Ship of Fools: Your Mother's a Caveman

Thread: Your Mother's a Caveman Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

This kind of thing seems impossible to reconcile with strict creationism. Were there Neanderthals on the ark?

quote:
From the BBC News website:
Many people alive today possess some Neanderthal ancestry, according to a landmark scientific study.

The finding has surprised many experts, as previous genetic evidence suggested the Neanderthals made little or no contribution to our inheritance.

The result comes from analysis of the Neanderthal genome - the "instruction manual" describing how these ancient humans were put together.

I wonder if this has any relationship to sickle-cell anemia, or other traits that separate people of African descent (recent, I mean, not Lucy era) from Eurasians?

Posted by pjkirk (# 10997) on :

The prevalence of sickle-cell is related to the presence of malaria - sickle-cell gives a survival advantage to carriers in malaria-stricken regions.

Obviously, perhaps the trait was inherited from Neanderthals, but since the disease is caused by a change in one amino acid in the protein (and that's caused by a mutation of one single base in the DNA), that'd be hard to prove. It also is becoming less common among blacks in areas without malaria, such as the US (supporting the malaria link), so it'd be harder to prove yet.

Dunno about other traits...I'd be curious if there's any SNPs we can trace through populations to see the spread/limits of this.

Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :

quote:
Originally posted by pjkirk:
Obviously, perhaps the [sickle cell] trait was inherited from Neanderthals, . . .

Why "obviously"? Given that to date no Neanderthal fossils have been found in Africa and their currently hypothesized range is Europe and the Middle East, why should it be "obvious" that a trait found among those with African descent could have been inherited from Neanderthals? Remember we're talking about a species of homonid that developed well after genus Homo dispersed outward from Africa, as the origin of the name "Neanderthal" makes pretty obvious.

Posted by MerlintheMad (# 12279) on :

Shouldn't the OP title be, "Yo Mamma's a cave WOMAN"?

The Ark: we just need to look at the spouses of Noah's family differently. If Ham's wife was a gorgeous Negress, then surely Noah's, Shem's or Japheth's wife could be the "cavewoman". Or, earlier, the ancestors of Noah had intermarried with cavewomen. ("Me like! Me like! Come here, WOMAN!"...)

Posted by pjkirk (# 10997) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:

quote:
Originally posted by pjkirk:
Obviously, perhaps the [sickle cell] trait was inherited from Neanderthals, . . .
Why "obviously"? Given that to date no Neanderthal fossils have been found in Africa and their currently hypothesized range is Europe and the Middle East, why should it be "obvious" that a trait found among those with African descent could have been inherited from Neanderthals? Remember we're talking about a species of homonid that developed well after genus Homo dispersed outward from Africa, as the origin of the name "Neanderthal" makes pretty obvious.

I was trying to state that there is a potential, and that weirder things may have happened. Even disregarding the points you make though, my conclusion is that it's far-fetched (at best).

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
This kind of thing seems impossible to reconcile with strict creationism. Were there Neanderthals on the ark?

My expectation based on my experience of creationist arguments, particularly in relation to the Ark, would be that they'd claim Neanderthals are the same 'type' of creature as modern humans. Creationists tend to have a slightly different understanding of what constitutes a species, arguing that the variety between different examples of particular 'types' (what most of us would call different species) developed among descendents of the small number of representatives of that 'type' on the Ark. I can see how the same argument will also apply to humans.

So, they were on the Ark because they're us. Or, I suppose an argument could be made that one of Noahs daughter-in-laws was Neanderthal (or, carried a large number of Neanderthal genes).

Posted by Chorister (# 473) on :

Well it does explain the part of the human race known as 'Jeremy Clarkson'.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

It used to be a pop fact that Neanderthals had a larger brain cavity than modern humans did.

Posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras (# 11274) on :

I don't know if the consensus amongst anthropologists has changed since I was an undergrad in the early 1970s, but to put some perspective on the species issue, we were taught at the time that neanderthals represented a specific adaptation to the Ice Age and were identified as Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis, as opposed to Homo Sapiens Sapiens -- same species, different sub-species.

[ 10. May 2010, 02:38: Message edited by: Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras ]

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

Wikipedia, fount of all wisdom and knowledge, says

quote:
Neanderthals are either classified as a subspecies (or race) of humans (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) or as a separate species (Homo neanderthalensis).

But the first option "subspecies (or race) of humans" is marked with a superscript link of "by whom?" which leads to the Wikipedia explanation of "Unsupported attribution".

The "separate species" claim has a footnote that leads to an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science from 1999.

The website of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History simply gives the attribution homo neanderthalensis.

But this is all before the story broke last month (or was it early this month?) that the two species seem to share a certain number of genes, leading neanderthalologists to theorize that maybe the two species interbred at some point. Which would suggest they were the same species, although I'm not sure it means that for sure (I think nowadays they allow for different species to interbreed, although when I was in high school part of the definition of what delineated one species from another was that they could not mate with one another to produce viable offspring).

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras:
we were taught at the time that neanderthals represented a specific adaptation to the Ice Age

There is evidence that even that is no longer as simple a picture. Neanderthals appear to have been physically better suited to a colder climate. But, recent studies of early human migration in the Caucasus we've been involved in have shown that during the last glaciation, as the ice sheets advanced Neanderthals moved south. The former northern reaches of their territory were then occupied by modern humans, who could clearly survive in colder climates than the Neanderthals. Which either means that the physical attributes of Neanderthals that were assumed to result in greater tolerance of cold didn't actually give that cold tolerance, or modern humans had other superior ways of adapting through technology unavailable to Neanderthals. That could be more efficient hunting techniques and equipment, better clothing or housing, etc.

Posted by Shadowhund (# 9175) on :

Your mother's a caveman, your father's Cro-Magnum, you rascal, you're my kind of guy.....

[ 10. May 2010, 17:27: Message edited by: Shadowhund ]

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

Nice one, Tex.

Posted by Shadowhund (# 9175) on :

I was hoping someone would get the reference!

Posted by Silver Faux (# 8783) on :

Where does all of this leave us with respect to the careful research showing that the ginger gene came to us from Neanderthal Man?
Wouldn't that tend to prove that the Neanderthalls lived in primarily Aberdeenshire, Scotland, at Strathdon?

Posted by Louise (# 30) on :

It leaves us discussing the relevance of a possible Neanderthal contribution to our genome to Creationism, or else this thread will need to be closed. If you want to discuss findings about Neanderthal genetics without reference to Creationism then the correct forum is Purgatory or if you just want to make ginger jokes - Hell.

thanks,
Louise
Dead Horses Host

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