SMITHSONIAN ON THE LATEST - NEANDERTHALS and DENISONVANS

SMITHSONIAN : HUMAN ORIGINS: NEANDERTHAL DNA  a full and excellent article that provides information also on blood type evolution, the perception of bitter taste, dental enamel, immune response, 

Excerpt:   

Clotting, Depression, and Allergies

While many of the genes that we retain for generations are either beneficial or neutral, there are some that have become deleterious in our new, modern lives. There are several genes that our Neanderthal relatives have contributed to our genome that were once beneficial in the past but can now cause health-related problems (Simonti et al 2016). One of these genes allows our blood to coagulate (or clot) quickly, a useful adaptation in creatures who were often injured while hunting. However, in modern people who live longer lives, this same trait of quick-clotting blood can cause harmful blood clots to form in the body later in life. Researchers found another gene that can cause depression and other neurological disorders and is triggered by disturbances in circadian rhythms. Since it is unlikely that Neanderthals experienced such disturbances to their natural sleep cycles, they may never have expressed this gene, but in modern humans who can control our climate and for whom our lifestyle often disrupts our circadian rhythms, this gene is expressed more frequently.

AMAZING RECONSTUCTION OF SHANIDAR NEADERTHAL WOMAN'S FACE

BBC NEWS : FACE OF 75,000 YEAR OLD NEANDERTHAL WOMAN 

The skull was smashed flat.  In this story of cutting edge Archaeology and Science, despite the many pieces being soft, the skull was reconstructed, the "fat" and "muscles" added in the right places, and the face came forth.

Excerpt:

The rebuilt skull was then surface-scanned and a 3D print given to Dutch artists Adrie and Alfons Kennis, who are renowned for their skill in creating anatomically faithful representations of ancient people from their bone and fossil remains.

NEADERTHALS DID NOT RAISE PINKY WHEN SIPPING TEA!

Most of us have used the term NEANDERTHAL to describe an uncouth person, a man or woman with no manners, or sometimes a person who seems to be a "throw back" in their attitudes about the opposite sex...


DISCOVERY : NEATHDERTHALS LACKED SOCIAL SKILLS

OZZY OSBOURNE'S GOT NEADERTHAL DNA? : ARE WE SURPRISED? (OZZY HAS A GREAT SENSE OF HUMOR!)

OK, I read Ozzy's book a few months ago, ust because, and he was very very funny!  Even though I never watched the Osbourne family's reality TV show and am not a fan of Heavy Metal music or people who behead bats on stage with their own mouths, so, so I still found his book truly funny.  In it he wondered why he was still alive.  Guess some scientists were wondering too!

Here's the article from Scientific American  Ozzy Osbourne's Genome Reveals Some Neandertal Lineage By Katherine Harmon

EXCERPT: "For a long time we thought that Neandertals didn't have any descendents today, but it turns out that Asians and Europeans have some evidence of Neandertal lineage—like a drop in the bucket. We found a little segment on Ozzy's chromosome 10 that very likely traces back to a Neandertal forebearer.


Ozzy, of course, was tickled to hear this."

THE FATE OF THE NEANDERTHALS : A and E FILM : WE HAVE A LITTLE OF THEM IN US?

Just noshing the other night watching this film, which came out in 2006, and is probably still available for rental or at your public library. A and E's THE FATE OF THE NEANDERTHALS, narrated by Leonard Nimoy of Star Trek fame, is the kind of educational film I enjoy. Several important professors of anthropology and archeology speak, and here is the consensus:

Neanderthals had very difficult lives. They usually lived to about 40, but this was enough time for some of them to have grandchildren. The men were buried with grave goods like weapons and flowers, the women were never buried with anything. This reflects a lack of status, possibly even a belief that women did not have an afterlife and suggests women were not respected in life. It is also possible that women and children lived separate of men for long periods of time. There is evidence that Neanderthals lived in small groups, and there were probably never more than 100,000 living at any one time. Their range based on burials and other evidence includes Israel and Iran, the British isles, and sweep of Mediterranean Europe. Since they treated each other differently than they treated most animals, they probably had a sense of themselves as special and different, and they may have had a concept of religiousness or worshipped a deity.

They were alive when Homo Sapiens emerged and the two groups probably encountered each other and recognized each other as both different and as people. Physically they were very robust, men with the strength of about 3 times that of modern man.

CROATIAN NEANDERTHALS DNA and US : WE HAVE SOME OF THEIR DNA STILL IN US!

Has your boyfriend been acting a bit like a NEANDERTHAL lately? Maybe that's because some of us are still carrying some NEANDERTHAL DNA in us!

There are so many articles on the Net about this breaking news, but I linked to Time-Science here... cool picture of someone you dated right there!

"Scientists discovered that 1% to 4% of the latter three DNA samples is shared with Neanderthals — proof that Neanderthals and early modern humans interbred. The absence of Neanderthal DNA in the genomes of the two present-day Africans indicates that interbreeding occurred after some root population of early modern humans left Africa but before the species evolved into distinct groups in Europe and Asia. "

GOT THAT? INTERBRED!

ARE YOU PART NEATHDERTHAL? GENES MAY SAY YEA

RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer : Between 1 percent and 4 percent of genes in people from Europe and Asia trace back to Neanderthals."

Click on the link above to get to the full story!