2 replies to this topic

[johnny]

A recent TV documentary suggested DNA could indicate sexual interaction between modern humans and neanderthals. But could any similarity in DNA not have come about due to modern humans observing and imitating some Neanderthal behaviours? Resulting in DNA modification without any sexual interaction between the two species. Comments please Johnny.

[Maju]

Actually all DNA studies so far have rather shown no direct connection between Neanderthals and modern humans. Their mtDNA was very different, they apparently had red hair (sometimes) but the gene and protein involved are different from that of modern Europeans, the whole DNA sequence of a Croatian Neanderthal is half way known already, again with negative results so far...

So, while we cannot prove absolutely that modern humans, specially West Eurasians, have not a single trace of Neanderthal DNA, we have not yet been able to find anything that proves it at all. And the hopes of such a finding are getting dimmer and dimmer as research advances.

[neowolf]

johnny, on 31 December 2008 - 12:15, said:

A recent TV documentary suggested DNA could indicate sexual interaction between modern humans and neanderthals. But could any similarity in DNA not have come about due to modern humans observing and imitating some Neanderthal behaviours? Resulting in DNA modification without any sexual interaction between the two species. Comments please Johnny.

The trouble with dna is the more information they get and the more advanced the technology becomes the more confusing the results are ! Although Neanderthals are an extinct off shoot the further back you trace ourselves and all the other now extinct off shoots you will find the closer our species become to the point that they were us and we were them . so although the dna had mutated we have the same origins . For me i find it hard to accept all these different catergories when i feel that since the very first bipedal ape there has been a steady and progressional developement that eventualy lead to us . There is alot we know but there is even more we dont ! The trouble is human bones just dont survive in enough quatities and what we do have is so sparce and with large gaps with hundreds of thousands of years in between , which is more than modern homo sapien has existed . Coninuety is the problem . We know less about the origins of our own spicies than we do the dinosaurs .