Neanderthals

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"Here's a question for you. A carcass was discovered that was 33 feet long, the length of a particular species of basking shark, found in in those waters. It's decay pattern is consistent with it being a shark. The tissue samples show a protein found only in sharks, & heavily lean to a basking shark origin. The number of cervical vertebrae, ~7, is consistent with it being a shark. Plesiosaurs have many more. Fin rays were evident. Fin rays are only found on fish, plesiousaurs have bony phalanges similar to whales. The ribs were 16" long, too short for ANY marine animal that size, living or dead, except sharks.
What is the likeliest explanation, the carcass was a shark, probably a basking shark, or a marine reptile not seen for 65 million years?"

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I just love this.------------------
Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!{OFF TOPIC - Maybe we should reset to what was said in message 90 - Adminnemooseus}[This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 10-01-2003]

Even though you probably won't read this:*Ceolocanth, which most scientists use to think went extinct several million year ago, are still living in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Africa and Madagascar. Finding a livining plesiosaur wouldn't really disprove evolution. You'd have to find 4 billion year old turkey and people fossils, to disprove evolution.*Neandertals (probably) couldn't survive in warm weather well, because of their nasal cavity. Here's a hypothetical extinction scenario:
Neadertals begin to run out of food, so they move to a new area. Because warm weather is bad for them they go North. They chase their prey further North until their food supply is exhausted. During the ice ages the weather becomes colder, so they can look for food in more Southern regions. After the ice ages the weather becomes warmer and they die of various diseases.*Another extinction possibility: Our ancestors begin trying to farm, and the Neadertals, who are nomadic wander through their fields and eat their food. So whenever they see a Neandertal they kill it, just like farmers nowadays do to insects.*In response to the original post: Neandertals are more like people than monkeys. Them having a "soul" and being creative isn't really surprising. Some people used to think of Africans and aboriginals as animals.

Hmmm.... "Reddish"? Is that name at all related to Greenish, of the Inevitably Successful In All Circumstances? ------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

Fascinating, but I'm not sure what it has to do with my point that while our species may be hundreds of thousands of years old, the reason we only see great progress in the past couple thousand is because that's how old language is. You can't have civilization without language.For some reason Rabair thought this was a stupid thing to say. It may be stupid to point it out, as it's rather obvious, but Rabair seemed like somebody you had to point the obvious out to. That may very well be true. I have not myself seen sufficient evidence to confirm any hypothesis as to the fate of Neanderthals, but I favor the hypothesis that they merged into the modern human gene pool. Seems more optimisic, somehow. Plus I think I know a few modern-day Neanderthals, so they can't all be gone.

Our species may be older than a million years. This is the crux of the multiregional hypothesis.You do realize that you can have language without speech and American Sign Language is an example of this.The replacement hypothesis many of us believe does not account for regional differences that we see in modern humans. These differences have been found in erectus fossils going back about a million years. There is also evidence that modern form occured in regions before the African mtDNA arrived.Check the links: Just a moment...Just a moment...Abstract from second link:Human mtDNA shows striking regional variation, traditionally attributed to genetic drift. However, it is not easy to account for the fact that only two mtDNA lineages (M and N) left Africa to colonize Eurasia and that lineages A, C, D, and G show a 5-fold enrichment from central Asia to Siberia. As an alternative to drift, natural selection might have enriched for certain mtDNA lineages as people migrated north into colder climates. To test this hypothesis we analyzed 104 complete mtDNA sequences from all global regions and lineages. African mtDNA variation did not significantly deviate from the standard neutral model, but European, Asian, and Siberian plus Native American variations did. Analysis of amino acid substitution mutations (nonsynonymous, Ka) versus neutral mutations (synonymous, Ks) (ka/ks) for all 13 mtDNA protein-coding genes revealed that the ATP6 gene had the highest amino acid sequence variation of any human mtDNA gene, even though ATP6 is one of the more conserved mtDNA proteins. Comparison of the ka/ks ratios for each mtDNA gene from the tropical, temperate, and arctic zones revealed that ATP6 was highly variable in the mtDNAs from the arctic zone, cytochrome b was particularly variable in the temperate zone, and cytochrome oxidase I was notably more variable in the tropics. Moreover, multiple amino acid changes found in ATP6, cytochrome b, and cytochrome oxidase I appeared to be functionally significant. From these analyses we conclude that selection may have played a role in shaping human regional mtDNA variation and that one of the selective influences was climate.The Eve hypothesis postulates that mtDNA was simply carried along with a migrating population. While the MRH states that genes were exchanged and natural selection facilitated the spread of favorable traits found in mtDNA.Then you also have to consider that Neanderthals are only really different from other erectus in that Neaderthals have greater cranial capacity. There does not appear to be any evidence that they were any more intelligent than other erectus, their technology was similar to other erectus. Then you also have a reduction in cranial capacity with sapiens and an increase in technology. The reliability of using cranial capacity to mark a species boundry is a dubious one.------------------
Bringer of fire, trickster, teacher.

Yes. I don't recall saying anything to the contrary, but maybe I forgot. If I equivocated "language" and "speech" it's because ASL is equivalent to speech in my mind.Clearly gestures would have played as important a role in early communication as they do in modern communication, if not more.Anyway the precise reason that Rabair thinks it's stupid to point out that civilization requires language is known only to him.

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the reason we only see great progress in the past couple thousand is because that's how old language is.

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I must have missed something. I know you did not just say that language is only a couple of thousand years old. Perhaps you meant written language?------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

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Our species may be older than a million years. This is the crux of the multiregional hypothesis.

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The multiregional hypothesis does not put our species at several million years old. With multiregionalism, one line changes from an ancestral species to modern H. sapiens. With replacement, one branch outcompetes another. Either way, H. sapiens shows up at about the same time. That part doesn't change. What changes is how we evolved, not when.

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Then you also have to consider that Neanderthals are only really different from other erectus in that Neaderthals have greater cranial capacity.

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Neanderthals were not H. erectus, but an H. sapiens species falling between archaic H. sapiens (500-200 kya) and ourselves ( beginning about 120 kya). They were a subspecies-- Homo sapiens neanderthalensis (230-30 kya). No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.msu.edu/~robin400/neanderthalensis.html------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

I think maybe I'm referring to language that's complex enough to communicate advanced ideas, and to refer to the future, etc.Having enough langauge to say "danger!" is a survival advantage, sure, but it's not enough to start a civilization.On the other hand, I may not know what the hell I'm talking about.

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The multiregional hypothesis does not put our species at several million years old. With multiregionalism, one line changes from an ancestral species to modern H. sapiens. With replacement, one branch outcompetes another. Either way, H. sapiens shows up at about the same time. That part doesn't change. What changes is how we evolved, not when.

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The division of a species across time is based on morphology, I tend to lump erectus with sapiens and the genus Homo with Pan. There is good genetic reason to not split Pan and Homo other than an inate chauvenism on our part. I believe the same holds true for chronological/morphological divisions. We really have not changed that much physically in a million years.Multiregionalism states that humans evolved in situ in each of the 4 regions of the Earth with structural features being retained by modern humans in each region. Genes from one region were exchanged for genes from another with regional variation being retained.A Neanderthal skull is the same with ergaster/erectus skulls in that all have the same morphology at the base. The occipital plate of the skull is flattened where the spinal cord enters and small mastoid processes occupying the same horizontal plane as the occipital condyles. In sapiens, the base of the skull has a rounded shape and the masoid processes are elongated to maintain the position with the condyles and preserve the mechanical leverage of the neck muscles on the base of the skull. It is this structural change that matters for sapienization, not cranial capacity.The recent mtDNA studies fit more closely with the MRH than the popular Eve theory.------------------
Bringer of fire, trickster, teacher.[This message has been edited by Speel-yi, 10-05-2003]

Having just finished reading "The Journey of Man" I have to tell you that it goes into detail about the Y chromosomes supporting the mtDNA "eve" idea.Both of these lines of evidence and the anthropological evidence are almost completely aligned with the out-of-africa hypothosis. I'm not in the field but I think that the multiregional hypothosis is falling out of favour with the additional evidence of recent years.

[Note: you posted the same link twice.]

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Abstract from second link:
Human mtDNA shows striking regional variation, traditionally attributed to genetic drift. However, it is not easy to account for the fact that only two mtDNA lineages (M and N) left Africa to colonize Eurasia and that lineages A, C, D, and G show a 5-fold enrichment from central Asia to Siberia. As an alternative to drift, natural selection might have enriched for certain mtDNA lineages as people migrated north into colder climates.

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These results do not support a multiregional hypothesis. The distribution of mtDNA haplotypes still strongly supports a migration out of Africa as the source of non-African populations. What this paper proposes is that as the migration expanded into colder regions, some variants were at a selective advantage and so became more common. This is completely consistent with an Out of Africa model -- OoA doesn't say anything about whether or not selection occurred during the migration.

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Both of these lines of evidence and the anthropological evidence are almost completely aligned with the out-of-africa hypothosis. I'm not in the field but I think that the multiregional hypothosis is falling out of favour with the additional evidence of recent years.

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There's a strong consensus now that Out of Africa is at least largely correct, although there's still debate about whether there was any genetic input from non-African archaic lineages or not, and lots of debate about the details of the migration (when, where, how many times).

Written language is at least 5500 years old. We have examples of it from around this time. Spoken language had to have been around for many years before that, so we are looking at tens of thousands of years not just thousands. Our ancestors had speech possibly as early as erectus-- 1.8-.1 mya. Certainly we've had language since the advent of our own species. At any rate, H. erectus sites indicate controlled use of fire, food sharing and some sort of concern about death-- ie. grave goods. This seems to indicate abstract thought and human-like social structure.------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

You replied to crash, but you quoted me.

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I tend to lump erectus with sapiens and the genus Homo with Pan.

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You realize that 'erectus' and 'sapiens' are species names within the genus Homo, while Pan and Homo are genus names?Lumping erectus and sapiens into the same species is unwarranted. Skull morphology is much too different. Chimps do belong in genus Homo, though.

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We really have not changed that much physically in a million years.

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The earliest erectus sites are nearly two million years old.You seem to be under the illusion that because we can track a slow change, every creature along the way belongs to the same species.

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A Neanderthal skull is the same with ergaster/erectus skulls in that all have the same morphology at the base. The occipital plate of the skull is flattened where the spinal cord enters and small mastoid processes occupying the same horizontal plane as the occipital condyles. In sapiens, the base of the skull has a rounded shape and the masoid processes are elongated to maintain the position with the condyles and preserve the mechanical leverage of the neck muscles on the base of the skull. It is this structural change that matters for sapienization, not cranial capacity.

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And this is more than enough reason to split erectus and sapiens into distinct species. Why, then, do you lump them?------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com