http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/neanderthal000328.html?
I can point to several pro wrestlers that refute this.
I can point to several pro wrestlers that refute this.
Neanderthal cousins
- Thread starter malaka
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davefoc
Philosopher
I follow these stories and it seems the bulk of evidence for awhile is that we don't carry genes that resulted from the mating of Neanderthals and humans.
This saddens me a little. I always liked the idea that there was a little of them floating around in all of us.
It seems like there have been various finds that suggested the possibility of interbreeding by the morphology of the fossils. But, I suppose, these finds can never be definitive and maybe the DNA studies can come close to being definitive.
Perhaps we have somebody that has an opinion on how close we are to a definitive answer based either on morphology or DNA?
This saddens me a little. I always liked the idea that there was a little of them floating around in all of us.
It seems like there have been various finds that suggested the possibility of interbreeding by the morphology of the fossils. But, I suppose, these finds can never be definitive and maybe the DNA studies can come close to being definitive.
Perhaps we have somebody that has an opinion on how close we are to a definitive answer based either on morphology or DNA?
arcticpenguin
Philosopher
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- Sep 18, 2002
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We had a lengthy thread on the topic not long ago, and I posted another recent report of Cro-Magnon sequencing jsut the other day: http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?threadid=15326
Dealing with PCR, you must be extremely careful about contamination of samples, because it is such a powerful amplifying technique.
I don't think I'd call it definitive, but the current weight of evidence is definitely against inter-breeding. The Cro-Magnon results show that their mitochondrial DNA was very much like ours 25000 years ago, whereas the Neanderthal results show that they are different.
Dealing with PCR, you must be extremely careful about contamination of samples, because it is such a powerful amplifying technique.
I don't think I'd call it definitive, but the current weight of evidence is definitely against inter-breeding. The Cro-Magnon results show that their mitochondrial DNA was very much like ours 25000 years ago, whereas the Neanderthal results show that they are different.