Comments | jeremy_m: World View Overturned Alert! Again!

jeremy_m

World View Overturned Alert! Again!

Jul 31, 2008 12:16

Unusually, television seems to have overtaken the web in reporting results from the Neanderthal Genome Project, which revolutionise my view of the world, again. See Sex and the Neanderthals if it's still around for download when you read this.

( What did you do in Genesis, Daddy? )

Comments 2

athanasius July 31 2008, 13:48:19 UTC

1) Is The One Bone old enough such that that particular Neanderthal couldn't have picked it up from another of the homonid species?

2) Could the FOXP2 gene not have been evolved more than once, independently ?

jeremy_m July 31 2008, 17:42:34 UTC

1) That would multiply up the questions nicely, but I don't think there are any good candidates. The mutation is dated to within the last few hundred thousand years (which was why we didn't expect Neanderthals to have it, we branched from them about 500,000 years ago), while Neanderthals were isolated in Europe. Occam's Razor would be quite blunted if they had to have some contact with, say, Asian Erectus not via the archaic Sapiens in the Middle East ( ... )