I'm taking a linguistics course right now just wrote something about the etymology of the word Neanderthal. Maybe someone here will be interested:
The word Neanderthal comes from the name of the Neander Valley in Germany, which in turn is named for a 17th century German songwriter named Joachim Neander. His surname is of Greek orgin, derived from neos (νέος, meaning "new") and andros (ἀνδρός, meaning "man"). So, Neander essentially means "new man."
In 1856, human fossils were discovered in the Neanderthal by workers at a limestone quarry. The fossils were found in a deep, undisturbed cave deposit, and were therefore assumed to be of great antiquity.
The main difference between the fossils found in Neanderthal was that the skull had notable differences with the skulls of other ancient skeletons. For an example, they featured an extremely pronounced brow ridge. This led researchers to propose that the fossils were remains not of prehistoric humans, but of a previously-unknown species of bipedal big-brained apes.
By the early 1900s, the word Neanderthal had entered popular speech, signifying a stupid, brutish person. In the popular imagination, the word neanderthal referred to subhuman cavemen who communicated through grunts.
Formerly, it was believed that Neanderthals were non-humans, and the idea that they might have interbred with ancient humans was considered heretical. In 2013, however, geneticists announced that they had proven that Neanderthals interbred with ancient humans. In other words, they were the same species.
Over the course of the past decade, announcements about new scientific discoveries have been coming at a breakneck pace.
It is perhaps worth noting that the German pronunciation is /ˈneː.andɐˌtaːl/. Formerly, the word was written as "neanderthal", with a silent th. German spelling reforms have since eliminated the silent h, meaning that the word is now spelled "neandertal".
In English, the older spelling is still preferred, and the word is commonly pronounced as /niˈændɚˌθɔl/, with the dental fricative /θ/ representing the alveolar stop /t/. This is an interesting example of how orthography can effect pronunciation.
In summary, the word neanderthal literally means "Neander Valley" when directly translated into English. Both the pronunciation and spelling of the English word are inconsistent with German. The popular conception of the word is based on an outdated misconception about the intellectual abilities of prehistoric humans.
It will be interesting to see how the meaning of the word neanderthal will evolve in the future. Now that we know that modern human are descended from neanderthals, will our language continue to exhibit anti-neanderthal prejudice?
I personally harbor doubts that this is a good idea. Again, we barely have neanderthal DNA and they made them out to be like our main and only ancestors in the media. I wonder why, especially when I look at who has higher levels of neanderthal DNA.
I am just wary of the politicization of this stuff, and when I learned we didn't carry the most neanderthal DNA, I immediately got suspicious about the endless amounts of media obfuscation on the subject. Our ancestors displaced and ultimately replaced neanderthals in Europe. Makes more sense for us to identify with them and their direct ancestors, and less with neanderthals.
I suppose I hold to the traditional view of "species". I believe that if different animals are capable of producing viable offspring, they are the same species. That is way coyotes, wolves, foxes, and dogs are all canine lupus, despite having major anatomical differences (and even differences in the number of chromosomes).
Likewise, bonobos and chimpanzees are the same species. Grizzly bears and polar bears are the same species. And neanderthals and humans were the same species.
Hybridization is ubiquitous across nature. Dr. Eugene McCarthy has researched hybridization for many decades, and authored 'The Handbook of Avian Hybrids', the bible on the subject. His site macroevolution.net provides a fascinating compendium of reports of hybrids of even widely dissimilar species, and in fact modern genetics no longer provides support for a very discrete definition of species. My understanding of species evolved significantly from considering the evidence of hybridization Dr. McCarthy has provided, to something more akin to populations that tend to breed exclusively, and nothing more discrete than that.
One of the most fascinating evidences for hybridization between dissimilar species is the platypus, that has entire sequences of bird DNA that simply can't be explained any other way than a hybridization event between a mammal and a bird, presumably Anas (duck) sp. Much more evidence of hybridization exists for plants, and polyploidy reveals some of the bizarre effects of hybridization that manage to perpetuate.
While morphology is important to speciation, behaviour is perhaps even more important, and the very different culture of Chimps and Bonobos reveals why they are different species that do not generally interbreed, despite that being potential genetically.
Edit: in a sense there is only one living organism on Earth, because all extant life descends from some progenitor creature that managed to reproduce, and every different species and phylum is the result of myriad unbroken chains of living cells that have differentially evolved in the last ~4B years. That wider view of terrestrial life sort of deconstructs the concept of species.
Biology would cease to be a viable field of study if we zoomed out to the point where we took the view that: "all extant life descends from some progenitor creature that managed to reproduce, and every different species and phylum is the result of myriad unbroken chains of living cells that have differentially evolved in the last ~4B years."
Sure, in one sense we presumably all come from one ultimate source, but I think that it's valid to stick to definitions for key terms like "species". Otherwise we'd end up with platitude like "everything is energy, man". True, but not very useful when you're trying to understand specific things.
I don't believe that Neanderthals were non-human. They made art, buried their dead, use tools, were of normal human height, and probably used language (based on the anatomy of their larynxes). Sure, their skulls were shaped differently. Big deal. The similarities far outweigh the differences.
Not at all. The incredible complexity of living things has an enormous variety of features to study besides speciation. You can certainly stick to your guns regarding speciation, but that doesn't dispel the reality of hybridization and what that means for reproductive behaviour of populations.
"I don't believe that Neanderthals were non-human."
Neither do I. All Homo species are human species, by definition. There are valid arguments to make that NEA and AMH were/are the same species, and I make several of them in replies to the OP and comments. It is difficult to say that NEA and AMH were different species when NEA mtDNA and Y DNA were completely replaced by AMH material by ~100kya. However, there was a discrete morphological difference (far more than just a bump on the occiput), as well as nDNA discretion, and appears to have been some cultural separation. Ultimately however, I agree with you because what the evidence shows is that NEA was absorbed into the AMH population by ~35kya, and there is no longer a discrete NEA population outside of the AMH population remnant.
If we ever were separate species, whatever that actually means, we certainly aren't anymore.
Well... to play the devil's advocate a bit... different humans can have incredibly different cultures, so I don't know why culture should be the dividing line between species.
Bonobos and chimpanzees are able to reproduce and produce viable offspring, but their habitats are far apart so they encounter each other in the wild. Same is true of polar bears and grizzly bears. They have anatomical differences, but they're not fundamentally different species.
Well, it depends on whether they can produce viable offspring or not. This question gets complicated when one considers species that reproduce asexually, so let's keep our discussion to sexually dimorphic species. Donkeys and horses cannot produce offspring that are able to reproduce, therefore mules are a hybrid species. Donkeys and horses are not the same species.
But if you reject the traditional way of defining species, what definition of "species" would you propose instead?
"The word Neanderthal comes from the name of the Neander Valley in Germany, which in turn is named for a 17th century German songwriter named Joachim Neander. His surname is of Greek orgin, derived from neos (νέος, meaning "new") and andros (ἀνδρός, meaning "man"). So, Neander essentially means "new man."
That is fascinatingly coincidental!
While it's understandable that 19th Century biases cast NEA as brutish subhumans, today our examination of crania suggest NEA exceeded modern AMH by ~20% in cranial capacity. Cro Magnon AMH, however, exceeded modern cranial capacity by ~25%. What is more significant is that H. denisova (H. juluensis) exceeded modern cranial capacity by ~50%, which very much quenches our natural self-preferential bias regarding our intellectual supremacy.
An interesting attribute of primates is that while most species with large brains have proportionately larger neurons the larger their brains, in primates larger brains result from an increase in the number of neurons, resulting in increasing neurological complexity and implied increased intellectual ability, which isn't implied by increased size of neurons.
Linguistically, all Homo species are technically human. Late H. erectus had comparable cranial capacity to modern AMH, so I personally don't share the self-preferential bias that seems prevalent. I suspect that as our understanding of our evolution improves, that relic bias will decline as our knowledge of our close relatives grows and reveals the similarity of our intellectual competence. At least, I hope we can quash bias in favor of rational understanding, anyway.
"From early primates to hominids and finally to Homo sapiens, the brain gets progressively larger - with the exception of extinct Neanderthals whose brain size exceeded that of modern Homo sapiens. The volume of the human brain has increased as humans have evolved (see Homininae), starting from about 600 cm3 in Homo habilis up to 1680 cm3 in Homo neanderthalensis, which was the hominid with the biggest brain size."
The various papers discussing hominin finds generally discuss cranial capacity when cranial remains are found. The above neglects recent claims of H. Juluensis, which is up to 1800 cc, half again larger than ~1200 cc human females average today. Ju lu means 'big head' in Chinese, IIRC, and this new species description is claimed to include H. denisova, but has only just been asserted in Nov. 2024, so not much discussion has yet confirmed or denied it's assertions.
"Relative brain size of Homo did not change from 1.8 to 0.6 mya. After about 600 kya it increased until about 35,000 years ago, when it began to decrease. "
The various sp. to which remains are assigned all have ranges of variation, and further show varying degrees of sexual dimorphism, reflecting differences in body size between sexes, and also between species, and individuals within species. To gain a good grasp of the variations between species and over time, you'll have to search up the papers discussing specific sites and remains that are described by the researchers involved.
>"The phylogenetic relationships of archaic and modern human Y chromosomes differ from the population relationships inferred from the autosomal genomes and mirror mitochondrial DNA phylogenies, indicating replacement of both the mitochondrial and Y chromosomal gene pools in late Neanderthals...the young TMRCA of Neanderthal and modern human Y chromosomes and mtDNAs suggest that these loci have been replaced in Neanderthals through gene flow from an early lineage closely related to modern humans"
These papers show that long before AMH samples presently available provide sources of evidence of admixture and interactions between AMH and other human species in Eurasia, AMH have been present and interacting with other human species outside of Africa, because there is no other way for NEA mtDNA and Y DNA to have been replaced by AMH material by ~100kya, and sequencing of NEA samples show that to have occurred no later than that time. Therefore the few AMH samples we have, none of which represent the earlier presence of AMH in Eurasia, are inadequate to fully reveal interspecific interactions of AMH in Eurasia.
Conclusions are of limited value due to a lack of samples availing us glimpses of processes that were ongoing, but for which we have only few sources of evidence. Regarding presence or absence of AMH in Eurasia, and for reproductive interactions with other human species, it is necessary to consider both directions of gene flow to gain the full breadth of evidence from samples available. Indeed, while funding is availed papers that support the OoA hypothesis, evidence of gene flow suggests a long duration of interspecific interactions that could not have occurred in Africa, as NEA have never been shown to have lived in Africa, for which only limited funding is available to research.
Afaik, the paper that discovered the existence of AMH admixture within Neanderthals concluded that it must have come from a source which split from the 'basal AMH' prior to the deepest AMH split of Khoisan/non-Khoisan, around 250kya?
There is an effort to 'buy' acceptance of the OoA hypothesis by funding only papers that refer to AMH emerging from Africa. But, when did NEA or Denisova come out of Africa? H. erectus is found in Eurasia and Africa by ~2mya, but the phenotypes in Eurasia are more primitive, while those in Africa are more derived. H. erectus is the source species from which the NEA, Denisova, and AMH derived and it ranged and spawned derivatives all across Eurasia and Africa. That Homo arose in Eurasia is supported by less derived species like H. floresiensis and H. luzonensis both deriving from the same source as H. erectus, which was clearly also in Eurasia to produce those offshoots in ISEA.
AMH has a chin. The only other hominin with a chin is H. antecessor, shown in Atapuerca from 1.4mya and last ~800kya. That's about the time Denisova is calculated to have split from the AMH/NEA taxon, which later itself split ~400kya. Taken together with much higher hominin diversity in Asia, with H. floresiensis, H. luzonensis, and H. longi now accompanying H. erectus, NEA and H. denisova(H. juluensis), what I see is that Homo diversified across Eurasia and ranged into Africa during the Pleistocene, and the OoA hypothesis is only supported by funding requiring it, not actual bones in dirt. It is obvious to me that AMH was the result of H. antecessor and NEA admixture such that H. antecessor was completely absorbed (just as NEA was later absorbed into AMH by ~35kya), and Denisova wasn't involved because it was in Siberia and SE Asia and missed out on all the fun (until it was absorbed into AMH as well, when we got out that way). That's where we got our chin. It's the only way we could have got it.
The Khoisan split was probably occasioned by AMH admixture with H. naledi (also presumably derived from the parent species of H. erectus, H. floresiensis, and H. luzonensis) that significantly impacted subsaharan diversity. However, none of this African action is somehow basal to AMH, because AMH introgressed Africa with a chin it got in Eurasia.
We lack bones/sites to nail down when and where these events occurred because fossilization is so rare, but the only place we could have got our chin is Iberia and that happened from ~800kya to ~400kya. There were no chins in Africa before that, and by the Khoisan split, AMH had chins in Africa. That chin came from where AMH arose and diverged from NEA. Our genes clearly show that divergence, and it didn't happen in Africa, because NEA/Denisova/Antecessor never lived in Africa but derived from H. erectus in Eurasia.
The apparent mtDNA sourcing from Africa is an artifact of the bottleneck caused by Toba ~73kya extinguishing S. Asian AMH. The pool of AMH in Africa at that time is too small for the sudden appearance of the L, M, and N mtDNA clades to have all arisen there. Prior to Toba those clades introgressed Africa from Eurasia, where Toba later eradicated them, but didn't similarly impact Africa. Continuity of derived features of AMH in Eurasia prior to Toba is shown in modern AMH populations today, from actual bones in dirt, not mathematical models (and funding) that are all that support OoA.
Probably comes from the cultural entanglement Europeans have been dealing with for 150 years since the Neanderthals were first discovered in Germany, I don't think Neanderthals are a part of other people's consciousness in the same way?
Fascinating! The evidence on early modern humans outside of Africa…would that have predated the bottleneck on modern humans suggested by research at the Blombos (sp?) Cave in South Africa?
At present the consensus is that all the humans outside of Africa today descend from human groups which left around 50-70,000 years ago, but that previous modern human groups attempted to leave and failed to thrive
It's not totally implausible that small homo sapien groups were wiped out by Neanderthals early in the colonisation process, but I think homo sapiens were more likely to be the aggressors once the numbers picked up
If all non-Africans sequenced so far are from AFTER the single admixture event with Neanderthal 45,000-49,000 years ago, unless there are Australian indigenous populations who have not yet been sequenced, then ALL current Australian indigenous are from the population that mixed with Neanderthal 45,000-49,000 years ago.
However, Australian indigenous remains that date more than 50,000 years ago must originate from a different human population, even though that population is now extinct in Australia. That population would not contain the admixture with Neanderthal.
If there are such Australian populations from more than 50,000 years ago, then Australia was settled by multiple distinct waves of humans, even though at present only the descendants of the Neanderthal admixture wave remain. That wave, in Australia and everywhere else outside of Africa, replaced all previous waves as everyone left has the Neanderthal admixture.
To know if "replaced" is the right description, wouldn't we have to have a pre-50k Australian bone or skeleton from which we had been able to extract DNA to compare to existing Australian Aboriginal DNA to look for evidence of admixture?
Just because you have "Neanderthal admixture" ancestry doesn't mean you mightn't also have "earlier Australian ancestry" too, right? Something like an Australian Aboriginal version of "ghost populations" -- at least in theory? Do you know if anyone has tried to look, or been able to eliminate this possibility? Is there any pre 50kya Australian aDNA under study? I don't know anything about preservation conditions in Australia, maybe they are terrible.
Sadly Australian archaeology is in one of the worst states globally for prehistoric research. Irreplaceable fossils such as the Lake Mungo remains have been buried by Aboriginal groups and removed from scientific study. There have been previous attempts to sequence Pleistocene era skeletons but they largely date from before the 2015 whole genome era.
Well the values of today trump the values of all future generations, including any future Aboriginal Australians possibly wanting to know more about their own past. So this seems like unobjectionable fair dinkum, really glad to hear of this, hooray and good job everybody!
I think one of the big issues is that there are real material interests involved in Aboriginal Australians and Native Americans blocking the advancement of human knowledge. If I am not mistaken, I believe that many treaties between these groups and the government's of Australia, the USA, Canada etc are dependant upon the idea of the group in question being indigenous and supposedly the original inhabitants. I therefore believe that the Aborigines and Native Americans are worried that their ownership of the land they live on and their right to some degree of self-government will be revoked by the results of further archaeological and genetic investigations. Whilst it is highly unlikely that they will lose those rights, they nevertheless have a real material reason not to allow further research. I may be mistaken in my assessment, and I will be happy to concede on this point.
I am sure you are right, even if only to a degree or in part. My understanding of human evolution suggests people evolved in the Old World, and everyone in Canada and the Americas, and Australia, are immigrants. Some immigrated earlier than others, and are widely recognized to have priority. I am very confident the original inhabitants of the Americas, at least, no longer survive, and the OP argues the original inhabitants of Australia no longer do either.
The peoples calling themselves Aboriginal and Native are certainly the descendants of immigrants. A Native friend of mine once said 'We're all boat people, if you go back far enough.' It's just that some of us were on earlier boats. Claiming to be first seems to have benefits, but I think being the last people to live on lands seems of more practical import.
That is a good point. I do not know any Australian archaeology. IF there are human remains in Australia that date more than 50K years ago (the original post implies that is the case, but I do not know), then there were at least two waves of human settlement in Australia pre-European contact. The first wave had no Neanderthal admixture and the second wave had. The second wave either replaced the first wave, or so completely combined with it that all current indigenous populations have the Neanderthal admixture.
In other parts of Asia there is the extra wrinkle of the Denisovians. Unlike Neanderthal, no Denisovians have been found. However, many Asian populations have meaningful amounts of Denisovian DNA (do Australian indigenous populations also have Denisovian DNA?). That's how the Denisovians were discovered. Being current non-African origin populations, presumably these populations also have Neanderthal ancestry from the Neanderthal admixture event of 45K-49K years ago.
"...do Australian indigenous populations also have Denisovian DNA?"
Indeed, aboriginal populations are amongst the highest examples of Denisovan DNA introgression.
"...our simulations provide support for the presence of two separate Denisovan lineages that independently introgressed into the ancestors of Ayta Negritos and Papuans, likely occurring around the same time after the Negrito-Papuan divergence 53 kya (95% CI: 41–64 kya). Upon entry of the first modern human migrants into Sunda and Sahul (ancestors of Negritos and Australopapuans), these ancestral Australasian groups likely experienced admixture with deeply divergent Denisovan-related populations scattered all throughout the ISEA and the Oceania region."
Sahul is the name for the combined continent of New Guinea and Australia that existed prior to the rise in sea level after the Younger Dryas. Sunda is the name of the subcontinent of SE Asia of much greater extent than exists today prior to sea levels rising ~100M.
There appear to have been at least two distinct populations of Denisovans, one that inhabited Asia from Tibet to Siberia, and another that lived in Island SE Asia and Oceania. There are claims that a third population of Denisovans admixed with AMH as recently as ~15kya, but this is contested by researchers that point out such admixture could be the result of AMH populations with earlier Denisovan admixture diverging and that retained different material later rejoining.
Perhaps. The lack of physical samples of Denisovans suggests any of several reasons we have so little remains to consider, from very low population densities, to extremely diligent and complete destruction of remains of the dead in funerary rituals. Given the bulk of evidence suggests Denisovans were seafaring, the highly controversial sites in the Americas that have been claimed to predate 100kya may also be Denisovan in origin. The vast continental shelves may surely reveal evidence someday of human societies we probably know nothing about at all today, given the serial incidences of cataclysmic flooding that was likely the way in which sea levels rose, and the impact that would have had on coastal communities. I speculate that innumerable cultures, and perhaps even civilizations and/or species, have been utterly eradicated when sea levels rose a meter or ten very rapidly.
Whatever it reveals, the prospect of archaeological research of sites presently beneath the waves is exciting to anticipate.
I'm taking a linguistics course right now just wrote something about the etymology of the word Neanderthal. Maybe someone here will be interested:
The word Neanderthal comes from the name of the Neander Valley in Germany, which in turn is named for a 17th century German songwriter named Joachim Neander. His surname is of Greek orgin, derived from neos (νέος, meaning "new") and andros (ἀνδρός, meaning "man"). So, Neander essentially means "new man."
In 1856, human fossils were discovered in the Neanderthal by workers at a limestone quarry. The fossils were found in a deep, undisturbed cave deposit, and were therefore assumed to be of great antiquity.
The main difference between the fossils found in Neanderthal was that the skull had notable differences with the skulls of other ancient skeletons. For an example, they featured an extremely pronounced brow ridge. This led researchers to propose that the fossils were remains not of prehistoric humans, but of a previously-unknown species of bipedal big-brained apes.
By the early 1900s, the word Neanderthal had entered popular speech, signifying a stupid, brutish person. In the popular imagination, the word neanderthal referred to subhuman cavemen who communicated through grunts.
Formerly, it was believed that Neanderthals were non-humans, and the idea that they might have interbred with ancient humans was considered heretical. In 2013, however, geneticists announced that they had proven that Neanderthals interbred with ancient humans. In other words, they were the same species.
Over the course of the past decade, announcements about new scientific discoveries have been coming at a breakneck pace.
It is perhaps worth noting that the German pronunciation is /ˈneː.andɐˌtaːl/. Formerly, the word was written as "neanderthal", with a silent th. German spelling reforms have since eliminated the silent h, meaning that the word is now spelled "neandertal".
In English, the older spelling is still preferred, and the word is commonly pronounced as /niˈændɚˌθɔl/, with the dental fricative /θ/ representing the alveolar stop /t/. This is an interesting example of how orthography can effect pronunciation.
In summary, the word neanderthal literally means "Neander Valley" when directly translated into English. Both the pronunciation and spelling of the English word are inconsistent with German. The popular conception of the word is based on an outdated misconception about the intellectual abilities of prehistoric humans.
It will be interesting to see how the meaning of the word neanderthal will evolve in the future. Now that we know that modern human are descended from neanderthals, will our language continue to exhibit anti-neanderthal prejudice?
I've heard both used, sometimes by the same person. There's a huge push atm within academia to incorporate Neanderthals fully into the 'human family'
Interesting! Could you point me in the direction of any papers or articles on that subject?
I personally harbor doubts that this is a good idea. Again, we barely have neanderthal DNA and they made them out to be like our main and only ancestors in the media. I wonder why, especially when I look at who has higher levels of neanderthal DNA.
I am just wary of the politicization of this stuff, and when I learned we didn't carry the most neanderthal DNA, I immediately got suspicious about the endless amounts of media obfuscation on the subject. Our ancestors displaced and ultimately replaced neanderthals in Europe. Makes more sense for us to identify with them and their direct ancestors, and less with neanderthals.
I suppose I hold to the traditional view of "species". I believe that if different animals are capable of producing viable offspring, they are the same species. That is way coyotes, wolves, foxes, and dogs are all canine lupus, despite having major anatomical differences (and even differences in the number of chromosomes).
Likewise, bonobos and chimpanzees are the same species. Grizzly bears and polar bears are the same species. And neanderthals and humans were the same species.
Unless there's something I'm missing?
Hybridization is ubiquitous across nature. Dr. Eugene McCarthy has researched hybridization for many decades, and authored 'The Handbook of Avian Hybrids', the bible on the subject. His site macroevolution.net provides a fascinating compendium of reports of hybrids of even widely dissimilar species, and in fact modern genetics no longer provides support for a very discrete definition of species. My understanding of species evolved significantly from considering the evidence of hybridization Dr. McCarthy has provided, to something more akin to populations that tend to breed exclusively, and nothing more discrete than that.
One of the most fascinating evidences for hybridization between dissimilar species is the platypus, that has entire sequences of bird DNA that simply can't be explained any other way than a hybridization event between a mammal and a bird, presumably Anas (duck) sp. Much more evidence of hybridization exists for plants, and polyploidy reveals some of the bizarre effects of hybridization that manage to perpetuate.
While morphology is important to speciation, behaviour is perhaps even more important, and the very different culture of Chimps and Bonobos reveals why they are different species that do not generally interbreed, despite that being potential genetically.
Edit: in a sense there is only one living organism on Earth, because all extant life descends from some progenitor creature that managed to reproduce, and every different species and phylum is the result of myriad unbroken chains of living cells that have differentially evolved in the last ~4B years. That wider view of terrestrial life sort of deconstructs the concept of species.
Biology would cease to be a viable field of study if we zoomed out to the point where we took the view that: "all extant life descends from some progenitor creature that managed to reproduce, and every different species and phylum is the result of myriad unbroken chains of living cells that have differentially evolved in the last ~4B years."
Sure, in one sense we presumably all come from one ultimate source, but I think that it's valid to stick to definitions for key terms like "species". Otherwise we'd end up with platitude like "everything is energy, man". True, but not very useful when you're trying to understand specific things.
I don't believe that Neanderthals were non-human. They made art, buried their dead, use tools, were of normal human height, and probably used language (based on the anatomy of their larynxes). Sure, their skulls were shaped differently. Big deal. The similarities far outweigh the differences.
"Biology would cease to be a viable field..."
Not at all. The incredible complexity of living things has an enormous variety of features to study besides speciation. You can certainly stick to your guns regarding speciation, but that doesn't dispel the reality of hybridization and what that means for reproductive behaviour of populations.
"I don't believe that Neanderthals were non-human."
Neither do I. All Homo species are human species, by definition. There are valid arguments to make that NEA and AMH were/are the same species, and I make several of them in replies to the OP and comments. It is difficult to say that NEA and AMH were different species when NEA mtDNA and Y DNA were completely replaced by AMH material by ~100kya. However, there was a discrete morphological difference (far more than just a bump on the occiput), as well as nDNA discretion, and appears to have been some cultural separation. Ultimately however, I agree with you because what the evidence shows is that NEA was absorbed into the AMH population by ~35kya, and there is no longer a discrete NEA population outside of the AMH population remnant.
If we ever were separate species, whatever that actually means, we certainly aren't anymore.
Well... to play the devil's advocate a bit... different humans can have incredibly different cultures, so I don't know why culture should be the dividing line between species.
Bonobos and chimpanzees are able to reproduce and produce viable offspring, but their habitats are far apart so they encounter each other in the wild. Same is true of polar bears and grizzly bears. They have anatomical differences, but they're not fundamentally different species.
That's fascinating about platypus including bird and mammal DNA... it sure seems unlikely to me that a bird and a mammal could hybridize...
Yeah I don't think hybridization between species makes them the same species.
Well, it depends on whether they can produce viable offspring or not. This question gets complicated when one considers species that reproduce asexually, so let's keep our discussion to sexually dimorphic species. Donkeys and horses cannot produce offspring that are able to reproduce, therefore mules are a hybrid species. Donkeys and horses are not the same species.
But if you reject the traditional way of defining species, what definition of "species" would you propose instead?
"The word Neanderthal comes from the name of the Neander Valley in Germany, which in turn is named for a 17th century German songwriter named Joachim Neander. His surname is of Greek orgin, derived from neos (νέος, meaning "new") and andros (ἀνδρός, meaning "man"). So, Neander essentially means "new man."
That is fascinatingly coincidental!
While it's understandable that 19th Century biases cast NEA as brutish subhumans, today our examination of crania suggest NEA exceeded modern AMH by ~20% in cranial capacity. Cro Magnon AMH, however, exceeded modern cranial capacity by ~25%. What is more significant is that H. denisova (H. juluensis) exceeded modern cranial capacity by ~50%, which very much quenches our natural self-preferential bias regarding our intellectual supremacy.
An interesting attribute of primates is that while most species with large brains have proportionately larger neurons the larger their brains, in primates larger brains result from an increase in the number of neurons, resulting in increasing neurological complexity and implied increased intellectual ability, which isn't implied by increased size of neurons.
Linguistically, all Homo species are technically human. Late H. erectus had comparable cranial capacity to modern AMH, so I personally don't share the self-preferential bias that seems prevalent. I suspect that as our understanding of our evolution improves, that relic bias will decline as our knowledge of our close relatives grows and reveals the similarity of our intellectual competence. At least, I hope we can quash bias in favor of rational understanding, anyway.
I hope you're right! If you've got any links to papers about cranial capacity of different hominid lines, I'd love to see them!
"From early primates to hominids and finally to Homo sapiens, the brain gets progressively larger - with the exception of extinct Neanderthals whose brain size exceeded that of modern Homo sapiens. The volume of the human brain has increased as humans have evolved (see Homininae), starting from about 600 cm3 in Homo habilis up to 1680 cm3 in Homo neanderthalensis, which was the hominid with the biggest brain size."
--https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_size
The various papers discussing hominin finds generally discuss cranial capacity when cranial remains are found. The above neglects recent claims of H. Juluensis, which is up to 1800 cc, half again larger than ~1200 cc human females average today. Ju lu means 'big head' in Chinese, IIRC, and this new species description is claimed to include H. denisova, but has only just been asserted in Nov. 2024, so not much discussion has yet confirmed or denied it's assertions.
"Relative brain size of Homo did not change from 1.8 to 0.6 mya. After about 600 kya it increased until about 35,000 years ago, when it began to decrease. "
--https://www.britannica.com/science/human-evolution/Increasing-brain-size
The various sp. to which remains are assigned all have ranges of variation, and further show varying degrees of sexual dimorphism, reflecting differences in body size between sexes, and also between species, and individuals within species. To gain a good grasp of the variations between species and over time, you'll have to search up the papers discussing specific sites and remains that are described by the researchers involved.
I note that this discussion and the cited sources only look at introgression of NEA material into AMH populations. <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318203664_Deeply_divergent_archaic_mitochondrial_genome_provides_lower_time_boundary_for_African_gene_flow_into_Neanderthals">Posth et al. (2017)</a> show that introgression of AMH mtDNA material was demonstrated by ~100kya, no earlier than ~270kya, and the discussion of admixture should be considered from both directions to inform understanding of AMH interactions in Eurasia with NEA populations, as looking only at such samples as we have of AMH are misleading due to the paucity of source material. In addition, <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abb6460">Petr et al. (2020)</a> showed that NEA Y DNA was wholly replaced by AMH material after ~370kya.
>"The phylogenetic relationships of archaic and modern human Y chromosomes differ from the population relationships inferred from the autosomal genomes and mirror mitochondrial DNA phylogenies, indicating replacement of both the mitochondrial and Y chromosomal gene pools in late Neanderthals...the young TMRCA of Neanderthal and modern human Y chromosomes and mtDNAs suggest that these loci have been replaced in Neanderthals through gene flow from an early lineage closely related to modern humans"
These papers show that long before AMH samples presently available provide sources of evidence of admixture and interactions between AMH and other human species in Eurasia, AMH have been present and interacting with other human species outside of Africa, because there is no other way for NEA mtDNA and Y DNA to have been replaced by AMH material by ~100kya, and sequencing of NEA samples show that to have occurred no later than that time. Therefore the few AMH samples we have, none of which represent the earlier presence of AMH in Eurasia, are inadequate to fully reveal interspecific interactions of AMH in Eurasia.
Conclusions are of limited value due to a lack of samples availing us glimpses of processes that were ongoing, but for which we have only few sources of evidence. Regarding presence or absence of AMH in Eurasia, and for reproductive interactions with other human species, it is necessary to consider both directions of gene flow to gain the full breadth of evidence from samples available. Indeed, while funding is availed papers that support the OoA hypothesis, evidence of gene flow suggests a long duration of interspecific interactions that could not have occurred in Africa, as NEA have never been shown to have lived in Africa, for which only limited funding is available to research.
Thanks!
Afaik, the paper that discovered the existence of AMH admixture within Neanderthals concluded that it must have come from a source which split from the 'basal AMH' prior to the deepest AMH split of Khoisan/non-Khoisan, around 250kya?
There is an effort to 'buy' acceptance of the OoA hypothesis by funding only papers that refer to AMH emerging from Africa. But, when did NEA or Denisova come out of Africa? H. erectus is found in Eurasia and Africa by ~2mya, but the phenotypes in Eurasia are more primitive, while those in Africa are more derived. H. erectus is the source species from which the NEA, Denisova, and AMH derived and it ranged and spawned derivatives all across Eurasia and Africa. That Homo arose in Eurasia is supported by less derived species like H. floresiensis and H. luzonensis both deriving from the same source as H. erectus, which was clearly also in Eurasia to produce those offshoots in ISEA.
AMH has a chin. The only other hominin with a chin is H. antecessor, shown in Atapuerca from 1.4mya and last ~800kya. That's about the time Denisova is calculated to have split from the AMH/NEA taxon, which later itself split ~400kya. Taken together with much higher hominin diversity in Asia, with H. floresiensis, H. luzonensis, and H. longi now accompanying H. erectus, NEA and H. denisova(H. juluensis), what I see is that Homo diversified across Eurasia and ranged into Africa during the Pleistocene, and the OoA hypothesis is only supported by funding requiring it, not actual bones in dirt. It is obvious to me that AMH was the result of H. antecessor and NEA admixture such that H. antecessor was completely absorbed (just as NEA was later absorbed into AMH by ~35kya), and Denisova wasn't involved because it was in Siberia and SE Asia and missed out on all the fun (until it was absorbed into AMH as well, when we got out that way). That's where we got our chin. It's the only way we could have got it.
The Khoisan split was probably occasioned by AMH admixture with H. naledi (also presumably derived from the parent species of H. erectus, H. floresiensis, and H. luzonensis) that significantly impacted subsaharan diversity. However, none of this African action is somehow basal to AMH, because AMH introgressed Africa with a chin it got in Eurasia.
We lack bones/sites to nail down when and where these events occurred because fossilization is so rare, but the only place we could have got our chin is Iberia and that happened from ~800kya to ~400kya. There were no chins in Africa before that, and by the Khoisan split, AMH had chins in Africa. That chin came from where AMH arose and diverged from NEA. Our genes clearly show that divergence, and it didn't happen in Africa, because NEA/Denisova/Antecessor never lived in Africa but derived from H. erectus in Eurasia.
The apparent mtDNA sourcing from Africa is an artifact of the bottleneck caused by Toba ~73kya extinguishing S. Asian AMH. The pool of AMH in Africa at that time is too small for the sudden appearance of the L, M, and N mtDNA clades to have all arisen there. Prior to Toba those clades introgressed Africa from Eurasia, where Toba later eradicated them, but didn't similarly impact Africa. Continuity of derived features of AMH in Eurasia prior to Toba is shown in modern AMH populations today, from actual bones in dirt, not mathematical models (and funding) that are all that support OoA.
Why do Europeans often get called the "descendants of neanderthals" when we don't seem to have the highest amount of neanderthal DNA?
Probably comes from the cultural entanglement Europeans have been dealing with for 150 years since the Neanderthals were first discovered in Germany, I don't think Neanderthals are a part of other people's consciousness in the same way?
Makes sense
Fascinating! The evidence on early modern humans outside of Africa…would that have predated the bottleneck on modern humans suggested by research at the Blombos (sp?) Cave in South Africa?
At present the consensus is that all the humans outside of Africa today descend from human groups which left around 50-70,000 years ago, but that previous modern human groups attempted to leave and failed to thrive
What do you think may that group of humans "special" over the pervious? Was it only random luck?
Where do you stand on Neanderthal Predation Theory? Got legs or fanciful pseudoscience?
It's not totally implausible that small homo sapien groups were wiped out by Neanderthals early in the colonisation process, but I think homo sapiens were more likely to be the aggressors once the numbers picked up
I've recently covered Slimak's 2024 The Naked Neanderthal at
https://whyweshould.substack.com/p/unmuddied-ludovic-slimak-essays-the
and
https://whyweshould.substack.com/p/postscript-ludovic-slimak-essays
Nice, I'll check that out!
Those Neanderthals aren’t up to no good.
Can you restate the Australian implications? I could not follow the quoted paragraph at all.
If all non-Africans sequenced so far are from AFTER the single admixture event with Neanderthal 45,000-49,000 years ago, unless there are Australian indigenous populations who have not yet been sequenced, then ALL current Australian indigenous are from the population that mixed with Neanderthal 45,000-49,000 years ago.
However, Australian indigenous remains that date more than 50,000 years ago must originate from a different human population, even though that population is now extinct in Australia. That population would not contain the admixture with Neanderthal.
If there are such Australian populations from more than 50,000 years ago, then Australia was settled by multiple distinct waves of humans, even though at present only the descendants of the Neanderthal admixture wave remain. That wave, in Australia and everywhere else outside of Africa, replaced all previous waves as everyone left has the Neanderthal admixture.
Thank you, that is helpful.
To know if "replaced" is the right description, wouldn't we have to have a pre-50k Australian bone or skeleton from which we had been able to extract DNA to compare to existing Australian Aboriginal DNA to look for evidence of admixture?
Just because you have "Neanderthal admixture" ancestry doesn't mean you mightn't also have "earlier Australian ancestry" too, right? Something like an Australian Aboriginal version of "ghost populations" -- at least in theory? Do you know if anyone has tried to look, or been able to eliminate this possibility? Is there any pre 50kya Australian aDNA under study? I don't know anything about preservation conditions in Australia, maybe they are terrible.
Sadly Australian archaeology is in one of the worst states globally for prehistoric research. Irreplaceable fossils such as the Lake Mungo remains have been buried by Aboriginal groups and removed from scientific study. There have been previous attempts to sequence Pleistocene era skeletons but they largely date from before the 2015 whole genome era.
Well the values of today trump the values of all future generations, including any future Aboriginal Australians possibly wanting to know more about their own past. So this seems like unobjectionable fair dinkum, really glad to hear of this, hooray and good job everybody!
sigh.
I think one of the big issues is that there are real material interests involved in Aboriginal Australians and Native Americans blocking the advancement of human knowledge. If I am not mistaken, I believe that many treaties between these groups and the government's of Australia, the USA, Canada etc are dependant upon the idea of the group in question being indigenous and supposedly the original inhabitants. I therefore believe that the Aborigines and Native Americans are worried that their ownership of the land they live on and their right to some degree of self-government will be revoked by the results of further archaeological and genetic investigations. Whilst it is highly unlikely that they will lose those rights, they nevertheless have a real material reason not to allow further research. I may be mistaken in my assessment, and I will be happy to concede on this point.
I am sure you are right, even if only to a degree or in part. My understanding of human evolution suggests people evolved in the Old World, and everyone in Canada and the Americas, and Australia, are immigrants. Some immigrated earlier than others, and are widely recognized to have priority. I am very confident the original inhabitants of the Americas, at least, no longer survive, and the OP argues the original inhabitants of Australia no longer do either.
The peoples calling themselves Aboriginal and Native are certainly the descendants of immigrants. A Native friend of mine once said 'We're all boat people, if you go back far enough.' It's just that some of us were on earlier boats. Claiming to be first seems to have benefits, but I think being the last people to live on lands seems of more practical import.
That is a good point. I do not know any Australian archaeology. IF there are human remains in Australia that date more than 50K years ago (the original post implies that is the case, but I do not know), then there were at least two waves of human settlement in Australia pre-European contact. The first wave had no Neanderthal admixture and the second wave had. The second wave either replaced the first wave, or so completely combined with it that all current indigenous populations have the Neanderthal admixture.
In other parts of Asia there is the extra wrinkle of the Denisovians. Unlike Neanderthal, no Denisovians have been found. However, many Asian populations have meaningful amounts of Denisovian DNA (do Australian indigenous populations also have Denisovian DNA?). That's how the Denisovians were discovered. Being current non-African origin populations, presumably these populations also have Neanderthal ancestry from the Neanderthal admixture event of 45K-49K years ago.
"...do Australian indigenous populations also have Denisovian DNA?"
Indeed, aboriginal populations are amongst the highest examples of Denisovan DNA introgression.
"...our simulations provide support for the presence of two separate Denisovan lineages that independently introgressed into the ancestors of Ayta Negritos and Papuans, likely occurring around the same time after the Negrito-Papuan divergence 53 kya (95% CI: 41–64 kya). Upon entry of the first modern human migrants into Sunda and Sahul (ancestors of Negritos and Australopapuans), these ancestral Australasian groups likely experienced admixture with deeply divergent Denisovan-related populations scattered all throughout the ISEA and the Oceania region."
--https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)00977-5
Sahul is the name for the combined continent of New Guinea and Australia that existed prior to the rise in sea level after the Younger Dryas. Sunda is the name of the subcontinent of SE Asia of much greater extent than exists today prior to sea levels rising ~100M.
There appear to have been at least two distinct populations of Denisovans, one that inhabited Asia from Tibet to Siberia, and another that lived in Island SE Asia and Oceania. There are claims that a third population of Denisovans admixed with AMH as recently as ~15kya, but this is contested by researchers that point out such admixture could be the result of AMH populations with earlier Denisovan admixture diverging and that retained different material later rejoining.
evidence of the latter SE Asian Denisovans will be under water in Sundaland. [edited]
Perhaps. The lack of physical samples of Denisovans suggests any of several reasons we have so little remains to consider, from very low population densities, to extremely diligent and complete destruction of remains of the dead in funerary rituals. Given the bulk of evidence suggests Denisovans were seafaring, the highly controversial sites in the Americas that have been claimed to predate 100kya may also be Denisovan in origin. The vast continental shelves may surely reveal evidence someday of human societies we probably know nothing about at all today, given the serial incidences of cataclysmic flooding that was likely the way in which sea levels rose, and the impact that would have had on coastal communities. I speculate that innumerable cultures, and perhaps even civilizations and/or species, have been utterly eradicated when sea levels rose a meter or ten very rapidly.
Whatever it reveals, the prospect of archaeological research of sites presently beneath the waves is exciting to anticipate.