RE: Neanderthals interbred with non African populations
July 18, 2011 at 11:53 pm
(This post was last modified: July 19, 2011 at 12:15 am by Anomalocaris.)
(July 18, 2011 at 9:52 pm)Minimalist Wrote:(July 18, 2011 at 8:40 pm)Chuck Wrote: "Without Interbreeding" is a superflous condition.
I don't think so. In this poorly-worded instance I think it means that they killed them all without stopping to screw the women. What they are trying to assert is that there is no genetic spill over from HNS to HSS and, of course, they have now been shown to be wrong.
HSS screw sheep (even before they got to Scotland), you think they would pass on a widely spread Neanderthal woman? The "no genetic spill over" is a ill founded, poorly thought out, and totally unnecessary flourish on an otherwise strongly supported theory.
If HSS and HNS last shared a common ancestor less 600,000 years ago, the odds would seem good that mating HSS and HNS can produce biologically viable and fertile offspring is mating were to occur. Different mammal species with lifespan very broadly comparable to humans often seem to retain some measure of this capability even after a couple of million years of evolutionary divergence. However, definition of species is usually more restrictive than that. The two populations must also possess behavioral similarities sufficient to ensure a significant continued exchange of genes in the course of each conducting its normal lives to be considered a single species. So if HSS and HNS lives in contact for several tens of thousands of years, but HNS passed only small amount of genes to HSS, that would in fact suggest HSS and HNS aren't the same species by tighter definition of species.
