Svante Paabo TED talk on Neanderthal admixture
Posting without having watching watched it yet.
"Sharing the results of a massive, worldwide study, geneticist Svante Pääbo shows the DNA proof that early humans mated with Neanderthals after we moved out of Africa. (Yes, many of us have Neanderthal DNA.) He also shows how a tiny bone from a baby finger was enough to identify a whole new humanoid species."
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He ends with a nice PC message, "we've always mixed."
Yeah, there's always been genocide and extinctions too. So the question is, who's it going to be, them or us?
You can become mixed only if you are unmixed in the first place. I think it's a good presentation but the PC cant is nauseating.
Yes we've mixed but we have also separated... And I am thanking god my ancestors separated from the ancestors of bananas : )
But on a more serious note I think the speaker was wrong or misleading at one point in the presentation. He said that his findings do not imply an "absolute" difference between Africans and non Africans because Africans might have mixed with archaics in sub Sahara Africa.
The fallacy in this thinking is that all archaics are the same, which is not true. The neandertals and the deno's are more unrelated to each other than are the different human populations. So when two human populations each mix with different archaic populations the will surely become more different.
I don't even understand why he has to think about it. His results were all about finding an absolute difference between Africans and non Africans... I don't care what you attribute that difference to (neandertals, cats, martians...), the point is the relation is there for ALL non Africans.
Does anybody have a link the the map at 4:50?
The map of diversity.
"Does anybody have a link the the map at 4:50?"
Possibly some relation to this: http://www.pnas.org/content/102/44/15942/F5.expansion.html
There's a fair bit of PC (pro-mixing, racial differences are surface, "we are all genomically Africans") but it's good that he at least introduced his audience to the concept that fixed phenotype differences can exist between populations without any single fixed locus (albeit without saying it in quite so many words in a way that leaves open the less observant among them not getting it). That's more than most geneticists with a public profile would try to do.
Interesting to know Paabo also boosts the idea of absorption and survival of other human types in Africa. I can't tell if he's more optimistic than most others I have read about our attempts to apply the Denisova / Neanderthal methodology of locating this mixture (i.e. finding well preserved bones with well preserved dna).
That's more than most geneticists with a public profile would try to do.
I'm sure he felt pressured to counterbalance the idea that we are in fact profoundly different and are species apart when looking at ancient admixture.
Rajesh Rao: A Rosetta Stone for the Indus script http://www.ted.com/talks/rajesh_rao_computing_a_rosetta_stone_for_the_indus_script.html
I find it funny that Paabo says "we've always mixed". Most "mixing" throughout history has not been a result of "peace and harmony" but of war and conquest, ie: warriors raping and stealing the women of another group.
Farmer et al. have made a very good case that the Indus symbols do not encode a language. They have also deemed Rao's methods invalid: http://tinyurl.com/3zm3udq
I find it funny that Paabo says "we've always mixed". Most "mixing" throughout history has not been a result of "peace and harmony" but of war and conquest, ie: warriors raping and stealing the women of another group.
Yup - so sadly correct.
I just wish the aspergery "we are the world" geeks would comprehend this historical truism.
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