notthenews

Well, well. It would appear that we humans can’t help ourselves.  We will just about do anything that remotely looks like us as we find out this week in a blaze of news stories that many people alive today possess some Neanderthal ancestry.  (Links at the end of this post).  The finding has surprised many experts, as previous genetic evidence suggested the Neanderthals made little or no contribution to our genetic make-up.  Yes, even ugly girls need love.

Many newspapers did miss the earlier story that a new genetic study of nearly two thousand people from around the world suggests that some of our ancestors bred with other species of humans at least twice! (via Short Sharp Science: Early humans may have bred with other species – twice).

Taken with the Chinese challenge to ‘out of Africa’ theory, it is becoming very obvious that Homo sapiens was not averse to getting jiggity with some of their cousins.  As a sidebar, there are Chinese anthropologists that believe that the Chinese evolved from a different branch of the human family.

You could argue that it was our homo cousins who were doing it to the pretty human beings but the fact that we are still here and they are not is pretty much conclusive, don’t you think?

 I expect to see the limits we were prepared to go to as more evidence is found in Africa.  I mean that is where most of our homo genus evolved.  I’m putting my money on our depravity   For the record though, the Neanderthal genes unsurprisingly do not appear to be in the African genes, this mating occurred after the ‘African’ migration and affects all other peoples – European and Asian.  I wait with bated breath to see what the ‘white supremacists’ are going to make of that considering we have slated the Neanderthal for decades about their ‘slowness’. 

And now for your reading pleasure some links:

• BBC News – Neanderthal genes survive in us.
• Neanderthals, Humans Interbred, DNA Proves
• Neanderthal genome reveals interbreeding with humans

Tags:

This entry was posted by admin on Saturday, May 8th, 2010 at 11:52 am and is filed under .fb, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.