///////////////////NEANDETHRAL CODE
///////////////////////Neanderthals are the closest hominid relatives of modern humans. The two species co-existed in Europe and western Asia as late as 30,000 years ago.
///////////////////////MGNFCNT TRCK ART OF PKSTN
////////////////////////The bias that most colored our view of Neanderthal man is the belief that evolution is an inherently progressive process. Evolution, it was believed, led through imperfect and primitive stages until finally achieving its pinnacle in Homo sapiens. But Stephen J. Gould and others spent their careers smashing this image of evolution. Gould argued that evolution is not inherently progressive. It merely adapts species to their local and immediate conditions. Any “progress” is purely an epiphenomenon. Gould’s non-progressivist view of evolution has dramatically shifted the consensus view of how evolution plays out over time, but there are still those who feel (and I think with good reason) that there may be a statistical trend toward something that can meaningfully be called progress at some times in some evolutionary lineages. This remains, as far as I can tell, a point of contention.
//////////////////////////////////The homo sapien’s tools are a lot smaller, which probably means you can carry more of them around, more conveniently. If you’re nomadic, a smaller tool could be a big advantage.
/////////////////////////////////xcerpt from High-Achieving Genes article found at:
http://www.forbes.com/2007/02/25/genghis-khan-descendants-lead_achieve07_cz_cz_0301khan.html:
“While some chunks of DNA are common today thanks to the conquest of kings or historical flukes, others have become widespread thanks to good old natural selection. People from time to time have been born with mutant genes that gave them a slight reproductive edge, one that their offspring enjoyed as well. These lucky mutants might be less likely to die of malaria, for example, or be better able to tolerate lactose or handle the complexities of full-blown language. In any case, their versions of genes spread through the human population while others dwindled away.
We’ll never know exactly who first carried those adaptive genes. But ultimately that doesn’t matter. It’s the genes, not the people, who have achieved this kind of greatness. The starkest proof of this comes from a gene called microcephalin, which is involved in brain development. All humans carry some version of microcephalin. One version is far more common than the others, found in 70% of all people.
Recently scientists at the University of Chicago compared the different versions of microcephalin to figure out how long ago they all originated from a single ancestral gene. The answer was startling: over a million years ago–long before our species emerged. But weirder still, the most common version of microcephalin only began to spread 37,000 years ago. What was that version of microcephalin doing in the intervening time?
The best explanation for this finding is that the most common version of microcephalin in our species came to us from Neanderthals. Neanderthals and humans evolved from a common ancestor that lived in Africa about half a million years ago. The ancestors of Neanderthals moved out of Africa and arrived in Europe about 300,000 years ago. These rugged, barrel-chested people survived the vast flux of Ice Age rhythms, hunting and building shelters. They had Europe to themselves until about 45,000 years ago, when modern humans arrived from Africa.
The slender, clever Africans came to stay. Over the next 15,000 years or so, Neanderthals shrank back into remote mountain refuges, while modern humans spread across the continent. And then the last true Neanderthal died–yet another species hurled onto the ash heap of extinction.
Neanderthals and humans presumably could have interbred, just as closely related species of other mammals do today. And the microcephalin study suggests that they did. Their Neanderthal-human hybrid children carried genes from both species, but it appears that most of the genes from the Neanderthals gradually disappeared from the human gene pool.
Microcephalin was different, though. Humans who carried the Neanderthal version had more children than those who didn’t, and the gene spread steadily.
Scientists don’t yet know why this particular Neanderthal gene gave humans such a reproductive edge. But scientists do know that microcephalin helps build brains. Its name–which means “tiny head”–comes from the devastating birth defects that can be produced when the gene is crippled by a mutation. So it’s possible that the human mind itself was reshaped by a Neanderthal gene.
In evolution, it seems, achievement is a very strange thing. A gene may break free from its ancestral species and go on to enjoy greatness, even as that species vanishes into extinction.”
Carl Zimmer is the author of At the Water’s Edge and Evolution: The Triumph of An Idea, among other books.
////////////////////////neanderthals originated in Europe, presumably from Homo erectus ancestry
///////////////////////////..........I think the early suggestions that microcephalin was related to brain size and was derived from Neanderthals was quite speculative and seems to have not been verified. It seems like all it has going for it was the time association. If when the Neanderthal genome is sequenced they find the now more common variant of microcephalin, that may increase the likelihood of gene flow from Neanderthal to human. But the gene flow could have been the other way, the microcephalin variant may have occurred in the human line and then been transferred to Neanderthal.
/////////////////////////Homo neanderthalensis
King, 1864
///////////////////////////////Neanderthals were generally only 12 to 14 cm (4½-5½ in) shorter than modern humans, contrary to a common view of them as "very short" or "just over 5 feet". Based on 45 long bones from (at most) 14 males and 7 females, Neanderthal males averaged between 164 to 168 cm (5 ft 4½ in to 5 ft 6 in) and females 152 to 156 cm (5 ft to 5 ft 1½) tall. Compared to Europeans some 20,000 years ago, it is nearly identical, perhaps slightly higher. Considering the body build of Neanderthals, new body weight estimates show they are only slightly above the cm/weight or the Body Mass Index of modern Americans or Canadians.[24]
/////////////////////EXTINCN-CANNOT PASS ONETO THEIR GENES
//////////////////////On November 16, 2006, Science Daily published an interview that suggested that Neanderthals and ancient humans probably did not interbreed. Edward M. Rubin, director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Joint Genome Institute (JGI), sequenced a fraction (0.00002) of genomic nuclear DNA (nDNA) from a 38,000-year-old Vindia Neanderthal femur bone. They calculated the common ancestor to be about 353,000 years ago, and a complete separation of the ancestors of the species about 188,000 years ago. Their results show the genomes of modern humans and Neanderthals are at least 99.5% identical, but despite this genetic similarity, and despite the two species having coexisted in the same geographic region for thousands of years, Rubin and his team did not find any evidence of any significant crossbreeding between the two. Rubin said, “While unable to definitively conclude that interbreeding between the two species of humans did not occur, analysis of the nuclear DNA from the Neanderthal suggests the low likelihood of it having occurred at any appreciable level.”
///////////////////////////////////Neanderthals also performed many sophisticated tasks which are normally associated only with humans. For example, it is known that they controlled fire, constructed complex shelters, and skinned animals. A trap excavated at La Cotte de St Brelade in Jersey gives testament to their intelligence and success as hunters [59].
Particularly intriguing is a hollowed-out bear femur with holes which may have been deliberately bored into it. This bone was found in western Slovenia in 1995, near a Mousterian fireplace, but its significance is still a matter of dispute. Some paleoanthropologists have hypothesized that it was a flute, while others believe it was created by accident through the chomping action of another bear. See: Divje Babe.
/////////////////////////////////Neanderthal children might have grown faster than modern human children. Modern humans have the slowest body growth of any mammal during childhood (the period between infancy and puberty) with lack of growth during this period being made up later in an adolescent growth spurt.[86][87][88] The possibility that Neanderthal childhood growth was different was first raised in 1928 by the excavators of the Mousterian rock-shelter of a Neanderthal juvenile.[89] Arthur Keith in 1931[90] wrote, “Apparently Neanderthal children assumed the appearances of maturity at an earlier age than modern children”. The earliness of body maturation can be inferred from the maturity of a juvenile's fossile remains and estimated age of death. The age at which juveniles die can be indirectly inferred from their tooth morphology, development and emergence. This has been argued to both support[91] and question[92] the existence of a maturation difference between Neanderthals and modern humans. Since 2007 tooth age can be directly calculated using the noninvasive imaging of growth patterns in tooth enamel by means of x-ray synchrotron microtomography.[93] This research supports the existence of a much quicker physical development in Neanderthals than in modern human children.[94] The x-ray synchrotron microtomography study of early H. sapiens sapiens argues that this difference existed between the two species as far back as 160,000 years before present.[95]
/////////////////////////////////Professor Trenton Holliday is a body plan expert from Tulane University, New Orleans. After seeing the skeleton, he believed it had comparatively short limbs and a deep, wide ribcage. This body plan minimises the body's surface area to retain heat, and keeps vital organs embedded deep within the body to insulate them from the cold.
///////////////////////////////The forests on which they depended began to recede, giving way to open plains. On these plains, Professor Shea believes, the Neanderthal thrusting spear and ambush strategy wouldn't have worked. So Neanderthals retreated with the forests, their population falling as their hunting grounds shrank.
///////////////////////////////Returning to the skeleton, Professor Holliday found an explanation for this - that the short limbs and wide pelvis of Neanderthals would have resulted in less efficient locomotion than modern humans. The energy costs in travelling would have been higher, and this would have been a serious evolutionary disadvantage.
For Neanderthal, it was an ironic end. The very body plan that had made Neanderthal so well adapted to the Ice Age, had locked him into an evolutionary cul-de-sac. He might have been better adapted to the cold than the first modern humans, but as the landscape changed, it was our ancestors, who could take better advantage of the more open environment, who survived.
///////////////////////////////Several features of the skeleton unique to Neanderthals appear to be related to cold climate adaptations. These features include limb-bone proportions and muscle attachments indicative of a broad, slightly short, and strong body; a large, rounded nasal opening; and a suite of anatomical traits of the skull (compare the crania of H. neanderthalensis and H. sapiens).
///////////////////////////////////PORTUGAL -ATLANTIC SHORE-LAST PLACE OF THE NEANDETHRALS B4 EXTINCN
//////////////////////////////////////Neanderthal:
Neanderthal skeleton vs. modern human
Neanderthal skeleton vs. modern human
© AMNH Exhibitions
* long, low braincase and double-arched browridge
* flaring, funnel-shaped chest
* flaring pelvis
* robust fingers and toes
Modern human:
* tall, rounded braincase and small, divided browridge
* cylindrical, barrel-shaped chest
* narrow pelvis
* slender fingers and toes
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