Neanderthals - No Relation
Foreward	The following is an article from the San Francisco Chronicle. The photo of Scientist Svante Paabo showing a replica Neanderthal bone, is courtesty of Associated Press. This article details how a recent discovery of Neanderthal genetic material dispells traditionally-held beliefs in the evolution community. Please read the article in its entirety before arriving at any conclusions.
Article	Neanderthals - No Relation DNA different from ours By Charles Petit, Science Writer San Francisco Chronicle - Friday, July 11, 1997 Edition, Front Page. Researchers have isolated DNA from the arm bone of a Neanderthal man who died 30,000 to 100,000 years ago, yielding strong evidence that the extinct creatures were an entirely different species from modern humans. Although our predecessors undoubtedly encountered Neanderthals, they evidently did not interbreed, according to findings published today in Cell by a team of German and U.S. researchers. In a stunning foray down the human family tree, scientists analyzed bits of genetic material taken from the remains of the powerfully muscled, low-brow whose famous remains have rested in a German museum for 140 years. Results show that the creature carried genes that were clearly human - and yet were dramatically different from the corresponding genes in modern peoples. The analyzed fragments represent only a tiny portion of a full set of Neanderthal genes. But it was enough to suggest that Neanderthals left no genetic trace of themselves before disappearing. The scientists said it appears that the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans lived 500,000 to 600,000 years ago, almost certainly in Africa. After that time, they say, Neanderthals were apparently alone on an ultimately dead-end branch of evolution. The discovery electrified experts in human evolution. "I think this is one of the great papers of human genetics and molecular evolution," said Luigi Cavalli-Sforza, professor of genetics at Stanford University. He welcomed the new findings as strong support of his own widely shared belief, drawn from other kinds of evidence, that modern peoples are all descended from a small population that evolved in Africa as recently as 150,000 years ago. The DNA is 10 or more times older than the previous oldest human, or near-human, genes ever isolated. And despite reports of genes taken from insects preserved in amber many millions of years old, dating even to the time of dinosaurs, the oldest confirmed DNA of any kind is dated to about 100,000 years, from a Siberian mammoth. "This is just a damned interesting thing," said F. Clark Howell, professor of paleoanthropology at the University of California at Berkeley. "We finally have some DNA on extinct humans." The leader of the new analysis is Svante Paabo, pressor of geology at the University of Munich, who also recently had isolated DNA from the 5,000-year-old body of a man found frozen in the Austrian Alps in 1991. But those genes, as expected, resemble those of Europeans today. [Left: Scientist Svante Paabo shows a replica Neanderthal bone] To get Neanderthal DNA, he and several colleagues, including Mark Stoneking, associate professor of anthropology at Pennsylvania State University, studied one of the best-known skeletons in science, found in 1856 in the Neander Valley near Dusseldorf, Germany. The sturdy bones and low, long skull were attributed by some scientists of the time to a person who got bowed legs from riding horses. Some said the heavy ridge of bone over its eyes was due to prolonged frowning in pain from a badly healed broken arm. Now in a museum in Bonn, it is the original or "type" specimen from which the name "Neanderthal" is taken. It applies to a type of human that arose as long as 300,000 years ago and disappeared about 30,000 years ago. Its members used stone tools and were far more heavily muscled than modern humans, with stocky frames suited for ice age Europe. Their brains were about as large as those of people today. Other anatomical details - heavy brow ridges; large, projecting noses; lack of chins - are not seen in modern Homo sapiens. Yet in Europe and the Near East, near Israel and Jordan, evidence indicates they could have coexisted with more modern people for as long as 10,000 years. Some theories say modern people caused the Neanderthal extinction, though no one can say exactly how that may have happened. While most anthropologists regard the Neanderthal, or Homo neanderthalensis, as distinct from modern Homo sapiens, a few experts still regard modern Europeans as at least partly descended from modern Neanderthals. Rachel Caspari of the University of Michigan called the new discovery a "remarkable achievement, just fantastic." Still, she noted it came from "one individual, and I think there is some overinterpretation going on here." She and her husband, anthropologist Milford Wolpoff, are prominent among those who argue that all humans have belonged to essentially one continuously interbreeding species for a half-million years and that Neanderthals were on the direct line of modern ancestry. The piece studied, weighing about three grams and measuring about an inch long, is from the humerus bone of the specimen’s right arm, between the shoulder and elbow. The team used molecular cloning methods to isolate and reassemble a short stretch of genetic material from the Neanderthal’s mitochondria, small organs in its cells. Mitochondrial DNA is distinct from the DNA of most genes, which are in a cell’s nucleus. There are many more copies of each mitochondrial gene than there are nuclear gene copies. This gives a better chance of finding a string of them still intact. And mitochondrial genes mutate faster, revealing the accumulation of genetic changes as evolution proceeds through time. The scientists contrasted the Neanderthal DNA to corresponding DNA from 475 Africans, 510 Europeans, 494 Asians, 167 Native Americans, and 20 from Australia or the Pacific Islands. They also compared it to 59 chimpanzees, humankind’s closest living creature. "These were clearly human genes, from the genus Homo, like us," Stoneking said. "But they weren’t like any humans alive now."