Fossil From Last Common Ancestor Of Neanderthals And Humans

You have not yet given us anything to judge logically, simply emotionally. The latter doesn't cut it. But show us something to judge scientifically, and this can change. As for population numbers, they are throughout the literature.

If you wish to elaborate on your views, fine. Do so with evidence

First you state megalithic structures may have been made by Neanderthals but state no evidence that they were either made by Neanderthals or that they were even old enough to be made by them...

To prove the structures, which are extremely weathered, are from 11,000 years ago or earlier, expeditions are underway off the coast of Malta looking for similar structures in up to 20 to 40 metres of water. The finds like this put the engineering and erection of these megaliths at around the time of inundation which was generally 11,000 ybp.

So far there is some evidence that similar structures to the above water engineering exist at these depths. But just look at the weathered state of the structures. That looks to me to be much older than the 4-5000 years of age that they are claimed to be."

"they sure look worn". That is simply silly. It shows no logic.

we don't see any time evidence other than humans were here about 15,000 years ago and no evidence of Neanderthals proven any newer than about 28,000 years.

The evidence consists of a variety of cut marks, incisions, scrape marks, chopping marks and striations resulting from the intentional butchering and defleshing of animals with stone tools, and penetrating, more or less deeply and in various places, the external walls of the bones. (Morlan and Cinq-Mars 1982: Fig. 10). It is important to note that we refer here to undeniable cultural indicators and not to similar marks made by carnivores, rodents, various geological processes or even excavators (Note 10). Thus far, we believe that we have been able to identify examples on numerous elements of the skeleton of nearly every large mammal species, with the possible exception of wolf, moose, wapiti and saiga. Almost all were found in Caves I and II.

This type of data also enables us to refine the time frame of the cultural content of the deposit. As there are no such markings on the faunal remains found in the humus-rich rubble, it is evident that this type of evidence and its causes date to the Pleistocene. This is confirmed by the 14C dates mentioned earlier and which were obtained from some of the specimens exhibiting such modifications. These dates suggest that cultural activities relating to the exploitation of the Bluefish fauna occurred sporadically between about 25,000 BP and 10,000 BP.

the most common estimates are no more than about 2500 breeding pairs estimated for Neanderthals. And this same number is estimated for humans during the vicious ice age of about 75,000 years ago (lasting an estimated 2,000 years) caused by volcanic eruptions in SE Asia.

The Clovis points are commonly now thought to be of European origin.

A New Species? July 29, 1997
by Mark Rose

Fossils from the Gran Dolina railway cut in northern Spain's Sierra Atapuerca are from a hitherto unknown species of early human, according to the site's excavator José Bermúdez de Castro of the National Museum of Natural Sciences, Madrid, and his colleagues. They named the newly identified species Homo antecessor (from the Latin for pioneer or explorer), and claim that it is directly ancestral to both modern humans and Neandertals.

The Gran Dolina fossils--nearly 80 postcranial, cranial, facial, and mandibular bones as well as teeth of at least six individuals--were excavated between 1994 and 1996 (see "The Peopling of Eurasia," ARCHAEOLOGY, January/February 1996). A key specimen is a partial facial skeleton of a juvenile, estimated to be ten to 11 years old, recovered in 1995. The fossils exhibit both seemingly modern features, such as sunken cheekbones with a horizontal rather than vertical ridge where upper teeth attach and a projecting nose and midface, and more primitive ones, including prominent brow ridges and premolars with multiple roots. The level in which the fossils were found, TD6, is dated by a reversal in the earth's magnetic field to more than 780,000 years ago. So far this level has been exposed only in a test pit of six square meters, but the excavators are confident that many more human fossils will be found when the larger excavations reach the level some years in the future.

40,000-year-old skull shows both modern human and Neandertal traits (results from southwestern Romania)

By comparing it with other skulls, Professor Zilhao and colleagues found that Oase 2 had the same proportions as modern human crania and shared a number of modern human and/or non-Neandertal features.

However, there were some important differences: apparently independent features that are, at best, unusual for a modern human. These included frontal flattening, a fairly large juxtamastoid eminence and exceptionally large upper molars with unusual size progression which are found principally among the Neandertals.
Professor Zilhao said: "Such differences raise important questions about the evolutionary history of modern humans. They could be the result of evolutionary reversal or reflect incomplete palaeontological sampling of Middle Paleolithic human diversity.

"They could also reflect admixture with Neandertal populations as modern humans spread through western Eurasia. This mixture would have resulted in both archaic traits retained from the Neandertals and unique combinations of traits resulting from the blending of previously divergent gene pools.

Problems with the Attribution of Neanderthal?

Paleontologist Fred H. Smith (Loyola University), who in the 1980s and 90s participated in the morphological analysis of the materials from Vindija Cave, believes that this bone is likely Neanderthal, although the morphological characteristics were not necessarily clear-cut, and given the error margin in the dates, it could represent Anatomically Modern Human remains. When asked for a comment about this question, Dr. Pããbo spoke of his confidence that the bone is Neanderthal or at most mixed modern human and Neanderthal. "As Fred says, the morphology of the bone itself does not identify this as a Neandertal. But as Fred also says, the G3 layer in Vindija is commonly accepted to be Neandertal and 38,000 is old to be modern human in the Balkans. Also, the mtDNA sequences we find in the bone are typical Neandertal. So at the most, it could be a mixture, it could not be purely modern human. As we go on with the project, we will find out if there is evidence for interbreeding with modern humans in this individual."

There have been claims both that Neanderthals assimilated with modern human beings and that they did not assimilate.
It is possible that the Neanderthals, with their small numbers, could have been absorbed by the much larger populations of modern Homo sapiens. In November 2006, a paper was published in the United States journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in which a team of European researchers suggest that Neanderthals and humans interbred, citing distinct human and Neanderthal features in a 30,000 year-old fossil found in Romania. [b]Co-author Erik Trinkaus from Washington University explains, "Closely related species of mammals freely interbreed, produce fertile viable offspring and blend populations. Extinction through absorption is a common phenomenon" (Hayes 2006)

Assimilation is difficult to prove as genetic differences between Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons were far more minute than the morphological differences between the two species might seem to indicate. Tests comparing Neanderthal and modern human mitochondrial DNA show some dissimilarity.

According to genetic studies, Neanderthals and modern humans diverged genetically 500,000 to 600,000 years ago, suggesting that, though they may have lived at the same time, Neanderthals did not contribute genetic material to modern humans (Krings et. al. 1997). Subsequent investigation of a second source of Neanderthal DNA supported these findings.

Most researchers adhere to a view that has the European Neanderthals either interbreeding and being absorbed or having been marginalized by invading Homo sapiens until they died out, leaving no genetic legacy (Kreger 2005). ......"whether they left a large heritage in modern humans or an insignificant one is a question that might not be answered satisfactorily for a long time."

The early modern human remains from the Petera Muierii, Romania have been directly dated to ~30,000 radiocarbon years before present (~30 ka 14C BP) (~35 ka cal BP) (”calendrical” age; based on CalPal 2005) and augment a small sample of securely dated, European, pre-28 ka 14C BP (~32.5 ka cal BP) modern human remains. The Muierii fossils exhibit a suite of derived modern human features, including reduced maxillae with pronounced canine fossae, a narrow nasal aperture, small superciliary arches, an arched parietal curve, zygomatic arch above the auditory porous, laterally bulbous mastoid processes, narrow mandibular corpus, reduced anterior dentition, ventral-to-bisulcate scapular axillary border, and planoconcave tibial and fibular diaphyseal surfaces. However, these traits co-occur with contextually archaic and/or Neandertal features, including a moderately low frontal arc, a large occipital bun, a high coronoid process and asymmetrical mandibular notch, a more medial mandibular notch crest to condylar position, and a narrow scapular glenoid fossa. As with other European early modern humans, the mosaic of modern human and archaic/Neandertal features, relative to their potential Middle Paleolithic ancestral populations, indicates considerable Neandertal/modern human admixture. Moreover, the narrow scapular glenoid fossa suggests habitual movements at variance with the associated projectile technology. The reproductive and scapulohumeral functional inferences emphasize the subtle natures of behavioral contrasts between Neandertals and these early modern Europeans.

Apparently, this means that the bones have features of both Neanderthals and modern humans. I’m no anthropologist, so as far as I’m concerned, the abstract may as well have been written in a foreign language. But John Hawks knows what he’s talking about.

There’s more evidence of Neanderthal-human interbreeding in this paper from Bruce Lahn’s lab at the University of Chicago. This time, the evidence is genetic rather than palaeontological, and comes from the investigation of the origins of a version of the microcephalin gene called the haplotype D allele.

microcephalin is one of the genes that is known to have been subjected to strong positive selection in the human lineage. Although the exact function of microcephalin is unclear, it is known to be involved in regulating brain size during development, and may promote the proliferation of neural progenitor cells during development of the nervous system. Mutations in the gene give rise to microcephaly, a condition in which growth of the brain is retarded.

Previous work by Lahn’s team has shown that there are two distinct groups of microcephalin alleles (versions of the gene), called the D alleles and the non-D alleles. The genes in the D alleles group have very similar DNA sequences, and arose from the amplification of a single ancestral gene approximately 37,000 years ago.These versions of the microcephalin genes are now found in some 70% of the human population.

Live Science

Humans today could be part Neanderthal, according to a new study that found our ancestors interbred with an extinct hominid species some millennia ago.

Neanderthals walked the Earth between about 130,000 and 30,000 years ago. While they co-existed with modern humans for a while, eventually they went extinct and we didn't. There has been intense scientific debate over how similar the two species were, and whether they might have mated with each other.

"The issue has been highly contentious for some time," said University of New Mexico genetic anthropologist Keith Hunley.

Last week at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Albuquerque, N.M., Hunley and colleagues presented the results of a new study that found evidence for interbreeding between modern humans and some other extinct ancient human species either Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) or another group such as Homo heidelbergensis. The research was first reported by NatureNews.

The researchers looked at DNA samples from humans living today, and found signs of leftover Neanderthal genes introduced from this interbreeding. They looked at genetic data from almost 2,000 people around the world, and calculated how much genetic variation existed between samples. The results indicate that some extinct group of hominids mixed their genes with ours at two points in history, Hunley said.

One period of interbreeding probably occurred shortly after Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa around 60,000 years ago. The researchers found an excess of genetic diversity in all modern people except Africans, suggesting that the influx of Neanderthal-like DNA came after the exodus from Africa.