RE: Neanderthals interbred with non African populations
July 18, 2011 at 7:01 pm
(This post was last modified: July 18, 2011 at 7:03 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(July 18, 2011 at 6:43 pm)Minimalist Wrote:(July 18, 2011 at 6:37 pm)Chuck Wrote: Why is this a big deal? Nothing major in the current conception of human evolution seem to depend on whether Neaderthals and humans ever interbred.
Its a big deal because for years the Out of Africa crowd has insisted that HNS was an evolutionary dead end and that there was no interbreeding between the two.
OOA doesn't depend on HNS being a dead end. It only depends on a small group of what is already HSS, or something so near as to make no different, coming out of africa being responsible for majority of the genetic heritage of all modern HSS outside of Africa. It hardly mattered if the african HSS picked up sea slug genes on the way to jeruselum so long as they didn't pick up a lot of it.
OOA said most of what makes HSS came from Africa, that's it.
If we didn't pick up any genes from outside Africa, that would be sufficient evidence to prove OOA. But that is not necessary evidence to prove OOA.
