Did Homo Sapiens Eat Neanderthals?

Jason

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I understand that the Neanderthal genome project has given unclear results on whether Homo Sapiens and Neanderthal interbred - answers including yes, no and only rarely. If interbreeding did occur it may be that offspring had compromised fertility (or where infertile). It seems that no mitochondrial (female) line goes back to the Neanderthals, so if the interbreeding happened it was Neanderthal males and Homo Sapiens females. I understand that the genes causing red hair in humans and Neanderthals have been shown to be different, so human red hair cannot be a Neanderthal trait. If Neanderthal-Homo Sapien interbreeding did take place it was a form of hybridisation creating a European & Middle Eastern population with genetic characteristics different to elsewhere.

Cannibalism is widespread among human populations (and quite easy to identify where human bones are found to have knife marks showing flesh has been removed). Humans also eat other primates. There is nothing surprising in humans eating Neanderthals. I suppose what is interesting is whether this should be defined as cannibalism, for example whether we see interbreeding as the trait which defines a species or is it merely a close genetic heritage - in which case how close? Is eating a chimpanzee cannibalism? Presumably not, but where do we draw the line?
 

B_subgirrl

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Somewhere over the past few months I learned that humans and Neanderthals could interbreed. This had been in dispute. But anyone with red hair and freckles definately has Neanderthal genes because the genes for red hair and freckles were not present in human beings in Africa.

Neanderthals, Humans Interbred

It's actually still disputed. It's a highly controversial topic. Personally, I'd like to believe it happened.


Living as hunter-gatherers and moving place to place we must have occasionally interacted with Neanderthals. The genetic evidence already proves we interbred. But Neanderthals suddenly died out about 30,000 years ago and there's some evidence we ate them.

How Neanderthals met a grisly fate: devoured by humans | Science | The Observer

One bunch of chewed on bones does not indicate that we ate them to extinction.


Overal, though, they were more intelligent than humans. But I suppose being good at learning old things isn't as important as being able to think of new things.

No one has any idea if they were more intelligent.

Neither direct brain-body size comparisons, nor the more complex encephalisation quotient are considered to be effective measures of intelligence. To some extent they are indicators, but they don't provide straight forward correlations.


It seems that no mitochondrial (female) line goes back to the Neanderthals, so if the interbreeding happened it was Neanderthal males and Homo Sapiens females.

Not necessarily. There could have been Neanderthal females involved. The lack of a mitochondrial link just means that no female line survived all the way until the current day.


This Neanderthal has never been eaten by a Homo. :frown1:

:frown1: It will happen for you one day :smile:.
 

joyboytoy79

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It's actually still disputed. It's a highly controversial topic. Personally, I'd like to believe it happened.


One bunch of chewed on bones does not indicate that we ate them to extinction.

No one has any idea if they were more intelligent.

Neither direct brain-body size comparisons, nor the more complex encephalisation quotient are considered to be effective measures of intelligence. To some extent they are indicators, but they don't provide straight forward correlations.

Not necessarily. There could have been Neanderthal females involved. The lack of a mitochondrial link just means that no female line survived all the way until the current day.

:frown1: It will happen for you one day :smile:.

The only thing you forgot to mention was that the lack of a Red-hair gene (which btw, doesn't exist - hair color is much more complicated than a single gene) in Africa doesn't at all mean that all redheads get their hair color from Neanderthal ancestry. WHO THE FUCK THINKS THAT WAY???

Anyway, Sub, I think i've just fallen in love with you! (In a completely platonic and non-sexual way, of course)
 

lucidbass

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Some Neanderthals were redheads - Technology & science - Science - LiveScience - msnbc.com

This is a 2007 link. Red hair and freckles have now been conclusively proven to enter homo sapien DNA via Neanderthals.

Native Africans living in Africa today do not have this gene. The homo sapien population that migrated from Africa 50,000 years ago intermixed with other primates. The population that stayed in Africa did not receive the genetic diversity.

That only says that some Neanderthals may also have had red hair and freckles. Seeing as they lived in similar climates to Nordic humans, it could've been due to convergent evolution.
 

joyboytoy79

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That only says that some Neanderthals may also have had red hair and freckles. Seeing as they lived in similar climates to Nordic humans, it could've been due to convergent evolution.

Not really "could have" but more like "was." mc1r, the gene they found in Neanderthal DNA, has several alleles in the modern human population, but none that match the variant they found in Neanderthals. Surprisingly, the allele found in Neanderthals matches that found in wooly mammoths, so, following joshua_ste's (lack of) logic, Neanderthals got their red hair from wooly mammoths!
 

lucidbass

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Not really "could have" but more like "was." mc1r, the gene they found in Neanderthal DNA, has several alleles in the modern human population, but none that match the variant they found in Neanderthals. Surprisingly, the allele found in Neanderthals matches that found in wooly mammoths, so, following joshua_ste's (lack of) logic, Neanderthals got their red hair from wooly mammoths!

Any more details on the research? If the alleles match those of mammoths, couldn't this mean that the bones were conteminated with mammoth DNA?

I'd like to believe that I know quite a bit about evolution, but I'm not even a layman when it comes to evolution on a genetic or molecular level.
 

joyboytoy79

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Any more details on the research? If the alleles match those of mammoths, couldn't this mean that the bones were conteminated with mammoth DNA?

It's highly unlikely that there was contamination. Mammoth gene loci are quite a lot different from human gene loci. Neanderthals and modern humans had a nearly identical chromosomal structure, which is radically different from that of wooly mammoths. If it was a case of contamination, it would have been readily obvious. It just so happens that there are several ways to deactivate mc1r, and Neanderthals and Wooly Mammoths independently stumbled upon the same method, whereas modern humans stumbled upon several other methods.

I'd like to believe that I know quite a bit about evolution, but I'm not even a layman when it comes to evolution on a genetic or molecular level.

You have a decent understanding. Ultimately, all evolution is driven at the genetic level. If you have a decent grasp of population evolution, which it seems you do, then you know a lot more about genetics than you thought.
 

lucidbass

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It's highly unlikely that there was contamination. Mammoth gene loci are quite a lot different from human gene loci. Neanderthals and modern humans had a nearly identical chromosomal structure, which is radically different from that of wooly mammoths. If it was a case of contamination, it would have been readily obvious. It just so happens that there are several ways to deactivate mc1r, and Neanderthals and Wooly Mammoths independently stumbled upon the same method, whereas modern humans stumbled upon several other methods.

Yeah, that's what I thought as I reread my post. Shoulda seen some obvious traces of mammoth genes in the Neanderthal bones other than just the alleles related to hair pigmentation.

Either way, I'm still skeptical of the interbreeding of humans and Neanderthals. Judging from the original link in this thread, the researchers are rather biased, with quotes like "They've finally seen the light ... because it's been obvious to many us that this happened,". If anything, it's just solid evidence and not conclusive evidence. And two closely related species sharing lots of DNA doesn't really mean that much.

Not saying it hasn't happened, but I don't know, from what I've read it's far from conclusive.

You have a decent understanding. Ultimately, all evolution is driven at the genetic level. If you have a decent grasp of population evolution, which it seems you do, then you know a lot more about genetics than you thought.

I suppose. Just not completely up on the lingo and some mechanics haha. Phylogeny is ultimately the most interesting aspect of evolutionary science to me.
 

joshua_ste

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Jason and subgirrl: The results from Neanderthal genome sequencing are becoming less "unclear" and disputed as we move forward.

Neanderthal genome reveals interbreeding with humans - life - 06 May 2010 - New Scientist

Neanderthals, Humans Interbred, DNA Proves : Discovery News



You'll notice the science keeps refering to the lines of homo sapiens that developed outside of Africa (which turned into the large majority of us). Blond hair, red hair, paler skin, freckles, all in a very rapid time, evolutionarily speaking.

The closest lines you can find of true, original homo sapiens are still in Africa. They are the closest model of the homo sapiens that migrated out 50-60,000 years ago (some professors say longer - time will always be in dispute) . So, we have to ask ourselves: where did we pick up all these diverse hair/skin/feature traits? Are they all random genetic mutations within a 20-30,000 year period? Modern Africans are a current population that does NOT have a small percentage of Neanderthal DNA -- and a human population that does not have a great deal of genetic diversity. How did the Scandinavian features and bodily attributes develop?


At any rate, the Neanderthal population died off suddenly. In the 30,000 year period (+) that humans occasionally interacted with them, there must have been a couple centuries where times got lean and food sources got scarce. Neanderthals are our competition. We compete for the same food supply. We might have killed them under these conditions. Or ate them. That's what "Origin of Species" is about, and we're still animals.



This site supports Neanderthal-human interbreeding ("Though it is difficult to prove or quantify admixture, small amounts of interbreeding were supported by a variety of analyses"), but it's very cautious.

Ancient DNA and Neanderthals | The Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program
 

willow78

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Surprisingly, the allele found in Neanderthals matches that found in wooly mammoths, so, following joshua_ste's (lack of) logic, Neanderthals got their red hair from wooly mammoths!

That might explain my strong attraction to hairy men with long.....trunks.

Enough of my 'thread-jacking', let's return to what has become a very serious and educated discussion.....
 

joyboytoy79

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<snip>
The closest lines you can find of true, original homo sapiens are still in Africa. They are the closest model of the homo sapiens that migrated out 50-60,000 years ago (some professors say longer - time will always be in dispute) . So, we have to ask ourselves: where did we pick up all these diverse hair/skin/feature traits? Are they all random genetic mutations within a 20-30,000 year period? Modern Africans are a current population that does NOT have a small percentage of Neanderthal DNA -- and a human population that does not have a great deal of genetic diversity. How did the Scandinavian features and bodily attributes develop?
<snip>

This is where you go very very very wrong. Africa has the greatest genetic diversity of any of the continents. In fact, this is one of the main pillars of the "out of Africa" theory of human origin (diversity is greatest near the point of origin because mutations have had the longest time to accumulate there). All of these "features" you point to are actually very very insignificant, genetically speaking, and they accumulate pretty quickly, being recessive, as they are. Blue eyes, for example, originated in far eastern europe about 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. Human populations at that time were very low, with clans often showing high degrees of in-breeding. A novel trait, such as blue eyes, would likely have increased an individual's desirability for mating - leading to interbreeding for those individuals, and introducing the trait into the gene pool of other clans.

Since the human population outside of Africa was much smaller than the population inside of Africa, mutations would have the ability to permeate the population with much higher frequency - and this has been backed-up by population genetics. A person from England is likely to be much more closely related to a person from Japan, than two people from neighboring regions of Africa. This seems to contraindicate your phenotypic diversity argument, as the Africans would have (to our eyes) more similarity than the English/Japanese pair. But you're only focusing on a set of genes that account for less than .001% of the human genome; those genes that affect pigmentation. Given the small subset of genes you're concerned with, and the small subset of the overall population at the time of modern human expansion from the original migration point (bands of less than a hundred individuals at a time, no more than 20 times), it wouldn't take much time at all to generate the diversity seen today. Heck, we can cause even more drastic changes in only 3 generations with domestic animals.

The articles you've referenced, while interesting, are not PROOF of anything. They're speculation. You need to know more about human demographics, linkage disjunction, allele frequency, genetic shift, genetic drift, and phenotypic expression before you can make the kinds of sweeping statements you're trying to make. It's not nearly as simple as you're trying to make it.
 

joyboytoy79

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That might explain my strong attraction to hairy men with long.....trunks.

Enough of my 'thread-jacking', let's return to what has become a very serious and educated discussion.....

OF COURSE it explains your attraction to hairy men with long... trunks! It also explains my attraction to extreme height! :wink:
 
D

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...such a topic this close to lunch time...
 

Jason

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Jason and subgirrl: The results from Neanderthal genome sequencing are becoming less "unclear" and disputed as we move forward.

Maybe. But this area of research is an ethical mine-field and the need for certainty (rather than theories) is great. As far as I'm concerned it remains unclear and unproven until such a time as it is proved beyond reasonable doubt.

Let's imagine for a moment that it can be proved that some Neanderthal DNA passed into the genes of the Eurasian races. The Eurasian races are therefore a hybrid of Homo Sapiens and Neanderthal and materially different from other races. If The white supremacists out there would have a field day. There is already a suggestion that Neanderthals had bigger brains and were therefore more intelligent (a suspect idea, but it is out there). It is only a step from this to suggesting that the Eurasian races became more intelligent because of the Neanderthal DNA and are today intrinsically more intelligent than other races as a consequence. :eek:

I'm applying full doubt and scepticism to Neanderthal gene claims until forced to do otherwise - at which time new ethical developments will be needed. I would be happiest if these claims are proved wrong.
 

joshua_ste

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joyboytoy79 & Jason:

You guys rock! You have your facts together, you both have good minds, and you proceed with caution. I wouldn't have guessed this level of detailed discourse available on a penis site! I do have a tendency to be drawn toward & get carried away with bold theories & conjecture!
 

B_subgirrl

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Anyway, Sub, I think i've just fallen in love with you! (In a completely platonic and non-sexual way, of course)

Why, thank you. I'm flattered :biggrin1:.


Jason and subgirrl: The results from Neanderthal genome sequencing are becoming less "unclear" and disputed as we move forward.

It is becoming less disputed, but considering how few people believed in the theory before, that's not really saying much.


This is where you go very very very wrong. Africa has the greatest genetic diversity of any of the continents.

I am soooo glad you got to this one first. That explanation took way too many words for me to be writing at this time of night :tongue:.


I'm applying full doubt and scepticism to Neanderthal gene claims until forced to do otherwise - at which time new ethical developments will be needed. I would be happiest if these claims are proved wrong.

I find it interesting that you would prefer them to be wrong because I am very much on the other side of the fence. Although, like you, I'm currently with the doubters.


joyboytoy79 & Jason:

You guys rock! You have your facts together, you both have good minds, and you proceed with caution. I wouldn't have guessed this level of detailed discourse available on a penis site! I do have a tendency to be drawn toward & get carried away with bold theories & conjecture!

Apparently I don't rock :tongue:. Thank you for starting this thread BTW. It's a topic I find really interesting.
 

Jason

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I find it interesting that you would prefer them to be wrong because I am very much on the other side of the fence. Although, like you, I'm currently with the doubters.

I guess the truth does not depend on what either of us want. I suspect that there is enough research now taking place for there to be a proved answer soon - and we can all move on from this.