Well, if you want to get really technical, it is the X chromosome that is shared. Women have two and men only have one. So, she’s more of a neanderthal than you!
I am not a geneticist, but I have been under the impression that the ability to produce fertile offspring is precisely the determinant of whether two seemingly different species are, in fact, just one, despite physiologic differences that might make one think otherwise.
The concept of species is not as definitively understood as one would think. The criterion of whether two individuals can sexually reproduce fertile offspring is a common one, but this criterion is not definitive for determining species status. For instance, many more primitive animals reproduce without sex – so one would have to find other ways of determining species status in asexually reproducing organisms.
Ha ha, but no, she’s Japanese so no chance really of Neanderthal DNA there…but you are right, it wouldn’t appear the Neanderthal was a “stupid” hominid, probably lacking in the sophistication the average homo sapiens sapiens has, but by no means a dumb brute.Well, if you want to get really technical, it is the X chromosome that is shared. Women have two and men only have one. So, she’s more of a neanderthal than you!
But more seriously, it is a shame that people still have this thought that neanderthals were dumb and thus turned into an insult.
What do you mean by “separated”. Separated geographically? That doesn’t make them separate species, any more than the ages-long separation of, say, Rifs from Australoids makes them separate species.
How sure are you that Ainu didn’t have any Neanderthal forbears? One would not discount that possibility by looking at them. Nor can any Japanese discount the possibility that he/she has Ainu in his/her ancestery, as much as many would prefer not to think so.
Well, possibly, though not a notion I would suggest to my wife since I don’t like sleeping on the couch! Most Japanese are very…quietly and politely proud, shall we say, of their japanese-ness, and for many, suggesting they might have some ancestry of anything other than Japanese, and especially the Ainu who do not have exactly a high degree of esteem in Japanese society, would be likely to make you persona non grata to say the least.
The Japanese are included in the “Neanderthal” family. All human lines that left Africa 30,000+ years ago are included, and that means Japanese too; her ancestors left Africa, and on the way East they met up with Neanderthals. East Asians are not as distant from Europeans as you might think.
This is kind of interesting, though it’s not quite topical, so I’ll make it brief. Possibly you know this, but I have read, in any case, that Japanese are a mixed race, composed largely of Malay and Korean stock with possibly tiny smatterings of Chinese and even perhaps a touch of Polynesian. And, of course, the Ainu are in the background. Some have observed that there is a sort of 'class difference" among Japanese; the more upper enders being taller, slender, more refined in appearance while the working and farmer classes are shorter, more robust and with a rougher overall appearance. Whether that’s “nature” or “nurture” is hard to know, of course.Well, possibly, though not a notion I would suggest to my wife since I don’t like sleeping on the couch! Most Japanese are very…quietly and politely proud, shall we say, of their japanese-ness, and for many, suggesting they might have some ancestry of anything other than Japanese, and especially the Ainu who do not have exactly a high degree of esteem in Japanese society, would be likely to make you persona non grata to say the least.
One of my daughters is an anthropologist who worked out her own "protocol’ for determining those things those folks can determine from studying skeletal remains. That protocol is now being used by others, including her own university’s professors.She has also long doubted that Neanderthals were a distinct “species”; her doubts being based on some of the skeletal “markers”, some of which are very, very indicative of racial or ethnic origins or mixes thereof. Some of the “markers” serve no “survival” purpose whatever, and are simply the result of mutations that tend to repeat down through generations. Neanderthals share some of those inheritable but (from an evolutionists point of view) absolutely useless markers with some moderns, particularly northern Europeans.
I realize how much anthropologists like to think in terms of these evolutionary trees and all, but I truly do wonder whether there is any actual branching to the human species at all. I can accept the notion of evolution. Doesn’t bother me. But I sometimes think these distinctions are a bit strained because so many just simply want to believe in them.
Yes, it is saying that everyone who is not sub-Saharan African has some Neanderthal DNA.
I mean “separated” as in the two populations begin to separate reproductively from each other. Members of each population begin to breed only with members of the same popluation.
But would it ever, necessarily? If Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens are really just human beings with somewhat different physiognomies, in the main, is there really any good reason to assume that human DNA would change suffiently to create a species diversification? It seems there is an underlying assumption in your statement that geographic separation will inevitably cause species differention from a single specie root; specifically that some kind of “invisible hand” drives evolution toward goals. But is there really a good reason to believe that? After all, sharks, crocodiles and other species have remained essentially the same for far longer than hundreds of thousands of years and we, for instance, might not represent any evolutionary improvement over Neanderthals any more than Belgians did over the 19th Century residents of the Congo, notwithstanding the differences in technological achievement between the two.
Supposedly, a Homo erectus population diverged sufficiently from other Homo erecti, producing the first Homo sapiens. Or maybe some other species of Homo was most directly ancestral to Homo sapiens. In any event, there’s no reason to suppose that Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens could not have diverged even further from each other, if only because other species of Homo have experienced genetic divergence from their ancestors.