The Leipzig group’s interbreeding theory would undercut the present belief that all human populations today draw from the same gene pool that existed a mere 50,000 years ago. “What we falsify here is the strong Out-of-Africa hypothesis that everyone comes from the same population,” Dr. Paabo said.More information here and here. Update: the papers (open access); John Hawks comments.
In his and Dr. Reich’s view, Neanderthals interbred only with non-Africans, the people who left Africa, which would mean that non-Africans drew from a second gene pool not available to Africans.
Neanderthal-human interbreeding
Gaysian troll Catperson/Linda is on suicide watch after learning "there was probably interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans before Europeans and Asians split":
What I'm wondering is what did Neanderthals ever do to Catperson?
ReplyDeleteThis whole idea pushed by multiple people in Sailor's comments that Neanderthals were inferior to other Humans at the time doesn't have any basis whatsoever.
I can't think of anything Africans had in the relevant time period that Neanderthals didn't also have.
And the Neanderthals had larger brains relative to body size.
Since the Neandertal mojo is supposed to be present in all Eurasians, does that mean that all the hitherto multiregionalist predictions for Euros and related populations (e.g. morphological similarity) are just tosh?
ReplyDeleteReginald,
ReplyDeleteNot only is there no reason to believe Neanderthals were "inferior", as John Hawks points out the recent acceleration of human evolution means in terms of adaptive genetic variation we are less similar to early modern humans than early modern humans were to Neanderthals.
Anonymous,
Science has a few video clips of Chris Stringer talking about related questions.
If Neandertals were so great, how come they're dead?
ReplyDeleteNeanderthals Were Too Smart to Survive
ReplyDeleteAnthropologist reconstructs Neanderthal vocal tracts to simulate their voice. Result sounds like part croaking frog, part human burping.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/04/16/neanderthal.sound/index.html?iref=allsearch