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Coffee!! Neanderkids!!

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Bit late with the coffee wagon, I admit. Other issues to deal with.

We are told in the queen of the “National Enquirer” science press that Neanderthals are not the only ‘apes’ humans bred with.

Every father on this list wants his daughter to date and later marry a Neanderthal, right?

Oh, wait, This just in: Most fathers don’t even want their daughters to date, let alone marry, a guy who plays the guitar in the subway for a living, let alone …like, there was a time when one of a father’s jobs was to check out suitors for his daughters’ hands.

Girls can be unduly influenced by romantic issues, but good fathers tend to ask boring stuff like “What is your annual income?”

Put more simply: If ten years later the girl comes trudging back to her parents’ house with three kids in tow and that guy is playing folk music somewhere far away, with his hat on the pavement, well …

But even worse. According to New Scientist, that guy’s daughter could be dating something now housed in a zoo? And Dad doesn’t care? And she shouldn’t be in therapy?

I used to wonder if the world had gone mad. Now I accept the fact and do not care.

Comments
Kyrilluk: I think you may have misread or mis understood what you read. I understand what you're saying, and your statement may have some relevancy in some situations concerning assumptions based on genome comparisons of the past, however those numbers seem a little off to me. Anyone ever heard of Richard Buggs a geneticist out of University of Florida? He's written a paper on Human and ape genome differentials? 2008. His argument which I think is a valid one, speaks of the fact that earlier comparisons did not include parts of our genome once referred to as junk, and only a small portion of what we thought was the only useful part of our genome were compared. He states that when we do compare the parts of our genome that are no longer considered junk, but seem to have important functions in gene expression and other emergent systems, we then get a much greater differential. I believe after considering all the different variables, the number is less than a 70 percent similarity to chimps. Pretty close to fruit flies if I'm not mistaken.THEMAYAN
May 16, 2010
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I thought I read an article that decisively refuted any interbreeding between the species. But if they did, and humans interbred with others of the homo genus, then doesn't that mean they were all one species? Here's what wikipedia has to say about it, "There are many definitions of what kind of unit a species is (or should be). A common definition is that of a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring of both genders, and separated from other such groups with which interbreeding does not normally happen." Seems to me that the creationists were right about this one. These ancestors/cousins were human.Collin
May 14, 2010
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"HUMANS and certain other species find symmetrical patterns more attractive than asymmetrical ones. These preferences may appear in response to biological signals, or in situations where there is no obvious signalling context, such as exploratory behaviour and human aesthetic response to pattern. It has been proposed that preferences for symmetry have evolved in animals because the degree of symmetry in signals indicates the signaller's quality. Symmetry, beauty and evolution http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v372/n6502/abs/372169a0.html "HUMANS and certain other species find symmetrical patterns more attractive than asymmetrical ones." Hmmm. I guess those Neanderthals were packing some other qualities to have been so favored. I mean, it's not the outside beauty that counts, but the inside, right?JPCollado
May 14, 2010
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O'Leary: "Every father on this list wants his daughter to date and later marry a Neanderthal, right?" hahahhaha too funny And let us not forget those Neanderthal babes. They must have been a work of art. They had to be. How else could one explain all of the intermarrying going on in those days. (oops I mean "interbreeding"). We know how men are.JPCollado
May 14, 2010
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Kyrilluk, I have no problem with the idea that Neanderthals should be considered an extinct ethnicity of modern humans. I think the same of homo Floriensis. But I hear both sides argued, and expect the arguments to go on for some time. Seversky, this is the coffee wagon, after all, not a series of science papers. I do not know who was bonoboing whom back then, but I bet no one else does either. I assure you, it wasn't me who was doing the snooping. My point is that a modern-day father who cares who his daughter is seeing likely follows a very, very old tradition of humanity. My reasoning: All that is needed is foresight - future sense. Whenever and however humanity gained this future sense, one thing would become apparent to Dad: If she is involved with a deadbeat, Dad could be on the hook for raising the kids - and just when he was hoping to start taking it easy, too. This is to say nothing of religious and moral issues, which I, of course, acknowledge. But that could be a separate stream of reasoning. Not sure.O'Leary
May 13, 2010
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I'm sorry, I'm not following. Home sapiens and Home neanderthalensis were bonoboing some where between 45,000 and 200,000 years ago and a modern-day father should be worrying about who his daughter is dating - why?Seversky
May 13, 2010
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I read somewhere that the difference is between 1 and 4 percents (well the white european have more in commun with the neandertals than the black african) between "modern human" and neandertals. I also read somewhere else that difference between races can rise to up to 8 percents of our DNA. So either we should define the Neandertals as Human from a different race, either we should define the other races as being another species. We can't have it both ways.Kyrilluk
May 13, 2010
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