Stem-human gene flow into Neanderthals
The evolutionary history of human spindle genes includes back-and-forth gene flow with Neandertals: Proteins associated with the spindle apparatus, a cytoskeletal structure that ensures the proper segregation of chromosomes during […]
The feathery Neandertal
Birds of a Feather: Neanderthal Exploitation of Raptors and Corvids:
The hypothesis that Neanderthals exploited birds for the use of their feathers or claws as personal ornaments in symbolic behaviour is revolutionary as it assigns unprecedented cognit…
Ötzi – more Neandertal than the average bear
Neandertal ancestry “Iced”:
Evaluating recent evolution, migration and Neandertal ancestry in the Tyrolean Iceman
Paleogenetic evidence from Neandertals, the Neolithic and other eras has the potential to transform our knowledge of human po…
Neanderthal admixture & the ecology of academe
Yesterday I pointed out that David Reich had a moderately dismissive attitude toward the new paper in PNAS, Effect of ancient population structure on the degree of polymorphism shared between modern human populations and ancient hominins. Here’s …
Human-on-human sex
Dienekes tips me off to the fact that the long-awaited Reich lab paper on Neandertal admixture dating has finally been put on arXiv! The date of interbreeding between Neandertals and modern humans:
Comparisons of DNA sequences between Neandertals and p…
Is resurrecting Neandertals unethical?
An interview with paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer:
This raises one more question: Could we ever clone these extinct people?
Science is moving on so fast. The first bit of Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA was recovered in 1997. No one then could have be…
Are you a caveman?
23andMe finally unveiled a Neanderthal Ancestry estimation feature. I’m at ~2.4 percent. What I’m curious about is the fact that out of the 45 “friends and family” who are surveyed, only two are at 3 percent. One of my them is my sibling who I found seems to have the Neandertal copy of a dystrophin […]
Non-zero sum transitions in the human past
A few people have pointed me to the recent paper in Science, Tenfold Population Increase in Western Europe at the Neandertal–to–Modern Human Transition. The basic result is obvious, and not totally revolutionary: anatomically modern humans may simp…
What did red-haired Neanderthals look like?
So asks a commenter below in relation to the question above. First, why would one even presume that they were red-haired, see my 2007 post, or the paper in Science: A Melanocortin 1 Receptor Allele Suggests Varying Pigmentation Among Neanderthals. In …
Neanderthal-human mating, months later….
Image credit:ICHTO
Recently something popped up into my Google news feed in regards to “Neanderthal-human mating.” If you are a regular reader you know that I’m wild for this particular combination of the “wild thing.” Bu…
Different Neandertal strokes
John Hawks, Europe and China have different Neandertal genes:
This is very striking. China and Europe by and large have different Neandertal-derived haplotypes. Haplotypes from Neandertals that are common in Europe — say, with more than two or th…
My family’s Neandertal genes, ii
Last week I reported that it turns out that one of my siblings carry a possible Neandertal haplotype on the dystrophin gene. To review, it seems likely that ~3% of the average non-African’s genome is derived from Neandertal populations. But by an…
Neandertal admixture, revisiting results after shaken priors
After 2010′s world-shaking revolutions in our understanding of modern human origins, the admixture of Eurasian hominins with neo-Africans, I assumed there was going to be a revisionist look at results which seemed to point to mixing between diffe…
Size doesn’t always matter
Neandertals famously had larger cranial capacities than modern humans, and, have gone through multiple phases of de- and re-humanization. A few weeks ago there was a revision of the idea that Neandertals in France ~30,000 years ago adopted some aspects of modern human culture through diffusion. This was a support for the Neandertal “ooga-booga” thesis. […]