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DNA Analysis Probes the End of Human-Neanderthal Sex
An anonymous reader writes "Modern Europeans may have interbred with Neanderthals as recently as 37,000 years ago, after modern humans with advanced stone tools expanded out of Africa, according to a new study. In an attempt to understand why the Neanderthals are more closely related to people from outside of Africa, researchers from Harvard and the Max Planck Institute estimated that while the last sex between Neanderthals and modern humans may have occurred 37,000 to 86,000 years ago, it is most likely that it occurred 47,000 to 65,000 years ago."
raped my great-great-.......great grandaddy! and he liked it!
the last sex between Neanderthals and modern humans may have occurred 37,000 to 86,000 years ago
Maria Shriver begs to differ.
And that's still better than most Slashdot readers.
Humanity never had successful reproduction with sheep, but I wouldn't go as far as to claim as a result that we've never had sex with sheep.
I do wonder what changed after the alleged period when occasional reproduction occurred.
Except that Neanderthals were also homo Sapiens. But they were more primitive in their technology, for whatever reason.
Pick your study. This one reported on in the same web site claims Researchers concluded that the similarities in the DNA are due to common ancestry and that Neanderthals and modern humans weren't inbreeding.
Technically they are considered a subspecies of Homo Sapiens, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, or as a separate species altogether, Homo neanderthalensis.
Except that Neanderthals were also homo Sapiens. But they were more primitive in their technology, for whatever reason.
Maybe, that's debatable.
Either way, they were either Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis or Homo Neanderthalensis, but most certainly not Homo Sapiens Sapiens, which is our species. They differed not only in culture and technology, they were a separate species.
And yes, different, but closely related species, can still interbreed and have viable offspring. That definition of species is not used anywhere above high school biology, because things get a lot more complicated once you take into account ring species.
There may have been a lot of sex without conception, and even a number of later Neanderthal-European hookups which did conceive. If the entire Neanderthal branch of evolution died out, it's equally possible that other, later branches, of Neanderthal-Euro stepkids died out, or used contraception. But I guess this gets the word "sex" in the headline, which is probably key. The study shows the last sex which produced surviving progeny which has been blood sampled, not necessarily evidence of the last snoo-snoo.
Gently reply
Given the recent data that they're our recent ancestors, only the former makes sense.
Not really. There wasn't a lot of genetic exchange even though the populations of the two groups lived by each other for up to 200,000 years.
I don't think that taxonomy has been in use for a long time. I haven't heard any researcher refer to Neandertals as a subspecies of H. sapens for many years. Nor would it make much sense considering they are likely both daughter species of H. erectus.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Except that Neanderthals were also homo Sapiens. But they were more primitive in their technology, for whatever reason.
Because they knew what a real woman needed. Real men, with proper real tools, solid Mousterian hand axes. Real woman has no need for the effeminate Aurignacian blades, those are for pussies.
Ezekiel 23:20
A really interesting Slashdot phenomenon is while attempting to be all scientificy and stuff and being strong advocates of Darwinian natural selection, don't seem to really grasp the implications of the concept. No species tries to maintain equilibrium. Equilibrium is forced upon them.
Could you provide evidence to the neanderthals contraceptive practices and motivation?
If two individuals give fertile descendency, aren't they of the same species?
Welcome to the Species Problem.
tl;dr - It's complicated.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Neanderthal means Neander Valley in German. I used to live near Dusseldorf which is also close to this valley in Germany. There is a really nice train ride to get to it, there's a nice nature trail and a museum with some displays of Neanderthal bones and artifacts. Neanderthals could probably interbreed with modern humans even if they were a new species. There are inter-special hybrids, such as mules. But they are usually sterile if the genome is too divergent. Neanderthal DNA is believed to be in our modern genome too. So they could not have been to genetically different than we are. Species are somewhat arbitrarily assigned anyway. It is also commonly believed by many that they were lesser mentally developed and brute beasts. The average cranial capacity of Neanderthal skulls exceeds that of modern humans. There's a lot of controversy surrounding their intellectual ability. Especially their language skills. The hyoid bone in your throat allows you to produce the sounds of modern language. They have found Neanderthal hyoid bones which were well developed. This has deepened that controversy. Just like there is great physical diversity among domestic dogs, why couldn't the same apply to homo sapiens? There is speculation that they were not immune to some of the infectious diseases that we had spread to their population. That this might have been the cause of their extinction and not our superiority. This would also explain why contact with them invariably led to extinction.
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
Which has always been a marvel to me. Even in the 1930's there was enough known about genetics and an established theory of speciation and natural selection that should have enable people to recognize that if anything purity is no virtue at all.
Its not good for our dogs and its not good for us. Mutations are one way to gain improved forms but the direct mixing of existing genetic material followed by the selection process is a much faster way. Blood lines that were mixed before the neolithic era, probably would have the surviving individuals expressing the most robust genetic material, from all the pre-modern man and related species.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Yeah, yeah. I wish everybody did things my way, too.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
... Before that, Northern and Western Europe was a backwater and had been since before the dawn of civilization.
Ever heard of Alexander of Macedon? You know...the guy who conquered half the world in the 4th century BC? Yeah, that was over two millennia ago. Maybe you should go take an Intro to Western Civ class, clown.
And when did Alexander of Macedon ever set foot in Northern or Western Europe? He himself thought he had conquered half the world, but we have learned a little more geography in the last 2400 years. Most of Greece, most of Turkey, part of the eastern half of the Middle East and Pakistan is not half the world.
Maybe Ringling Brothers is holding auditions AC.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
No, the Neanderthals liked technology, but invented patents so that Ug got exclusive rights to fire and refused to license it to Og. There was also some nastiness over whether the stone tools could have rounded edges.
Humans freely ripped off Neanderthal technology. The Neanderthals tried to take them to court, but the humans had not yet evolved enough to understand the concept of intellectual property rights so just ignored them.
Eventually the Neanderthals consumed all of their resources in a massive lawsuit that left the earth scorched and the humans scratching their heads and telling themselves that whatever happened in the future, they wouldn't ever be so stupid as to repeat those mistakes.
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
> But they were more primitive in their technology, for whatever reason.
I disagree. If anything, the Neanderthals liked technology TOO MUCH for their own good. Humans were content to attack with spears in large organized groups. Neanderthals fought back as individuals armed to the teeth with surprisingly sophisticated weapons. Humans tended the fields and used primitive axes to cut firewood. Neanderthals spent half the summer trying to make a better plow and improve the ergonomics of their axe.
So Neanderthals were the first nerds?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it