Competition did in the Neanderthals????
JTEM
It's kind of funny how the same ideas keeping
back... sort of like each generation rediscovers
them & makes them popular for a while...
: "You can't wave your hands and say it was climate
: change," said Peterson, who demurred at
: describing actual conflict between the groups.
: "We're not demonstrating that there was some
: sort of interaction. We're simply demonstrating
: that the alternative explanation doesn't cut it," he
: said.
:
: But the team's paper, "Neanderthal Extinction by
: Competitive Exclusion," suggests competition,
: a hypothesis strengthened by the eventual
: diffusion of modern humans into the Neanderthals'
: last stronghold in what is now Spain.
: Neanderthals soon disappeared there as well.
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/12/neanderthals-co.html
Personally, I'd have to say that the only thing wrong
with the theory is the way people tend to
misunderstand it. "Competition" doesn't only ever
mean that they ran around slitting each other's
throats, and the last man standing was a modern.
When you consider how small populations were
believed to be... the fact that it wasn't just one
migration of moderns... there was a period of at
least 10,000 years for this all to take place... add
up all that and there seems to be be so many ways
that Neanderthals could be washed out that it's a
wonder they lasted as long as they did.
Everything from new diseases to being bred out of
existance remains a posibility. And let's not forget:
It's pretty rare in human history to find a situation
where two distinct groups co-exist as equals.
So what's the answer?
Well, the answer (of course) is that it's all frigging
meaningless. Neanderthals & so-called moderns
didn't meet in Europe, their paths first crossed in the
middle east, and perhaps even north Africa. If
"Moderns" and Neanderthals interbred, then in all
probability the first moderns to reach Europe were
already carrying Neanderthal genes, and perhaps
even usurped the best of Neanderthal culture.
Steven L.
I posted to sci.bio.paleontology about the possibility of Homo Sapiens'
diseases wiping out the Neanderthals, but the paleontologists on that NG
didn't like it.
--
Steven L.
Email: sdli...@earthlinkNOSPAM.net
Remove the NOSPAM before replying to me.
unrestra...@hotmail.com
> Remove the NOSPAM before replying to me.
Did they say why not?
Kermit
unrestra...@hotmail.com
> It's kind of funny how the same ideas keeping
> back... sort of like each generation rediscovers
> them & makes them popular for a while...
>
> : "You can't wave your hands and say it was climate
> : change," said Peterson, who demurred at
> : describing actual conflict between the groups.
> : "We're not demonstrating that there was some
> : sort of interaction. We're simply demonstrating
> : that the alternative explanation doesn't cut it," he
> : said.
> :
> : But the team's paper, "Neanderthal Extinction by
> : Competitive Exclusion," suggests competition,
> : a hypothesis strengthened by the eventual
> : diffusion of modern humans into the Neanderthals'
> : last stronghold in what is now Spain.
One idea I've heard recently is that there was a rapid fluctuation
between ice age and warmer spells, resulting in the shrinkage of
European area covered by forest. The Neanderthals were adapted to
ambushing big game in forests, and we were already suited for open
grassland.
Kermit
JTEM
> I posted to sci.bio.paleontology about the possibility of
> Homo Sapiens' diseases wiping out the Neanderthals,
> but the paleontologists on that NG didn't like it.
Oh, I'm sure there had to be at least SOME issue with
diseases. Even today when the world is supposedly so
much "smaller" (thanks to modern transportation), there
are health concerns.
For illustration, check out this U.K. travel advisory which
MINIMIZES the risks...
: Another thing that gets many prospective tourists in a
: flap is one or other exotic disease. In reality, provided
: that you have all the appropriate shots, you are sensible
: about what you eat and drink and you don't indulge in
: unprotected sex with members of high-risk groups, the
: only significant health risk to tourists in most parts of
: Africa is malaria.
http://www.travelafricamag.com/content/view/250/82/
And that's TODAY. So what would have happened, say,
if Neanderthals & Moderns didn't have all their appropriate
shots, weren't all too picky about what they ate & didn't
use condoms?
Bob Casanova
appeared in talk.origins, posted by JTEM <jte...@gmail.com>:
I think you've missed an essential ingredient. Today, the
most dangerous factor is a combination of rapid global
transportation and days (or weeks) of latency, when the
disease may be communicable while showing no symptoms.
Obviously, this wouldn't have been a problem when travel was
measured in, at most, tens of miles/year.
--
Bob C.
"Evidence confirming an observation is
evidence that the observation is wrong."
- McNameless
JTEM
> I think you've missed an essential ingredient. Today, the
> most dangerous factor is a combination of rapid global
> transportation and days (or weeks) of latency, when the
> disease may be communicable while showing no symptoms.
> Obviously, this wouldn't have been a problem when travel was
> measured in, at most, tens of miles/year.
It's true I'm thinking that there's more than one model. There's
Chicken Pox on native American populations, for example. Here
was this childhood disease that travelled with the European
population -- and was harmless enough to children -- but when
it finally made the leap into the native population it might as well
have been the Black Death.
R. Baldwin
news:JJWdnW5s19yupf_U...@earthlink.com:
[snip]
>
> I posted to sci.bio.paleontology about the possibility of Homo Sapiens'
> diseases wiping out the Neanderthals, but the paleontologists on that NG
> didn't like it.
>
>
Since the Neanderthal dieoff predates agriculture, perhaps Homo sapiens
hadn't yet accumulated the kinds of killer diseases that would have done
them in.
JTEM
> The Neanderthals were almost certainly more versatile
> and adaptable than that. They weren't stupid.
In some ways they were stupid. One example I've often
heard is Salmon. They're a great source of protein and
with their annual runs it not only makes it easy to catch
them in great quantities but it's easy to plan ahead. But
if the Neanderthals even once noticed any of this they
left *Zero* indication.
The suggestion, of course, is that they weren't very good
at recognizing patterns, and so couldn't take advantage
of even annual events... more or less simply reacting to
the world around them.
On the other hand, maybe they just didn't like fish....
On the other hand, if Neanderthals didn't have the technology
of the moderns then it was for a very good reason. After all,
perfectly balanced throwing spears first show up in Europe
about 200,000 years before moderns were around. So either
the Neanderthals did have the same tools as the moderns
for hunting game or for some reason or another the knowledge
was lost. And, if it was lost then it certainly was a case where
something else held an advantage over it, and the Neanderthals
were smart enough to find it....
Ron O
> "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote innews:JJWdnW5s19yupf_U...@earthlink.com:
>
> [snip]
>
>
>
> > I posted to sci.bio.paleontology about the possibility of Homo Sapiens'
> > diseases wiping out the Neanderthals, but the paleontologists on that NG
> > didn't like it.
>
> Since the Neanderthal dieoff predates agriculture, perhaps Homo sapiens
> hadn't yet accumulated the kinds of killer diseases that would have done
> them in.
If they can differentiate all the DNA that they are sequencing from
modern contamination they will be obtaining DNA sequence of some of
the pathogens that infected Neandertals and the modern humans that
coexisted during this time period. A lot of the non human DNA is
bacterial.
It is a strange case and it may take quite a while to get some
reasonable answers. There isn't really that much left of Neandertal
culture and remains to study. They apparently survived in marginal
habitats. Population pressure would not have had to be that high in
order to force them into even more marginal habitat. All you need is
for population to increase enough so that it gets harder to feed
yourself every day. If other groups took over prime spots like salmon
spawning streams a vital portion of your annual caloric intake would
have suffered. For some reason they seemed to be more conservative
than the fundy religious nut cases that we see around here. They kept
basically the same tool set hundreds of thousands of years. Even
after they were obviously in contact with modern humans they kept
their stone tool culture even though it was less efficient use of
stone and the stone that they needed might be hundreds of km away from
where they lived. It doesn't look like they changed their minds until
just before they went extinct, or it could be that the only remnants
left were the ones that had adopted the technology.
Beats me if modern humans interbred with Neandertals. The easy tests
show no evidence of mixing so it likely didn't happen very often or at
least not often enough to be readily observed. Neandertals were not
just in Europe, but no Neandertal mitochondrial (maternally inherited
DNA) seems to have been passed down in to the extant human
population. In Europe this could be because the "modern humans" that
coexisted with Neandertals were themselves replaced by other
populations. There might have been mixing that got diluted with each
new wave of new competitors. What happened to Cro-Magnon? Did
competition drive them to extinction? Once we sequence enough of Cro-
Magnon DNA we might get the answer to whether they interbred with
Neandertals.
Ron Okimoto
Steven L.
> On Jan 5, 9:11 pm, "R. Baldwin" <res0k...@nozirevBACKWARDS.net> wrote:
>> "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote innews:JJWdnW5s19yupf_U...@earthlink.com:
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>>
>>
>>> I posted to sci.bio.paleontology about the possibility of Homo Sapiens'
>>> diseases wiping out the Neanderthals, but the paleontologists on that NG
>>> didn't like it.
>> Since the Neanderthal dieoff predates agriculture, perhaps Homo sapiens
>> hadn't yet accumulated the kinds of killer diseases that would have done
>> them in.
>
> If they can differentiate all the DNA that they are sequencing from
> modern contamination they will be obtaining DNA sequence of some of
> the pathogens that infected Neandertals and the modern humans that
> coexisted during this time period.
Impossible (with one exception).
The only pathogens that actually modify the DNA of a hominid are
endogenous retroviruses. Not bacteria. I've had lots of bacterial
infections in my lifetime, but the DNA of my sperm (which would be
inherited by my children) wasn't altered. Unless my testes got inflamed
and started producing mutated sperm. But such mutations couldn't
necessarily be traced to an infection after the fact. They would look
like any other mutations caused by radiation or chemicals.
But on sci.bio.paleontology, I had sugggested some kind of deadly
endogenous retrovirus in the Pleistocene era that decimated the
Neanderthals (reduced their numbers below viability as a species), but
to which the Homo Sapiens had at least partial immunity. The
paleontologists there were nonplussed at this possibility.
OK, you defenders of scientific orthodoxy, here's an even more exciting
possibility: As has been discussed on this NG before, there is now
evidence that an endogenous retrovirus may have infected animals many
millions of years ago, suppressing the immune system of a pregnant
female so that she could carry a fertilized egg (which has foreign DNA
from the male) long enough to enable live births. And that's how live
births got started in our ancient ancestors. Today, the placenta of a
pregnant human woman actually produces endogenous retroviruses that
suppress the woman's immune system locally, so that it doesn't attack
the growing fetus as foreign. That's a "fossil" of that retroviral
infection many millions of years ago.
Well, maybe an endogenous retrovirus in the Pleistocene era reversed
this capability--infected pregnant Neanderthal women and re-activated or
stimulated their immune systems to attack their fetuses, resulting in
numerous miscarriages***. That would have quickly reduced the
Neanderthal numbers to zero after one or two generations. But perhaps
Homo Sapiens was at least partially immune to this retrovirus.
And if that's the case, then yes, comparison of the DNA of both species
might discover just such a retrovirus sequence.
Hey, it's just like the movie "Expelled": Those paleontologists on
sci.bio.paleontology aren't willing to consider new theories from
amateurs like me. Help! I'm being persecuted!!! :-)
*** We're having enough trouble with HIV. Let us pray that such an
endogenous retrovirus as I've described never reappears in the present
day. A retrovirus that activates the immune system of the uteruses of
pregnant human women would result in their all having miscarriages, and
that might exterminate the human race in one generation.
Steven L.
I was unable to cite a single example of such a retrovirus actually
decimating a present-day species. Mad cow disease, which can cause a
form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, is spread by prions, not by
endogenous retroviruses.
But while I'm more excited by the retrovirus possibility, any infection
that preferentially decimated the Neanderthals over humans would explain
why Neanderthals died out without much direct human contact (i.e., war).
Even prions. Someone on the sci.bio.paleontology NG pointed out that
the disease kuru, which may be caused by prions, is spread in humans by
cannibalism--and there is evidence that Neanderthals may have been
cannibals.
--
Steven L.
Email: sdli...@earthlinkNOSPAM.net
Cory Albrecht
> But on sci.bio.paleontology, I had sugggested some kind of deadly
> endogenous retrovirus in the Pleistocene era that decimated the
> Neanderthals (reduced their numbers below viability as a species), but
> to which the Homo Sapiens had at least partial immunity. The
> paleontologists there were nonplussed at this possibility.
> Hey, it's just like the movie "Expelled": Those paleontologists on
> sci.bio.paleontology aren't willing to consider new theories from
> amateurs like me. Help! I'm being persecuted!!! :-)
If all you did was suggest, no wonder they were nonplussed. I wouldn't
be terribly impressed, either, and I'm no palaeontologist.
Did you give any thought to the possibility that reason they were
unimpressed was that you did not provide a decent amount of evidence to
support your wild speculation?
Ye Old One
Neanderthals liven an a wide range of habitats, from tundra to dense
forest to open plain.
--
Bob.
JTEM
> Did you give any thought to the possibility that reason
> they were unimpressed was that you did not provide a
> decent amount of evidence to support your wild
> speculation?
I guess the problem is that there's been a great deal of
wild speculation thrown about (starting with the story I
quoted), but only a subset of the wild speculation is
ever challenged so rudely.
Wild speculation? Sheesh! Look at the mtDNA that's
been tossed around for years! Did you know that the
original "Out of Africa/Eve" mtDNA study began with the
exact OPPOSITE assumptions as those who point to
Neanderthal mtDNA as "evidence" that there was no
interbreeding? Which is to say, the people who performed
the OOA/Eve study assumed that two distinct populations
could coexist for centuries -- with a not insignificant amount
of interbreeding -- and still maintain their distinct mtDNA
lines. They used African American mtDNA for their "African"
subjects, despite interbreeding being the absolute worst
kept secret of the Antebellum south...
Oh. Maybe I should point out that the results of the original
OOA/Eve studies have been duplicated, with latter teams
using African subjects for their African mtDNA. So, if their
assumptions were wrong then it was one of those rare
occurances where "wrong" is indistinquishable from "right."
Where am I going with this?
Well the whole mtDNA is WORSE than "wild speculation,"
it's thoroughly debunked poo, yet nobody here challenges
it.
Bob Casanova
appeared in talk.origins, posted by JTEM <jte...@gmail.com>:
> Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off> wrote:
True. And IIRC there's some evidence that it was spread
fairly rapidly between villages by those infected but still
mobile going for help (i.e., a significantly greater spread
rate than my "tens of miles/year", but still far below
today's 10,000 miles/day).
Bob Casanova
talk.origins, posted by nmp <add...@is.invalid>:
>Bob Casanova wrote:
>
>> I think you've missed an essential ingredient. Today, the most dangerous
>> factor is a combination of rapid global transportation and days (or
>> weeks) of latency, when the disease may be communicable while showing no
>> symptoms. Obviously, this wouldn't have been a problem when travel was
>> measured in, at most, tens of miles/year.
>
>What makes you think that travel at the time was limited to at most tens
>of miles per year? Tens of miles per *day* seems more realistic, surely.
That would depend on what you mean by "travel". I was
thinking of migration (either volkswanderung or annual), not
bands of roving hunters.
Ron O
> Ron O wrote:
> > On Jan 5, 9:11 pm, "R. Baldwin" <res0k...@nozirevBACKWARDS.net> wrote:
> >> "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote innews:JJWdnW5s19yupf_U...@earthlink.com:
>
> >> [snip]
>
> >>> I posted to sci.bio.paleontology about the possibility of Homo Sapiens'
> >>> diseases wiping out the Neanderthals, but the paleontologists on that NG
> >>> didn't like it.
> >> Since the Neanderthal dieoff predates agriculture, perhaps Homo sapiens
> >> hadn't yet accumulated the kinds of killer diseases that would have done
> >> them in.
>
> > If they can differentiate all the DNA that they are sequencing from
> > modern contamination they will be obtaining DNA sequence of some of
> > the pathogens that infected Neandertals and the modern humans that
> > coexisted during this time period.
>
> Impossible (with one exception).
>
> The only pathogens that actually modify the DNA of a hominid are
> endogenous retroviruses. Not bacteria. I've had lots of bacterial
> infections in my lifetime, but the DNA of my sperm (which would be
> inherited by my children) wasn't altered. Unless my testes got inflamed
> and started producing mutated sperm. But such mutations couldn't
> necessarily be traced to an infection after the fact. They would look
> like any other mutations caused by radiation or chemicals.
No, pathalogical bacteria infecting the Neandertal when it was alive
would only have to get into the blood and into the bones that way.
Most of the bacterial DNA that they get out of the Neandertal bone
likely come from bacteria that invaded the bone after death.
>
> But on sci.bio.paleontology, I had sugggested some kind of deadly
> endogenous retrovirus in the Pleistocene era that decimated the
> Neanderthals (reduced their numbers below viability as a species), but
> to which the Homo Sapiens had at least partial immunity. The
> paleontologists there were nonplussed at this possibility.
I guess that they never heard of AIDS or what it is doing in Africa.
Though scattered hunter-gatherer populations are not conducive to
spreading disease.
> Email: sdlit...@earthlinkNOSPAM.net
> Remove the NOSPAM before replying to me.-
A lot of viruses produce provirus that can integrate into the DNA.
Endogenous retroviruses are vertically transmitted to progeny
genetically. What you might hope to find in extant human populations
are such vertically transmitted viruses that can be found in
Neandertal DNA. If the phylogeny of the virus shows that it probably
originated in Neandertals and was transferred recently to modern
humans it could be evidence of hybridization (vertical transmission).
If it came from modern humans and had your properties of inhibiting
reproduction your notions might be vindicated. Hybrids would
reproduce less frequently and population pressure from modern humans
moving in would eventually drive Neandertals to extinction. Beats me
if such a virus exists.
Ron Okimoto
Ron O
> Cory Albrecht <coryalbre...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Did you give any thought to the possibility that reason
> > they were unimpressed was that you did not provide a
> > decent amount of evidence to support your wild
> > speculation?
>
> I guess the problem is that there's been a great deal of
> wild speculation thrown about (starting with the story I
> quoted), but only a subset of the wild speculation is
> ever challenged so rudely.
>
> Wild speculation? Sheesh! Look at the mtDNA that's
> been tossed around for years! Did you know that the
> original "Out of Africa/Eve" mtDNA study began with the
> exact OPPOSITE assumptions as those who point to
> Neanderthal mtDNA as "evidence" that there was no
> interbreeding? Which is to say, the people who performed
> the OOA/Eve study assumed that two distinct populations
> could coexist for centuries -- with a not insignificant amount
> of interbreeding -- and still maintain their distinct mtDNA
> lines. They used African American mtDNA for their "African"
> subjects, despite interbreeding being the absolute worst
> kept secret of the Antebellum south...
No such assumption. All they did was look at extant mtDNA sequences
and figure out when the progenitor molecule might hav existed. We now
know that if Neandertal mtDNA had been mixed in that it would have
resulted in screwy results (the deepest branches of the mitochondrial
sequence tree would be found outside of Africa and mixed in with the
least diversity of sequences). What was found was that the greatest
sequence diversity occurred in Africa and the least diversity was
found among the migrants that left Africa.
>
> Oh. Maybe I should point out that the results of the original
> OOA/Eve studies have been duplicated, with latter teams
> using African subjects for their African mtDNA. So, if their
> assumptions were wrong then it was one of those rare
> occurances where "wrong" is indistinquishable from "right."
>
> Where am I going with this?
>
> Well the whole mtDNA is WORSE than "wild speculation,"
> it's thoroughly debunked poo, yet nobody here challenges
> it.
Your last statement is not supported by the evidence. Why is
verification "wild speculation?" You admit that the original results
have been verified by several studies involving many more
mitochondrial sequences.
The out of Africa coelescent for human mitochondrial DNA is about as
much a fact as the world being roughly spherical in shape. Only a
flat earth type would challenge it at this time without a whole lot of
data supporting such a reinterpretation of the data. The Neandertal
mtDNA sequence does not fall within that found among modern humans.
It branches off before the mtEve existed. Neandertal mtDNA has a more
ancient coelescent point with modern human sequences.
Ron Okimoto
JTEM
> JTEM <jte...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Wild speculation? Sheesh! Look at the mtDNA that's
> > been tossed around for years! Did you know that the
> > original "Out of Africa/Eve" mtDNA study began with the
> > exact OPPOSITE assumptions as those who point to
> > Neanderthal mtDNA as "evidence" that there was no
> > interbreeding? Which is to say, the people who performed
> > the OOA/Eve study assumed that two distinct populations
> > could coexist for centuries -- with a not insignificant amount
> > of interbreeding -- and still maintain their distinct mtDNA
> > lines. They used African American mtDNA for their "African"
> > subjects, despite interbreeding being the absolute worst
> > kept secret of the Antebellum south...
>
> No such assumption.
You're talking nonsense.
> All they did was look at extant mtDNA sequences and figure
> out when the progenitor molecule might hav existed.
: Wilson and Cann calculated how much humans had diverged
: from one another relative to how much they had diverged from
: chimpanzees, and determined the ratio was less than 1:25.
: Assuming five million years since human/chimp divergence
: results in an estimate of 200,000 years to our common
: maternal ancestor.
You have to know that it would be absolutely INSANE to make
such claims without sampling distinct populations. But for their
"African" population they chose African Americans, despite the
well established interbreeding that had been going on for
centuries...
: Wilson and Cann relied on black Americans as substitutes
: for Africans.
Ironically, their results appear to have been duplicated.
Here's a link for you:
http://www.jqjacobs.net/anthro/paleo/genome.html
> We now know that if Neandertal mtDNA had been mixed
> in that it would have resulted in screwy results
Actually, we know that the exact opposite would be true, if
interbreeding looked anything like it did in the Antebellum
south... white males with black females... Neanderthal
males with Modern females...
Oops, sorry, that's not /quite/ right. See, even if interbreeding
weren't quite that one-sided we'd still have every reason to
expect that Neanderthal mtDNA shouldn't be present in
current populations: Mungo Man.
Oh, I know, so many people have been programmed to
misunderstand the nature of the evidence Mungo Man
presents, but let me lay it out for you:
Mungo Man is a 40,000 y.o. anatomically modern human
who isn't included within any existing human mtDNA
lineage. That's right, we can dig up anatomically modern
humans with extinct mtDNA lineages without concluding
that our ancestors never bred with anatomically modern
humans.
Another *Huge* red flag flying in the face of all the mtDNA
people is the chimp data. According to the Y-chromosome
data, the human line was interbreeding with the chimp
line more than a million years after the human line interbred
with the chimp line...
: The US research, published in Nature, shows that the
: evolutionary split between humans and chimpanzees was
: not clean and sudden 7 million years ago, as previously
: suspected.
:
: The split happened 6.3 million years ago at the earliest,
: say the scientists. But more importantly, the genetic
: analysis shows that chimpanzees and the earliest hominids
: continued to have sex with each other and swap genes for
: another 1.2 million years before the final break.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/meet-your-ancestor/2006/05/17/1147545394809.html
But none of this is necessary. See, it doesn't pass the first,
the easiest and clearest test of all: Common sense.
Whenever we see a study, and before be dig into it, we have
to consider it's objectives and ask ourselves, "Given a
best-case scenario, how would I want to go about investigating
this answer?"
Next, as we look at the study in question we must note exactly
how far away from a best-case scenario it is, and/or how
limited it is.
We all know, for example, that Neanderthals & moderns had to
cross paths in the middle east, if not earlier, and in any case
BEFORE moderns set foot in Europe. So what is our "Best
Case Scenario?"
Compare & contrast "modern" DNA dating to a time BEFORE
they crossed paths with the Neanderthals with Neanderthal
DNA dating to the same period.
How far away from this "Best Case Scenario" has every study
been? Miles away. Light years away. We know what could
absolutely/positively answer the questions, hands down, and
nothing anybody is doing looks anything like that.
> > Well the whole mtDNA is WORSE than "wild speculation,"
> > it's thoroughly debunked poo, yet nobody here challenges
> > it.
>
> Your last statement is not supported by the evidence.
Ironically, you failed to introduce ANYTHING in support of your
position, eaither. However, I have presented three cases here
which do support what I stated.
> You admit that the original results
> have been verified by several studies involving many more
> mitochondrial sequences.
The results of the study.... the out-of-Africa study... the whole
"mtDNA Eve" thing...
Seriously, you're not grasping this?
They said, "I'm going to look at everybody's mtDNA, and see
how different each population's mtDNA from each other. Then
I'm going to use those differences to calculate how many
generations back you have to go before all those different
populations merge into one."
Get it now?
Their results could NOT have been duplicated, "verified," if
they had been WRONG, if the African American population
couldn't maintain it's uniquely African mtDNA lineage in
the face of hundreds of years of co-existing & interbreeding
with America's European population.
Again: They. Used. African-American. mtDNA. For. Their.
African. Samples.
If two distinct mtDNA lineages couldn't maintain their distinctions
in the face of co-existing & interbreeding for hundreds of years,
then their results would never have been duplicated. Their
results would never have been verified. Because, when the next
researchers came around and used AFRICAN mtDNA instead
of "African American" mtDNA, that would have CHANGED the
results.
....when they replaced something that wasn't uniquely
African with something that was, the results would have
been altered.
Ron O
> Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > JTEM <jte...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > Wild speculation? Sheesh! Look at the mtDNA that's
> > > been tossed around for years! Did you know that the
> > > original "Out of Africa/Eve" mtDNA study began with the
> > > exact OPPOSITE assumptions as those who point to
> > > Neanderthal mtDNA as "evidence" that there was no
> > > interbreeding? Which is to say, the people who performed
> > > the OOA/Eve study assumed that two distinct populations
> > > could coexist for centuries -- with a not insignificant amount
> > > of interbreeding -- and still maintain their distinct mtDNA
> > > lines. They used African American mtDNA for their "African"
> > > subjects, despite interbreeding being the absolute worst
> > > kept secret of the Antebellum south...
>
> > No such assumption.
>
> You're talking nonsense.
Yeah, the type of nonsense that got repeatedly confirmed by more
research. It isn't the type of nonsense that you are spouting is it?
>
> > All they did was look at extant mtDNA sequences and figure
> > out when the progenitor molecule might hav existed.
>
> : Wilson and Cann calculated how much humans had diverged
> : from one another relative to how much they had diverged from
> : chimpanzees, and determined the ratio was less than 1:25.
> : Assuming five million years since human/chimp divergence
> : results in an estimate of 200,000 years to our common
> : maternal ancestor.
The original range of the estimate still holds up today. You can't
deny that. They claimed a range of from 80,000 years to over 200,000
years. With further refinements the current estimate is hovering
around the low end of the range.
>
> You have to know that it would be absolutely INSANE to make
> such claims without sampling distinct populations. But for their
> "African" population they chose African Americans, despite the
> well established interbreeding that had been going on for
> centuries...
Too bad that they actually had enough sequence data to get the correct
estimates.
>
> : Wilson and Cann relied on black Americans as substitutes
> : for Africans.
You work with what they had, and it turned out OK.
>
> Ironically, their results appear to have been duplicated.
>
> Here's a link for you:
>
> http://www.jqjacobs.net/anthro/paleo/genome.html
It isn't ironic it is due to the fact that even with the noise the
signal was strong enough to see the correct interpretation from the
data that they had.
>
> > We now know that if Neandertal mtDNA had been mixed
> > in that it would have resulted in screwy results
>
> Actually, we know that the exact opposite would be true, if
> interbreeding looked anything like it did in the Antebellum
> south... white males with black females... Neanderthal
> males with Modern females...
Why would it only go one way? Are you claiming that Neandertal males
would be the only ones mating with new encounters?
>
> Oops, sorry, that's not /quite/ right. See, even if interbreeding
> weren't quite that one-sided we'd still have every reason to
> expect that Neanderthal mtDNA shouldn't be present in
> current populations: Mungo Man.
Go for it. Demonstrate that Mungo is Neandertal.
>
> Oh, I know, so many people have been programmed to
> misunderstand the nature of the evidence Mungo Man
> presents, but let me lay it out for you:
>
> Mungo Man is a 40,000 y.o. anatomically modern human
> who isn't included within any existing human mtDNA
> lineage. That's right, we can dig up anatomically modern
> humans with extinct mtDNA lineages without concluding
> that our ancestors never bred with anatomically modern
> humans.
But you need to include him into the Neandertal mtDNA lineage. Things
like sequencing errors would just put Mungo out by itself and not
related very well to any extant lineage.
>
> Another *Huge* red flag flying in the face of all the mtDNA
> people is the chimp data. According to the Y-chromosome
> data, the human line was interbreeding with the chimp
> line more than a million years after the human line interbred
> with the chimp line...
You have to restate to make sense. Confirmation obviously means
nothing to you. You are as bad as the creationist science deniers
that we see around here. Just do something simple. Demonstrate that
Cann and Wilson's work was not replicated and verified. You can't do
this because it was replicated and verified. Demonstrate that Mungo
man mtDNA sequence falls within Neandertal sequence variation. Beats
me if you can do this, but if it had been done it would have been big
news.
If you can do those things you might have an argument.
>
> : The US research, published in Nature, shows that the
> : evolutionary split between humans and chimpanzees was
> : not clean and sudden 7 million years ago, as previously
> : suspected.
> :
> : The split happened 6.3 million years ago at the earliest,
> : say the scientists. But more importantly, the genetic
> : analysis shows that chimpanzees and the earliest hominids
> : continued to have sex with each other and swap genes for
> : another 1.2 million years before the final break.
>
> http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/meet-your-ancestor/2006/05/17/114...
So what? The coelescent of human mtDNA occurred millions of years
after the last possible instance of interbreeding. Do you know the
difference between as much as 250,000 years and over 4 million? Do
you understand what that means? It means that no mixing occurred
after the coelescent, so your argument is bogus. The diversity that
we observe in the current human population was generated after any
mixing could have possibly occurred.
>
> But none of this is necessary. See, it doesn't pass the first,
> the easiest and clearest test of all: Common sense.
Sure, I agree, none of your arguments are necessary. You do have to
ignore common sense to keep on like you are.
A complete Neandertal mtDNA genomic sequence is available in Genbank
(NC_011137). You can access the Cell paper by Green et al 2008 by
going to the NCBI Genbank, finding NC_011137 (search the nucleotide
database for "NC_011137" you have to put in the underline between the
C and zero), and clicking on the reference link in the comments
section. The entire sequence provides pretty much unequivocal
evidence that Neandertal mtDNA does not fall within any modern human
lineage.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=nuccore&cmd=search&term=NC_011137
SNIP:
Ron Okimoto
Bob Casanova
talk.origins, posted by nmp <add...@is.invalid>:
>Bob Casanova wrote:
>
>> On 05 Jan 2009 23:15:50 GMT, the following appeared in talk.origins,
>> posted by nmp <add...@is.invalid>:
>>
>>>Bob Casanova wrote:
>>>
>>>> I think you've missed an essential ingredient. Today, the most
>>>> dangerous factor is a combination of rapid global transportation and
>>>> days (or weeks) of latency, when the disease may be communicable while
>>>> showing no symptoms. Obviously, this wouldn't have been a problem when
>>>> travel was measured in, at most, tens of miles/year.
>>>
>>>What makes you think that travel at the time was limited to at most tens
>>>of miles per year? Tens of miles per *day* seems more realistic, surely.
>>
>> That would depend on what you mean by "travel". I was thinking of
>> migration (either volkswanderung or annual), not bands of roving
>> hunters.
>
>You brought up communicable diseases, I thought that was the context. It
>seems to me that prehistoric roving hunters (or scouts, messengers,
>traders et al.) would have been able to spread such diseases very fast
>over great distances.
We seem to be talking past each other. My point was that
today's speed of transport would allow a new disease with
high mortality, but a relatively long asymptomatic
incubation period, to spread around the world before we even
knew it existed. In a culture limited to foot travel, most
deaths would occur "locally", since at most the nearest
village(s) would be infected from the initial one, and that
only if infected-but-asymtomatic inhabitants of the initial
village carried it there in a bid for assistance. IIRC this
is similar to how Ebola and other extremely lethal
hemorrhagic fevers operate, with fairly long incubation
periods (4-6 days average incubation, 2-21 days max
variation incubation for Ebola; see...
http://ebola.emedtv.com/ebola/ebola-incubation-period.html
....for more info) and rapid deterioration and death after
symptoms appear.
These characteristics don't lend themselves to rapid spread
of the disease in cultures consisting of small villages (or
family/clan bands) limited to travel by foot, since the
disease incapacitates and kills quickly after symptoms
appear, and the relatively long incubation period allows the
entire population to be infected before symptoms indicate a
need for help.
JTEM
> Yeah, the type of nonsense that got repeatedly
> confirmed by more research.
You're *Way* off base here. Seriously. You need to sit
back, cool down a little and thinks things over. As is,
you should be embarrassed for saying these things...
> It isn't the type of nonsense that you are spouting
> is it?
You clearly don't "Get it," but I'll point out the bleeding
obvious:
*I* first raised the fact that Wilson & Cann's results
were duplicated because (now get this) it PROVES
my point. If their results had not been duplicated by
other researchers that would mean that two distinct
groups CAN NOT co-exist & interbreed for centuries
while both maintain their unique mtDNA lineage.
> > : Wilson and Cann calculated how much humans had diverged
> > : from one another relative to how much they had diverged from
> > : chimpanzees, and determined the ratio was less than 1:25.
> > : Assuming five million years since human/chimp divergence
> > : results in an estimate of 200,000 years to our common
> > : maternal ancestor.
>
> The original range of the estimate still holds up today.
Which disproves those who claim that the mtDNA "evidence"
says anything about Neanderthals & moderns interbreeding.
Because, yeah, European Americans & African Americans
co-existed for hundreds of years in America, with a not
insignificant amount of interbreeding. Yet, Wilson & Cann got
the same results as those who used African subjects for their
African mtDNA samples, instead of African American subjects.
Ron O
> Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
> > Yeah, the type of nonsense that got repeatedly
> > confirmed by more research.
>
> You're *Way* off base here. Seriously. You need to sit
> back, cool down a little and thinks things over. As is,
> you should be embarrassed for saying these things...
I'm just setting you straight. You can't deny anything that I've said
and all you can do is claim that I am the one that has to rethink
their position? What a bonehead. Just do what you have to do to
demonstrate that my interpretation is wrong. You can't do that for
one simple reason.
>
> > It isn't the type of nonsense that you are spouting
> > is it?
>
> You clearly don't "Get it," but I'll point out the bleeding
> obvious:
>
> *I* first raised the fact that Wilson & Cann's results
> were duplicated because (now get this) it PROVES
> my point. If their results had not been duplicated by
> other researchers that would mean that two distinct
> groups CAN NOT co-exist & interbreed for centuries
> while both maintain their unique mtDNA lineage.
If Neandertals had been intermixed with modern humans the worst that
would happen would be that the coelescent point would have been pushed
farther back in time. It would have still been the coelescent point
for all the extant mtDNA lineages because that is what it is by
definition. Aside from the rare possible occurrance of recombination
mtDNA are maternally inherited and each lineage would have stood alone
and would have been placed in the phylogeny that you would get by
adding the Neandertal sequences to it. There would just be deeper
branches to the common ancestral sequence. In the Neandertal case the
branch lengths would have been so long compared to the vast majority
of extant human sequences that I'd bet that a lot of people would have
interpreted it as rare interbreeding. You would get a slingshot type
of phylogeny with short bushy branches on the ends of the Y. If
mixing had been common it would have looked like a single
interbreeding population because that is what it would have been. The
question was what was the progenitor molecule and when might it have
existed. What do you think would have happened if there had been
mixing? Do you understand how the analysis is done?
In certain circumstances we would have been able to determine that it
had been mixing. If mixing was only common in Europe and Asia the
greatest modern human sequence diversity would have still been in
Africa. We would have observed these long Neandertal branch lengths
in parts of Europe and Asia and only residual back migration evidence
in Africa. The guys that are claiming that interbreeding was common
and that humans evolved for very long periods of time in Asia and
Europe would have been vindicated. Instead their notions were
falsified by the data. We have no mitochondrial evidence of mixing.
>
> > > : Wilson and Cann calculated how much humans had diverged
> > > : from one another relative to how much they had diverged from
> > > : chimpanzees, and determined the ratio was less than 1:25.
> > > : Assuming five million years since human/chimp divergence
> > > : results in an estimate of 200,000 years to our common
> > > : maternal ancestor.
>
> > The original range of the estimate still holds up today.
>
> Which disproves those who claim that the mtDNA "evidence"
> says anything about Neanderthals & moderns interbreeding.
How do you get from A to B? The mitochondrial evidence shows no sign
of mixing (no Neandertal sequences have been identified in extant
humans) therefore we can't make any conclusions about whether there
was any interbreeding? If by sampling more sequences the results had
not been verified, but we had found some Neandertal sequences among
modern humans the coelescent point would have been changed to over
500,000 years ago.
>
> Because, yeah, European Americans & African Americans
> co-existed for hundreds of years in America, with a not
> insignificant amount of interbreeding. Yet, Wilson & Cann got
> the same results as those who used African subjects for their
> African mtDNA samples, instead of African American subjects.
It appears that mixed mating went mostly in one direction (European
male to African female), and African maternal mtDNA stayed mostly
associated with the skin color and other features. If there had been
equal mixing in both directions there would have been more of a
problem, but it just turned out that there was enough signal in the
noise to get a decent answer. You can't deny that because that is
what was found. You have no argument here. Bogus lamentations that
it should not have worked does not change the fact that it did work.
Just sit back and reflect on how bogus your argument is. It would
only be valid if the results were not verified. Since the results
were verified, why try to argue against the verification using faults
in the first study if those faults do not apply to the verification
studies?
Ron Okimoto
Bob Casanova
in talk.origins, posted by Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>:
Any response, nmp?
Bob Casanova
in talk.origins, posted by Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>:
I guess not.
Louann Miller
news:homsm4lktkc9l0ceu...@4ax.com:
> On Sun, 11 Jan 2009 11:17:54 -0700, the following appeared
> in talk.origins, posted by Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>:
(an entire thread of some 70 lines in order to pose the rhetorical question
"gonna answer my question now? and reply)
> I guess not.
I'm not against these on principle, but _please_ prune better. You can give
a micro-summary and a link to the previous iteration of the post, you know.
Bob Casanova
in talk.origins, posted by Louann Miller
<loua...@yahoo.com>:
Sorry; I usually use this technique with Addled Maniac, and
if I trim and/or provide a reference it gives the idiot
wiggle room to say I didn't post anything to be answered.
With the whole post in front of his weaselly little face he
doesn't have that luxury. Since this was nmp I assumed he'd
simply missed it, since he seems a bit more rational, and
could have done as you suggest, but habit won out. And maybe
he just doesn't have an answer he likes.