Re: A quick question on human evolutionary history...

Nickhotep <Nickhotep@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

It came up in conversation earlier today, and since I've been lurking
for a little while, I figured I might as well ask this forum as a way
to introduce myself.

Anyway, someone told me recently that Homo Sapiens Sapiens might have
actually evolved from both the neanderthal and the cro magnon, breeding
together. This statement is, I suspect, a badly mangled restatement of
a new theory, as it was (quote) "Something I heard on CNN a month ago"
and I was just wondering if there was any truth to it.

As for myself, I find this place endlessly entertaining. As far as I
can tell, the general practice is: "A creationist/IDer comes along,
says something nuts, is dogpiled." Wax, rinse, repeat.
Hilarious and educational at the same time.

I'm not at all well versed in the subject, and other than reading a
few Dawkins books here and there I know almost nothing about it, but I
find it pretty interesting. This eventually led me here.

First off, the taxonomic name _Homo sapiens sapiens_ is not used much
these days - it assumes that there is a subspecies of _Homo sapiens_
sometimes called "modern man" in the older literature, which is distinct
from older Hs types. This is pretty well abandoned, and there was always
a whiff of European superiority in it.

Neandertals (_Homo neanderthalensis_) might have hybridised with Hs in
Portugal - there's an equivocal skeleton of a child with intermediate
anatomical characteristics, called the Lagar Velho child. This doesn't
mean that all European Hss evolved from such hybrids - in fact it would
be a very rare event, as Hn and Hs were distinct species, and the
specimen died young, suggesting (but not proving anything one way or
another) that hybrids were not viable, as is often the case in
interspecific hybrids.

Hn was a robust species well adapted to cold and not adapted like Hs to
long distance running. They probably stayed within a few tens of
kilometers of their base camp. Hs on the other hand routinely travelled
hundred of kms, and traded across much greater differences. As the
glaciers retreated, Hn would be increasingly isolated from its
conspecifics, and the Portugese child may have been due to a revenant
small population trying to outbreed. Or it may just be a diseased
individual of either species, we don't know for sure.

Here's information andf discussion on the hybrid:
<http://www.athenapub.com/8zilhao1.htm> [The whole issue is on
Neandertals: <http://www.athenapub.com/index8.htm>]

<http://donsmaps.com/lagar.html> Nice pic.

<http://www.johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/neandertals/neandertal_dna/joll
y_hybridization_2001.w> Good discussion (as always!) on the likely
relationship between the two species.

A recent paper suggest that the genetic discontinuity between Hs and Hn
is pretty large, and that no evidence of European inclusion of
Neandertal genes exists.

Caramelli, D., C. Lalueza-Fox, C. Vernesi, M. Lari, A. Casoli, F.
Mallegni, B. Chiarelli, I. Dupanloup, J. Bertranpetit, G. Barbujani, and
G. Bertorelle (2003), "Evidence for a genetic discontinuity between
Neandertals and 24,000-year-old anatomically modern Europeans", Proc
Natl Acad Sci U S A 100 (11):6593-6597.


--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Biohumanities Project
University of Queensland - Blog: evolvethought.blogspot.com
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Sean is turning into Tony Pagano with all his title changes
    ... inferior group is not the same species as Homo sapiens. ... as stark as those displayed by Neandertals. ... All the quotes say is that there are differences among humans. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Sean is turning into Tony Pagano with all his title changes
    ... inferior group is not the same species as Homo sapiens. ... as stark as those displayed by Neandertals. ... All the quotes say is that there are differences among humans. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: A quick question on human evolutionary history...
    ... someone told me recently that Homo Sapiens Sapiens might have ... sometimes called "modern man" in the older literature, ... hybridisation between neandertals and "Cro-Magnon" people. ... Species names are arbitrary labels. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Could our big brains come from Neanderthals?
    ... Homo sapiens better able to adapt to the Eurasian environments that ... it might have something to do with Neandertals ... being the same species as us. ... Roth said 100% D in Native Americans. ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: For Sean Pitman: Some real nested hierarchies
    ... > branch points have been used as an argument that Neandertals should be ... > given a different species classification. ... not ancestral to modern humans. ... (For a start, as I've already told you upthread, the tree is a tree of haplotypes, not a tree of populations, and that's not the only flaw in your argument - John Harshman has already mentioned some of the others.) ...
    (talk.origins)