Monday, July 18, 2011

Confirmed? Early humans and Neanderthals interbred!


Somebody got some spainin to do! But according to a recent IO9 article:
  • Part of the X chromosome found in people from outside Africa originally comes from our Neanderthal cousins.
This reversal of positions from Neanderthals and more "modern" homo-sapiens at the time come from research done at the Damian Labuda of the University of Montreal.

Neanderthals left Africa around 400,000 to 800,000 years ago and went extinct 30,000 years ago. Homo-Sapiens left Africa 80,000 to 50,000 years ago. This would give the two races at least 20 thousand years of overlap.

Now anyone reading so far is thinking....that doesn't prove anything or if anything such a short period is more than likely to lean towards no intermingling at all. But Dr LaBuda has additional evidence to bolster his case.

Again from the article:
  • (During the last decade LaBuda) and his team had identified a piece of DNA in the human X chromosome that seemed out of place (possibly) from a non-human source.
Of course their suspicions were confirmed with the sequencing of the Neanderthal genome in 2010. 6,000 chromosomes were examined from donors of all major and minor population densities. All with the exception of populations from sub-Saharan Africa, had corresponding parts of the Neanderthal sequenced DNA, even widely separated populations in places like Australia.

IO9 article

This article links to Molecular Biology and Evolution which has even more fascinating information.

6 comments:

Homer said...

If you met some of the people I work with you would know that this is obvious. There's one guy, swear to God, he has the longest arms I have ever seen in relation to torso length, a protruding brow line and has trouble walking totally upright. All you need to add is some hair and a club!! Sorry, couldn't resist but it is true!! At least I didn't bring up politicians and lawyers.

Beam Me Up said...

I KNOW Homer! I know a couple of people that fit the bill as well. Barely over five feet tall, big brow ridges and way too much body hair. lol oh I am so going to hell...lol

Rosehippi said...

Criminy! all you have to do is look around, they are everywhere... why is it so hard to figure out... I'll bet every creature of fairy tale we have ever read about existed at one time and probably still exist, hidden to this day... People take a tooth and build a whole culture and refuse the evidence of their own eyes ... People don't have the sense God gave a goose...

Beam Me Up said...

Rosehippi wow take deep breaths!
You are right though. It is hard to swallow the "neanderthals are extinct"
line of thinking when you can recall ten people that are clearly neanderthals and you haven't even left your own block yet! All kidding aside when I first saw a skull that an artist had built up with clay into a face, I instantly thought hell I know these people!

JoshM said...

You've gotta love the irony, though. The Caucasian race, one of history's more fervent fans of its own "ethnic purity", turns out to be a kind of hominid mutt. And most of our efforts at "purity" have apparently been aimed at keeping out the more undiluted homo-sapiens strains.

Beam Me Up said...

Boyz from Brazil on its' collective head! Good call Josh, and you know it scares the crap out of me. You ever read Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear? In a nut shell, our DNA has been seeded with genetic time bombs that go off when we reach a certain point in our evolution clearing a path for homo-sap 2.0. You have a story in there Josh, the kind that give me nightmares.