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News & ArtsThursday, May 6, 2010
Sex / Science Can They Blame This On Gay Marriage?
Posted by Dan Savage on Thu, May 6, 2010 at 2:46 PM
NYT:
Neanderthals mated with some modern humans after all and left their imprint in the human genome, a team of biologists has reported in the first detailed analysis of the Neanderthal genetic sequence.
2
Do neanderthals actually count as another race? (As opposed to the erroneous application of 'race' to homo sapiens sapiens people with merely different skin colors and cultural customs.) If so, then the "purity" of our race was diluted millenia ago and it's a lost cause. Not that bigots will be able to follow that logic very well, or will want to.
5
I suppose the homophobes could say that Neanderthals introduced the "gay gene" into the human species. But since there is a crossover between homophobes and creationists they are likely to say that merely because Neanderthals are not mentioned in their book that they did not exist in the fictional Garden of Eden.
6
That would explain why there are redhead modern humans- they found the redhead gene in Neanderthals a few years ago http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7062415.stm
I've always loved redheads- now I think I like em more...
I've always loved redheads- now I think I like em more...
8
I don't know...uni-brows and excess body hair, doesn't sound very gay to me. I think just the opposite, probably we should be blaming Neanderthals for Nascar and George Reker.
10
@2: Yes, I would say so at the very least. Depending on who you talk to, they're considered either a different subspecies of humanity (H. sapiens neandertalensis) or a different species altogether (H. neandertalensis), albeit one at least somewhat genetically compatible with modern humans.
11
Of COURSE Gay Marriage did this. After all, Gay Marriage killed the dinosaurs in the first place.
http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid…
http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid…
12
Hey Dan, you old homophone, I just thought of the title for your upcoming kids' sex ed book:
"Just Say Know." Heh.
"Just Say Know." Heh.
16
I was at Svante Paabo's (he's pretty much the spearhead of all this stuff) talk today at Vanderbilt where he essentially broke the news, just a couple hours after the papers went live. SO FREAKING COOL. And if anyone wants a brief explanation of the science, I'm happy to oblige.
17
I am shocked.
I thought Jesus only had sex with dinosaurs and now you want me to believe he had sex with short stocky hairy women?
I thought Jesus only had sex with dinosaurs and now you want me to believe he had sex with short stocky hairy women?
19
If two species can interbreed and have viable offspring (children that aren't sterile) then by definition they are not separate species at all. I'd be interested to know what modern humans would have looked like had they not interbred with Neanderthals. Christ, the Eugenicists are going to have a field day.
20
I guess I mated with a couple of them years ago when NYC's Lure was open. They may have been Neanderthals but they were fucking hot.
21
@14, I've seen enough feet and cocks to know that there isn't a size correlation. I still like big feet though.
22
@19
Agreed. This finding brings up interesting questions about speciation. Humans seem to break the speciation mold though. Other species where members are separated for thousands of years (eg. Darwin's finches) speciate and can no longer interbreed at all or at least produce fertile offspring, yet when humans encountered a segregated population of themselves in America thousands of years later speciation had not occurred.
Agreed. This finding brings up interesting questions about speciation. Humans seem to break the speciation mold though. Other species where members are separated for thousands of years (eg. Darwin's finches) speciate and can no longer interbreed at all or at least produce fertile offspring, yet when humans encountered a segregated population of themselves in America thousands of years later speciation had not occurred.
23
So now does Israel belong to the Africans or to the Neanderthals?
According to Dr. Klein, people in Africa expanded their range and reached just Israel during a warm period some 120,000 years ago. They retreated during a cold period some 80,000 years ago and were replaced by Neanderthals.
So now does Israel belong to the Africans or to the Neanderthals?
24
A couple things:
Brandon @ 19. Just...no. We don't have Neandertal GENES, per se, and there's no evidence yet that the segments of the genome that came from them are selected for in any way. What it looks like right now, for instance, is that the 1-4% of MY genome that's Neandertal-fragments are probably different from the fragments of your 1-4%. And we DO know what modern humans who didn't interbreed with Neandertals look like: Africans.
sickgirl @ 22: Remember, though, that the timescale for speciation is generations, not years, and the selective pressures on Darwin's finches and many of our best examples of speciation-as-we-watched are incredibly strong AND occurred in species that have relatively short generation times. Humans don't break the mold as far as any biologist I know is concerned. Not to mention, of course, that we commonly delineate species not just by them being UNABLE to interbreed but by them not doing so for whatever reason. In this sense, the species difference is useful because humans and Neandertals were morphologically and likely socially different, but it doesn't necessarily have to apply to their ability to mate.
Brandon @ 19. Just...no. We don't have Neandertal GENES, per se, and there's no evidence yet that the segments of the genome that came from them are selected for in any way. What it looks like right now, for instance, is that the 1-4% of MY genome that's Neandertal-fragments are probably different from the fragments of your 1-4%. And we DO know what modern humans who didn't interbreed with Neandertals look like: Africans.
sickgirl @ 22: Remember, though, that the timescale for speciation is generations, not years, and the selective pressures on Darwin's finches and many of our best examples of speciation-as-we-watched are incredibly strong AND occurred in species that have relatively short generation times. Humans don't break the mold as far as any biologist I know is concerned. Not to mention, of course, that we commonly delineate species not just by them being UNABLE to interbreed but by them not doing so for whatever reason. In this sense, the species difference is useful because humans and Neandertals were morphologically and likely socially different, but it doesn't necessarily have to apply to their ability to mate.
25
@24 I agree with you that this is incredibly cool. I almost couldn't believe what I was reading when the story broke. Thanks for reminding me of the distinction between being able to and actually mating. It's good to have a biologist around.
27
@22 - Finches have a much shorter life cycle than humans. You can't compare the evolutions of species by years, you have to compare it by numbers of life cycles; that's why they use fruit flies for evolution experiments.
This does raise interesting questions, though. If anything, I should think this would be a final nail in the coffin for anyone who still believes in racial genetic essentialism; humans of different colors aren't different sub-breeds of the same species, humans and neanderthals are.
This does raise interesting questions, though. If anything, I should think this would be a final nail in the coffin for anyone who still believes in racial genetic essentialism; humans of different colors aren't different sub-breeds of the same species, humans and neanderthals are.
28
The other bad news: there's another, simpler explanation for the data. The few genes some modern Europeans, Asians, and Papua New Guineans, but not modern Africans, seem to share with the tiny sample of Neandertal DNA, are just as likely to be genes our common ancestor had. The gene pool that stayed in Africa could have lost those segments (assuming we don't find them there after all, with more testing) after H.s.s left Africa for parts east.
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