Re: Article: Neanderthals Grow Fast, Die Young

From: Philip Deitiker (Donevenask_at_worlnet.att.net)
Date: 08/08/04 

Date: Sun, 08 Aug 2004 14:59:46 GMT

Dar_83001@yahoo.com (Daryl Habel) says in
news:d24f0b9f.0408080324.59c9a012@posting.google.com:

> While it is true (your last sentence) that there is no
> genetic evidence suggesting archaics could interbreed with
> your "humans", it seems to me just as reasonable to say you
> can't genetically prove it didn't, at least occasionally,
> occur, either. There seems to be lot of possible
> demographic movement by African-derived morphology into
> Eurasia during the Upper Pleistocene, and possible, even
> probable in some cases, replacement of local populations,
> but even allowing for a lot of replacement, that by itself
> doesn't necessarily prove one species totally replaced
> another. Depends on where you draw the "species" line in
> the sand. You've convinced yourself of a pretty rigid
> definition of "human", asnd you're entitled to your opinion
> of course. But please don't throw this HLA and Y stuff at
> me as evidence for no interbreeding. You'll have to do
> better than that to convince me to take _your_ "human"
> differences more seriously.

I am convinced by the evidence I see, the evidence that
Neandertals were replaced, from a genetic point of view is 99.9%
convincing.

I am not convinved also by the lack of good evidence. Apriori, I
would argue that Neandertals were more likely to have interbred
relative to asiatics. However the evidence that asiatic
erectoids could not have interbred with humans is less
convincing, both from a morphological point of view and from a
genetic point of view.

>From the genetic point of view:
1. MX1 locus. Hap 4 and Hap 5 are a minority even in asia.
2. HLA, many two component plots cannot join east asia to
africa, even though they join european lines directly to the
most genetically deep parts of africa. This might be explained
by a long term contribution and expansion of certain erectoid
haplotypes (selective in those regions) as well as gene
conversion and recombination to mix them up. In particular, one
group that has been difficult to reconcile are the Indonesian
highlanders. The MX1 and HLA 'hot spots' overly each other.
3. mtDNA undertyping in the region.
4. No mtDNA sequences from Erectus and undertyping of tribes in
australia and indonesia.

Even so the prospect of intermixing in south east asia, by all
these loci would present a scenario of a few individuals, 1 to
100 intermixing in the context of 1000s to 100,000s of humans.

We can contrast this with the work done in europe.

1. 1000s of mtDNA typed
2. 10,000s of HLA typed (13,000 typed in germany similar number
in denmark), all consistent with recent african origins.
3. Only one MX1 type in italy, which could be explained by rare
recent mutation.
4. 1000s of Y chromosomes typed.
 
The basic question here is if the mtDNA representing female
lines is african, it the Y lines representing males is all
african and if >100,000 HLA lines are africa. Where did this
neandertal contribution come go to. I am not unfair on this, I
can and have dissected peoples HLA, like Japan and Europe
scraping off layers of migration and examining that which is
left behind. The most genetically distinct people in europe, by
far, are the sardinians. The most genetically diverse group of
people are the iberians and the greeks and anatolians. In
essence everyone else in europe is a recent serial expansion
product of these two peoples.
  For example I scraped off layers of recent migration in europe
to show a specific allelotype connection between the french,
germans and koreans/orochon/ainu/japanese. And while I could
have stopped there I further found evidence for intermixing in
the middleeast. I also traced the origins of these early mixings
back to africa, I showed the proportion that likely came from
the east, and the proportion that likely came from the west
(iberia). This population would have migrated out of and fixed
patterns that would be later replaced in europe, essentially
making them a snapshot of the population of southern europe >10
kya. By migrating as a people and scattering themselves in asia
they in essense protected that material from wholescale
replacements. And yet where are the non-african alleles in these
peoples? In addition who did the replacing in france, and
germany. The replacement was not largely from outside, it came
from all directions. From Ireland, from the basque, from
austria, from greece, from iberia, from sardinia and from
africa. IOW there was a vacuum that sucked new peoples into a
largely evacuated region. Thus there is no great evidence that
humans in europe were replaced by all kinds of waves from
africa. It looks more like the waves reached europe, expanded in
europe and then the populations were devastated (Irish HLA,
France, German and Italian HLA makes this evident). The
protoIrish, protoBasque, protoaustrian were in much better
situations than the people in germany and france at the end of
the last ice age and these groups re-expanded.
  Nor am I fixated on this hypothesis. I traced the immigration
of several african haplotypes in the last few thousand years
into europe. However, I also at the same time detemined, that
most of the european geographic expansion had occurred before
these new haplotypes reached europe. Therefore it is quite clear
the demic diffusion and multiple sweeps do not explain the
makeup of europeans. These models argue for single discrete
early waves that expanded and largely blocked later waves.
Nor can a model be placed which says the early hybrids were
swept out, in essence the Basque, Iberians, Tuscans are what
became of the early hybrids, and the hybridization is between
older european from the east and west africans.

AMH or anatomically modern human is the morphology of Cromagnon.
THe word cromagnon is used primarily to describe the 'human'
associated cultures of france and spain. When one wants to
describe the morphology of cromagnon, AMH is used to separately
distinquish this. From the beginning the argument over cromagnon
resolved around the culture, were these paleolithic or neolithic
peoples, by artifacts both found in the caves and in caves in
the region, and while it was generally concluded these people
had qualities of what we now call a race, it was later noticed
that the racial qualities did not disappear but later blended
into modern humans and these qualities are still seen in many
moderns although not in a single individual. As I had reported
previously I felt that humans entered europe about the same
time, or even before via iberia and sardinian, and that hence
these peoples mixed. Less modern qualities are seen in both
sardinians and berbers, two suspect populations, and a wide
range of morphology exist in africa from short, stout robust
people like such as in Nigeria, to very tall people, like the
Mandenka of Senegal. This treatment of cromagnon as a special
race is interesting because genetics has basically dissolved all
racial lines as meaningless, and greater morphological extremes
exist in africa, just not the same traits. The morphological
diversity of humans changes over time in two ways.

1. People evolve in response to environment, or have an
environmentally induced response within development.

2. People change in abundance and intermix. There is nothing
spectacular about cromagnon AMHs in the context of all human
kind.

3. The traits that become subject to selection change.

And on top off this Knight determine that 'races' may have
appeared in africa, but later dissolved into each other as they
have appeared to have done all over the world. Therefore it is
nothing spectacular that non-'modern' looking races appear or
that they disappear. What is important is that while these
'human' races appear in europe, the Neandertals do not melt into
the human races, that morphology simply dissappears. This is not
true in asia, where it appears there could have been blending,
but as stated above this doesn't have to have occurred, and fine
analysis of erectus and similar looking humans refutes this, the
blending products do not neccesarily have to have the same fine
qualities as the starting materials. In fact in europe, as
humans appear on the eurasian scene Neandertals continue to
derive as classic neandertals, they are anti-blending. IOW, not
only do Neandertals show qualities of a completely different
grouping of humans, both morphologically and genetically, when
tested with a migration their morphology indicates evolution of
more distinguishing traits, possibly as a means of species
identity and xbreeding restriction, a pariah effect. (which for
the soothing of Annes Neanderhysteria, humans would have been
the Pariahs). The timing of Neandertal mtDNA coalescence roughly
coincides with human appearance in levant and implicit in
LiuJIang and other asian sites. This suggest that neandertals
underwent reexpansion and this possibly explains the greater
derivation of their morphology, with more human looking
Neandertals dying out and more distinquished surviving. lol.

I can give you the two papers dealing with 10,000s of europeans
HLA if you want to find evidence of Neandertal, be my guest.

Have fun. 

-- 
Philip
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