Assumes they are/were separate species.
Wouldn’t the logical—and economical—conclusion be the exact opposite? That they weren’t separate species?
But then she lives in Darwin World, coterminous with pop science journalism.
Remember, Darwin’s Origin of Species was the “most influential academic book,” so we can assume that vast numbers who haven’t read or thought about it “get” the basic messages she would receive and transmit.
I am 2.5% Neanderthal.
That’s according to a genetic analysis of snippets of my DNA. It is slightly less than the European average of 2.7%.
I owe my part-Neanderthal nature to an accident of history. Thousands of years ago, modern humans ran into Neanderthals somewhere in Asia or Europe.
We don’t know exactly what happened, but one way or another my ancestors had sex with members of another species.
Aw come on. Even Neanderthal genome mapper Svante Pääbo (MaxPlanck Institute) did not want to believe the 20% overlap (taken together): “But the strength of genetic data is that once the results are in, one has to believe the results.”
A novel theory, Pääbo’s …believe the evidence, not the narrative.
As one already suspects, from multiple sources, there is a strong need to believe that Neanderthal man, and similar human finds, were “separate species,” in order to back up the speciation claims made in that “most influential academic book.”
Claims still accepted in a world where the forced claims for dogs and wolves as “separate species” are piously written up as if they represent a body of fact.
The whole concept of “species” is currently a mess, and can’t be resolved until Archaea discoverer Carl Woese’s dream is fulfilled: Toppling Darwin in favour of evidence.
There is also the need to believe that Neanderthal man was somehow significantly dumber than the rest of us, to back up current naturalist theories of the human mind.
So of course, we are then told that Neanderthal genes might have done bad things to us (that happens with “foreign” genes, right?):
It’s conceivable that this predisposition to heavy smoking was passed down to me from a Neanderthal. But I don’t have enough details to know this for sure.
Aw, why don’t we go back to blaming it on the North American Indians who grew tobacco and perfected the art—to many of whom it had a key religious significance.
Despite which, people with all kinds of gene packages start or quit smoking every day.
Now for something more interesting:
If we sequenced the genome of every living person, we might recover 30-40% of the Neanderthal genome, says co-author Joshua Akey of the University of Washington in Seattle, US. “The key point is, our study was not just from a single Neanderthal ancestor. We recovered sequences from the entire history of interactions that happened between modern humans and Neanderthals.” More.
Any guesses what the result will be? Here’s mine: We have met the heavy smoker and he is any or some or all of us.
Meanwhile, see also:
Neanderthal Man: The long-lost relative turns up again, this time with documents
and
A deep and abiding need for Neanderthals to be stupid. Why?
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