Do modern Europeans partly descend from Neanderthal ?

Blonde hair, white skin and blue eyes are only indigenous to Europe and found nowhere else. How can it be you have modern humans living in the exact same areas where the blonde, light skin, blue eyed Neanderthal lived and then claim they both developed light skin, blonde hair and blue eyes seperately? Its absolutely ridiculous. Sometimes I think most scientists are idiots that publish rubbish because they have to publish something.

Finally, some scientists have been claiming, its likely that modern Europeans likely got their genes for light hair,skin and eyes from Neanderthals because Neanderthals also had those traits. Absolutely right.

We know which genes cause light hair and blue eyes in humans. And we have high-coverage Neanderthal genomes. As far as I know we do not find the genes that produce light pigmentation in humans in the Neanderthal genome.

Neanderthals probably developed light pigmentation for the same reason humans did -because its an advantageous environmental adaptation in northern latitudes. But separately.
 
From Eupedia, modern humans likely inerited light skin and hair colours from continous interbreeding with Neanderthals:
https://www.eupedia.com/europe/neanderthal_facts_and_myths.shtml

This also applies to behaviour, immunity to diseases and according to some scientists, the shape of modern European skull and brain.

So considering that Neanderthal DNA is still influencing the genes of modern humans in the above ways, modern Europeans are nothing but NEANDERTHAL HYBRIDS! Asians also interbred with Denisovan.

Neanderthal looking just like a modern European, his descendants:

serveimage

You seem to have missed most of the scientific papers on that topic in the last years. Humans DID INHERIT genes related to behavior (of course a tiny proportion of all the genes associated with human behavior), as well as to skin and hair color, but NOT JUST those that are associated with loss of pigmentation, but also some of those associated with heavier pigmentation (darker color). Besides, and most importantly, NONE OF THOSE gene variants were among the most relevant and impactful gene alleles that caused light skin, light hair and other traits in modern humans. None. Therefore the modern phenotype of humans was NOT heavily influenced by Neanderthals, but they had a very very minor contribution, indeed.

Well, if you think that Neanderthal man looks exactly like a modern European, I'm afraid all you're loking at is the hair and skin color. He does not look like average Europeans at all, and that's pretty obvious and visible. Besides, all those "Neanderthals" out there are preconceived reconstructions made by artists. The latest findings of DNA studies have clearly established that Neanderthals probably had a range of skin, hair and eye colors roughly like modern Eurasians also do. Therefore, there were very probably black-haired, darker-skinned Neanderthals, too, but the reconstructions are clearly based on the assumption that, because they were very northern hominins, then they must all have looked white and blonde. But even if they were, well, that's exactly a classic case of convergent evolution, especially because we ALREADY KNOW that the looks-related genes Eurasians inherited from them were not that significant to us moderners. If blonde hair, blue eye or very light skin had indeed come from Neanderthals, we'd also expect East Asians to have much more of those traits, because it is in East Asians that we actually find the highest proportion of Neanderthal ancestry.

I find it kind of ludicrous that some Europeans are talking so much about this "Neanderthal ancestry in Europeans". It's not "in Europeans". It's in non-Africans as a whole, and Europeans aren't even those with more archaic human admixture, not even Neanderthal-specific ancestry. East Asians, Central Asians, Native Americans, Middle Easterners, South Asians, all of them have partial, even if invariably tiny, Neanderthal ancestry, and yet we don't see many non-European people supposedly "looking just like Neanderthals". Europeans as a whole are NO OUTLIERS at all in that respect.

Like Angela, I find it a bit bizarre that, instead of merely acknowledging archaic hominin introgression in modern Europeans (actually in all modern humans, including Africans), people think it's reasonable to talk of Europeans as "AMH-Neanderthal hybrids" when the average Neanderthal contribution to the modern European genetic pool is, what?, around 1.5% (and, if anything, all non-Subsaharan-Africans would be such "hybrids", not just Europeans). So a 98.5% European man with 1.5% Subsaharan ancestry is "multiracial", or a white American with 1.5% Native American ancestry is maybe a "Native American hybrid"? I can't follow that reasoning...
 
Blonde hair, white skin and blue eyes are only indigenous to Europe and found nowhere else. How can it be you have modern humans living in the exact same areas where the blonde, light skin, blue eyed Neanderthal lived and then claim they both developed light skin, blonde hair and blue eyes seperately? Its absolutely ridiculous. Sometimes I think most scientists are idiots that publish rubbish because they have to publish something.

Finally, some scientists have been claiming, its likely that modern Europeans likely got their genes for light hair,skin and eyes from Neanderthals because Neanderthals also had those traits. Absolutely right.

1) Of course white skin, light hair and light eyes exist outside Europe, and in the ancient DNA record the main skin-lightening alleles are found earlier in West Asia than in much of Europe, particularly east of Ukraine. The frequency of skin-lightening alleles in most of Europe actually increased a lot after the West Asian farmers migrated into the "core" of Europe. That premise of your reasoning is totally flawed and extremely outdated.

2) There is no evidence at all that the main blue eye-related alleles derive from Neanderthals. It actually looks much more probable that it's much more recent. Oh, and the gene for blue eyes was also found in the ancient (Chalcolithic and Neolithic) Middle East associated with 100% non-European autosomal admixtures.

3) Neanderthals actually also lived in all of West Asia and Central Asia (and certainly in North Asia, too, because a 1st generation Neanderthal+Denisovan hybrid was found recently in Siberia), so it seems your "Europe = Neanderthals = Modern Europeans" equivalence is not that accurate either.

7b4ef389667b5616fe3aa8e0a195805c.jpg


4) "Some scientists" are just wrong and have seen their hypothesis based on totally faulty and unscientific reasoning ("Europeans must have derived XYZ from Neanderthals because they also had XYZ" - what an utter phallacy!) continuously debunked in the last years as science advances rapidly.
 
^^
Relatively new reconstruction of Neanderthal "Altamura Man" from southern Italy.

338F8A0300000578-0-image-a-2_1461779277660.jpg


Even with hair cut, cleaned up, and wearing modern clothes (which would have to be custom made), there is no way this person would pass as a modern human.

If homo sapiens sapiens helped drive them to extinction, I'm sorry about that, but those are the facts, just as it's a fact that we had to purge most of their genes because they were harmful. Not all admixture is ultimately beneficial.
 
Blonde hair, white skin and blue eyes are only indigenous to Europe and found nowhere else. How can it be you have modern humans living in the exact same areas where the blonde, light skin, blue eyed Neanderthal lived and then claim they both developed light skin, blonde hair and blue eyes seperately? Its absolutely ridiculous. Sometimes I think most scientists are idiots that publish rubbish because they have to publish something.
What actual evidence - rather than artists' guessing - do we have for Neanderthal skin, hair, or eye colour?

As far as Neanderthal light pigmentation alleles, the one with highest frequency in modern populations I know of (Val92Met in MC1R) is most common in East Asia and peaks in Taiwanese Aborigines. Most people from the Arctic to the Tropics have dark hair and eyes, blue eyes are rather West Eurasian, blond hair is famously found in Melanesia. What parallel dimension are you from where blond hair, blue eyes, and light skin are restricted to Europe? I know of no evidence that light eyes or hair (as opposed to light skin) are under selection at high latitudes, so while we can reasonably argue that Neanderthals ought to have been relatively light-skinned, we can hardly claim they ought to have been blue-eyed and blond-haired.

Neither Neanderthals nor high latitudes are specific to Europe, so I can see no reason to expect that Neanderthal ancestry or adaptive alleles from them ought to be specific to Europe today.
 
^^
Relatively new reconstruction of Neanderthal "Altamura Man" from southern Italy.
338F8A0300000578-0-image-a-2_1461779277660.jpg

Even with hair cut, cleaned up, and wearing modern clothes (which would have to be custom made), there is no way this person would pass as a modern human.
If homo sapiens sapiens helped drive them to extinction, I'm sorry about that, but those are the facts, just as it's a fact that we had to purge most of their genes because they were harmful. Not all admixture is ultimately beneficial.
I haven't seen any evidence at all that Neanderthal genes were mostly harmful and had to be "purged". For +50,000 years everyone in Europe and Asia was a Neanderthal hybrid with 10-75% Neanderthal DNA. By 45,000 YBP we have mostly modern-looking remains that are still autosomally 10% Neanderthal. Neanderthal ancestry in middle Siberia has decreased by perhaps half a percentage point since 18,000 YBP, if the remains in Afontova Gora are anything to go by. That could be due to European admixture. Neanderthal ancestry pretty much hasn't decreased in Asia in any significant way that indicates natural selection against Neanderthal alleles.
This is quite remarkable given that Neanderthals never made up more than 4% of Earth's population at any given time. According to John Hawks the entire world's population of Neanderthals at any given time could have been seated comfortably at at an NFL superbowl stadium. The amount of Neanderthal ancestry in modern humans is actually higher than what one would expect; given the very shallow populatuon size of Neanderthals as compared with modern humans.
Unadmixed modern humans (west-central Africans and western Negritos) have lagged behind immensely and suffered a kind of "purge" of their own, if you will, throughout recorded history. One wonders if you were given a choice to be born black at any given time in history, vs being born white or Asian with some Neanderthal ancestry, which would you choose? Clearly, Neanderthal ancestry was critical to the current standard of living and status that you enjoy.
 
^^
Relatively new reconstruction of Neanderthal "Altamura Man" from southern Italy.

338F8A0300000578-0-image-a-2_1461779277660.jpg


Even with hair cut, cleaned up, and wearing modern clothes (which would have to be custom made), there is no way this person would pass as a modern human.

If homo sapiens sapiens helped drive them to extinction, I'm sorry about that, but those are the facts, just as it's a fact that we had to purge most of their genes because they were harmful. Not all admixture is ultimately beneficial.

This might sound horrible, but he definitely passes as more human than most Australian Aborigines (who are the most archaic modern humans):

Lena-and-Rosie-Pula.jpg


Case-Study-1.jpg


hK13hYY.png
 
Neanderthals actually had less primitive faces than modern humans:

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170214-your-face-is-probably-more-primitive-than-a-neanderthals

The truly human face is primitive -- hollow cheeks, a short, flat nose, low orbits, a high FWHR, cheekbones shifted forward -- these are the primitive features found on early hominids such as erectus.

Neanderthals had newly evolved traits such as inflated maxillae, tall and projecting noses, high and large orbits, low FWHR, retreating zygomatic bones.
 
Yes, Neanderthals did live all over Eurasia, but its likely the lighter skin ones lived in Central/Northern Europe, just like the majority of blue eyed light skin, blondes:
Map of blondes:
blond-haired-in-europe-map.jpg
 
Although Asians interbred with Neanderthals, they also interbred with 2 different groups of Denisovan, so its not surprising they don't look like Europeans who only interbred with Neanderthals.
 
The oldest remains found so far with light skin, hair and eyes was found in Motala Sweden and dated 7700 years:
main-qimg-aba0dc25afb841b00fa3db69c558594d-c
 
So how did Neanderthal genes affect modern humans:

They affect the behaviour of modern humans, whether you are a night person who likes to nap during the day. Addiction, depression, type 2 diabetes, Corns disease and many other diseases.

They affect the immune system of modern Eurasians.

THEY AFFECT THE SKIN COLOUR OF MODERN EUROPEANS and Asians.

70% of Europeans possess the Neanderthal gene for skin colour. BNC2 which affects skin colour amongst other traits,
is found in 70% of Europeans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_genetics#Interbreeding_with_modern_humans
 
Later Neanderthals resembled modern Europeans. A neanderthal was found in Italy that had the same chin shape as modern humans. He likely had a Neanderthal mother and a modern human father.

There are many hybrid modern humans/Neanderthals that have been found which is why I believe Neanderthals were assimilated into the modern human population because of interbreeding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_(biology)#In_humans
 
Later Neanderthals resembled modern Europeans. A neanderthal was found in Italy that had the same chin shape as modern humans. He likely had a Neanderthal mother and a modern human father.


No, that's wrong and outdated. You're referring to the Riparo Mezzena mandible which was described as a Neanderthal-modern human hybrid in a terrible paper by Silvana Condemi. They re-tested those remains years later and found that they weren't Neanderthal at all, in fact, the mandible was dated to the post-glacial period and had lower Neanderthal admixture than most modern Europeans. There has never been evidence of a modern human male interbreeding with a Neanderthal female.


https://www.nature.com/articles/srep29144


We also performed a more detailed investigation of the lithic assemblage of layer I. Surprisingly we found that the Riparo Mezzena mandible is not from a Neanderthal but belonged to an anatomically modern human. Furthermore, we found no evidence for the presence of Neanderthal remains among 11 of the 13 cranial and post-cranial fragments re-investigated in this study.
 
Yes, Neanderthals did live all over Eurasia, but its likely the lighter skin ones lived in Central/Northern Europe, just like the majority of blue eyed light skin, blondes:
Map of blondes:
blond-haired-in-europe


There is no evidence of a Neanderthal ever having had blond hair or blue eyes, or even light (in the modern European sense) skin.

European Neanderthals had relatively dark pigmentation.

Blond hair evolved in eastern Siberia and spread to northern Europe by way of Ancient North Eurasian admixture; blond hair/blue eyes were also more common in Siberia and central Asia than in Europe until about 900 A.D.


Those Motala HGs you posted would have been brown eyed, black haired and black skinned just like their glacial-period European ancestors were, before they got mixed with Ancient North Eurasians/Eastern Hunter Gatherers. Lighter phenotype populations existed much futher east before Motala.
 
THEY AFFECT THE SKIN COLOUR OF MODERN EUROPEANS and Asians.

70% of Europeans possess the Neanderthal gene for skin colour. BNC2 which affects skin colour amongst other traits,
is found in 70% of Europeans.

Light skin pigmentation in humans is associated with the genes SLC24A5 and SLC45A2. These genes came with us out of Africa, where they were present in low numbers. During the human populations stay in Siberia and Scandinavia during and just after the Ice Age they increased sharply in frequency in some populations in those areas, probably because they provided an adaptive advantage in those environments. Clustering is generally far faster as an adaptive mechanism than mutation.

Basonuclin 2 is indeed from the Neanderthals and involved in skin pigmentation, but not in the sense of being causative for light pigmentation, but in the way of being involved in freckling.
 
I haven't seen any evidence at all that Neanderthal genes were mostly harmful and had to be "purged". For +50,000 years everyone in Europe and Asia was a Neanderthal hybrid with 10-75% Neanderthal DNA. By 45,000 YBP we have mostly modern-looking remains that are still autosomally 10% Neanderthal. Neanderthal ancestry in middle Siberia has decreased by perhaps half a percentage point since 18,000 YBP, if the remains in Afontova Gora are anything to go by. That could be due to European admixture. Neanderthal ancestry pretty much hasn't decreased in Asia in any significant way that indicates natural selection against Neanderthal alleles.
This is quite remarkable given that Neanderthals never made up more than 4% of Earth's population at any given time. According to John Hawks the entire world's population of Neanderthals at any given time could have been seated comfortably at at an NFL superbowl stadium. The amount of Neanderthal ancestry in modern humans is actually higher than what one would expect; given the very shallow populatuon size of Neanderthals as compared with modern humans.
Unadmixed modern humans (west-central Africans and western Negritos) have lagged behind immensely and suffered a kind of "purge" of their own, if you will, throughout recorded history. One wonders if you were given a choice to be born black at any given time in history, vs being born white or Asian with some Neanderthal ancestry, which would you choose? Clearly, Neanderthal ancestry was critical to the current standard of living and status that you enjoy.

Purifying selection disproportionately affected Neanderthal alleles that modulated the tissues of the brain and the testes. This means that the Neanderthals were, by humans standards, likely rather primitive. It's our cognition and (especially male) sexual behaviour that most differentiate us from other animals.

Brain regions and testes exhibited significant downregulation of Neanderthal alleles relative to other tissues, consistent with natural selection influencing the tissue-specific regulatory landscape. Our study demonstrates that Neanderthal- inherited sequences are not silent remnants of ancient interbreeding, but have measurable impacts on gene expression that contribute to variation in modern human phenotypes.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6219754/
 

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