love or rape?
For the first false assumption: I doubt that any offspring of human/neanderthal -- if such offspring was possible at all -- would have been able to reproduce.
However, that doesn't stop gene transfer between -- for example -- humans and their dogs, or humans and their cats, or humans and their birds.
There's something called viral gene transfer, and if I understand correctly it works partially through retroviruses. I expect that if there is human/neanderthal gene mixing, it is more likely to have been through viruses that the mixing occurred.
Another possibly false assumpt ion that was not made outright, but implied, is that there is merit to a larger brain. I'm not so sure that's correct. Yes, it stands to reason... if your reason inclines in the direction of "more is better". But there are other factors in intelligence, including bistability, instability, speed, and so on and so forth.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Given that even today, there are documented instances of men and women having sex with sheep, horses, and donkeys, and human proclivities for rape, the common genes do not necessarily mean love. One party could have simply violated the other.
END COMMUNICATION
intelligence != brain size
in humans or any other creatures
there people/ animals with small brains that could be deemed quite intelligent. there are also people/ animals with large brains that could be deemed quite stupid
so to think that brain size correlates with intelligence is... stupid
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It doesn't explain why Asians do so well in school compared to their European counterparts in America... =P
That people refuse to even consider there are racial abilities in real life, so to speak, but get so angry when the races in the games they play aren't as dissimilar as possible.
Perhaps that's because while you can choose the race in the game, and thus be the best, you may just have to admit that someone has better genes than you in reality.
The Gay Nigger Association of America is not amused.
Patent: from Latin patere, to be open
apparently, 70% of the world's population has a variant of a gene regulating brain size, with the variant of this gene being most common in people of European descent
I wonder if this is why European countries have the highest rates of suicide in the world?
It's also worth pointing out that elephants have larger brains than humans. Sure, you can make lots of good arguments about how 20% of your metabolism (or something like that) is devoted to powering your supercooled cpus, but the point is that brain size is an imperfect indicator of intelligence. Also, men have larger brains than women - but smaller brains proportional to mass. And if you find these arguments unconvincing, then I'll just ask you to trust me - I'm an elephant and I've got a larger brain than you do.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Australia and New Zealand invaded Turkey in 1915.
First off, they have no idea what this gene does. It's related to brain size, in that some different mutations lead brain problems. So Neanderthals making us smarter? That's bullshit.
Then they suggest that this gene was introduced into the population by interbreeding with Neanderthals. No reason to think it was Neanderthals except the general timing. That's an illusory correlation. We could have developed this mutation, and then went and killed all the Neanderthals at the same time. Possibly with our now giant heads.
So it was from a population not a mutation in an individual? Why? because that wouldn't have spread before dying out. However is it so hard to imagine thousands of years ago, a tribe of humans living is semi-isolation, interbreeding for a couple hundred years so this gene becomes popular, then moving, or being joined by other tribes, and interbreeding? That would satisfy all the facts.
So gene makes brain bigger? maybe? Gene from Neanderthals, probably not. So why say it is? Because it generates press and interest. That's basically grant money. They don't even have to lie, just tell the press the possibility, and the press will go crazy.
Don't buy the Hype. Your granny wasn't a quarter Neanderthal, and Africans do no have smaller brains because white people had cave-men sex with Thog. Any questions?
http://www.santacruzbynight.com/index.shtml Santa Cruz By Night Vampire Larp
Neanderthals, eh? I think I dated one of those once...
> humans and neanderthals decided to make love
yeah, because war and rape are mutually exclusive?
Will your marriage be able to survive, anyway?
Eugenics was embraced by "progressives" not conservatives.
See the Scopes Trial for a good example in the USA.
> Look at CEO's, company founder etc VS. Scientist and Engineers....
Look at scientists and engineers vs. secretaries, receptionists, and librarians.
The income of the scientists and engineers is much greater.
But don't mind me. Have fun with your pseudoscientific drivel.
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
It's also worth pointing out that even if this did have something to do with brain size, elephants have larger brains than humans. Sure, you can make lots of good arguments about how 20% of your metabolism (or something like that) is devoted to powering your supercooled cpus, but the point is that brain size is an imperfect indicator of intelligence. Also, men have larger brains than women - but smaller brains proportional to mass. And if you find these arguments unconvincing, then I'll just ask you to trust me - I'm an elephant and I've got a larger brain than you do.
(If this looks like it's a duplicate comment it's because the previous comment was orphaned and appears to have disappeared.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Must be my ex-girlfriend, she always said I was as dumb as a neanderthal
I scanned the headline too quickly, thought it said "...from the Netherlands"..... I mused, "Ok they're fairly smart but all of that cheese and dope can't be too good for cognative function."
RTFT
The ones who created us with their genes.
Believe it.
In the beginning we were all fish, OK, swimming around in the water. And then one day a couple of fish had a retard baby and the retard baby was different so it got to live. So retard fish goes on to make more retard babies and then one day a retard baby fish crawled out of the ocean with its mutant fish hands and it had butt-sex with a squirrel or something and made this retard frog-squirrel and then that had a retard baby, which was a monkey-fish-frog, and then this monkey-fish-frog bad butt-sex with that monkey and that monkey had a mutant retard baby that screwed another monkey and that made you.
:-)
Don't you have someone you'd die for?
This summary and article, which I list complaints about below, is symptomatic of the sparse and incredibly poor science reporting that has been coming out of slashdot. This "news for nerds site" has better coverage of battlestar galactica, and whatever RMS and linus torvalds has for breakfast this morning than anything substantive about the sciences. I for one would like to see some effort to improve on the part of the editorial staff. If you are with me on this and would like slashdot to become a more informative and less glitzy news site, please post replies outlining problems you've seen and possible solutions.
The article mentions that more neanderthals lived in europe than africa, and that distribution of this gene that may or may not have come from neanderthals corresponds to that. However, the article also mentions that *70% of the human population* has this gene. If the gene's presence in africa is lower, they don't say how much lower. The data mentioned in the article gives no indication whether the gene is present in a majority or a minority of africans.
Given all of these qualifications present in the article, the submitter was obviously trying to spice up his submission to get it posted by playing up the race element and drawing a strong connection between this gene and race *that the original article doesn't actually show*.
Personally, I would be curious to see more of the data that these people collected; maybe even see the actual distribution of this gene by geographic location. However, lately a lot of incredibly poor science reporting has been posted on slashdot. By poor science reporting, I mean articles that include a lot of fantastic speculation (often primarily in the summary...) but no hard data.
This is a site for news for nerds! We want numbers graphs and PI charts! Not some f*cking cnn article with incredibly vague details about research the submitter obviously doesn't understand. Let's see some positive change hear.
Just a few thoughts...
:-P
Smaller brains have less storage to work with so they probably work more efficiently than big bloated brains (quicker recall). However, the downside being that the smaller brain doesn't have much for backup storage to compensate should it take damage to a vital area.
Larger brains have that extra (redundant) storage space that can compensate for any damage taken but are so spread out that they aren't as efficient with recalling information.
So basically what I am saying is both have their advantages and faults but are equally capable of the same overall functionality...
For an experiment for you slashdotters out there, I propose this. Get a bunch of your friends together of simular body types, measure their brains and then get them drunk. Compare the relation of their brain size to ability to hold their liquor. My guess is the person with the big melon head will be able to hold his liquor better than the rest. Truly unscientific I'm sure, but fun to try nonetheless.
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
somewhere in our lineage ancient humans and Neanderthals decided to make love and not war
Isn't it just as likely that they decided to make love and war? Even now war and mass rape go together more often than not.
Is that the new euphemism for "racist"?
No it is not a trap.
In the USA this a NewChristianConservative [AKA: Bushit Perverts] Government recruiting plan
for their superior HomoSapientSapient (HSS) race/breed that will retake (with the force of god) this holy
country from those damn peace-loving godless big-brained Neanderthals of the world.
Oh, there are many HomoSapientPrescient (HSP) impure offspring of HomoSapientSapients and Neanderthals
fornication that will be the first sent to the camps for exploitable labor and purification for the forthcoming
NewChristianConservative WorldOrder.
God bless america and lets all wave a flag with a christian cross of doom and damnation.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Um... isn't that far more than the percentage of living humans who are European-derived? So where is everyone else getting their D variant genes?
Wouldn't it be more reasonable to conclude that the gene came from an ancestor common to both modern humans and Neanderthals?
Could have been raped!! we don't know.
Uhhh, success in modern society is based off the same thing that made early humans successful. And that's ability to take risks. That coupled with literally deadly competition got us where we are today, the top of the food chain. Organization did play a role, but it was hardly primary. CEO's and the ilk may not be smashing rocks on 'lesser' members of society, but if they can get a leg up by stepping on someone, they will.
Someone hates these cans.
very vogue in the late 1800s, as was eugenics, both of which were direct parents of nazi medical theory (sacrifice 'lesser' humans to advance 'the race').
science thinks religion is bad, but it forgets its own crimes so easily.
Being an Aspie (the colloquial term for a person with Asperger's Syndrome) I have to ask: why am I, and others on the autistic spectrum, hyper sensitive to touch and other sensations?
Perhaps its a result of this gene trasnfer, and some aspect of the Neanderthal's brain structure being incopatible with 'modern man'. Neanderthals, it is my impression, were short, thick, and very tough. Being tall, thin, and fragile (especially in the gut) I have to wonder what went wrong.
Did she tell you that, too?
"Ohh, 2 inches. Definitely Neanderthal."
And the lack of Neanderthal genes is why humans of African extraction don't suffer from this problem.
Well, there have been Neanderthal remains found in parts of Israel. So they were not just in Europe. That said, I'm wondering about their genetic makeup. At some point two genes fused so that Homo Sapiens' haploid cells have 23. Apes have 24 (48 for diploid cells). There have been some genetic studies that claim that there is enough difference between Humans and Neanderthal that they were not the same species and the jury is still out in as far as the cross-breeding between the two species. Honestly the so-called gene for large brain size might exist within other primates as well. You can find genetic similarities between humans and mice. That is why we use them for experimentation. Remember, correlation does not prove causation although it makes for an interesting conversational thread.
--Cally
Neanderthal chick and ancient guy?
Or ancient chick and neanderthal guy?
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Read Beals Et Al.'s study on brain size vs. climate termperature and infant nutrition. Bottom line, brain weight increases by lattitude regardless of race, and decreases also because of poor nutrition as an infant.
For example, one thing MAN seems to have in greater degree than almost any other creature is an ability to be flexible in many fronts. Humans, for example, may have been more aggressive. They may have been more flexible in terms of diet. They may are clearly flexible in their mating choices -- it seems not even other species are safe.
Neanderthal may have been really great at getting along with each other and keeping house but too passive or not curious enough to survive against the more aggressive and curious humans.
There are all kinds of things at play, and brain size alone doesn't cover enough ground.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Actually I believe the current research shows that tool making was probably developed separately by neanderthals and homo sapiens at around the same time.
Wake me up when X-ists arrive. That'd be 7 AM July 5th, 1998 - if not sooner. (snore)
If "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and "it was beauty that killed the beast" then "please stop staring at me".
Ah yes, because "feelings" are the solid foundation of good science.
I found your post interesting in that I too have an occipital bun. More interesting is that I come from the North of England which Wikipedia mentioned was one of the rare places where such features are found.
However what is more surprising is that the article says that this is a trait common in Lancashire! As a Yorkshireman I'll never live this one down. Mind you it does make the old rhyme, which was probably written by Lancastrian, somewhat ironic: "Yorkshire born and Yorkshire bred, strong in the arm and thick in the head"!
The problem with IQ tests is that they lack content and criterion validity (predictive & concurrent). As such they measure IQ and not much else, certainly not intelligence. Their usage is probably a good measure of racist bigotry (like your own) but of little use when it comes to genuine science. Now be a good little insect and crawl back under that rock you emerged from.
Since the entire human history is a description of struggle against the tribe, village, city, country that you don't happen to belong to. Since mankind has always opted to destroy, oppress, replace steal from, exterminate any group not like them or that might possibly a competitor for what ever resource is require for survival at that stage of civilazation.... Your telling me Homo Sapiens (including our Cro Magnon parents, had sex with those hairy brutes? Ha Ha ha ha ha ha ha... HTH: http://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Socie ties/dp/0393317552/sr=8-1/qid=1163040598/ref=sr_1_ 1/002-2011287-7660018?ie=UTF8&s=book/ Guns, Germs, Steel
Obviously we inherited our brains from those on the B-ark. Which is why we always have such impeccably clean phones.
You are obviously someone with the small brain variant...
...and like every other effort to make a link between the biology of pre-historic man and the modern social world it is a load of crap. Never mind.
It's not my fault that I speak the truth about the White Race. SIEG HEIL!
That's what I wanna know...
So that's why Europeans are so much smarter than we in the United States...doh!
Look what Zog do!
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
...and like most efforts to draw a link between pre-history and the modern social world its a load of crap. Never mind eh.
Don't you mean your ex-wife?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The problem with IQ tests is that they lack content and criterion validity (predictive & concurrent).
As such they measure IQ and not much else, certainly not intelligence.
I have a theory that what they do measure is racist bigotry (like your own). Just a theory, but they're certainly of little use when it comes to genuine science.
Now be a good little insect and crawl back under that rock you emerged from.
You bringing the beer?
"He may be mad, but there's method in his madness. [...] It's what drives men mad, being methodical." G.K.Chesterton
Uhh... mitochondrial DNA would come from the female. If a male neanderthal reproduced with a female homo sapien, the child would not have neanderthal mitochondrial DNA.
It's interesting that this gene arises in Neanderthals. Is this because it was so cold that they'd have to do more planning to survive the winters?
What factors force populations to evolve more intelligence? The Jews are probably so damn smart due to years of oppression, not being able to own property and thus farm "the easy life" and thus having to to develop business and finance smarts, and finally the holocaust coming down to weed out most of the ones left in the slums.
But both with the Neanderthals and the Jews, do the intelligent genes get reinforced by allowing populations to grow out of more crowded, competitive regions, or simply due to the fact that the less intelligent ones die out?
Nowadays with advances in medicine and means to deliver sustenance anywhere, it doesn't seem like either factor allows natural selection to take its course. As earlier slashdot links had pointed out, evolution of mankind has eventually stopped, the only trend over the next few hundred to thousand years is for the entire population of earth to blend into a homogenous mutt, or maybe it will even bifurcate into two types of mutts due to artificial selection. But without any life-threatening challenges, there's really no push for "stronger/faster/better/smarter" genes to avoid getting diluted back into the main pool.
So what now??!
My dog is a greater swiss mountain dog. They average between 90 and 135 pounds. They have extremely large doggy skulls...with brains to fill them.
My friend has a small size 13" beagle. Her head is about the size of my fist. Her brain the size of a peanut.
They are both equally intelligent and well trained. Both have very distinct personalities, and definite wants and desires.
Considering the peanut brain next to the orange size brain....
yeah.
size doesn't really matter much does it?
similar to the whole male/female brain mass difference. study after study say that size doesn't mean much.
What a futile experiment and study....guys with their doctorates and a team of undergrads and grad students are pooring their life into this pursuit...
how sad.
Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
... Eurasia Carrera! (couldn't resist)
And didn't Einstein have a smallish brain? I thought the correlation between brain size and intelligence went away a long time ago.
RFC2119
Seriously.
... does this mean that the dude and the sheep "decided to make love and not war on the ancient plains of Oregon?"
People have sex with sheep and horses, for the love of god
No, it just means somebody fucked a sheep.
Likewise, if it was basically human-size and had a vagina, do you really have to have a PhD to realize that it's almost unthinkable that they didn't fuck?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
That is what gets me is that truth is the truth.
The real truth that it doesn't matter. Even if Europeans on average are smarter or men on average are better at Math it doesn't mean that an Individual of African American decent can not be must as smart as any European or a women can not be brilliant at math!
It is individuals that count. And everybody MUST be judged on their ability and talents and not on what category they where born in.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Does this make the Elephant Man the smartest man of all, considering how large elephants brains are?
As far as homo sapiens goes, there is no need to "improve". People are smart enough to survive, and there are plenty of them. The "pressures" are no longer basic survival, they are cultural.
The trend, therefore, is for fewer and fewer rich, educated people and more and more poorer people who have large families to fulfill their religous ideals.
Not to be flip about it, but whatever happens, it will be the "natural outcome". Anything else would imply there is a purpose, and "42" is just as good answer as any.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Morg like food
Morg need mate
Morg mod WOW
Now Morg happy
I for one am convinced we bred them out of existence by diluting their gene pool. I say that in all seriousness.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
While viewing the comments to the story I was presented with an advert for the United Negro College Fund. How exactly are slashdot choosing which adverts to display?
Heil Hitler! Kill the Jew!
The fact that you claim to know 100s of programmers suggests you are not one -- if you were, you'd be too busy cranking out code. You'd know maybe four programmers.
I dunno, but score! I have the bump. Neener neener to all you second class non-bump heads.
Relax I just want some peanuts.
I read it as "Did Humans Get Their Big Brains From Netherlands?" :-)
from the to-stupid-for-words dept.
Don't question research just because the conclusion rattles some deeply held beliefs. Researches don't defend morality, they practice science.
Lets say that tomorrow we found Jews were on average smarter then everyone else, blacks were on average less intelligent, Asians were on average better at math, Whites were on average more competitive, and that women were on average worse at math and science then men. Further lets say that we found out that all of these things were genetic in nature and not a result of societal conditioning or what not. Would that such discoveries make racism suddenly justified?
Hell no!
We value equality of opportunity not because science has shown us that everyone is a perfect clone of one another that varies only by superficial traits; but because it is morally right. We should hold this as an unshakable belief regardless of what science and broad averages show us. It is crystal clear that not every Asian is better then every single Black at math. One group might be better on average, but that says absolutely nothing about each individual. We value equality of opportunity because we believe each person has the right to have their actions and abilities judge as an individual, not as part of some "average population" that clearly has wild deviations.
My point is simple; don't reject prejudice and believe that people deserve to be judged as individuals because you have faith that science will prove that every race/gender/whatever is the same. If you hold those values because you believe that science will not contradict you, you might find your faith was unfounded at that the foundation of your beliefs crumble under mounting evidence to the contrary. Hold those values because those are good and humane values to have.
Personally, I don't know what the science of genetics is going to show us about human nature. It might very show that some populations have certain average traits that result in a slightly different average ability in some things. Who cares? That won't change my beliefs that people should be judged as individuals because my beliefs are rooted in morality, not faith that a theory about human genetics will turn out to be true. If it turns out that science shows us that we are all roughly genetically equal, great. If not, I won't lose any sleep or see my values change any.
Somethin like that i'd say yeah... take flys, tiny brains, so the signal doesn't have far to travel, and so they have very fast reaction times.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
One of the things I have come to realize is in modern society the ability to organize is far more valued then raw intelligents.
I'm not a pedant when it comes to spelling, but PLEASE, PLEASE show some intelligence when posting about intelligence - it makes you look less than intelligent when you don't. Spelling the word intelligence incorrectly in an otherwise insightful/interesting post about intelligence tends to cause the irony meter to chime rather loudly.
OK, have I given you more intelligence now that I've pointed out your unfortunate mistake by using the word intelligence far too many times - with annoying emphasis - in this post or have I insulted your intelligence?
Soko
*Triple checks spelling
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
So how do you account for populations of modern humans in locations where Neanderthals never existed? (e.g. the aboriginals of Australia who settled Australia 40,000 to 50,000 years ago)
First posting isn't trolling. It's...first posting.
From ScienceNOW:
o gression.php
"Ancient DNA pioneer Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, says that this new work is "the most compelling case to date for a genetic contribution of Neandertals to modern humans." Indeed, Pääbo says, he will now search for the haplogroup D variant of microcephalin in his own studies of the Neandertal genome."
Also, the point is that the kind of interbreeding posited would not have left mtDNA traces. It pretty much amounts to driveby DNA theft. For more detail, see here:
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/11/neanderthal-intr
I already posted this in reply to a similar post, but since it keeps popping up, it's worth repeating. Svante Pääbos comment on this research from ScienceNOW:
/ 2006/1106/1?rss=1
o gression.php
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full
"Ancient DNA pioneer Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, says that this new work is "the most compelling case to date for a genetic contribution of Neandertals to modern humans." Indeed, Pääbo says, he will now search for the haplogroup D variant of microcephalin in his own studies of the Neandertal genome."
Also, what is posited is not extensive interbreeding between humans and an archaic homo lineage, but rather drive-by allele theft. This can be very effective, for reasons explained here:
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/11/neanderthal-intr
I know were tangeting off topic here,
But Very few brilliant engineers can spell to save there lives.
I am one of them. I have had to put in 10 times the effort to try to get through english and still failed.
Yet I they insisted in putting in in A track classes because my reading comprehention was off the charts, and my vocabulary was considered colledge level while in 4th grade. I just can't spell damb it...
So, if you can't read past the type-o's and miss spelling then it's not just me but also you that are lacking.
Most engineer type's never notice the type-o's they see right through them.
But again this goes back to the agument of
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
"Personally, I would be curious to see more of the data that these people collected; maybe even see the actual distribution of this gene by geographic location."
, 000-722163.JPG
Your wish, my command:
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/uploaded_images/MCPH1-37
I think people have been sailing, trading and mixing genetically for a very long time, much longer and more often then we currently know about or believe.
I mean how did those aborigines get there in the first place?
There are so many submerged cities and none have really been investigated.
Off the coast of India, Bahamas, Asia, in the Mediterranean. So far archeology has been limited to where it's convenient, if only the development of human evolution was also so limited to these locations.
We really have no idea how advanced past civilizations might have been.
If New York were to get submerged in 20 feet of water for 20000 years, will the people in that new time, believe the legends of the Island city with the twin towers and flying machines.
What would be left for the archeologist? Unusual sand from the glass windows in the buildings, odd shaped coral on old cement blocks. Not much else. No Iron, silicon Chips or light bulbs. Gold would last but certainly get scavenged. And I'm sure people will argue that the cement could have occur naturally.
Look at how things are now and have been for the few hundred years that we really have some documentation about up to this point.
We like to think everything has changed but I don't think it's as different as we think.
Fighting and f***ing, it's not all one or the other, but both.
Remember is "Rape AND Pillage" not OR pillage.
Sex and War are the things that drive human evolution.
Human evolution is still taking place every day, on the highway, in Iraq, at the stock market, prison system, music and sports. Through our Ideas, culture, religion or lack of it.
Selection over who get to mate with whom, and who gets remove from that option, by staying celibate, incarceration, through illness or death.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
The suprising fact is that this gene correlates the part of the body being bigger with the latitude where the human being lives.
So nothern europeans have a bigger brain while africans have bigger pennis.
I know now why spanish girls have those big b.
This is quite annoying,
:-)
First you cannot insult anybody by telling them that they are neanthertals anymore.
And second, it seems that being smart is not a survival factor.
I guess I'll go out and hit my head with a hammer a couple of time.
Humm, maybe that is what did the neanthertals in ? they couldn't believe how their stoopid cousins where able to manage, and they tried to be as stupid as an experiment, and missed.
Hum so I'll wait for the hammer, after all with a little bit of luck I have just the right level of stupidity to survive
You know, the official orthodoxy about human evolution goes something like this (out-of-Africa hypothesis):
Of course there are several holes in that hypothesis (and the claimed lack of any miscenagion is one of those - but of course the biggest hole of all is that we don't see a lot of equality but a lot of diversity instead. The supposed lack of evolution in the last couple of thousand years is also a very bold claim that is not supported by any evidence and is actually pretty far-fetched). The problem is only that all the holes are politically very sensitive because you must not question equality.
Actually the theory that humans have interbreed with the various forms of Homo erectus/Neanderthals is nothing really new, some have theorized that the gene of red hair came from the Neanderthals.
With interbreeding, the whole out-of-Africa hypothesis is in danger: After all, with interbreeding there is no single ancestor or small groups of ancestors.
So this is nothing new, what is new is that it's on CNN. And that is IMO a big surprise, probably the journalists didn't quite understand that this questions the fundamental pillar of current political correctness.
Of course with the advances in genetics it is only a matter of time when the out-of-Africa hypothesis gets questioned outright, the evidence is piling up already.
I woke up with one beside me in bed this morning.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
What you seem to be implicitly suggesting is that those scientists are implicitly suggesting that Africans are less intelligent that Europeans because they have smaller brains which means that you would be equating brain size with intelligence. However, in science it is well known that brain-size != intelligence if it did whales would be the most intelligent animal on the planet. Intelligence in Humans appears to be governed more by the structure and 'wiring' of the brain than it is governed by size. So I think we can conclude that there are probably no racial undertones in this discovery although I don't doubt that ignorant extremists of all denominations will jump all over this data in an attempt to prove their racist theories. The question is: should we keep a lid on scientific discoveries because they might be used by morons to re-enforce their idiotic theories about the superiority of their own race over others?
To quote TFA:
"The D alleles may not even change brain size; they may only make the brain a bit more efficient if it indeed affects brain function," Lahn said.
That sounds to me as if the discovering scientist is saying that this gene gives marginal benefits at best. What is mostly interesting about this discovery is that it is yet another hard-to-ignore hint that Neanderthals and Modern Humans may have interbred. This is something that many scientists have vehemently denied could possibly have happened despite the complete absence of evidence to prove the validity of that denial and despite the fact that species with greater degrees of evolutionary separation than Modern Humans and Neanderthals are known to be able to interbreed.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
""By no means do these findings constitute definitive proof that a Neanderthal was the source of the original copy of the D allele. However, our evidence shows that it is one of the best candidates," Lahn said."
We shouldn't make such big news of science that may or may not be true.
More specifically, all implications on conclusions from the article were highly speculative, this is what Lahn was saying.
As much I would like the "make love not war" idea the editor is suggesting, I need to point out that war is a common way in human history to regenerate the gene pool.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Of course not! Doesn't anyone read the Bible anymore?
Open Office- try it http://www.openofice.org
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: Igor, would you mind telling me whose brain I did put in?
Igor: And you won't be angry?
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: I will NOT be angry.
Igor: Abby someone.
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: Abby someone. Abby who?
Igor: Abby Normal.
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: Abby Normal?
Igor: I'm almost sure that was the name.
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: Are you saying that I put an abnormal brain into a seven and a half foot long, fifty-four inch wide GORILLA?
[shakes and grabs him]
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: IS THAT WHAT YOU'RE TELLING ME?
As was recently suggested in the context of dolphins, increased brain size might simply be a result of the pressure on the organism's metabolism caused by cooler climate conditions (abstract on PubMed; summary on random blog). So European brains might be bigger, just because they have to keep thinking in the frosty winters. And as with dolphins, there's no reason to link brain size to intelligence unless you're not terribly bright yourself. Of course, none of this rational debate will happen in the mainstream press.
... Wait a minute. Slashdot covered the dolphin story, for heaven's sake: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/2 1/0358215. Never mind all this talk of sea-bound mammals: the /. community has the combined memory of goldfish!
They're just suggesting that europeans have a brain influencing gene that africans don't. They're not making any claims for what it may do. Though of course that won't stop nutters on both sides from reading into what they please.
It could have happened here in Portugal as it is sugested by some stdies about The Lapedo Child.
Is being more able to reproduce. Those who don't or can't are evolutionary dead ends.
With that in mind, the single parent with 5 kids on welfare is a superior human than your genius physics professor with no children. The concept of a moral superiority comes from the ignorant religious bigot sector. Neanderthals were not sub human, they were human, by definition if they were able to interbreed with humans and produce viable offspring.
Deleted
Or we could read the news from national geographic ...
6 1026-neanderthals.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/10/0
Which say the opposite.
Gérard Depardieu
"They are still found fairly often among Lapp and Finn individuals."
We always knew that we were better off with 'better brain' gene and willingfully gave the 'superior beauty' gene to the Swedes! Unfortunately 'better artistic skills' and 'big round tits' were bundled in the same package, but I guess that we are better off with Nokia than Abba.
It's a very intriguing theory. You might want to check this site out: http://www.rdos.net/eng/asperger.htm
How does this theory of yours explain the stagnation of Neanderthal tool making, and that the sudden and marked advance in the complexity of tools used in Europe coincides exactly with the arrivial of Homo Sapiens? How does this explain that Homo Sapiens outside of Europe were making more advanced tools and more intricate art than the Neanderthals?
Could competition among sapien/neanderthal groups have selected for an already existing gene? Why must we all make love all the time?
check this out http://europe.brg19.at/projekte/body/por_a/por_a.h tmlLAPEDO VALLEY
Couldn't the genes have come from a virus that affected humans and Neanderthals
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Pass me that spliff man ...
I have an occipital bun and the bridge row thingy ... a quick spliff and I'll be painting caves with my soul.
But you aren't.
YOu may have some similar characteristics, which would not be suprising since it seems we shared a common ancestor, but Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens are 2 different species that most likely coud not interbreed.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There could not interbreed with Homo Sapiens 500000 years of evolution attest to that.
And your nonsense about artistic abilities is the other way around.
Archeological evidence show that for the 200000 years that Neanderthals "ruled" in Europe and parts of East Asia there was almost zero cultural progress of any kind.
It was not until Homo Sapiens arrived from Africa that culture and arts exploded.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
(a) Did Humans Get Their Big Brains From Neanderthals?
Article says:
(b) The gene microcephalin (MCPH1) regulates brain size during development
(emphasis mine). Doesn't look like the article claims bigger brains for any group overall. Article further says:
(c) it is not yet clear what advantage the D allele gives the human brain
And both the slashdot summary and the article highlight the notion that the genetic difference in question is prevalent in Europe and not in Africa. So just to put this all out on the line here: do Europeans have bigger brains than Africans? Slashdot headline implies this, but article does not say this. Do Europeans have bigger brains during temporary stages of development? Article implies this with (b), but does not actually say this. Does this gene confer an advantage? It's implied by all of this coverage, but (c) disavows any evidence of such.
So this whole angle (from the slashdot header) of "modern day eugenicists might all too eagerly read into these findings to draw their own politically biased conclusions" would seem to be just a baseless, inflammatory statement injected for sensationalism... or am I missing something here?
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
have you read http://www.rdos.net/wiki/index.php/Neanderthal_the ory / http://www.rdos.net/eng/asperger.htm ?
I'm not sure if I agree but still its interesting.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
have always felt that the blending of the two humanoid Races is what created modern humans
1) theories based of feelings is a hallmark of a crank. Spelling random words in capitals because they are important (and poorly defined) is another.
far more valued then raw intelligents.
Being able to spell "more valued than raw intelligence" wouldn't hurt either.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
ancient humans and Neanderthals decided to make love and not war
Try rape. It's both!
Seriously. This wasn't exactly uncommon thousands of years ago. From the old Testament, Numbers 31:
7 And they warred against Midian, as the LORD commanded Moses; and they slew every male.
8 And they slew the kings of Midian with the rest of their slain: Evi, and Rekem, and Zur, and Hur, and Reba, the five kings of Midian; Balaam also the son of Beor they slew with the sword.
9 And the children of Israel took captive the women of Midian and their little ones;
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
From TFA: But our study demonstrates the possibility that interbreeding contributed advantageous variants into the human gene pool that subsequently spread"
Actually, it probably introduced a bunch of disadvantageous variants, too, but they dissapeared from the population since they were, you guessed it, at a disadvantage.
Variation in the population is one of the drivers of evolution. The more variation, the more likelihood that some members of the population will be significantly more adept at survival and successful reproduction than other members. The most adept do the best, the least adept starve and die.
The devil take the hindmost, and up the ladder we go!
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
I would like to point out one hole in your theory. You state that your engineers speak a different body language, i.e. they are competent in body language but "differently abled". I'd like to draw your attention to some scholarly research on the subject: here.
The point of the article is that even if you perceive yourselves to be competent in a thing, the less competent you indeed are, the less likely you will be to judge it accurately.
It's nice to know that our ancestors were getting their freak on, oh so long ago.
Now a quick question would be if the cavemen nerds were into mamoth trunk porn.
..........FULL STOP.
Hmmm, so my geekyness is somehow related to my inability to find a hat that fits, my hairy knuckles and my high cold-tolerance. It's all coming together now...
Mules are sterile because horses and donkeys have differing numbers of chromosomes. Horses with 64(32 x2) and donkeys with 62 (31x2) with the resulting offspring with 63.
Neanderthals and homo sapiens have the same # of chromosomes and can interbreed, just like a different breeds of dogs can.
..........FULL STOP.
The 2 groups could have just merged and incorporated each other.
..........FULL STOP.
those damn europeans will do anything that moves!
and thereby can calculate the brain size. of the two groups, so it's no a guess.
..........FULL STOP.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Chromosomal analysis has shown that both groups have the same number of chromosomes. They've found a skeleton of a boy who looks very much like an offspring of both those groups from that time period 30,000 years ago.
..........FULL STOP.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm curious why the submitter over-hyped the article. As numerous others have pointed out, the original article clearly states uncertainty as to the exact function of the gene in question, and the evidence for the mixing (and resulting gene transfer) is indirect. It's a bunch of maybes.
At the same time, I'm surprised at the strong slashdot reaction to an open discussion on race. There are obviously 3 major variants of humans, with differences in hair, skin, susceptibility to different diseases, conditions, etc. The tone people use to fight any discussion as to how and when these variants came into being is amazing.
Seriously, beat up the article and the poster for inadequate science, but let's tone down the racism charges. Noting differences and guessing is not *automatically* racist.
-Jeff
P.S. As a reader of history, I am of course sensitive to how "genetics" has been used in the past to justify all sorts of crimes (e.g. aspects of colonialism). But that's no excuse to leap in, swords drawn, at the first hint of such a discussion.
Please learn the difference between a dissenting opinion and a troll before you moderate.
It's the Phrenology hypothesis, and it has been throughly shown to be false in the last century...
The quote you use as evidence to say it is doesn't have to do with IQ is the part the researcher added in order to get published by the liberal media, as the findings of his study are completely non PC (ie: to be censored as they counter the agenda of the ruling classes).
Read the actual study. This gene most likely has to do with brain size, and many other studies have shown brain size and IQ highly correlate.
mtDNA only shows direct line female ancestry, eg; your mothers mothers mothers mothers mother... None of your mother mothers fathers mother or anything like that. It's a ridiculously small indicator of total ancestry, it leaves out the vast majority of people who contributed to your genetics.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
This could insignificant or false because the selection pressures were the same on neanderthals and humans in northern Europe: the cold. I learned in my physical anthropology class that the reason for neanderthals having larger brains and muscles is that it naturally keeps bodies warmer. The extra brain tissue may not have had a purpose other than to keep the brain warmer. This comes from It would be interesting to know if they took this into account with their research.
The allele in question, the D version of microcephalin, was discovered by geneticist Bruce Lahn of the University of Chicago. It appears to regulate the growth of fetal brain cells. If you have another allele of the gene, you end up with microcephaly, which in extreme cases causes death and in less severe cases ends up with smaller heads/brains (hence the name). If you've ever seen Howard Stern's show, the guy called "Beetlejuice" has microcephaly.
It's theorized that the D variant of microcephalin causes the fetal brain to organize slightly more rapidly and efficiently, leading to a bump in IQ. This variant seems to have appeared in either the Middle East or Europe about 37,000 years ago (hence, the newer theory about Neanderthal origin) and conferred such a genetic advantage that it has swiftly (in genetic terms) swept through the populations that had access to this allele.
70% of Europeans and East Asians now have variant D of microcephalin (not 70% of humans as was stated in the article). It is nearly non-existent in sub-Saharan Africa (many populations have none), but where there was any contact with Europeans or Asians, it has swiftly taken over (up to 25% of the population in just a few hundred years).
The standard measure of variation in human alleles is known as Wright's fixation index or FST. A value of between 5-10% should be considered "normal" within subpopulations. Higher than that, and the allele is being heavily selected for. The FST value for variant D of microcephalin is 48%, which is simply off the charts for a mutation (or introduced by cross-breeding with Neanderthals) that occurred within the last 37,000 years. This is one really important allele.
Lahn has also discovered a version of the ASPM gene that seems to have similar brain-boosting abilities that arose in Caucasian populations (Europe, the Middle East and India) about 6,000 years ago and is now found in 44% of that population. Another modified gene, found mostly in Ashkenazi Jews (Eastern European descent), also seems to significantly boost intelligence by modifying brain chemicals known as sphingolipids. It's quite a boost (27% of US Nobel prizes have been awarded to Ashkenazi Jews, who make up less than 3% of the US population), but its downside is severe as well (Tay-Sachs, Gaucher and Niemann-Pick diseases), indicating that the mutation is relatively recent and that the less favorable aspects of these alleles have not yet been selected out.
There are probably equivalent mutations in other populations that have boosted their intellect as well - they simply have yet to be discovered.
Most of this information is found in Nicholas Wade's excellent book Before the Dawn Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors, pp. 97-99, 193, 245-256 and 271.
In the scientific literature, look for:
Patrick D. Evans et. al., "Microcephalin, a Gene Regulating Brain Size, Continues to Evolve Adaptively in Humans", Science 209:1717-1220 (2005)
Nitzan Mekel-Bobrov, "Ongoing Adaptive Evolution in ASPM, a Brain Size Determinant in Homo sapiens", Science 209:1720-1722 (2005)
The problem is that aside from a few one-off studies like this, the vast majority of research comes to the same conclusion: modern humans and pretty much genetically identical to Cromagnum (ie, we are the same species), and has no genetic code from the Neanderthal species. Either we were not genetically compatible enough to breed, or those few hybrids died out long ago.
Neanderthals, despite having large brains (larger than ours, suggesting a higher level of intelligence) wouldn't have had highly developed vocal systems, meaning that any "language" they could come up with would be incredibly primitive. Without language, it's hard to pass on knowledge, and that leads to a race of people smarter than us but who end up having to constantly rediscover things that we were teaching our children.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
The quote you use as evidence to say it is doesn't have to do with IQ is the part the researcher added in order to get published by the liberal media, as the findings of his study are completely non PC (ie: to be censored as they counter the agenda of the ruling classes).
Read the actual study. This gene most likely has to do with brain size, and many other studies have shown brain size and IQ highly correlate..
This comes as no surprise to me, as we are in fact products of a monkey having butt-sex with a retarded fish-squirrel.
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
it could have been any archaic Homo lineage.
Are you calling us all Homos?
That would have been funny in its threaded context... we need threaded discussions back!
Yes. We took their brains. That's why they're all dead.
What about the Rh blood gene and the gene or gene complex that confers lactose tolerance past puberty. Both of these traits are concentrated in western Europe.
Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud.
It's called the "Occipital Bun".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occipital_bun
Suppose using the best and most widely accepted principles of human evolution, scientists conclude that people of race X evolved along a different path than race Y (please don't argue this point, it's just a thought experiment). Suppose then that the same principles led scientists to believe that X is superior to Y.
How would a moral person deal with this information? (don't argue morality... just a TE). If science is based on truth, and our current version of "truth" is viewed as racist, what do we make of it, regardless of how unpleasant it is?
Some of the posters have tried to reconcile the finding (which can be viewed as racist), with an emotional reaction of "but of course this doesn't mean..."
I find this topic interesting because it shows how a rational/moral conflict can exist even among people who may not consider themselves religious.
Then why does everyone have a larger brain?
Perhaps the main person who has been pushing this idea is Leif Ekblad.
His extensive website is- http://www.rdos.net/eng/ (Click on left "Neanderthal Theory").
John Sokol wrote "...it's just a theory.." but as theories become more and more
developed then more and more testable hypotheses (and affordably testable hypotheses!)
begin to emerge. That seems to me anway to be the stage where things are at now (see
Ekblad's site). - inkwiztor (aka harpersnotes).
"A beginning is a delicate time for making certain that the balances are correct..." So go see "Mahdi" O'Reilly's
Jean Auel was way ahead of this article.
/.'ers can agree with: lots of erotic descriptions.
Of course, she also wrote it in a way
completely unsound hypthesizing:
two species can interbreed with the result that a growth gene is expressed and the usual limiting gene is not available resulting in gigantism.
it'd be hilarious if brain gigantism began this way and then was taken advantage (I do not believe this was the reason for intelligence spurt).
If you need text styles to communicate then you don't have a message.
the most interesting thing about this thread so far is just how rabid people get whenever there is any suggestion that some people might be smarter than others. even a hint of that idea will bring out ridiculously aggressive reactions.
why? there is no such reaction when it is suggested that some people are better athletes than others, that some can run faster, some can dance better, some make better musicians, some are better at various crafts, and so on - it is ONLY when it is suggested that some are more intelligent than others that we get this lynch mob.
Time for all niggers to die, niggers.
how many Neanderthal skulls were discovered ? 20 ? 30 ? If anybody but a paleontologist would try to go statistical on so little data s/he would be sent back to undergrad school faster than one can spell "Neanderthal" ...
... Homo Sapiens Sapiens were making much more complex stone tools than the Homo Sapiens Neanderthaliensis ... so maybe the size of the processing unit does not tell everything.
btw
I'm hoping that possession of this gene controls something really important, but that we don't find out until the racists have claimed it as their "proof". Then the announcement comes: this gene causes substandard IQ's, small penises.. something good like that :-)
-- Tony Lawrence
I certainly agree with the concern about 'hate speech' legislation. But in this case, TFA is, at best, badly misinformed.
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