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."

Comments

anything to do with that "bump"

[not already in use]

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...

Oh, I coulda told you this.

[sammy baby]

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.

competition?

[JeffSh]

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.

that would make far more sense to me than a larger brain resulting from inter-breeding with an obviously inferior sub-specie. /shrug what do i know.

love?

[krotkruton]

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.

False assumptions?

[MickLinux]

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.