Not that anybody is reading this or cares, but I just found out I'm a bleeping Neanderthal. ...somewhat. Seems them smarty pants science guy just figured out that if you have any Asian ancestry,...hi Grandma. If you got some of that you're likely 2% cave person.
See Grandpa above.
Don't take my word for it. Here's stuff from "Scientific American", and as we know...they're never wrong. Well except for that time back in the day when they said all the non-white races were mentally inferior, and that women were too emotional to hold responsible positions.
Yeah they may have been a bit off there.
'But still.
If you have Chinese heritage, you might have slightly more Neanderthal in your genome, while a new study finds that people from South Asia have more Denisovan, another type of early human, in their DNA.
Evidence started to emerge in 2010 that
our distant ancestors interbred with Neanderthals, the Stone Age hominids who populated Europe until around 40,000 years ago. We can
all, with the exception of African people, credit Neanderthals for
around 2% of our genome.
(Our ancestors apparently started hooking up
with their stocky cousins after moving out of Africa.)
Now
it seems Neanderthals were not the only interbreeding game in town. The
new study finds that Denisovans interbred with the distant ancestors of
people living in what is now South Asia, including India, Bangladesh
and Pakistan. Previously the only people known to have detectable traces
of Denisovan DNA were in Papua New Guinea, Australia, China and other parts of East Asia.
The current study and previous research suggest that we can no longer
think of our ancestors as interbreeding with other hominids only once,
said John Hawks, professor of anthropology at University of
Wisconsin-Madison.
"It is happening repeatedly, wherever modern humans
are coming into contact with these archaic people," said Hawks, who was
not involved in the current study.
(CNN/Scientific American )
So apparently we were banging cave women, and I must assume cave boys...homosexuality being natural to mammals as soon as we clapped eyes on them cave folks, and "Vice Versa".
...nice name for a book. Ahem.
...nice name for a book. Ahem.
Here below are some images of our departed relatives if they were still around, and paying taxes like the rest of us.
Stay Tuned.
How do we know neanderthals weren't smarter and nicer than us? Maybe we were the violent cannibals that murdered them while they were busy developing art forms, philosophy and astronomical theories. Only our amazing vanity causes us to assume otherwise.
ReplyDeleteAll these diorama depictions of early humans as ill-kempt unwashed beetle-browed bozos are to be taken with a large lump of salt. All kinds of cultural and political agendas lie behind them, beginning but not necessarily ending with European imperial white supremacist ideologies. It panders to the notion that "we" - however defined - are the glorious final product in a linear progression leading directly to us: as if evolution were a teleological process with some goal, which it isn't.
So-called stone age people living today, such as Amazonian Indians, far from having lives that are "nasty, brutish and short" - another agenda-driven notion - enjoy good life expectancy, generally good health and excellent teeth (our grain-based diet is awful for your teeth). They're also about as smart as anyone.
Still, it's interesting about the gene distribution.
Z
I've read that we are living in a unique time,...besides watching a massive Climate Change in one life time.
ReplyDeleteBesides that.
We're all wandering around in an era that has every human culture at the same time.
From rain forest cave folks to hunter gatherers to small farming villages. City States to Mega Inter-connected Post Industrial Space, and Star Faring Cultures.
During the next century or so only the inter-connect techno culture will be around. All the other folks will be stuffed, and behind glass in museums.
well that, and in cartoons.
Btw they think we learned art body adornment ceremonial burying of the dead...and music from the Neanderthals. Seem we didn't have any of this till we met them guys,...and exterminated them.
Also seems our intelligence peaked during the Paleolithic. Read that on some science page a while ago. No evidence that we're any smarter now or are getting smarter.
ReplyDeleteWhat we have may be all we get.