Your Neanderthal Father...?
It's possible, entirely possible. You may have within your genetic code a footprint fragment of DNA linking you way, way back in prehistory to Neanderthal man. You always suspected it anyway, didn't you? All those times when you submerged good sense and blurted out how you really felt about situations, and then had that disrespectful label flung in your face: Neanderthal!Well, let's face it, none of us is truly responsible for the genes we've inherited; nature took care of that in her inimitable way, linking our ancesters in ways we couldn't even begin to guess at.
So here were two separate and very distinct pro-human archetypes, one called Neanderthal, those whom we imagine shambling along with a distinct sloping lope, slanted forehead, bony features, shaggy as all hell. Hey, guess what? they had larger brains than their "modern human" counterparts. They buried their dead, they constructed rudimentary tools, they recognized and made their own music. Nah, nah!
And then there was that other group, our forefathers so to speak, modern, yet not completely modern humans, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, Man the Wise (hah!), the tabula rasa of you and me and everyone else claiming to be part of humankind. Ah, but the thing is, many evolutionary biologists and paleoanthropolgists believe, based on what little evidence there is, that the two strains, although separate and distinct, lived alongside one another and had more than ample opportunity to inter-breed, and in fact, did.
Well, not entirely. Remember that larger brain, leading to a larger cranium; a large, bony head? I recall reading decades ago theories about inter-breeding and potential relations which might have existed between the two - before Neanderthal disappeared from the fossil record entirely, about 30,000 years ago. Neanderthal men might attempt to father a child with a "modern human" prototype, but it would be destined to failure, given the pelvic-bone spacing of the human female.
Alternatively, the "modern human" male fathering a child with a Neanderthal female could reach success, given the adaptation of the female to her own species' larger cranium and her own birth canal and pelvic-bone spacing to accommodate same. Bearing a human child would be child's play (likely sometimes was. You mightn't have had a human female forbear, but its entirely possible that there's a Neanderthal mother away back in your DNA history. How does that strike you?
Of course this is all conjecture; scientists have not yet been successful in isolating anything remotely like evidence in modern humans today of Neanderthal ancestry through some tiny, teeny, isolated DNA bitties, but they might yet, should they be entirely successful in developing the entire DNA sequence of our bedding cousins.
Mystery upon mystery. Stay tuned: we're going to hear a lot more.
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, November 16, 2006
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