Do modern Europeans partly descend from Neanderthal ?

Have you seen the Y-DNA and mtDNA frequencies on this website ? At least it is complete for Europe, unlike the website you are referring to.

I, W and X probably all originated around the Caucasus (I, X) and the Pontic steppe and forest-steppe (W).
 
The naysayers are going to have a hard time denying all the new evidence in favour of a genetic assimilation of Neanderthals by Homo Sapiens.

BBC News : Neanderthal genes 'survive in us'

BBC said:
Many people alive today possess some Neanderthal ancestry, according to a landmark scientific study.

The finding has surprised many experts, as previous genetic evidence suggested the Neanderthals made little or no contribution to our inheritance.

The result comes from analysis of the Neanderthal genome - the "instruction manual" describing how these ancient humans were put together.

The genomes of 1% to 4% of people in Eurasia come from Neanderthals.

...

The sequencing of the Neanderthal genome is a landmark scientific achievement, the product of a four-year-long effort led from Germany's Max Planck Institute but involving many other universities around the world.

The project makes use of efficient "high-throughput" technology which allows many genetic sequences to be processed at the same time.

The draft Neanderthal sequence contains DNA extracted from the bones of three different Neanderthals found at Vindija Cave in Croatia.
 
click

^^ In this video from El Pais we can see how neanderthals mixed with modern humans.
 
The latest DNA research concludes that Europeans and Asians have between 1-4% Neanderthal genetic influences. The only populations without any Neanderthal DNA are from Sub-Saharan Africa.
 
This is a question I've been pondering about for many years. As far as I can tell, the Neanderthals were light and blue eyed. Some dispute that. I don't know. If that however is the case, it seems as if the region of distribution of Neanderthals concur roughly with the area where light humans are distributed i.e. caucasians. My thought was that we might have gotten the fairness and blue eyes from mixing with them. That they didn't disappear or where exterminated but that they are us. Mixed and integrated over time.

Hardly scientific, but something that I thought about for a long time. It probably has no merit at all. Subjects like this are probably rarely as simple as that.
 
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Very interesting to read that Eurepeans and Asians have 1-4% Neanderthaler
ancestry.

But did the Asiatic Neanderthaleres have fair/red hair and blue eyes?
I supposed that Neanderthalers only lived in Western-Europe.
Why were these fair hair and blue so numerous with the North- and
West-Europeans? Perhaps there was an other cause which stimalated
blond hair and light eyes for the West-Europeans?
 
Light eyes and hair are indigenous throughout Europe. The north has higher percentages of light hair and eyes primarily because of environmental adaptation. Actually, in the mountainous areas of Morocco, descendants of non-mixed Eurasian (White) origin Berbers show ~ 40% light eyes.
 
This is a question I've been pondering about for many years. As far as I can tell, the Neanderthals were light and blue eyed. Some dispute that. I don't know. If that however is the case, it seems as if the region of distribution of Neanderthals concur roughly with the area where light humans are distributed i.e. caucasians. My thought was that we might have gotten the fairness and blue eyes from mixing with them. That they didn't disappear or where exterminated but that they are us. Mixed and integrated over time.

Hardly scientific, but something that I thought about for a long time. It probably has no merit at all. Subjects like this are probably rarely as simple as that.

That's what I also hypothesised here and here.

Central Asia appears to be the most likely place for Homo Sapiens-Neanderthal intermingling. Blond and red hair as well as blue eyes might well have come to Europe with the Indo-Europeans from the Eurasian plain. I think it is very probable that modern humans got fair skin, hair and eyes from Neanderthal in Central Asia around 45,000 years ago. These new hybrid modern humans would have belonged to Y-haplogroup K, who has spawned haplogroups L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S and T.

L and T moved back to South and South-West Asia (T as far as North-East Africa). M and S went all the way to Australia and Papua. N moved north to Siberia, O east to East Asia. P, Q and R remained in Central Asia for many millennia, then Q moved to north-east Siberia and the Americas around 20,000 years ago. R1 and R2 developed in Central Asia. R2 moved to northern India and Pakistan. R1 split into R1a and R1b. R1a remained all over Central Asia, with a branch in the Pontic steppe. R1b moved to northern Mesopotamia and Anatolia, the rejoined the western R1a branch across the Caucasus. Their fusion gave birth to Indo-European culture and people, then expanded into Europe and back to Central and South Asia.

That's a very brief and schematic summary of how Neanderthal genes spread all over Eurasia.

As for why fair hair and eyes are not found among the first branches to depart from Central Asia (N, O and Q), there are several possibilities.

1) N, O and Q people mixed early with another human population and lost the fair hair and eyes gene before expanding. My guess is that they mixed with another hybrid, of Homo Sapiens and the descendants of the Peking Man, which gave the Mongoloid features to East Asians, Siberians and Native Americans. These older Homo Sapiens in East Asia belonged to Y-haplogroup C and D. N, O and Q might have replaced them as paternal lineages for any of the reasons that R1a and R1b replaced older Y-lineages in Europe. I am increasingly in favour of a genetic predisposition for these haplogroups to father more boys.

2) The fair hair and eyes mutations were not present in the people who migrated north and east from Central Asia. It was only inherited by another tribe, who later became the R people.

3) The fair hair and eyes mutation did not come from Neanderthal but was a later independent happening.
 
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Light eyes and hair are indigenous throughout Europe. The north has higher percentages of light hair and eyes primarily because of environmental adaptation. Actually, in the mountainous areas of Morocco, descendants of non-mixed Eurasian (White) origin Berbers show ~ 40% light eyes.

Haplogroup R1b has been found among the Berbers. It's possible that the Vandals who settled in the Maghreb mixed with the Berbers after being defeated.
 
Haplogroup R1b has been found among the Berbers. It's possible that the Vandals who settled in the Maghreb mixed with the Berbers after being defeated.

How do explain old accounts provided by Spanish and Portuguese maritime explorers describing a good number of Gaunches (Canary Island Berbers) as having light hair and eyes? The Gaunches were isolated and did not have any contact with Vandals.
 
How do explain old accounts provided by Spanish and Portuguese maritime explorers describing a good number of Gaunches (Canary Island Berbers) as having light hair and eyes? The Gaunches were isolated and did not have any contact with Vandals.

It's not because there is no documented evidence of the Vandals in the Canaries that they or their descendants didn't settle there.
 
Interesting to read that blond/red fair and blue eyes of the Nordic Race
had an Neanderthaler origin. Is there difference between red and fair hair?
Are the Neanderthalers responsible for ashblond hair of the East-Baltics
in East-Europe?

I understand that the intermingling with homo sapiens sapiens and Neanderthalers happened in Central Asia. Perhaps the blue eyes and
fair of some Arabs and a lot of the Berbers also has a Neanderthaler origin.

Remarkable that the equality of men and women in North-Europe had
a Neanderthaler origin. I read that the psychological deviation of autism originated from the Neanderthalers. So I think that in Sweden and Norway there are much more autistic persons than in other parts of Europe.
 
Interesting to read that blond/red fair and blue eyes of the Nordic Race
had an Neanderthaler origin. Is there difference between red and fair hair?
Are the Neanderthalers responsible for ashblond hair of the East-Baltics
in East-Europe?

I understand that the intermingling with homo sapiens sapiens and Neanderthalers happened in Central Asia. Perhaps the blue eyes and
fair of some Arabs and a lot of the Berbers also has a Neanderthaler origin.

Remarkable that the equality of men and women in North-Europe had
a Neanderthaler origin. I read that the psychological deviation of autism originated from the Neanderthalers. So I think that in Sweden and Norway there are much more autistic persons than in other parts of Europe.

Fair hair runs from light brown to light blond. Red is intermediary between blond and brown.
 
It's not because there is no documented evidence of the Vandals in the Canaries that they or their descendants didn't settle there.

It should be said that depictions of Berbers by ancient Greeks, Romans and others show a good percentage of individuals with fair hair and eyes. Obviously, these were produced prior to the Vandal invasion of North Africa.
 
How do explain old accounts provided by Spanish and Portuguese maritime explorers describing a good number of Gaunches (Canary Island Berbers) as having light hair and eyes? The Gaunches were isolated and did not have any contact with Vandals.
Not only european explorers, but also arabs described them as fair haired,the arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi wrote a book in which he said :
""a village whose inhabitants were often fair hair with long and flaxen hair and the women of a rare beauty".
 
Not only european explorers, but also arabs described them as fair haired,the arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi wrote a book in which he said :
""a village whose inhabitants were often fair hair with long and flaxen hair and the women of a rare beauty".

Light hair and eyes among Eurasian Berbers were / are mainly indigenous. Given the great advances in the genetic and archaeological sciences, the racial and ethnic truths about numerous human populations will soon be very clear.
 
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Thor Heyerdahl, of Kon Tiki fame, based his theory of reed raft travel from Africa to the Americas, partly on the Guanches of the Canary Islands. This is what led him to sail from the Canaries to the Caribbean on a reed raft during his "Ra Expedition'.

He reasoned that if the Guanches could have gotten to the Canaries as early as he believed, they could also have followed the prevailing currant on the the Americas.

He was a great believer in the seas being highways, not barriers, during the Neolithic Period.
 
Here is an article from Discovery News about some interesting adaptations of Neanderthals.

Neanderthal males had ‘Popeye’-like arms

Arm bone remains show Neanderthals were unusually pumped up on male hormones

Remains of an early Neanderthal with a super strong arm suggest that Neanderthal fellows were heavily pumped up on male hormones, possessing a hormonal status unlike anything that exists in humans today, according to a recent paper.

Neanderthal males probably evolved their ultra macho ways due to lifestyle, genes, climate and diet factors, suggests the study, published in the journal Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia.

Project leader Maria Mednikova told Discovery News that Neanderthal males hunted in the "extreme," helping to beef up one arm.

Full article is here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38105813/ns/technology_and_science-science/
 

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