Neanderthals

Having just finished reading "The Journey of Man" I have to tell you that it goes into detail about the Y chromosomes supporting the mtDNA "eve" idea.Both of these lines of evidence and the anthropological evidence are almost completely aligned with the out-of-africa hypothosis. I'm not in the field but I think that the multiregional hypothosis is falling out of favour with the additional evidence of recent years.

Of course there is continued debate over the details, we are, after all, dealing with academics. There may never be enough data to settle it once and for all at the detailed level.[This message has been edited by NosyNed, 10-05-2003]

The mtDNA and Y chromosome polymorphisms also strongly support the out of africa hypothosis. In addtion, recent archaic h. sapiens find of about 160,000 years ago in africa fit well with the genetic data.I understand (Nature - Not Found) that there has been enough Neanderthal DNA sequencing done to demonstrate that we have been separate from them for more like 500,000 years.In addition, I am not aware of any neanderthal evidence in anywhere but Europe. H. erectus is ound in asia and is not the same.[This message has been edited by NosyNed, 10-05-2003]

I read it. It isn't something that we can judge. It will have to be left to those looking at the detials to arrive at a consensus.My limited understanding wonders about the use of regular genes that get mixed so much. I'd like to know more of why he choose to use them and why it is ok here when others avoid that.It doesn't cover the details of "his analysis" so I don't know what the conclusions mean.

Why is an issue about the contaminents?I think we can assume that neanderthals and us share a lot of genes. So if sequence them we will find similar genes for that reason as well as possible contaminents.So we ignore the similarities. We do find differences. Differences that are taken as big enough to suggest we have not interbred.If we counted as the similarities as real neanderthal dna would the conclusion be any different?

I still don't quite get it. What about the divergent DNA? Isn't it different enough to both not come from contamination and to separate us from the neanderthals?
Or is that whole samples are rejected and there is the possibility of some heanderthals not being all tha divergent?