http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/328/5979/710 http://arstechnica.com/science/news...aft-done-indicates-interbreeding-occurred.ars Genome hints humans, Neanderthals rolled in prehistoric hay This news has been in the works for several years, from the first reports of gene sequences in 2006 to a public overview at last year's AAAS meeting. Today's issue of Science now contains the final product: the first draft sequence of one of our recent human relatives, the Neanderthal. There's lots of information here for the genomics obsessive, which we'll get to later, but there's also some generally significant findings, including evidence that the ancestors of some human populations interbred with Neanderthals. ....
From Scientific American Wow, that's some amazing research. This has been such a contentious issue for quite a while and now it seems to have been settled. We've interbred with the Neanderthal species. Are they truly a separate "species" then? Seems more like kissing cousins Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I've often looked at a few Norse-like/Viking/Scandinavian people and thought to myself... you know, these people look more Neanderthal than Homosapian.... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! It's an interesting story on the path of human development. I wonder what these genes encode for? Girth? Stamina? What? Maybe nothing? As an aside, I find it interesting to think that sub-Saharan Africans may be more "pure" homosapian. I'm not sure if "pure" is the correct adjective but it's still an intriguing idea. Even this idea of all these human-like creatures working in competition and cooperation is fascinating. From New Scientist Maybe we're not really different species at all :shrug: just a slightly different human.
