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Oldest Human Genome Reveals When Our Ancestors Mixed With Neanderthals

Posted by samzenpus on from the how-you-doing? dept.

sciencehabit writes DNA recovered from a femur bone in Siberia belongs to a man who lived 45,000 years ago, according to a new study. His DNA was so well preserved that scientists were able to sequence his entire genome, making his the oldest complete modern human genome on record. Like present-day Europeans and Asians, the man has about 2% Neanderthal DNA. But his Neanderthal genes are clumped together in long strings, as opposed to chopped up into fragments, indicating that he lived not long after the two groups swapped genetic material. The man likely lived 7000 to 13,000 years after modern humans and Neanderthals mated, dating the mixing to 52,000 to 58,000 years ago, the researchers conclude. That's a much smaller window than the previous best estimate of 37,000 to 86,000 years ago.

128 comments

  1. Re:Bone a Neanderthal by Teresita · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Someday they'll figure out "Neanderthal" is a completely artificial distinction, like "White Aryan", and the scientific consensus will be that Neanderthals R Us.

  2. Yeah but ... by ve3oat · · Score: 5, Informative

    The same tests on DNA from another man from the same era and locale but from a different Y-haplogroup (and different mt-haplogroup) might show a completely different proportion of genetic mixing and time to most recent mating. Don't draw too many conclusions from a sample of just one.

    1. Re:Yeah but ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nor should we draw any conclusions from a hypothetical example.

    2. Re:Yeah but ... by Doubting+Sapien · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Mod parent up. The article as written is dumbed down and misleading in many ways. Against my usual temperament I'm going to make a sociological/anthropological argument that someone reading the article will draw very wrong conclusions about the nature of prehistoric Neanderthal-modern human interaction. Genetic inheritance or progeny happens to be the only evidence we have right now about early Neanderthal-modern human interaction. But it does not say anything useful about when we "first had sex with" them as the article claims. Consider the following: Archaeological evidence suggests that large scale violence we would consider warfare was a part of human life as far as 7,500 or possibly 14,000 years ago. Does that mean ancient society was all about peace and love before that time? No. There is too little information to make such sweeping conclusions. To return to the subject at hand, not all sexual encounters with Neanderthals are going to leave evidence for us to conveniently find. What we *DO* know at this point is that at least one such encounter resulted in a pregnancy that was carried to term and the resulting offspring lived long enough to have children of his/her own who continued to survive. That's ALL we know. Put another way, imagine the young men and women of ancient communities playing a game of "fuck, marry, or kill" that included their funny looking neighbors. The visual may not be pleasant, but any earlier incidents of war-rape and deliberate infanticide due to parental rejection will leave little to no evidence behind for us. And barring extreme luck, there is almost NO WAY we can know if/when such incidents occurred. Who really knows when Neanderthals and us *FIRST* had sex?

      --
      ========== "Hello World" in my programming language of choice: ATG - LET THERE BE LIFE - TAG ==========
    3. Re:Yeah but ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Modern science is just guessing anyway, so there will be a point where someone will pinpoint when sex happened. I read everything like as fiction since it can not be proven/disproven.

    4. Re:Yeah but ... by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

      Uh, excuse me, but what do Y-haplogroups have to do with this? Weren't the co-located genes in question observed on the autosomes?

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    5. Re:Yeah but ... by pastafazou · · Score: 3, Funny

      Well I don't know about you, but I know when I first had sex with a Neanderthal...and that's all I'm willing to say about it....

    6. Re:Yeah but ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Who really knows when Neanderthals and us *FIRST* had sex?"

      Why do you keep saying 'us'? We are the product.

    7. Re:Yeah but ... by radtea · · Score: 1

      This is a general problem with the way people infer origin dates from sparsely sampled distributions: http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=...

      The earliest anatomically modern human fossils date from about 195,000 years ago, and people often say on this basis that anatomically modern humans appeared about 200,000 years ago, which is statistically illiterate at best.

      Maybe people in the field know better, but I've seen an awful lot of claims like this and even in the semi-professional literature there seems to be a strong tendency to assume origin dates based on "date of earliest discovery plus a bit", which is just the wrong way to do it.

      --
      Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
    8. Re:Yeah but ... by HiThere · · Score: 1

      What they are is an existence proof. And since there is crossover happening with every sperm or egg, this puts a limit on the probable number of generations...though I do need to include "probable".

      P.S.: This wasn't a survey of the Y chromosome.

      OTOH, since the amount was only about 2%, that indicates that the hybridization must have occurred several generations ago, perhaps 50.
      (2% is the modern count, so you can't just say around 5 generations, as some of it is clearly being conserved).

      OTOH, since we share most of our genes with Chimpanzees (and lots with mice) I'd need to know how they calculated that 2%. It's a figure I've encountered before, but I've never been quite certain on what basic the claim is made. Taken straight it would seem to mean that Neanderthals were as different from us as Chimpanzees, and that's clearly wrong.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    9. Re: Yeah but ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The word you seek is *disproved

    10. Re:Yeah but ... by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      The same tests on DNA from another man from the same era and locale but from a different Y-haplogroup

      Where's the sample?

      In archaeology (and palaeontology in general), you play the hand you're dealt. (Though you can try to stack the deck a little by choosing where to dig.)

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  3. Can't be right by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    This can't be right. The world is only 2014 years old!

    1. Re:Can't be right by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean 6018 don't you?

  4. Exinction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So by what metric are Neanderthals extinct, if there are Neanderthals who have living descendants with a measurable amount of their genetic makeup?

    (Or, for that matter, dinosaurs.)

    1. Re: Exinction by saloomy · · Score: 2

      My guess is that the fact that no organisms exist with a Neanderthal genome defines them as extinct. Where one draws the line is more art than science I guess. There is a species of Galapagos tortoise that was biologically extinct since there was until recently just one male member (lonesome George). I know that there are some genetics in us (like the HMG group of proteins) that are ancient, but work so well that we still retain them. That doesn't mean the first species to have evolved them isn't extict, it just means we evolved from them.

    2. Re: Exinction by saloomy · · Score: 1

      Group of genes, not protiens! My bad.

    3. Re:Exinction by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 1

      So by what metric are Neanderthals extinct, if there are Neanderthals who have living descendants with a measurable amount of their genetic makeup?

      There is no living population, large enough to produce additional generations of viable offspring, with a full, or substantial, Neanderthal genome.

      --
      Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
    4. Re: Exinction by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      Drawing hard lines in the sand is perhaps not possible. Neanderthals would share a vast majority of our DNA just by being hominids. There are clusterings of genetic patterns, but a cluster is not a clear-cut distinction.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    5. Re: Exinction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, generally speaking there are conserved sequences of the genome. Common among many species. They are similar probably because mutations in such important parts of our genome would lead to progeny that don't function properly. Most likely resulting in a stillbirth or at least death before reproduction age.

    6. Re: Exinction by jc42 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      My guess is that the fact that no organisms exist with a Neanderthal genome defines them as extinct. Where one draws the line is more art than science I guess ... I know that there are some genetics in us (like the HMG group of proteins) that are ancient, but work so well that we still retain them. That doesn't mean the first species to have evolved them isn't extinct, it just means we evolved from them.

      Well, I don't think that quite matches the scientific concept of "species". By your definition, almost all species who were alive 50,000 years ago would be considered extinct, but hardly any biologists would agree with that. It's true that no humans alive today have 100% Neanderthal genes, but it's also nearly certain that there are no living humans with 100% Cro-Magnon genes, either. What happened would be considered a mixing of several human sub-species after migrations of one or more African groups into Eurasia. The Cro-Magnon sub-species disappeared, too, and modern human Caucasian and Asian sub-species are the results of that mixing. This sort of thing happens in species all the time, when conditions allow such genetic mixing, and the result is rarely considered a new species.

      The fact is that modern humans are all one species. We can and do interbreed when groups mingle, and there are no groups of modern humans that are genetically incompatible. If sub-species "disappear" by genetic mixing, that is usually not called an extinction event. It's just the routine and normal mingling of subspecies.

      An interesting contrast is that most North American duck species are known to hybridize occasionally, and the offspring are usually fertile. Does this mean they're really all one species? No, because they all mingle a lot, but interbreeding is rare. They have "behavioral" species-separation features, mostly based on female mate choice. The females are mostly all mottled brown (protective coloring), and the males often approach females of other species (because they can't tell them apart either ;-). But the females usually only accept males that have the "right" color markings; the others are ugly to them. This suffices to keep the species separate, though there is probably a very low level of genetic interchange between many of the species.

      But humans aren't like this. Even if we do generally prefer mates in our own subspecies, most of us do find many members of other subspecies physically attractive, and we'll mate with them given the opportunity. This means that we really are all the same species. We now have good evidence that the Neandertals were merely another subspecies, because when they had the opportunity, they did interbreed with those slender, dark-skinned folks who migrated into their territory. They did so often enough to produce a new subspecies that's physically distinct from either of the earlier two (or three or more).

      --
      Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
    7. Re:Exinction by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      This seems like circular logic. First one has to define what a "Neanderthal" is before answering that question.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    8. Re: Exinction by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      Exactly. Look at chimpanzee's that share about 99% of human's DNA. Neanderthals would have to be much closer.

    9. Re: Exinction by radtea · · Score: 2

      Well, I don't think that quite matches the scientific concept of "species".

      There is no generally-agreed-upon "scientific concept of species". The "Biological Species Concept" is a well-know and highly contentious artifact. It is clearly useful, but how it is defined varies enormously from person to person and across sub-fields.

      This variation doesn't matter much in practice, but it gives philosophers who for some unfathomable reason want there to be just one BSC fits. They seem unaware that concepts are tools used by knowing subjects to understand objective reality, so different subjects with different purposes will tweak the tool as appropriate, much the way a carpenter and a plumber are apt to use different types of hammer.

      --
      Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
    10. Re: Exinction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      An interesting contrast is that most North American duck species are known to hybridize occasionally, and the offspring are usually fertile. Does this mean they're really all one species? No

      Actually it means Yes, the are the same species. That is one of the definitions of a species. They may well be different sub-species on the way to becoming separate species, but for now they are the same species.

    11. Re: Exinction by Half-pint+HAL · · Score: 1, Interesting

      The Cro-Magnon sub-species disappeared, too, and modern human Caucasian and Asian sub-species are the results of that mixing.

      Modern thinking suggests there was no Cro-Magnon subspecies, and that scientists of the time were actively looking for differences, hence ignored that the dimensions of the cro-magnon specimens were within the variation found within modern humans. Remember, prior to World War II, "racism" was more or less considered a branch of science. In Frank Herbert's Dune, there is an obsession with finding "humans" and separating them from "animals" by breeding, and while it's easy to rationalise that away as a Nazi reference, but that's just choosing to ignore that a lot of people felt that way elsewhere. While most of the world abandoned eugenics after the war, there are some who lament the Nazis giving a "bad name" to it. Eugenics even continued in parts of the US, through mandatory sterilisation of the mentally disabled, which was extended to African Americans with poor school records. There was a continuing assumption among many that black Africans were an "inferior race" and therefore just pollution to the genestock. Elsewhere, the colonial powers justified their continued occupation of their remaining territories through the condescension that these foreign types just weren't capable of ruling their own countries, and so we were doing them a favour by lending them our superiority. For all this time, scientists were looking for individual homonid species/subspecies as ancestors of the "races" that we had invented in modern populations based on little more than melatonin levels and eye shape.

      Yes, I've gone off at a tangent. A very long tangent. My point is that in matters of human evolution, generations of science were led by the nose in order to rationalise the prejudices of the privileged few. Modern science, thankfully, has proper data to work with -- DNA. Neanderthal DNA has been sequenced from Neanderthal fossils, and it differs from Modern Human DNA in ways that are measurable and quantifiable. It denies the old claim that white man was neanderthal and therefore a distinct race from Africans, or that Basques are Cro-Magnon and a different species from everyone else in Europe.

      Neanderthaler was different enough to be of note and is extinct. A few genetic markers remain, but most of the unique DNA is lost.

      But humans aren't like this. Even if we do generally prefer mates in our own subspecies, most of us do find many members of other subspecies physically attractive, and we'll mate with them given the opportunity. This means that we really are all the same species. We now have good evidence that the Neandertals were merely another subspecies, because when they had the opportunity, they did interbreed with those slender, dark-skinned folks who migrated into their territory. They did so often enough to produce a new subspecies that's physically distinct from either of the earlier two (or three or more).

      I find your use of human subspecies troubling -- it harks back to the institutional racism of pre-genomic science (there was a point to my earlier rambling after all). Neanderthal may have been a subspecies rather than a fully-fledged species (debating that would be irrelevant here) and that definition would be based on marked genetic differences and rare interbreeding with early modern human populations. But the genetic differences between human racial groups is not on the same level as subspecies -- in fact, as I understand it, it's less than between different breeds of domestic dog, and all domestic dogs are lumped under one single subspecies: canis lupus familiaris.

      Even though you didn't intend to, your argument implies that the difference between Neanderthaler and Modern Human is on the same order of magnitude as the difference between black African and white European. That's not a road we want to start back down.

      --
      Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
    12. Re: Exinction by Half-pint+HAL · · Score: 1

      Except... tigons and ligers.

      --
      Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
    13. Re: Exinction by Opyros · · Score: 1

      Mod parent up. Here is a discussion of the various definitions of "species"; also, it's worth clicking through to this list.

    14. Re: Exinction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I want a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/pumapard

      (the *adorable* hybrid munchkin offspring of a cougar/puma and either a leopard or a jaguar)

      50-80 pounds of munchkin big-kitty love :-)

    15. Re: Exinction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Strictly speaking, the genetic difference between a sub-Saharan black African and a blonde northern European Swede is quite a bit larger than the genetic difference between a leopard and a jaguar. Yet leopards and jaguars are arbitrarily classified as distinct species JUST BECAUSE they live on different continents & normally would never encounter each other "in nature", even though they'll readily interbreed in captivity with no real problems for their offspring.

      Neanderthals weren't freaky subhumans. They were just the first white people... nothing less, nothing more. And leopards & jaguars are just different races of 'panther'.

    16. Re: Exinction by crunchygranola · · Score: 1

      ...

      ... It's true that no humans alive today have 100% Neanderthal genes, but it's also nearly certain that there are no living humans with 100% Cro-Magnon genes, either. What happened would be considered a mixing of several human sub-species after migrations of one or more African groups into Eurasia. The Cro-Magnon sub-species disappeared, too, and modern human Caucasian and Asian sub-species are the results of that mixing....

      Just addressing the example given - the "Cro-Magnon" concept and term has been entirely abandoned by science. The problem was that there was never a definition of what a "Cro-Magnon" supposedly was. No distinguishing set of physical characteristics, no distinctive physical culture, and now with our powerful genetic analysis tools - no distinctive genetic pattern. Their range of variation is within that of modern humans, and supposing they were a subspecies would be as well founded as declaring "Samoans" a subspecies since they are, like the "Cro Magnon" physically more robust on average than modern Europeans.

      --
      Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
    17. Re:Exinction by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 1

      This seems like circular logic. First one has to define what a "Neanderthal" is before answering that question.

      Yep. A lot of taxonomy is like that.

      In the process of classifying things they're trying to find or define sharp boundaries on a subject matter that is actually a continuum.

      I recall, in my first encounters with the subject, trying to get a coherent definition of the distinctions between species, genus, family etc.. The instructor was utterly uanble to provide one. (Of course this WAS at the junior-high level.)

      DNA technology is also substantially revamping the whole field. Previously they had to infer what genes various organisms had by observing their expressions in morphology - which makes it hard to track genes that are there but "turned off". Now that they can actually sequence the DNA (or the expressed protiens when the sample is too old for DNA and RNA to survive) a lot of the classifications are getting rearranged.

      Was Neanderthal a species, or something more akin to a colorform? What constitutes extinction when a branch that once interbred with another dies out, but leaves behind a substantial amount of its DNA? Did the two branches actually "speciate", i.e. separate to the point where the COULDN'T interbreed, or at least couldn't produce viable crossbreed offspring that could produce offspring of their own in turn? Or was it just that they mostly DIDN'T interbreed? Were they like the races of the current human species (clusters of different traits but one big gene pool), like horses and donkeys (where crossbreeds are easy but mostly infertile), or like fully-speciated organisms that might try but just can't produce offspring? Did they go extinct, or did most of their traits just gradually (or suddenly, as in a near-extinction event where all the copies of a gene were in the places where everybody died off) get lost from the geneome of the one big human family?

      Seems to me it's mostly a matter of definition and partly a subject for more research.

      Don't ask me for an authoritative definition. I'm just another observer, not a taxonimist. B-)

      --
      Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
    18. Re: Exinction by HiThere · · Score: 2

      What's a Neanderthal? What's a Cro Magnon?

      Basically, these are names assigned to groups of fossils with similar bones. Sufficiently similar, for some nearly arbitrary value of sufficiently.

      FWIW, it is my belief that they typical Neanderthal woman had a pelvic girdle to tight to pass a Cro Magnon baby. (The adults definitely had very differently shaped heads, though what that means is subject to doubt.) This explains nicely the lack of Neanderthal mitochondria in our genome. And it means that while Neanderthal males could successfully mate with Cro Magnon women, the converse didn't work out. As a result heads shaped like the Neanderthal disappeared from the gene pool, and any genes for producing them, and any genes that were tightly coupled with them.

      OTOH, I haven't heard anything about the shape of the heads of the Denisovians. Some people have some of their genes, too.

      It is my belief that Cro Magnon/Neanderthal/Denisovian is all one species, and that splitting them into separate species is an error, one fostered througout palentology, not just in this case, because it is much more important to discover a new species than to discover a new population with some unusual features.

      OTOH, please note that species boundaries are nowhere near as absolute as normally thought. Often there will be diverse populations of a single species clustered in a spread out area, with the populations at the extremes of the area either unable or unwilling to interbreed, even though there is a continual flow of genes throughout the cluster, i.e., every adjacent population is willing to breed with its neighbors.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    19. Re: Exinction by Half-pint+HAL · · Score: 1
      What's Neanderthal's skin colour got to do with it? We didn't get our pale skin gene from neanderthaler

      . Note that the article also suggests that not all neanderthals were white, either. Note also that other traits often erroneously claimed to be neanderthal (blond hair, red hair, blue eyes) have again been shown not to be part of the neanderthal genome.

      --
      Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
    20. Re: Exinction by Triklyn · · Score: 1

      yet again, ring species.

    21. Re: Exinction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's FAR from even being remotely settled. Your article is from 2 years ago. This one is from earlier this year, and argues that Neanderthal DNA was the single biggest influence ON skin and hair color. http://news.nationalgeographic...

      The Neanderthals didn't become "extinct" -- they simply interbred until their offspring ended up leaping ahead of BOTH. It's probably not a coincidence that everything we think of as "civilization" began to emerge right around the time the African early humans ran into the European Neanderthals.

      Some argue that "only" 2.5%-4% of the modern human genome is of Neanderthal origin. That doesn't sound like much, until you consider that the DNA of a human and a gorilla only differ by about 4%. A difference of 2-4% represents nearly the entire range of genetic diversity found among the entire human race. It's a HUGE difference. The only thing that likely saved the purely non-Neanderthal sub-Saharan Africans from meeting the same fate as the original Neanderthals at the hands of their mutual offspring was basically good luck and distance. Had European colonialism persisted in Africa long enough for the British to have started building skyscrapers in central Africa, there likely wouldn't BE any such thing as a human without any trace of Neanderthal DNA, even in Africa.

    22. Re: Exinction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Personally, I think Rh factor is a more logical explanation. Rh- women (of which 100% of purely-Neanderthal women are believed to have been, but only a simple majority of mixed/human women are today) are more likely to die in childbirth than Rh+ women, because they can have an allergic reaction while giving birth to a Rh+ baby. It wouldn't take more than a few dozen generations to reach the tipping point where the few remaining purely-Neanderthal women were vastly outnumbered by women of mixed race if a large number of their babies were likely to be Rh+.

  5. Never fails... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 0

    Humanity always fall for the trailer trash around the corner.

    1. Re:Never fails... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Realize that 80% of the human population lives in abject poverty. The "trailer trash" are already above the average human condition.

  6. Re:First? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It turns out that pretty much all biological processes are disgusting. Some people can't cope with this and become reclusive germophobic stuck-ups. Other people accept reality and find ways to be happy about it.

    Incidentally, yours was not the first post, and the fact that you gave your post a title suggesting that you cared about getting first post tells a great deal about your maturity level. Not that it matters, you will get modded troll and your post will be read by hardly anybody.

  7. One sample by wbr1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Does not conclusively prove. Mixing could have occurred at many times and locations. While useful, more data needed.

    --
    Silence is a state of mime.
    1. Re:One sample by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There is always a way:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrapping_(statistics)

    2. Re:One sample by aralin · · Score: 1

      What you say makes no sense. If there were multiple mixings over large periods (we talk thousands of years) there would be uneven chopping of the DNA. Parts would be chopped more than other parts. Also if there were two mixings, but the two resulting groups never met, as your hypothesis assumes, than the second group that didn't result into modern humans is irrelevant. But good try at sounding smart. :)

      --
      If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
    3. Re:One sample by wbr1 · · Score: 1

      What if he is descending from one wandering group that ran into and and interbred once in their history. There would be no genetic fragmentation with this individual, however yet another find could be from a different group that interbred at a different time or times. This would result in many different, geographically isolated, groups of humans with different genetic histories of interbreeding with neanderthals.

      --
      Silence is a state of mime.
    4. Re:One sample by jc42 · · Score: 2

      Does not conclusively prove. Mixing could have occurred at many times and locations. While useful, more data needed.

      Yup. But the fossil record tends to be rather sketchy, and has little concern for what we consider our "needs".

      --
      Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
    5. Re:One sample by aralin · · Score: 1

      But this would show either in the way neanderthal DNA fragments in the present day humans. If these fragmentations occurred at different times, the present day DNA would be fragmented differently in different present day samples. Since that is not the case, either it happened in one period or the second case never merged again with the current lines, rendering that irrelevant to present day humans.

      --
      If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
    6. Re:One sample by u38cg · · Score: 1

      Would you mind outlining your qualifications in genetics that qualify you to make sweeping statements about peer-reviewed research?

      --
      [FUCK BETA]
    7. Re:One sample by Muros · · Score: 1

      Now who's trying to sound smart. The fragmentation of neanderthal DNA strings in modern genomes is chaotic, because of repeated mixture of genomes with differing amounts of aforementioned genes, and with varying numbers of generations since it's introduction. The article even states that the timeframe for the introduction of neanderthal genes into this individuals genetic makeup is more accurately defineable than is possible for modern humans.

    8. Re:One sample by HiThere · · Score: 1

      I'm sure that in present populations DNA traced to Neanderthals has been split every which way. You get crossovers in (nearly) random places everytime a sperm or egg is made.

      What's unusual here is that there haven't been many crossovers. This implies that the hybridization was recent.

      My problem with this is that I'm not convinced that the populations were ever distinct enough that most genes could be traced to one species or another. So what they're saying is that 2% of our genes can be traced to Neanderthals, but that's close to the level that counts our difference from Chimpanzees, which I just find impossible to accept. So perhaps they're figuring that 2% against some other baseline than the entire genome...but I didn't read anything that said against what they were figuring it. (And I've run into that same 2% figure in other studies, always without an explanation.)

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    9. Re:One sample by aralin · · Score: 1

      That simply sounds like some journalist does not understand that there could be a world of difference between 1.7% and 1.9% for example and rounds both to 2%.

      --
      If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
    10. Re:One sample by HiThere · · Score: 1

      No, I don't think it's that simple. I think they're figuring the percentage against different baselines. Say the difference from chimpanzees was figured against the protein coding genes and the difference from Neanderthals was figured from a baseline of "common differences from chimpanzees". That would make it plausible. But there clearly isn't much time between the first different ancestor between humans and neanderthals, so a large difference is just implausible, even if we don't consider the evidence of on-going hybridization.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  8. Title seems a bit racist by Parafilmus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The author's cro-mag bias is showing.

    Her title implies that the neandertals in question are not also our ancestors.

    A better title might have been "...genome reveals when our Cro-Magnon ancestors had sex with our Neandertal ancestors."

    1. Re:Title seems a bit racist by grouchomarxist · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I was wondering when the ugly racist interpretation was going to raise its head. So, far a long time Neanderthals were thought of as more primitive than humans, but now that it is known that most Europeans have Neanderthal DNA (and most Africans don't), they are being re-interpreted as being the origin of the master race.

    2. Re:Title seems a bit racist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Leela: ...but be careful, many robots are stupid and violent.
      Bender: I wish I was stupid and violent! Din't I say what's what?! I'll pound hee... Whoa!

    3. Re:Title seems a bit racist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I... I think he was being satirical. People can't seriously consider having such a minor ancestral connection to a different sapient mammal along our evolutionary journey to actually have any significant effect on their modern existence, when put into perspective with all of the other influences (e.g. societal, economic, etc), can they?

    4. Re:Title seems a bit racist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why not? Genetics have clear effects on offspring, no matter how people pretend otherwise. Just because some genes come from a Neanderthal doesn't make them any less effective from what I understand.

    5. Re:Title seems a bit racist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's ironic that someone enamored with Marxism would be on here bitching about racism and who's the master race. You should stick to comedy, groucho.

    6. Re:Title seems a bit racist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think you just lowered the IQ of the whole room by about 10 points. You should stick to Fapdu, tard.

    7. Re:Title seems a bit racist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Statistics paint an ugly picture for some but how do Gooks fit in who are generally less violent than the master race?

    8. Re:Title seems a bit racist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The author's cro-mag bias is showing.

      Her title implies that the neandertals in question are not also our ancestors.

      A better title might have been "...genome reveals when our Cro-Magnon ancestors had sex with our Neandertal ancestors."

      Yeah, I can't believe how many of my ancestors had sex with each other. Disgusting!

    9. Re:Title seems a bit racist by Half-pint+HAL · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I... I think he was being satirical. People can't seriously consider having such a minor ancestral connection to a different sapient mammal along our evolutionary journey to actually have any significant effect on their modern existence, when put into perspective with all of the other influences (e.g. societal, economic, etc), can they?

      You're being very optimistic there -- satirical comments are not usually made by anonymous cowards, and comments all in lower-case containing the "n" word are a bit of a staple on /., but they typically get modded down before you see them.

      I actually once had a conversation with a guy who genuinely believed that Africa profited from colonialism, because despite all the war, slavery etc etc, the introduction of our "advantageous" neaderthal genes would benefit the continent in the long run....

      --
      Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
  9. Re:First? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    I belong to the group having two to four percent Neanderthal in me and I still haven't scored with a pure blooded homo sapiens, you insensitive clod!

  10. Question for sequencing expert. by tloh · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How accurate is it for the media to say a "complete" genome was sequenced? I know a little molecular biology and have been lead to believe that certain types of DNA, (centromeres, telomeres, other such regions with lots of repetitive sequences or "fragile sites") are very hard to sequence reliably. Are these "swept under the rug" in a "complete" sequence? Perhaps a related question, how are non-coding regulatory portions of chromosomes handled in whole genome analysis?

    --
    Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
    1. Re:Question for sequencing expert. by kinko · · Score: 3, Informative

      I don't know if ancient samples are processed differently, but for 'fresh' samples, the DNA gets broken up into small fragments (200-1000 base-pairs long), and then these fragments get sequenced. All bits of the genome have roughly even chance of getting sequenced, and with thousands or millions of copies of each fragment, you normally get reasonably even coverage over the whole genome.

      The problem is when you map your sequences back onto a reference genome (ie the currently known chr1, chr2, chrX, etc). The aligning software will have trouble deciding where to place a fragment that is part of a highly repetitive sequence (like centromeres or telomeres) , or is duplicated several/many times (eg large gene families that have large sections of the genes in common, or pseudogenes that look like copies of other genes). In addition, we don't even know the exact sequence for some of these regions, so our reference human genome is contantly being updated (currently up to version 38).

      For bioinformatics analysis, sometimes it is easier to sweep some of this under the rug. For example, some people use a reference genome that masks out the centromeres and telomeres (ie our reference sequence just has NNNNNNNNNNNN bases here, instead of As,Cs,Gs and Ts). Otherwise there are databases that list the regions containing repeated sequences or duplicated segments, so you can check any of your findings to make sure they aren't in a suspicious region.

    2. Re:Question for sequencing expert. by HiThere · · Score: 1

      I'd assume that the media is being quite "generous" in its interpretation. DNA tends to degrade fairly quickly, and I'd be really surprised if there was a good complete genome available to sequence. More probably several very long (unexpectedly long) sequences in several copies and nothing too corrupted.

      I don't think the problems will be restricted to "fragile sites", and I'd bet the problems with telomeres weren't even considered, as those grow and shrink even during a normal lifetime.

      If you're studying ancestry, then the non-coding portions of the genome are even more important than the coding portions (at least over short time scales [i.e., a million years or so]). The coding portions are exposed to pressures to conserver them, and thus evolve (except for silent point mutations) a lot more slowly.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  11. Title seems a bit racist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What you said. Also, I have read that there are lots of bits of Neanderthal DNA in current humans. Maybe as much as 40%, but different small parts of this in different modern lineages.

  12. Obligatory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    House homonid...Street homonid...ghetto homonid...we're all homonids.

  13. Were pre-mixing humans really modern humans? by egarland · · Score: 1

    The summary refers to the time when neanderthals and modern humans intermixed, but can we really call what came before the mixing modern humans? It seems that something about the combination sparked huge evolutionary changes that allowed us to rather rapidly (evolutionarily speaking) develop modern society. As far as I'm concerned, the history of modern humans starts with the mixing.

    --
    set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
  14. Re: Bone a Neanderthal by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 3, Informative

    it couldn't be measured if it weren't a distinct genotype. That says nothing about speciation, of course.

    --
    My God, it's Full of Source!
    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  15. and what do we learn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    being interoperable with posix doesn't stop openbsd from becoming extinct, but in every of today's UNIXes (except older unixes of course) there is a tiny part of openbsd, but that isn't harmful.

    its nice to combine human genetics and netcraft.

  16. Africans. by Truth_Quark · · Score: 2

    I think that some of those Africans look a little bit more Homo Sapien than Europeans who have the Neanderthal Genes.

    A little bit more upright, less stooped, a little bit less hairy, a little mound of forebrain in their foreheads.

    There's a lot of genetic variation in Africa by comparison though. I'm thinking of those tall, really black-skinned, Sudanese looking people.

    1. Re: Africans. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Probably you only wrote for the lulz, but I'm somewhat baffled. Obviously less hairy in Africa, due to climate, although if you factor in the thickness and density of hair on the head, the mass will be comparable.

      But more upright posture? I see caucasians with a more upright posture than africans.

      It is the forehead that's baffling: caucasians generally have a tall, upright forehead, while africans often have a gentler elevation angle from the eyebrows up... Which is a neanderthal feature.

    2. Re: Africans. by Truth_Quark · · Score: 1

      Probably you only wrote for the lulz, but I'm somewhat baffled. Obviously less hairy in Africa, due to climate

      Not due to climate. Inuit aren't as hairier than Europeans, and Indians and Australian aboriginals can be very hairy.

      But in parts of Africa, they have no arm hair at all. Not even the vestigial stuff. I think we'd gone further from the common ancestor with chimps/bonobos before we mixed back with Neanderthals.

      African lips are further from chimps than Europeans too.

      But more upright posture? I see caucasians with a more upright posture than Africans.

      Do you? I definitely see the Sudanese around here always straight as a die, no hint of a slouch.

      It is the forehead that's baffling: caucasians generally have a tall, upright forehead, while africans often have a gentler elevation angle from the eyebrows up... Which is a neanderthal feature.

      I have a flat forehead, it's smoothly curved from my eyes to my hairline, but the furthest part forward of it is my brow ridges. But those tall hairless Africans have a forehead that bulges out in the centre.

    3. Re: Africans. by HiThere · · Score: 1

      (Primitive means that it was inherited from a common ancestor.)
      FWIW, the sloping forehead isn't a Neanderthal feature, but a primitive feature that was retained by the Neanderthals, and by some Cro Magnons.

      Also, you will find more genetic variation among the humans of Africa than among the humans of all the rest of the world combined. By a factor of greater than 2. I'm sure that *some* of them are stupid in comparison to the rest of the world, but they've just got a wider standard deviation. And without a culture-free intelligence test there's no way to calculate the means. (E.g., how are you at finding a water hole in the desert? Very basic and important. How about at safely drinking from a water hole when there are predators around? That's a bit more advanced, but equally important.)

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    4. Re: Africans. by Reziac · · Score: 1

      I'd noticed that too -- that there's a broader range of physical types among Africans than everyone else combined. And as I once put it, turn everyone the same shade of green, and the African faces will retain the most individuality.

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
    5. Re: Africans. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I am guessing, but it seems Neanderthals were the ugly ones with the fat cocks who hit puberty sooner.

  17. Re:Bone a Neanderthal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Way to Godwin the article in the first thread!

  18. Old news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ancient news

  19. Neanderthals are 'modern' humans by globaljustin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    We've got to stop with the Neanderthal nonsense...

    Neanderthals are *not* the magical missing link, nor does proving/disproving the existence of God or the truth of the theory of Evolution...none of this is in play

    This is about legacy academia and how century-old academia wars are burdening good research today.

    Another example: Clovis Culture http://www.examiner.com/articl...

    Clovis Culture theory has been the bane of anthropologists and archaeologists for decades...the only reason it was so entrenched is b/c of flaws in academia.

    Neanderthals are the same. The whole notion of "Neanderthals" being a separate thing is just a miscategorization of traits that modern humans have. Maybe they are rare, and have become less attractive over the millenia, but not any different than any other trait.

    Look at Russian boxer Nikolai Valuev

    The traits we collectively call "Neanderthal" are a distinction without a difference.

    It's a failure of science that some ideas are irrationally difficult to disprove. Usually it is because people are using the research wrongly to prove a non-science point.

    Again...Neanderthals can be variations on modern humans and it **does not disprove evolution!!!**

    --
    Thank you Dave Raggett
    1. Re:Neanderthals are 'modern' humans by crunchygranola · · Score: 1

      Neanderthals are the same. The whole notion of "Neanderthals" being a separate thing is just a miscategorization of traits that modern humans have. Maybe they are rare, and have become less attractive over the millenia, but not any different than any other trait.

      Look at Russian boxer Nikolai Valuev

      The traits we collectively call "Neanderthal" are a distinction without a difference.

      If you were complaining about the "Cro Magnon" concept you would be on solid ground. That turned out to be an imaginary construct. Neanderthals and Denisovans though definitely form a genetically defined group much more divergent from modern human populations than are found between the most divergent populations among modern humans (defined roughly by the San on one hand and everyone who is not African on the other). That said there is only 0.3% variation across the entire Neanderthal-Denisovan-Modern Human super-group. The Neanderthals and Denisovans were real separate breeding populations for hundreds of thousands of years, but still clearly part of one human species.

      --
      Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
  20. 52,000 to 58,000 years ago? by Vinegar+Joe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Strangely enough, beer was invented 57,999 years ago.

    --
    "The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
    1. Re:52,000 to 58,000 years ago? by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      9 month before that the excuse of beer goggles came up.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  21. Re: Bone a Neanderthal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Scientific distinction "homo neanderthalensis". White aryan is still a subset of "homo sapien"

  22. Re:First? by catmistake · · Score: 0

    It turns out that pretty much all biological processes are disgusting. Some people can't cope with this and become reclusive germophobic stuck-ups. Other people accept reality and find ways to be happy about it.

    Incidentally, yours was not the first post, and the fact that you gave your post a title suggesting that you cared about getting first post tells a great deal about your maturity level. Not that it matters, you will get modded troll and your post will be read by hardly anybody.

    Hi. Not sure wtf you're talking about, but I, for one, find beastiality repugnant. Apparently, you don't.

    The post title was referring to the first cross-species orgy. But if your display of your ability to comprehend is any indication, you never had a chance of seeing that.

    I thank the mods for correctly determining that I was trolling neanderthals and those that practice beastiality... and I'd do it again, proudly. Mod on, bitches.

    --
    The Admin and the Engineer
  23. Re:First? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There's no such thing as beastiality.

  24. Together again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If humans and neanderthals came and were able to mate then obviously they previously split from the same species.

  25. Re:Bone a Neanderthal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Neanderthal" may be artificial, but "white aryan" is a contradiction.

  26. Entire genome? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The only way to find out for sure if one of his parents was Neanderthal is to clone him. I bet the government's already working on it.

  27. Re:First? by catmistake · · Score: 1

    There's no such thing as beastiality.

    Indeed.

    --
    The Admin and the Engineer
  28. Re: Bone a Neanderthal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Scientific distinction "homo neanderthalensis". White aryan is still a subset of "homo sapien"

    Don't you think it's time someone come up with "homo aryan" ?

  29. Title seems a bit racist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Neanderthals make up a very small percentage of our genes 2%, there are other ways we can get new genes other than from breeding, virus can introduce new genes into species but we wouldn't call virus that have done so for use our ancestors, this not really the same of cause, the point is nature is messy with not clear cut borders. Neanderthals represent a little be of added genetic variability to our species, if you want to say 2% is enough to count as our ancestor then thats perfectly valid there is no one Cro-Magnon ancestor that is any more our ancestor than any one Neanderthal ancestor.

  30. Re: Bone a Neanderthal by Muros · · Score: 1

    Homo sapiens neanderthalensis is also a classification used by some.

  31. Re: Bone a Neanderthal by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

    If we could breed with it and the offspring was fertile, I guess there's a reason why some people still insist on calling them Homo sapiens neanderthalensis instead of just Homo neanderthalensis.

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  32. Another proof by Begemot · · Score: 1

    I can tell the same by looking at some of my neighbors

  33. Yes, we are descended from Durc! by TheRealHocusLocus · · Score: 1

    We've got to stop with the Neanderthal nonsense...

    Right we do. There are just a few pieces of evidence now, but it may be that Neanderthal is actually a distant race that falls within our human specie. If their whole genome diverged from the branch of modern humans ~600,000YA and yet --- if there is additional evidence of interbreeding up to ~50,000YA, and humans from ~50,000YA could interbreed with us today (which I believe is true) --- then I consider it extremely likely that a Neanderthal could breed with a modern human.

    And give your children superpowers like X-ray vision.

    This is vindication for Jean Auel, whose Earth's Children series of books has popularized this exciting idea for generations of children. As a lay author she has been the lightning-rod target of those who disagree with the hypothesis, and at times her literary critics have even betrayed a tone of indulgent arrogance that just might have been a glimmer of the old Darwinian stuffed shirts, who banished Neanderthal from the human family early on by some of the characteristics that (merely) differentiate races existing today. Central to all of this goofy criticism is the Ayla's hybrid child Durc.

    I highly recommend Earth's Children books to all. They are on par with Tolkien in their use of descriptive language, the central characters portray a series of actual humans over time who have made technological discoveries over time. The books are especially fit for children as they imagine the rich and viable human society that we know must have existed long ago, dispelling the silly myths that what we would recognize as civilization is merely a few thousand years old.

    --
    <blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
  34. Re: Bone a Neanderthal by ilguido · · Score: 1

    I'm with you on this, however you must be aware that a lot of different species can actually interbreed. It's just that biology is 10% science and 90% fluff.

  35. Re:Bone a Neanderthal by invid · · Score: 1

    Someday they'll figure out "Neanderthal" is a completely artificial distinction, like "White Aryan", and the scientific consensus will be that Neanderthals R Us.

    If by "artificial distinction" you mean the classification of lifeforms into different groups based on physical and genetic characteristics, the boundaries of those classifications made by scientists, then you have a valid point. A species is generally understood as a population that can interbreed and produce viable offspring. Homo sapiens and homo neanderthalis obviously can do so, so they should be the same species. However, there is a valid argument for them being classified a subspecies, due to measurable physical and genetic differences.

    --
    The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
  36. Oh no you di'int! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Jean Auel's work is literate smut. It's just a Stone Age bodice-ripper. Don't make me quote-mine for proof.

    1. Re:Oh no you di'int! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Which raises the question: Betty or Wilma?

      Me? Definitely a Betty man.

    2. Re:Oh no you di'int! by TheRealHocusLocus · · Score: 1

      Jean Auel's work is literate smut. It's just a Stone Age bodice-ripper. Don't make me quote-mine for proof.

      Calling it a 'bodice ripper' is obscene.

      Earth's Children series comprises six books, ~1.8 million words altogether.

      In Clan of the Cave Bear There is brutal sex without consent. It occurs within the context of a culture that does not require a woman's consent, which is how Auel chose to portray the Neanderthals --- yet it is clear that among the clan brutality is not tolerated. This is essential to the story... and a series of encounters between Jondalar and Ayla appearing throughout the books that are as sensual and vivid as one might expect of a young couple in love, sex done 'right'. The scenes are described in extravagant (if you hate sex you might prefer 'lurid') detail. Auel's writing style is strained a bit during these sex passages only in that there are some repeated words and phrases, the cutest of which is the use of the word nodule.

      But the lovers are soon satiated and the story moves on, just as it does in real life. It does not detract in the slightest from the series. Do not expect a 'did this, said this' style where the characters' minds are opaque and clumsily presented. Auel is a masterful writer who jumps skillfully between expressed inner thought, dialogue, and the senses.

      But her portrayal of Earth's primordial landscapes and the journey/adventure is the real treasure one will find in these books. An avid reader not only sees through the characters' eyes, even down to the minutiae of making camp, it becomes possible to place yourself there, so well is it described. I loved the way Tolkien describes Ithilien and always wanted to tarry awhile without a burdensome ring quest. For me, Earth's Children recaptured that feeling.

      I do not hesitate to recommend these books to any child who is old enough to read them, even the unpleasant explicit content within 'Cave Bear'. We do not live in a perfect world where there is no need to learn of such things, and that book portrays brutish and bully behavior in its complete context of the character's jealousy and malice. Many might consider these to be 'adult' themes, but my position is that they are just themes that children are sure to encounter in their lives. There is no 'right time' to introduce kids to these things only a 'right way'. The author neither glorifies nor apologizes for them. Books like these help prepare children for life.

      Sorry to bore you. Back to the sex. Here is a Google search for "Ayla's nodule for your enjoyment and titillation. Now get off my lawn.

      --
      <blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
  37. Re: Bone a Neanderthal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There were a lot of homos among the aryans.

  38. Our ancestors mixed with our other ancestors. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When they were young, drunk, and needed the money.

  39. Later than that by Russ1642 · · Score: 1

    Judging by one of my coworkers I'd say it was still going on around sixty years ago.

  40. Re:Bone a Neanderthal by JeffAtl · · Score: 1

    A species is generally understood as a population that can interbreed and produce viable offspring. Homo sapiens and homo neanderthalis obviously can do so, so they should be the same species.

    That's a very poor understanding of speciation.

    For example, consider ring species: species A & B can breed and species B & C can breed, but species A & C cannot.

     

  41. Re:Bone a Neanderthal by invid · · Score: 1

    For example, consider ring species: species A & B can breed and species B & C can breed, but species A & C cannot.

    Good point. What if Neanderthals could create viable offspring with Homo Erectus but modern humans couldn't?

    Life is messy.

    --
    The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
  42. clan of the cave bear by globaljustin · · Score: 1

    I checked it out...seems interesting

    I kind of wish we could just ditch "neanderthal" and "cro-magnon" from the lexicon entirely...Cro-Mags are "AMH" and IMHO all the evidence shows that Neanderthals are AMH as well...so let's start from scratch with the genomic comparisons and make a new nomenclature

    Back to Earth's Children....from reading the wikipedia, it seems like it might be similar to the film "Clan of the Cave Bear"

    --
    Thank you Dave Raggett
  43. Cylon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You mean "cylon", right? Ancient humans mixed with cylons.

  44. clan of the cave bear by default+luser · · Score: 1

    That's the first book in the series.

    It was made into a film 6 years after the original book, after she had written the second and third books.

    --

    Man is the animal that laughs.
    And occasionally whores for Karma.

  45. Re:Bone a Neanderthal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If that's the case, someone will sue, and make us pay for wiping them out. Don't know who we'd have to pay, but why would that hamper such a case?

  46. As The World Turns... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is getting soap operaish.

  47. Most Interesting Part of This by crunchygranola · · Score: 1

    This much older modern human has the same fraction of Neanderthal DNA as modern humans today.

    Think about it.

    We haven't seen any ancient Modern Humans that have a different degree of Neanderthal ancestry.

    When Modern Humans first bred with Neanderthals the offspring were 50/50. If these F1s bred with each other predominantly from then on you would end up with a new breeding population that was roughly 50/50 in heritage. If the F1s predominantly bred with Modern Humans, then the Neanderthan portion would be cut to 25% in the F2, and if the process repeats it is 12.5% in the F3, etc.

    This process stops when there are effectively no more pure blood Modern Humans, that the Neanderthal genome has diffused evenly across the entire population. But subsequent re-encounters would inject new Neanderthal DNA and restart the process.

    We haven't yet seen any evidence of this history yet. Even 45,000 years ago it was "ancient history" and epoch that passed many, many generations earlier.

    --
    Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
  48. yay by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Show this to the fucking retards who go "WELL WHERE ARE ALL THE NEANDERTHALS!?"

    Learn 2 science.

  49. 52,000 to 58,000 years ago? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Strangely enough, beer was invented 57,999 years ago.

    To be accurate, beer was invented 58,001 years ago.

  50. i had already by globaljustin · · Score: 1

    whoa!

    mind=blown

    --
    Thank you Dave Raggett
  51. How do you know you fools! by Xman73x · · Score: 0

    Now you say 45,000 years ago baloney! But I guess you believe in that humble jumble theory from stupid Darwinism which is a lie since they stopped teaching where we came from God! Not a picking ape or a monkey!

  52. Re: Bone a Neanderthal by micahraleigh · · Score: 1

    Last I remember all the neanderthal specimens were discredited by highly secular sources.

    The original fossils were mixed with clearly human fossils, but were later determined to have a condition called rickets.

    So, yeah, this one seems a little made up to me, and I don't blame the 58% of Americans who don't believe in evolution.

    If all the species are related, why are there all these shenanigans?

  53. Neanderthals are 'Not Fully Extinct' by iq145 · · Score: 1

    The latest big finding on Neanderthals: Some 20% of caveman DNA made its way into the human genome thanks to mating between humans and Neanderthals, though people today typically have only 1% or 2% of the stuff. (People have different parts of the DNA, which collectively represent what's left of the Neanderthal genome.) The results come compliments of two studies. Standout details: In one study of 1,004 people, Harvard researchers wanted to determine which populations have the most Neanderthal DNA; East Asians ranked ahead of Europeans, at 1.4% versus 1.1%, respectively, Reuters reports. (Africans essentially have no Neanderthal DNA, as Neanderthals never lived there.) That backs up a 2013 study, notes Reuters, but the researchers went beyond previous findings with this observation: Though Neanderthals are thought to have died out on the Iberian peninsula 28,000 years ago, Spaniards exhibited some of the smallest amounts of Neanderthal DNA, at 1.07%. As such, Neanderthals "are not fully extinct, if you will," a co-author of the Harvard study tells the Los Angeles Times. "They live on in some of us today—a little bit." The second study also compared the genomes of Europeans (379 of them) and East Asians (286), and found a similar heavier "genetic signature of Neanderthals" among the latter. A co-author tells the LAT that might indicate a second series of matings happened. "It's a two-night-stand theory now." The University of Washington geneticist also shared this observation: Based on the amount of our genome that comes from Neanderthals, he thinks the two species "mated perhaps 300 times about 50,000 years ago," per the LAT, though it's unclear whether that happened in one wave or over generations. Both studies reached a shared conclusion: that natural selection smiled on the Neanderthal genes that make skin and hair tough (possibly providing thicker insulation), and they remain common in populations with Neanderthal genes today, the New York Times reports.