Do modern Europeans partly descend from Neanderthal ?

[Maciamo]

I have read further studies mentioning that at first (until about 40,000 years ago), Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons had the same tools, technology and lifestyle. Both buried their deaths, with similar ornaments. The Cro-Magnons then developed new tools, which were either copied or developed independently later by Neanderthals. As a matter of intelligence, both seem to be equivalent. Skeletons of hybrids of the two species dating from 25,000 years ago, around the time of the disapperance of Neanderthals, may indicate that their disappearance was indeed due to a genetic absorbtion by the increasingly numerous Cro-Magnons. This latter would have outnumbered Neanderthals due to to the cooling of the climate and the fact that Neanderthals always lived more North, in colder regions with less food, while Cro-Magnon could migrate south more easily via the Middle East to Africa, then come back more numerous when climate warmed up again. There have been signs of trade between the two species, which show that they had amicable contacts, and could very well of interbred with each others.

Furthermore, we see around 15-20,000 years ago, just after the hypothetical merger of the 2 species, the appearance of mural paintings in caves. This phenomemon is strictly limited to Western Europe. Why would such paintings have been done by European Cro-Magnon only, and not other Cro-Magnon (=Homo Sapiens) around the world ? I believe that this could be due to the racial convergence with Neanderthal, because Neanderthal had a more developed occipital lobe, and thus a better vision and visual memory, resulting in an earlier development of visual arts. This also explains the difference in skull shape, especially the more elongated occipital lobe, between Caucasoids and other humans, esp. compared to Mongoloids.

Some French and American researchers also found convincing evidence of an direct evolution from the Asian Homo Erectus toward the modern Asian Homo Sapiens, probably after interbreeding with a new arrival of Homo Sapiens from the Middle East.

[Maciamo]

According to this article, it would have taken 850,000 years to achieve the current diversity in hair and eyes colours in Europe. We know that Cro-Magnon moved out of Africa and the Middle East to "colonise" Europe around 40,000 years ago at the latest. This would support the theory that the blond or red hair, and blue or green eyes found only in Europe were indeed indeed inherited from an older occupant than Cro-Magnon, and there was only the Neanderthal before them. This is not yet a definitive proof, but another convincing evidence that modern Europeans, especially those of Germanic, Celtic and North Slavic descent, carry a more important part of Neanderthal genes that previously admitted.

[Maciamo]

Carleton Coon supports the theory that modern Europeans are of dual origins, consisting of Upper Paleolithic (mixture of Sapiens and Neanderthals) types and Mediterranean (purely Sapiens) types.

In his s book The Races of Europe, studying the population of Fehmarn Island, at the border of Germany and Denmark, he says :

Fifty per cent of the Fehmarn males studied were thick-set and heavy-bodied; a lateral or somatic constitutional type is common here. One-fourth of the group has a straight, presumably flattish occiput, despite the great vault length; a planoccipital cranial form is a strong minority trait. Half of the noses have straight or wavy profiles; 30 per cent have convex, and 20 per cent concave. The photographs indicate that heavy brow-ridges and exceptionally sloping foreheads are common.

The hair is brown as a rule among adults; 54 per cent could be classed as dark brown (Fischer #27, 4-7); the rest are divided between golden and ashen shades of light brown and blond. The hair as a rule darkens steadily throughout life; at the onset of senility, 80 per cent of all non-white hair observed was dark brown, as against 7 per cent at the age of 6 years. By contrast, the eyes are very light; less than 3 per cent have brown or dark-mixed shades (Martin #1-6); 78 per cent have eyes which are pure light or almost entirely so (Martin #13-16). This combination of very light eyes with brown hair is typical of Palaeolithic survivors in northern Europe, rather than of Nordics.

[Maciamo]

Studies by Harvard anthropologist C. S. Coon in his book The Races of Europe, modern Europeans could partially descend from Neanderthal.

The Neanderthal group was extremely variable, and showed within its ranks clear evidence of evolutionary change in a human direction.
...
In Palestine, which falls on a periphery of this cultural range, excavations in caves near the Sea of Galilee and Mount Carmel have revealed a number of Neanderthaloid skeletons which are different from those in Europe, and others which are, in fact, only partly Neanderthaloid.
...
In a nearby grotto, the Mugharet es-Skhul, were the remains of a number of individuals, including three male crania sufficiently complete for reconstruction and measurement, A preliminary publication of three of these skulls, and of the long bones of the same and other individuals, gives us a reasonably accurate idea of their position in the human family tree. Originally considered members of the Neanderthaloid species, they are now known to be fully human, although preserving a number of unmistakable Neanderthaloid characteristics.
...
In the skull, Skhul man is definitely intermediate between the Neanderthal and sapiens groups, but much closer to the latter, so that its inclusion in the living species cannot be denied.
...
In vault form, then, two are mainly sapiens, while one appears, from the measuremenis, to be largely Neanderthaloid.
...
Keith and McCown have demonstrated, beyond serious doubt, that the Skhul skeletons are intermediate between Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens, and that Neanderthal must therefore be included among the ancestors of modern races. Thus the opinions of Hrdlička, Aichel, and others, expressed earlier on the basis of equally valid but less striking evidence, are at last, in one sense or another, substantiated We now know that the Neanderthal strain did not become extinct, but passed over into the genetic stock of modern man. If this occurred once, it could have occurred a number of times. The field is flow open to discover survivals of non-sapiens accretions in modern races in other parts of the earth.

[Maciamo]

This article (PDF) suggest that interbreeding did indeed occur between Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthalis. It says that the H2 MAPT haplotype, only found among a minority of Europeans, could have been inherited from Neanderthal.

The tau (MAPT) locus exists as two distinct clades, H1 and H2. The H1 clade has a normal linkage disequilibrium structure and is the only haplotype found in all populations except those derived from Caucasians. The H2 haplotype is the minor haplotype in Caucasian populations and is not found in other populations. It shows no recombination over a region of 2 Mb with the more common H1 haplotype. The distribution of the haplotype and analysis of the slippage of dinucleotide repeat markers within the haplotype suggest that it entered Homo sapiens populations between approx. 10000 and 30000 years ago. However, sequence comparison of the H2 haplotype with the H1 haplotype and with the chimp sequence suggests that the common founder of the H1 and H2 haplotypes was far earlier than this. We suggest that the H2 haplotype is derived from Homo neanderthalensis and entered H. sapiens populations during the coexistence of these species in Europe from approx. 45000 to 18000 years ago and that the H2 haplotype has been under selection pressure since that time, possibly because of the role of this H1 haplotype in neurodegenerative disease.

[Maciamo]

More articles on the subject :

Are you part-Neanderthal?

People of European descent may be 5% Neanderthal, according to a DNA study that questions whether modern humans left Africa and replaced all other existing hominids.

The same study, published in the latest issue of the journal PloS Genetics, also says West Africans could be related to an archaic human population.
As both groups spread, the findings suggest we all have a bit of archaic DNA in our genes.

"Instead of a population that left Africa 100,000 years ago and replaced all other archaic human groups, we propose that this population interacted with another population that had been in Europe for much longer, maybe 400,000 years," says Vincent Plagnol.
Plagnol, a researcher in the Department of Molecular and Computational Biology at the University of Southern California, and colleague Assistant Professor Jeffrey Wall analysed patterns of ancestral linkage in 135 modern individuals.
...

Human Brain Carries at Least One Neanderthal Gene

New finds in Europe shed new light on the relation between modern humans and Neanderthal people. Skeletons discovered in Pestera Muierii (Woman's Cave) in Romania, in Czech Republic, in Portugal presents signs of interbreeding between the two species.

Whatever might have been this relationship - if there was sporadic or continuous interbreeding - a new study suggests that this could
have had a major impact on the evolution of the Homo sapiens�f brain. Neanderthals, although long extinct, may have transmitted to our own species a lasting genetic gift. Till now, analysis of Neanderthal ancient DNA has revealed no signs of interbreeding.

Recently, a team at the University of Chicago reported that at least one gene, called microcephalin, involved in regulating brain growth (although the gene's precise role is not known), might have passed from the ancient species to ours.
...

and from another source :

Evidence that the adaptive allele of the brain size gene microcephalin introgressed into Homo sapiens from an archaic Homo lineage

about hair and skin now :

Red hair a legacy of Neanderthal man

Red hair may be the legacy of Neanderthal man. Oxford University scientists think the ginger gene, which is responsible for red hair, fair skin and freckles, could be up to 100,000 years old. They say their discovery points to the gene having originated in Neanderthal man, who lived in Europe for 260,000 years before the ancestors of modern man arrived from Africa about 40,000 years ago.
...
The researchers homed in on the MC1R gene linked to hair and skin colour and used DNA analysis to find a variation that produced the same kind of pigmentation changes as in humans with red hair and pale skin.

The study, published in the journal Science, comes a week after another set of researchers looking at a different gene said Neanderthals may have been capable of sophisticated speech.

�gThe papers make Neanderthals more like modern Europeans, with light skin and hair colour and language abilities, and yet there are no signs of interbreeding with modern humans,�h Carles Lalueza-Fox, a molecular biologist at the University of Barcelona, said in a commentary in Science.
...

This all seems to confirm my theory.

[Maciamo]

One more interesting article : Washington Post : Modern Man, Neanderthals Seen as Kindred Spirits

...
The two groups saw each other as kindred spirits and, when conditions were right, they mated.

How often this happened will never be known, but paleoanthropologist Erik Trinkaus says it probably occurred more often than is generally imagined.

In his latest work, published last week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Trinkaus, of Washington University in St. Louis, analyzed prehistoric fossil remains from various parts of Europe. He concluded that a significant number have attributes associated with both Neanderthals and the modern humans who replaced them.

"Given the data we now have, it would be highly improbable to argue there is no Neanderthal contribution to the early European population that came out of Africa," Trinkaus said. "I believe there was continuous breeding between the two for some period of time.
...
By the time the Neanderthals were dying about 30,000 years ago, the fossil record suggests that about 10 to 20 percent of the genetic material in European humans was from Neanderthals, he says.

[Maciamo]

Evidence that Neanderthal could have survived well into modern times and could interbreed with Homo Sapiens

The Almas is a cryptozoological species of presumed hominid reputed to inhabit the Caucasus and Pamir Mountains of central Asia. In other words, they could be relict hominids, i.e. isolated descendents of ancient forms of humans, such as Neanderthal. Sometimes, these hominids are refered to as troglodytes.

Almas are typically described as human-like bipedal animals, between five and six and a half feet tall, their bodies covered with reddish-brown hair, with anthropomorphic facial features including a pronounced browridge, flat nose, and a weak chin.[1] Many cryptozoologist researchers have been struck by the similarity between these descriptions and modern reconstructions of how Neanderthals might have appeared.

One such hominid was captured in the wild in Abkhazia, Western Caucasus (now in Georgia) in the late 1800's. Her name was Zana (see article). She was buried near the village of Tkhina, but her remains were not yet found by modern scientists to examine her skull and DNA. She, however, had a son with a

Accounts of people who had seen Zana describe her as having black or dark grey skin (maybe partially from dirt, as she was imprisoned in a cage like a wild animal) with reddish black hair. After 3 years in a cage, Zana had became tamer and was released. She was particularily athletic, fast at both running and swimming.

She gave birth several times to "half-breed" children (with local villagers), and four of them (born between 1878 and 1884) are known to have been taken away from her and raised by local families. Contrarily to her who had been raised in the wild, her children could speak and behave like normal men and women, in spite of some strange physical and mental features.

The two sons (Dzhanda and Kwhit) and two daughters (Kodzhanar and Gamasa) had children of their own, whose descendents still live in that region. Khwit and Gamasa were given the surname Sabekia.

Kwhit died in 1954. His skull was examined by scientists, and indeed shows clear evidence of strong Neanderthal features mixed with modern features.

It is interesting to note that Gamasa and Khwit were described as darked skinned and powerfully built, but otherwise lacking Zana's facial apperance. Some genes are dominant and other recessive. This is why a child born to a European and an East Asian parent will look much more East Asian than European. The same is true of a child half Black African, and half European. So if Neanderthal contribute to modern European genes, it is likely that millenia of interbreeding have mostly erased most of their physical characteristics, leaving only to modern Europeans some very slight Neanderthal features not found among people elsewhere in the world.

British anthropologist Myra Shackley in "Still Living ?" describes Ivan Ivlov's 1963 observation of a whole family of Almas.

[Maciamo]

Analysis of Neanderthal mtDNA revealed that several HVR mutations found in all Neanderthal samples so far are also found in the rare European haplogroups I, X and W (altogether accounting for 1 or 2% of the European mtDNA).

These haplogroups are phylogenetically related, and are quite different from all other haplogroups on Earth. Another particularity is their great geographic spread, even in very isolated regions (e.g. Sardinia, Norway), despite their very low frequency. This points at a very ancient diaspora, probably prior the Neolithic re-expansion at the end of the Ice Age. In fact, haplogroup X is found as far as North America, which proves that it had spread there before the end of the Ice Age.

The following mutations were found in all 7 Neanderthal mtDNA tested so far :
C16223T A16230G C16234T G16244A C16256A C16262T 16263.A T16311C

Among them, it is interesting to see that C16223T is found in haplogroups I, W and X. A16230G is a defining mutation of haplogroup X. T16311C defines a I subclade.

These mutations are also typical of Neanderthal (found in all but one sample) :

G16129A A16139T C16148T A16183. T16189C 16193.C T16209 C16278T A16299G C16320T T16362C

16183, 16189 and 16278 are defining mutations of haplogroup X, and 16193, 16223, 16230 are all found among subclades of haplogroup X. 16129 is a defining mutation of haplogroup I.

This is strong evidence that haplogroup X, and possibly also I and W are related to, if not directly descended from one subgroup of Neanderthal.

Neanderthal was wont and well adapted to cold climates. The warming up of the Earth after each Ice Age has probably pushed them to seek colder territory than Homo Sapiens. This would explain the spread of haplogroup X to typically cold regions like Northern Europe, Russia, the Caucasus, Siberia and Canada.

This would also explain why cases of relict hominids like Zana (above post) are always spotted in cold and remote regions, like the Caucasus, Russia, Norway or the Himalaya. If Homo Sapiens were/are better adapted than Neanderthals and replaced them and outnumbered and eventually absorbed them, it is normal that the last pockets of relatively pure Neanderthals to survive should be found in very remote and inhospitable regions of Eurasia, where only them were sufficiently adapted genetically to survive (although in very small groups).

[Maciamo]

Human societies everywhere on Earth have lived for thousands of years with gender roles. In fact humans have separated tasks between men and women ever since the stone age. Men went hunting or warring while women were gathering, taking care of the children or sewing clothes from animal skins. Hormones influence the specialisation of the brain. This is why men and women think and feel differently. Gender role division runs deep into our genes.

Gender equality is something that appeared in Northern Europe. Medieval Norse societies were already much more egalitarian, socially and sexually, than any other part of Europe at the time. Even though women's rights activism has now spread through most of the Western world and has reached other countries since (e.g. China, thanks to communism), the only societies where women can really aspire to act and be treated like the equal of men are only found in Nordic countries.

Now what is interesting is that Neanderthals did not practice gender role division, like Homo Sapiens. Both men and women went hunting together. Some specialists have argued that could be why Homo Sapiens ultimately got an advantage over Neanderthals, as women had spare time to make clothes, build tools or make pottery vessels, becoming technologically superior to their distant cousins.

If gender roles are genetically determined in modern humans, how comes that out of all humans in the world some came to act differently, more like Neanderthals. Maybe a percentage of the Scandinavians have always behaved this way justly because they inherited the "gender equality" gene from Neanderthal. It does not mean at all that they are the modern Neanderthals, just that they inherited at least this gene. It only takes one accidental mating with a Neanderthal at one point to spread some of their genes through a Homo Sapiens population. If it is useful it is survive natural selection, even if only locally.

There is overwhelming evidence that modern humans inherited at least some genes from Neanderthal (see above). Maybe that it less than 0.1% of our genome, but it is there. Blue eyes and red hair could very well have come from Neanderthal too. Why not the gender equality gene ? I am not even arguing the existence of such a gene. It is evident from the archeological evidence about the difference of lifestyle between Homo Sapiens and Neanderthal. It could not have been cultural. Some animals also have gene for gender equality (e.g. ducks), while others are genetically determined for role separation (e.g. lions).

Had gender equality been characteristic of many human societies on Earth for centuries, we could argue that the gene might have spread worldwide. However I think that this phenomenon is more limited to people of Scandinavian descent, who spread the gene through most of the Western world at varying levels with the Viking invasions. Gender equality is not so much cultural as genetic. Parts of Europe closely related to Scandinavia, be it the Baltic, the Netherlands or East England all have a higher tendency to gender equality. Conversely, the most genetically distant countries (Greece, Southern Italy) also have the most marked gender division.

[Maciamo]

The main arguments against interbreeding between Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals are :

1) modern humans do not look like Neanderthal, hence Neanderthal has become extinct.
=> FALSE : Neanderthal physical characteristics were just diluted, but survived in modern humans of the Caucasoid type.

If only one Neanderthal interbred with one Homo Sapiens at one time, the child's feature would appear to be just in between the two types, like the skeleton found in Portugal. If that child procreated with a full Homo Sapiens, the grandchild would be 1/4 Neanderthal, and would look clearly more Homo Sapiens. After 7 generations like this, the children would be 1/128 Neanderthal, meaning that they would already be almost undistinguishable from "pure" Homo Sapiens.

This experiment can be made with the main racial groups on Earth nowadays. A person with 127 Northern European ancestors and one Black African ancestor at the 7th generation may very well have blue eyes and blond hair, and look just as Northern European as someone with 128/128. Pure Neanderthals seem to have disppeared around 30,000 years ago, i.e. some 1,000 generations ago.

2) Modern Caucasoid people developed physical traits similar to Neanderthal independently.

It is doubtful that modern Europeans developed the exact same physical characteristics as Neanderthal by chance. Were it only 2 or 3 characteristics, it might be plausible. But there are dozens of physical traits that distinguish Caucasoids from Mongoloids or Negroids, and Caucasoid types developed on same territory as where Neanderthals used to live (Europe + Middle East + North Africa).

In fact the proportion of Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens ancestors required for someone to look like a modern European could be calculated using morphing on a computers. I haven't done it, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was more than 1/128, probably more something like 1/32 for modern humans with the stronger Neanderthal-like features. Comparison of the Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens genomes will give us a clearer answer (as long as we find the right subspecies of Neanderthal that interbred with Homo Sapiens).

3) Neanderthal mtDNA is very different from human mtDNA, so interbreeding did not happen.
=> FALSE : this is one of the stupidest argument I have read so far. First of all, Mitochondrial DNA is only transmitted by the mother. It is very possible that some haplogroups have disappeared with time, especially if they had pathogenic mutations. If Neanderthal mtDNA caused an evolutionary handicap compared to Homo Sapiens mtDNA, it would have been wiped out with a few hundreds or thousands years.

Take a family tree of cave person going back 5 generations. All of his 32 great-great-great-grand-parents are Homo Sapiens, except one Neanderthal woman. If the Neanderthal woman is not the ancestor in cognatic line (mother's mother's mother's...), then the child will not inherit Neanderthal mtDNA, although he/she will inherit other genes from Neanderthal. After 5 generations there is only one chance out of 16 to inherit that particular female ancestor's mtDNA. After 21 generations, there is only one chance out of 1 million. If that mtDNA is pathogenic, the chances are close to zero. Think about 1,000 generations that separate us from the "extinction" of pure Neanderthals.

Secondly, mtDNA evolves with time. Most of the haplogroups found in Europe nowadays did not exist 40,000 years ago, when Homo Sapiens reached Europe. If Neanderthal mtDNA had survived, it would have evolved just like Homo Sapiens mtDNA. If we found that mtDNA in someone, it would be quite difficult to recognise when compared to the few samples of Neanderthal bones (some over 100,000 years old !) tested. It could be that haplogroups such as X, W or I actually descend from Neanderthal, but have a high genetic distance to the bones tested because a) they do not belong to the same subspecies of Neanderthal, and b) they have evolved too much in 40,000 years.

4) The Neanderthal genome shows major differences with the Homo Sapiens genome.

This is to be expected. Neanderthal has evolved separately from Homo Sapiens for at least 500,000 years before they met again in Europe. Even if a small percentage of Neanderthal genes were inherited by modern humans, only the most evolutionary useful would have survived through natural selection. Therefore it is totally compatible to think that both types of hominids interbred but only a tiny percentage of Neanderthal genes (probably smaller than the actual proportion of Neanderthal ancestors in the "genealogy") were inherited.

[Maciamo]

Another argument in favour of modern Europeans having inherited some Neanderthal genes is that Europeans have stronger and denser bones than Mongoloid people. One of the main characteristics of Neanderthals is their robustness and heavy built. Apart from the obviously heavier built of Caucasoids compared to Mongoloids, osteoporosis is also much more common among Mongoloid than Caucasoid people. Higher bone mineral density makes bones stronger and less susceptible to osteoporosis. Do Europeans owe that to some Neanderthal DNA ?

[Vidar]

Firstly, id like to say good job and well done, i enjoyed this reading, and it presents a very possible perspective.

Secondly, i would like to contribute another source that might confirm this theory, this source is to be found in the religion of the early scandinavian people.

In general, Mythologies and early religions existed mainly to describe the things that could not be comprehended or explained at the time, that is why i believe that some confirmation to your claim that the scandinavian may in fact be some of the closest descendants to the Neanderthals, is within the early nordic mythology.

As all other mythologies of the time, there is a story describing the origin of the world and its inhabitants.
The Tale "Voluspa" Describes the creation of the world,
in the north lay the cold Niflheim, which consisted of tundras and frost, and in the south lay Muspelheim, a kingdom of fire and heat. Exactly as in the real world in the perspective of a person living in scandinavia.
Other than these kingdoms there was nothing but a cold empty chasm. Then came the first living creature, a Huge giant by the name "Ymer" and when he whent to sleep a jötunn son and a jötunn daughter grew from his armpit. The rest of his body contributed to creating the entire landscape, and also the "Gods".
From his hair came the woods. From his blood came the ocean. From his bones came the mountains. From his teeth came the sand and rocks.
Then his own creation Killed him when the gods, Odin, Vili and Vé, the Oldest gods of Nordic mythology turned against him.

I want to point out the Jötunn, are always described as a race that didnt live in Asgaard, but in Udgaard. As the gods lived in Asgaard. They are in all sources(prose Edda, poetic Edda, Voluspa, Heimskringla, Tyrfing and many others) described as stronger, bigger and more cunning than the normal humans who live in Midgaard.

The Voluspa Tale, ends with the destruction of the world.
The world will end with Ragnarok, a huge conflict in which all the beast in the world and the "Jötunns" will fight against the gods and the humans.
And according to the story, the humans will win, and start a new life in a new world.


What really makes gets me thinking here is this "Jötunn" people, i have never seen any mythology that empathizes so strongly on the different "tribes" of people. Normally, as in roman, greek, egyptian, zarathustra and others, there is One evil beast or person, or a handful. But never an entire Branch, living next to you.
Lets presume that these "Jötunns" where Neanderthals or close descendants of Neanderthals, they would look physically bigger and stronger, and with their slightly bigger brain capacity, we should presume that in some areas they would be smarter than the humans, maybe more cunning. If you didnt know why, you were so closesly related but yet so different with these strange humans that live a bit further down the river that you catch fist at, wouldnt that be something that you very strongly would want to have explained, for instance through religion?

Pressuming the forerunners to Nordic mythology was orally passed stories in families, that spread to tales and myths, untill they were written down in runes, which we dig up many years later.
What if scandinavian tribes intermingled with the Jötunns a long long time ago, even before the first nordic mythology sources, im not saying the entire scandinavian race is a cross bred of homo sapiens and Neanderthals but a lesser part might be.

[Maciamo]

Welcome to the forum, Vidar. :)

I like your theory. The last Neanderthals could indeed have been the so-called Jötunns. Scandinavia also has stories about ******, those ugly human-like creatures with big noses and low foreheads - in other words just like Neanderthals would appear to humans. They are said to live in isolated parts of the mountains in Norway, far from human society. This is what to be expected from any surviving Neanderthals, who could never live normally with humans.

It is possible nevertheless that humans did interbreed at some point with Neanderthals. There is strong evidence from various skeletons found with features in between Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals.

This would explain the origin of red hair and maybe even blond hair and blue and/or green eyes in modern Europeans. DNA tests on Neanderthals the few testable remains are positive that they had red hair and fair eyes.

So why should red and blond hair and fair eyes be so much more common in Scandinavia, the land of ******/Jötunns, than elsewhere if not because of Neanderthals ?

Many people claim that fair hair and eyes evolved naturally in northern Europe due to the low amount of light in winter. But that doesn't make much sense when we see that Siberians or Inuits have black hair and dark eyes despite having lived in Arctic latitudes for longer than Scandinavia has been settled by modern humans.

The ice cap over northern Europe only receded less than 10,000 years ago, and Scandinavia was probably not settled before 6,000 years ago. Inuits have lived in the Arctic for possibly 15,000 years, and Siberians for even longer (at least 20,000 years, when some of them crossed the frozen Bering Straight to America).

So why wouldn't they develop a mutation for lighter hair and eyes ? Well, human DNA is composed for billions of base pairs and the right mutations don't occur so often. 20,000 years is not so long in term of evolution. Neanderthals, on the other hand, had lived in Europe since 200,000 years ago until their extinction or blend out in modern Europeans. They lived through the various Ice Ages, which made them become more robust and better adapted to the cold than Homo Sapiens from Africa. Needless to say that they had some very useful mutations for the Homo Sapiens who first arrived in Europe. Breeding with Neanderthal would confer them better immunity, stronger bodies and lighter pigmentation to adapt to the winter light. Modern Siberians or Inuits are not as strongly built and light-haired/eyed as Europeans because they didn't interbreed with Neanderthals, who lived only in Europe.

[Maciamo]

The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution, by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending.

Here is new best-seller that summarises very eloquently the various arguments developed on this forum about the advantageous genetic component that introgressed from Neanderthals into the gene pool of modern humans.

The whole of Chapter 2 (40 pages) is dedicated to the matter. I have to say that the arguments and examples in the book are even more compelling that anything I had read or written before.

On the other hand, about half of the arguments developed here are absent from the book. I suppose it is normal as some of them are entirely mine (I haven't seen them mentioned anywhere else).

For example, the idea that there were many subspecies of Neanderthals (meaning that the Neanderthal genome project might not be testing the actual subspecies that interbred with Cro-Magnon), or that their mtDNA might have evolved so much that, if it survived to this day, it would be unrecognisable from that of 40,000 year-old bones.

I also think that light pigmentation for hair, eyes and skin all originated in Neanderthals, who had been living in northern latitudes for over 200,000 years when Homo Sapiens moved out of Africa. Introgression would have provided a quick adaptive advantage to the low sunlight in winter - a vital element to avoid vitamin D deficiency and neurological problems.

Neanderthal genes probably spread on most of the globe (with the possible exception of Australian aborigines), but are probably found in higher percentage among Europeans because some traits just weren't useful elsewhere. Siberians and East Asians would have inherited fair skin, but not fair eyes and hair, because only the former was really advantageous in their environment, or because fair eyes and hair were not considered beautiful in their cultures.

[JackMack]

I have read further studies mentioning that at first (until about 40,000 years ago), Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons had the same tools, technology and lifestyle. Both buried their deaths, with similar ornaments. The Cro-Magnons then developed new tools, which were either copied or developed independently later by Neanderthals. As a matter of intelligence, both seem to be equivalent. Skeletons of hybrids of the two species dating from 25,000 years ago, around the time of the disapperance of Neanderthals, may indicate that their disappearance was indeed due to a genetic absorbtion by the increasingly numerous Cro-Magnons. This latter would have outnumbered Neanderthals due to to the cooling of the climate and the fact that Neanderthals always lived more North, in colder regions with less food, while Cro-Magnon could migrate south more easily via the Middle East to Africa, then come back more numerous when climate warmed up again. There have been signs of trade between the two species, which show that they had amicable contacts, and could very well of interbred with each others.

Furthermore, we see around 15-20,000 years ago, just after the hypothetical merger of the 2 species, the appearance of mural paintings in caves. This phenomemon is strictly limited to Western Europe. Why would such paintings have been done by European Cro-Magnon only, and not other Cro-Magnon (=Homo Sapiens) around the world ? I believe that this could be due to the racial convergence with Neanderthal, because Neanderthal had a more developed occipital lobe, and thus a better vision and visual memory, resulting in an earlier development of visual arts. This also explains the difference in skull shape, especially the more elongated occipital lobe, between Caucasoids and other humans, esp. compared to Mongoloids.

Some French and American researchers also found convincing evidence of an direct evolution from the Asian Homo Erectus toward the modern Asian Homo Sapiens, probably after interbreeding with a new arrival of Homo Sapiens from the Middle East.

I think you're right. Possibly being European means being a mixture of Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal....and Asian as Homo Erectus. I've read many articles on this topic.

[Tully]

Lets hope that more DNA testing of these Cro-Magnon & Neanderthal remains turns up longer more sequences of DNA. The tying in (maybe) of these older Humans would be one of the most amazing evolutionary discoveries. The present evidence seems to hint at tantilizing closeness of Neanderthals, Magnons & Sapiens.

[JackMack]

Lets hope that more DNA testing of these Cro-Magnon & Neanderthal remains turns up longer more sequences of DNA. The tying in (maybe) of these older Humans would be one of the most amazing evolutionary discoveries. The present evidence seems to hint at tantilizing closeness of Neanderthals, Magnons & Sapiens.

Neanderthal- Cro Magnon hybrids have already been discovered- I believe one was from a site in Spain. I think that hybridization is now being accepted among the scientific community. Any thoughts on this?

[Ua'Ronain]

Neanderthal- Cro Magnon hybrids have already been discovered- I believe one was from a site in Spain. I think that hybridization is now being accepted among the scientific community. Any thoughts on this?

Dont tell that to my anthropology professors (they refuse to believe it) I also am in the beliefe that there must be a connection between us modern sapiens to magnons and neanderthals.

[Cambrius (The Red)]

I would place much trust in what Coon said. Many of his theories were just plain inaccurate. Especially farcical were his eye and hair color maps.

[Cambrius (The Red)]

Correction of previous post: "I would [not] place much trust..."

[Cambrius (The Red)]

I agree. There is growing evidence that Neanderthals and Cro-Magons mated.

[Maciamo]

Here a distribution map of the 3 main Neanderthal subspecies.

[Cambrius (The Red)]

Carleton Coon supports the theory that modern Europeans are of dual origins, consisting of Upper Paleolithic (mixture of Sapiens and Neanderthals) types and Mediterranean (purely Sapiens) types.

In his s book The Races of Europe, studying the population of Fehmarn Island, at the border of Germany and Denmark, he says :

The dual origins notion is about the only reasonable contribution Coon made to evolutionary / physical anthropology. The man was wrong on just about everything else... A nut-job.

[Cambrius (The Red)]

Recent studies by scientists in Barcelona suggest that the gene for red hair may well have come from a Neanderthal refuge in Iberia.