We are 5% Neanderthal

Some mules are not sterile, though that is rare; most mules are. Neandertals and sapiens were isolated by only a few hundred thousand years, whereas horses and asses were isolated for millions of years. Same with the cat species.

There are isolated populations of frogs in the US in which each population close to the next produce viable offspring, but the most distantly separated populations cannot produce viable offspring when mated.

Neandertals were likely, therefore, actually within the same species as sapiens. There is some indication, however, that their ability to speak was very limited, compared to the more advanced sapiens ("strong, silent type"). Perhaps their occasional mating with the sapiens females led to their extinction! (Guys usually don't like strangers messing with their women, particularly if from a much different race. Such mating might well have led to tribal wars, with the more advanced sapiens prevailing.)
 
Dinosaur said:
BTW: I think I read somewhere that the h has been dropped from Neandertal.
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Before German spelling was standardized, it had some strange spellings, although nothing as crazy as English or French. "Valley" was originally spelled "Thal." Many surnames retain the early TH spelling: Rosenthal, Blumenthal. But it's pronounced TAL, not THAL. We anglophones can't resist showing off our ability to articulate the TH phoneme, but it's not authentic.

I doubt that the Germans are going to change the official spelling of the name of the Neander Valley, so the movement to change the spelling of the name of the species will be an uphill (and out-valley :)) struggle.
 
Walter L. Wagner said:
Some mules are not sterile, though that is rare; most mules are. Neandertals and sapiens were isolated by only a few hundred thousand years, whereas horses and asses were isolated for millions of years. Same with the cat species.

There are isolated populations of frogs in the US in which each population close to the next produce viable offspring, but the most distantly separated populations cannot produce viable offspring when mated.

Neandertals were likely, therefore, actually within the same species as sapiens. There is some indication, however, that their ability to speak was very limited, compared to the more advanced sapiens ("strong, silent type"). Perhaps their occasional mating with the sapiens females led to their extinction! (Guys usually don't like strangers messing with their women, particularly if from a much different race. Such mating might well have led to tribal wars, with the more advanced sapiens prevailing.)
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I don't think the Neanderthals would agree with you on that one. But afterall, what do they know? 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.' Right? :D
 
I can't comment on this recent study, but I know the tree of life is actually a bush, with many interconnecting branches. The idea of separate species is just provisional, these classifications are much more fluid in nature.
 
Walter L. Wagner said:
Maybe it will become 'chic' to be able to prove one has a Neandertal as an ancestor?!
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Erm, unless this Neandert(h)al DNA was introduced very recently, either everyone has it or no one has it.
 
Zephyr said:
Erm, unless this Neandert(h)al DNA was introduced very recently, either everyone has it or no one has it.
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Some of my buddies are Neanderthals. Especially on bowling league nights.:D
 
spidergoat said:
I can't comment on this recent study, but I know the tree of life is actually a bush, with many interconnecting branches. The idea of separate species is just provisional, these classifications are much more fluid in nature.
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I agree that we are interconnected genetically.
 
Wouldn't it be interesting to see if it's still possible. Granted neandertalers aren't moving much today but unlike dinosaures their bones aren't foselisists. So there must still be large quantities of neanderthals DNA.
 
orcot said:
Wouldn't it be interesting to see if it's still possible. Granted neandertalers aren't moving much today but unlike dinosaures their bones aren't foselisists. So there must still be large quantities of neanderthals DNA.
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Read a neanderthal paper. It's difficult to extract any DNA.
 
wel it was impossible 20 years ago, I don't mean we can do it right now, but proberly well within a lifetime.
 
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spuriousmonkey said:
Read a neanderthal paper. It's difficult to extract any DNA.
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And it's even more difficult to read too, especially the earlier editions dating back to 40,000B.C. :D
 
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The quality of the DNA isn't miraculously going to improve in the future.
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not the original parts but the technologie to multiply DNA strengs and to repair them is going to improve sufficient.
Then it's yust a matter of getting it in a fertelized egg
 
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orcot said:
not the original parts but the technologie to multiply DNA strengs and to repair them is going to improve sufficient.
Then it's yust a matter of getting it in a fertelized egg
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Remember the move 'Iceman'? They dug up a Neanderthal dude frozen for over 40,000 years, thawed him out, brought him back to life and got him a job in movies and a girlfriend too. The moral of the story is: Keep digging in the frozen Artic, ya never what you might find some day. :D
 
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:) Can't say I've seen it, but if he got a human girfriends then their must be some truth in the 5% neanderthal in all of us.
Did you know that they are actually mapping the genome of the neanderthals
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13955661
and that they gave enof mtDNA to crossexamin with modern humans.
(the results were that they couldn't proof intern species breeding and offcourse that there are enof parts of the neandertaler mtDNA (not nuclear DNA like the ones their now mapping) that are still in good condition)
 
orcot said:
:) Can't say I've seen it, but if he got a human girfriends then their must be some truth in the 5% neanderthal in all of us.
Did you know that they are actually mapping the genome of the neanderthals
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13955661
and that they gave enof mtDNA to crossexamin with modern humans.
(the results were that they couldn't proof intern species breeding and offcourse that there are enof parts of the neandertaler mtDNA (not nuclear DNA like the ones their now mapping) that are still in good condition)
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Maybe he didn't know if he had a girlfriend or not, but this Iceman dude was definetly a Neanderthal. They must have look long and hard for this guy, because he must have been at least 50% Neanderthal to get the part in the movie. :D
 
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according to the link

it says
DNA was extracted from 0.4 g of the cortical compact bone. Previous experience shows that ancient DNA tends to be degraded and damaged to an extent that makes amplification of segments of mtDNA longer than 100–200 bp difficult ([29]). Therefore, two primer (L16,209, H16,271) that amplify a 105-bp-segment of the human mtDNA control region (including primer) were used to perform amplifications from the bone extract as well as from an extraction control. An amplification product was obtained in the bone extract but not in the control (data not shown). In a subsequent experiment, this was repeated and the same results were obtained.
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Does that mean that they mixed human DNA with neanderthals to clone it?
 
Novacane said:
Remember the move 'Iceman'? They dug up a Neanderthal dude frozen for over 40,000 years, thawed him out, brought him back to life and got him a job in movies and a girlfriend too. The moral of the story is: Keep digging in the frozen Artic, ya never what you might find some day.
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In reality there's no evidence of Neanderthals having migrated to the New World. The first humans here were H. sapiens. I remember at the time thinking that the movie didn't make enough of that point. The anthropological community would have been stunned speechless.
 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5343266.stm

Our evolutionary cousin the Neanderthal may have survived in Europe much longer than previously thought.

A study in Nature magazine suggests the species may have lived in Gorham's Cave on Gibraltar up to 24,000 years ago.

The Neanderthal people were believed to have died out about 35,000 years ago, at a time when modern humans were advancing across the continent.

The new evidence suggests they held on in Europe's deep south long after the arrival of Homo sapiens.

The research team believes the Gibraltar Neanderthals may even have been the very last of their kind.

"It shows conclusively that Gorham's Cave today was the last place on the planet where we know Neanderthals lived," said lead author Professor Clive Finlayson, director of heritage at the Gibraltar Museum.
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Gibraltar seems a good place to survive. It's the only place in Europe where you can find wild monkeys.

The last bastion of the neaderthal man (and woman). They managed to life more than 10.000 years in the same area as modern humans.
 
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