Much of this reply is concerned with the evidence for h. sapiens being the same biological species as the archaic hominids. I believe this to be the case, and is one reason I move Adam back as far as I do. I will cite some famous anthropologists who were the ones who initially made me aware of that position--a position they advocate, contra mbp1 and others.
My view does require that humanity extend way back in time, but contra Mark's claim, there are many mainstream anthropologists who believe precisely this!
RAZD wrote:
I agree that until we have y-chromosome comparisons between H. neanderthalensis and H. sapiens that interbreeding is not ruled out. There is also evidence that speaks for it but not conclusively (child fossil and could be sterile):
The question goes way beyond y-chromosome data. It goes to all the other chromosomes and the genes they contain. Melanocortin is not found on the y-chromosome; it is on chromosome 18. The Microcephalin gene, which appears to have come from the Neanderthals is on, I believe, chromosome 8.
The bbc link, may be a bit out of date and refer only to attempts to get mtDNA. The data I am citing is coming from within modern humans and there is evidence about 40,000 years ago, for genes, long separated from our lineage, jumping back into the human lineage. Interbreeding is a very likely mechanism.
Of the Lagar velho child (the one cited in the BBC report), on June 24, 1999, I asked Eric Trinkaus about this child. This man has actually studied the child, indeed was called in by the discoverers. Trinkaus is the leading authority on Neanderthals. This is what I reported to a listserv about that discover:
-----------my email--------------
I e-mailed Trinkaus today and got a reply. He told me that the
thoracohumeral muscle insertions are not totally diagnostic but are
supportive of Neanderthal ancestry. However, he did state that there is a clear "difference particularly in the development of the pectoralis major insertion on the humerus". This difference is found among Neanderthal children as well as adults. Thus this muscle attachment is diagnostic of Neanderthal ancestry.
The article clearly notes this on the child:
"The left humerus has clear diaphyseal torsion and a prominent ridge
along the pectoralis major insertion leading up to the anterior greater tubercle. There is rugosity for the pectoralis major attachment, and the ridge creates a marked intertubercular sulcus and an anterolateral to posteromedial elongation of the diaphyseal cross section." Cidalia Duarte, Joao Mauricio, Paul P. Pettitt, Pedro Souto, Erik Trinkaus, Hans van der Plicht, and Joao Zilhao, "The Early Upper Paleolithic Human Skeleton from the Abrigo do Lagar Velho (Portugal) and Modern Human Emergence in Iberia," Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci, USA, 96(1999):13:7604-7609.
>From the leg information I posted earlier
(
Page Not Found - Error pages | Calvin University) and from this
muscle attachment, the child must have had Neanderthal parentage.
--------end of my email----------
I still have a copy of Trinkaus's email to me, but I never pass on other people's emails because then they won't send me more.
Page not Found | NYCEP
quote:
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Erik Trinkaus (Washington University) ... agreed to give an informal talk on the new Portuguese find, which had just hit the news. The Lagar Velho 1 child skeleton was associated with a typical Gravettian burial and dated to about 24,500 BP. The combination of anatomically modern tooth size and proportions, chin structure, and morphology of the radius and pubic ramus with the claimed Neanderthal-like inclination of the mandibular symphysis and tibial plateau and, especially, tibial robusticity suggests to Trinkaus that this four-yearold was a hybrid between Neanderthals and modern humans. The late date, younger by 3,000 to 4,000 years than any dated Neanderthal, was taken to imply a lengthy period of such hybridization. Members of the audience questioned both the meaning of tibial robusticity and the likelihood that individuals beyond the first few hybrid generations would continue to preserve such clearly diagnostic character states without showing intermediate conditions. The description of this specimen has now been formally published,1 accompanied by a commentary that questions the interpretation provided.2
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This citation basically agrees with what Trinkaus told me.
Don't know what's happened to this one since. As far as I am concerned the jury is out but the likelyhood is low that any significant flow of genes occurred.
I actually think the jury is almost in on it. There is some interbreeding but the gene flow is quite small. There were few neanderthals and if a large number of Africans came into Europe, their genetic heritage would be swamped. Are you aware that among some Native American tribes, their genes today are far more likely to resemble Europeans than Native Americans? This is after only 400 years of a massive immigration to the Americas followed by interbreeding with the few remaining North Americans. Indeed, here is an amazing statistic.
"Wub-e-ke-niew wanted to learn about his own line of descent,
and to do so he worked out the genealogy of the
Ahnishinahbaeojibway. He entered some 60,000 names and
relationships into his computer. What he learned is that the
vast majority of patrilineages could be traced, not to Aboriginal
Indigenous Americans, but to Euroepan sources. he wrote a book
on this topic. Clara, who had done much of the analysis,
estimates that some 99 percent of the people who identify
themselves as Ahnishinahbaeojibway have Europoean patrilines.
Reasons for this are complex and purposeful. In a second phone
call, Clara told us she believes the high level of European
patrilines in the descendants of indigenous peoples is not
unusual in areas of European colonization. It reflects the
colonization process, and in some cases subsequent government
policy."Milford Wolpoff and Rachael Caspari, Race and Human
Evolution, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), p. 363-364
IF this process continues, in about 40,000 years we will have the observational data for people to claim that Native Americans are not the same species as us. The swamping of the genes of a few indigenous peoples by a much larger population of invaders is probably what happened to the Neanderthals.
But, there is even more evidence of the interbreeding. I presume that we can agree that the anatomically modern humans brought their traits with them from Africa when they invaded Europe. And I presume that we can agree that they didn't acquire new traits (blue eyes, red hair etc), SIMPLY by being in Europe. If their descendants acquired the traits of the Neanderthals, they didn't do it by standing next to them, but through lying next to them and doing what comes naturally when in that position with one of the opposite sex, (e.g. having sex).
With that as a basis, please explain how the earliest anatomically modern humans in EUROPE obtained the traits associated with the Neanderthals, when their anatomically modern African parents didn't have those same traits. And here are the traits I am speaking of. In these charts the Skhul/Qafzeh and African Eves are the parents of anatomically modern invaders of Europe.
Fossil Sample Meric Index femoral robusticity
European-Neanderthals-------------79.6
Skhul/Qafzeh---------------------------83.1
Early-Upper-Paleolithic--------------77.6
Late-Upper-Paleolithic---------------78.0
Mesolithic-------------------------------78.0
Medieval---------------------------------80.4
~ David W. Frayer, "Evolution at the European Edge: Neanderthal
and Upper Paleolithic Relationships," Prehistoire Europeenne,
2:9-69, Table 8, p. 35
I like this one, it is a measure of the largeness of the nose. The Neanderthals had HUGE noses. Notice that the small nosed Africans suddenly got BIG noses when they entered Europe. Amazing that this can be done without any sex being involved. As an aside, I lived in China for 14 months and I speak Mandarin. The Chinese racial slur against Europeans is Da bi zi, which means 'big nose'. Think of the Gallic or Britannic nose, compare them with Chinese noses and you will see that the description is apt.
Fossil_Sample______Nasion_Projection_(mm)
Neanderthals------------------29.3
African-Eve--------------------17.8
Skhul/Qafzeh-----------------12.4
Early-Upper-Paleolithic----21.9
Late-Upper-Paleolithic-----19.3
Mesolithic----------------------19.3
Medieval-Hungarians-------20.2
~ David W. Frayer, "Evolution at the European Edge: Neanderthal
and Upper Paleolithic Relationships," Prehistoire Europeenne,
2:9-69, Table 2, p. 17
The Mandibular foramen is the place in the jaw where the nerve to the teeth leaves the lower jaw bone. this is the place the dentist tries to shoot his novacaine. The Horizontal oval shape of the foramen is almost unique to the Neanderthals. And about half of them had it. Half had the normal form. But notice that the African invaders didn't have it at all. And once again, we are expected to believe that merely by standing next to a Neanderthal, the descendants of the AFrican invaders, who had no H-O foramen, acquired the H-O foramen without any sex being involved. Amazing powers these Neanderthals have.
mandibular foramen
European-------------------H-O-------------Normal
-----------------------------Foramen------Foramen
------------------------------%------------%
Neanderthal-----------------53-------------47
African-Eves-----------------0------------100
Skhul/Qafzeh-----------------0------------100
Early-U.-Paleolithic--------18-------------82
Late-U.-Paleolithic----------7-------------93
Mesolithic---------------------2-------------98
Medieval-Europeans-------1-------------99
~ David W. Frayer, "Evolution at the European Edge: Neanderthal
and Upper Paleolithic Relationships," Prehistoire Europeenne,
2:9-69, Table 7, p. 31
YOu an see that even today, some Europeans have this form of foramen. Frayer's article gives trait after trait like this in which the earliest anatomically modern Europeans were in between the Neanderthals and the real African invaders.
What I would like those who don't think there was interbreeding to explain is how on earth the invaders came into Europe and acquired Ancient European traits, without having any sex with them.
Yes, I am aware of the microcephalin and the Melanocortin-1 gene information. I am also aware of evidence of several bottlenecks in the Homo sapiens line, one ~70k years ago and one ~130k years ago (and others older and of disagreements about them):
Of the genetic bottlenecks, I would point out that populations of 10,000, which is considered a decent bottleneck, does not match at all the Biblical account. If one wishes the Biblical account to actually concord with the observational data, one needs the bottle neck of 2-5 people to be way way longer ago than 100,000 years ago.
Bottlenecks change the rates at which mutations are selected. I have
I also have trouble with the claims that such genes could come from H. neanderthalensis when there is no evidence that they carry the genes. One could equally claim that the asiatic genes come from interbreeding with H. habilis in those areas.
Well fine, if the gene came from H. habilis, H. erectus, or whatever older hominid, that fits my view of how to fit science with the Bible every bit as much as it does if the genes come from the Neanderthals. My views are not dependent upon the Neanderthals being the same species, because what I am saying is what Milford Wolpoff (whom I have personally met) says. Humanity is one single evolving species from several million years ago to the present. IN other words they say all hominids are Homo sapiens. Don't believe me? This is from a post I made in 1997 and last year.
Ernst Mayr the great taxonomist said that there should be only one
genus--Homo for the entire past 5 million years. He said
this in 1951 at the Cold Spring Harbor Symposium which gave rise to the modern taxonomy. He said that with any other lineage that is how it would be--Homo transvaalensis, Homo erectus, Homo sapiens.
"The biggest bombshell dropped on the Old Guard, however, came
from Ernst Mayr, a German-trained ornithologist and specialist in
the naming (taxonomy) of species in nature. Using the new
yardstick of variability within populations, he stated that
'after due consideration of the many differences between Modern
man, Java man, and the South African ape-man, I did not find any
morphological characters that would necessitate separating them
into several genera.' He suggested that all the fossil human-
like specimens that anthropologists had discovered after so much
laborious effort over the preceding century be simply ascribed to
one genus, our own--Homo. In other words, the entire 'Age of
Description,' from before Darwin to Cold Spring Harbor, was a
waste of time. His opinion was that the differences were not as
great as between genera of other animals. This assertion meant
that the wonderfully diverse lexicon of human paleontology, a
virtual liguistic playground for the classically educated, with
melliferous names such as Plesianthropus transvaalensis,
Meganthropus palaeojavanicus, Africanthropus njarensis,
Sinanthropus pekinensis, Pithecanthropus erectus, and so on, were
to be replaced. Everything was now to be simply Homo, with three
species: Homo transvaalensis, Homo erectus, and Homo sapiens.""
"Mayr's proposal went so far that even Washburn argued that at
least the South African Australopithecus be retained (instead of
Homo transvaalensis) because it showed such significantly more
primitive anatomy than members of the genus Homo. Mayr simply
countered that the population is what the species designates.
How one determines a genus is arbitrary. The definition is
gauged by the relative amount of difference that one sees
between the genera of other animals and, in Mayr's opinion,
hominid fossils don't show very much difference. To
anthropologists, this statement was a bit like telling a new
mother that her baby looks like every other baby. It did not go
over well."" ~ Noel Boaz, Quarry, (New York: The Free Press,
1993), p. 10
Here is a direct quote from Ernst Mayr:
"Summary
1.There is no conclusive evidence that more than one species
of hominids has ever existed at a given time.
2. It is proposed to classify fossil and recent hominids
tentatively into a single genus (Homo) with three species
(transvaalensis, erectus, sapiens).
3. The recognition of subspecies groups within the species
facilitates classification.
4.The ecological versatility of man and his slowness in
acquiring reproductive isolating mechanisms have prevented
the breaking up of Homo into several species."" Ernst Mayr,
"Taxonomic Categories in Fossil Hominids,"" Cold Spring
Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology, 15(1951)pp109-117,
reprinted in William White Howells, Ideas on Human
Evolution, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), pp
241-256, p. 256
Milford Wolpoff, no slouch in anthropology, beleives that Homo erectus, Neanderthal and us are members of the same species. He writes:
"No speciation events seem to separate us from our immediate
ancestors, and cladogenesis, the splitting of one species into
two, last characterized our lineage at the origin of Homo sapiens
some 2 million years ago, when members of what we once called
'Homo erectus' first appeared in East Africa. For 2 million
years, from the end of the Pliocene until now, ancient and modern
Homo sapiens populations are members of the sames
species." Milford Wolpoff and Rachael Caspari, Race and Human
Evolution, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), p. 34
Franz Weidenreich, one of the discoverers of Peking Man also thought that Homo erectus was merely a subspecies of us.
"His use of 'Sinanthropus pekinensis' was a convenience
'...without any 'generic' or 'specific' meaning or, in other
words, as a 'latininzation' of Peking Man....it would not be
correct to call our fossil 'Homo pekinensis' or 'Homo erectus
pekinensis'; it would be best to call it 'Homo sapiens erectus
pekinensis.' Otherwise it would appear as a proper 'species,'
different from 'Homo sapiens,' which remains doubtful, to say
the least.'""~Franz Weidenreich, "The Skull of Sinanthropus
pekinensis: A comparative study of a primitive hominid skull,"
Palaeontologia Sinica, new Series D, Number 10 (wole series No.
127), p. 246, cited by Milford Wolpoff and Rachael Caspari, Race
and Human Evolution, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), p.
186
Try Helmut Hemmer who says the same,
"Since these features vary among the recent races no less
significantly than between different fossil groups, or between
fossil and recent populations, it is impossible to draw a line
anywhere for species delimitation unless one intends also to
split up recent man into several species. Therefore it seems
necessary to include all of these fossil and recent groups in the
single species H. sapiens."~Helmut Hemmer, "A New View of the
Evolution of Man," Current Anthropology, 10(2-3):179-180, p. 179
Jan Jelinek advocated that there was only one species of humans in:
Jan Jelinek, "Was Homo erectus already Homo sapiens? Les Processus de l'Hominisation,(CNRS International Colloquium, No. 599:85-89
"Robinson argued that in the broad view of human evolution, 'most
of the obvious physical change had already occurred' at the time
of the appearance of homo erectus. All subsequent human
populations were mainly characterized by a single evolutionary
trend, in his view, 'the realization of the cultural potential.'
he believed homo erectus and Homo sapiens should therefore be
subsumed in the single species Homo sapiens, because it has
priority.""~Milford Wolpoff and Rachael Caspari, Race and Human
Evolution, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), p. 251
Haywood notes:
"From the neck down Homo erectus was, to all intents and purposes, a fully modern human." John Haywood, The Illustrated History of Early Man, (London: PRC Publishing Ltd., 2000), p. 30
Barnouw notes the same:
> > The reality is that only a small difference exists from the neck
> > down
> >
"From the neck down, Homo erectus seems to have been much like
ourselves but the skull was low browed, keel domed and thick
walled, with a cranial capacity ranging between 780 and 1,300
cubic centimeters. Homo erectus had heavy brow ridges and
lacked a chin. Behind the brow ridges there was a post orbital
constriction. The proportion of arms to legs was greater than
for present-day humans."" ~ Victor Barnouw, An Introduction to
Anthropology: Physical Anthropology and Archaeology, 1,
(Homewood, Ill: The Dorsey Press, 1982), p. 137
Most of human differences today are in the skull. Many Chinese and native Americans have extra bones, called wormian bones in their skulls which Europeans lack. I can assure everyone that the Chinese and us are one biological species and my half-chinese grand-daughter is proof of that.
Even Richard Leakey wrote:
"I am increasingly of the view that all of the material currently referred to as homo erectus should in fact be placed within the species sapiens [which would]project Homo sapiens as a species that can be traced from the present, back to a little over two million years." R. E. Leakey, 1989, ""Recent Fossil finds from East Africa," in J.R. Durant ed. Human Origins, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989),p. 57
Red hair itself is not a difficult mutation to derive independently, especially as we also have blond hair that is NOT explained by the neander populations AND the two seem to be linked.
I don't think you can say that blonde is not explained by the N's. Other anthropologists have already concluded, prior to the advent of the melanocortin work, that blond and ginger hair came from the N's.
Neanderthals are also traditionally drawn with black hair; but it
seems likely to me that such northern creatures would have been
blond or ginger. With their great manes of read or yellow hair
and their huge red beards their heads would have glowed like
sunflowers in the slanting northern sun, their faces as round as
an orang-utan's, though shaped by hair rather than by flesh. It
is a fanciful vision but it has more thinking biology behind it
than the standard image of the male neanderthal as a kind of down-
and-out." Colin Tudge, The Day Before Yesterday, (London: Pimlico,
1995), p. 220
This hair is found ONLY in the territory of the Neanderthals--amazing that this should be the case if there was no sex with Neanderthals.
This also gets into the area of sexual selection within the human populations, with the evidence being for greater sexual selection within female features for younger appearing females and bare appearing skin in females. Blonds appear bare compared to dark hair, red less so, then brown and black.
That isn't what brings blond hair. What brings it is something that is not found in Africa. Consider this:
"Recently, there has been some evidence that skin colors are
linked to differences in the ability to avoid injury from the
cold. Army researchers found that during the Korean War blacks
were more susceptible to frostbite than were whites. Even among
Norwegian soldiers in World War II, brunettes had a slightly
higher incidence of frostbite than did blonds." ~ Boyce
Rensberger, "Racial Odyssey," in Elvio Angeloni, Editor, Annual
Editions Physical Anthropology 94/95,(Sluicedock,Guilford, Conn.:
The Dushkin Publishing Group, Inc., 1994), p.40-45, p. 42
Neanderthals needed protection from frostbite, Africans didn't need it and thus didn't bring it with them when they invaded Europe! To deny interbreeding with the N's means that miraculously Africans developed the frost-bite protecting blond hair when they invaded a territory inhabited by a people who had lived 200,000 years in Europe when it was at its coldest. To me, it is amazing that people don't understand this data exists out there.
This puts it smack in that ~70k year bottleneck timeline. Another explanation is that it was in low proportion in the H. sapiens population before the bottleneck event, but happened (luck of the draw) to be in sufficient proportion in the survivors that it could then spread in the resulting population while there was less active selection against new mutations (as occurs in recovery periods).
When in doubt, go to the casino. So, if that is true, why don't we see it in low percentages in the Africans today? Did they go to the casino as well and lose at the roulette wheel? How convenient for your proposal!
Correct it is my argument. But the evidence of a disposition for religious behavior in both neander and sapiens and in both chimps and humans speaks to being evidence for a disposition for religious behavior in their common ancestors.
I challenge you to show me where and at what church chimps will worship this week. I don't buy the crazy idea that chimps have religion. I might sarcastically add, that people think my views wacko! but chimps having religion? Some evidence (other than a mere speculation) would be nice.
... past that, I don't have evidence, but as you said, somethings don't fossilize.
I can accept that not everything will be found, but I have read hundreds of anthro books and thousands of articles. I have never heard anyone suggest that chimps have that old time religion!
Enjoy.
I have. and I have given you the best shot of which I am capable.
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