Neanderthals

[Allyn Gibson]

Some help needed, if possible.

I'd like to do some reading on the Neanderthals. Only, I don't know quite where to begin.

Can anyone recommend a good introductory text -- or even a solid specialist text -- on Neanderthals?

I'm aware of some of the vague trends in Neanderthal research, from genetic evidence to speculations over Neanderthal speech and music. I'd like to get a fuller picture.

It's the junk, though, that I'm trying to avoid. Nothing about how larger Neanderthal brain casings means they were psychic or things like that. (Yes, there really is stuff like that out there. I've seen webpages.)

Thanks in advance!

 

[TEH BABA]

Don't know trace seems to survive either in human languages. Also to nean and cromagnum children if possible would of been infertile.

 

[Meredith]

Don't know trace seems to survive either in human languages. Also to nean and cromagnum children if possible would of been infertile.

Some may have been fertile and passed on genes,

Male Neanderthal + Female Cro Mag human = Fertile offspring with no Neanderthal MtDNA.

Male Human + Female Neanderthal = infertile offspring.

In Horses there have been a few cases of fertile Mules, though rare.

We really would need complete enough DNA on a Neanderthal to do a Chromosome count.

 

[Venardhi]

Fertile mules always pass on only the genes of one or the other of their parents though, if I remember correctly.

 

[Ariadne]

Don't know trace seems to survive either in human languages. Also to nean and cromagnum children if possible would of been infertile.

Some may have been fertile and passed on genes,

Male Neanderthal + Female Cro Mag human = Fertile offspring with no Neanderthal MtDNA.

Male Human + Female Neanderthal = infertile offspring.

In Horses there have been a few cases of fertile Mules, though rare.

We really would need complete enough DNA on a Neanderthal to do a Chromosome count.

Why does the gender of the parents matter like that?

 

[Timo]

Because we have telltale DNA in several different places in our cells. Even our sex cells have it in other places besides the nucleus.

In fertilization, the DNA in the nucleus of the sperm cell and the DNA in the nucleus of the ova combine in an egalitarian manner. But the DNA in the cellular organs known as mitochondria behaves differently. The mitochondrial DNA from the sperm is usually destroyed in the process, and only the mitochondrial DNA from the ova survives. Thus, while nuclear DNA tells about the whole tree of ancestors, mitochondrial DNA only tells about the maternal branch.

Thus, male Neanderthals might not leave any sign of their cross-pollination attempts, but female ones probably would.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Meredith]

Because we have telltale DNA in several different places in our cells. Even our sex cells have it in other places besides the nucleus.

In fertilization, the DNA in the nucleus of the sperm cell and the DNA in the nucleus of the ova combine in an egalitarian manner. But the DNA in the cellular organs known as mitochondria behaves differently. The mitochondrial DNA from the sperm is usually destroyed in the process, and only the mitochondrial DNA from the ova survives. Thus, while nuclear DNA tells about the whole tree of ancestors, mitochondrial DNA only tells about the maternal branch.

Thus, male Neanderthals might not leave any sign of their cross-pollination attempts, but female ones probably would.

Timo Saloniemi

Thanks for the helping me explain it!!

 

[Ariadne]

Because we have telltale DNA in several different places in our cells. Even our sex cells have it in other places besides the nucleus.

In fertilization, the DNA in the nucleus of the sperm cell and the DNA in the nucleus of the ova combine in an egalitarian manner. But the DNA in the cellular organs known as mitochondria behaves differently. The mitochondrial DNA from the sperm is usually destroyed in the process, and only the mitochondrial DNA from the ova survives. Thus, while nuclear DNA tells about the whole tree of ancestors, mitochondrial DNA only tells about the maternal branch.

Thus, male Neanderthals might not leave any sign of their cross-pollination attempts, but female ones probably would.

Timo Saloniemi

But couldn't a male human and a female Neanderthal have fertile offspring, just not offspring that happened to be ancestors of people that are currently alive?

 

[Timo]

Quite possibly - it would then be a matter for the statisticians among us to tell if that's plausible.

I mean, many a line has gone extinct in the history of human life. The mitochondrial DNA evidence is so incredibly homogeneous, in fact, that we now believe that basically all lines save one went extinct at one point or another, leaving the illusion that there existed a single Eve from which all current humans derive their ancestry.

In fact, all current humans merely derive their mitochondrial ancestry from this woman. She wasn't the only woman alive back in her day or anything - but she does testify to the fact that bloodlines tend to die out, erasing the vast majority of genetic evidence we have on our broader ancestry. Traces of Neanderthal crossbreeding might have disappeared in the loss of bloodlines, too, long before H.sapiens became so dominant and cosmopolitan that everybody would start to be related to everybody and nobody's nuclear DNA line would be at a risk of disappearing.

If we knew outright what sort of "Neanderthal DNA" to look for in the nuclei, we might isolate it and do statistics on it to decide when (if) humans and Neanderthals last mated. However, we don't know about any specific bits we could identify today as Neanderthalic, and the frequently mixed and remixed nuclear DNA doesn't come in nice, ancient packages like mitochondrial DNA where long archaic chains may be identified.

Timo Saloniemi