

Extinct Humans Passed High-Altitude Gene to Tibetans - ericpan
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/07/02/sex-with-extinct-humans-passed-high-altitude-gene-to-tibetans/

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tokenadult
Readers who are interested in this kind of thing may be interested in the new
book by Svante Pääbo, _Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes._ [1] Pääbo
was the first researcher to figure out how to sequence DNA from ancient human
beings, starting with Egyptian mummies and eventually leading to the complete
sequencing of Neanderthal nuclear genomes.

[1]
[http://www.amazon.com/Svante-P%C3%A4%C3%A4bo/e/B00GJ9XR7O/](http://www.amazon.com/Svante-P%C3%A4%C3%A4bo/e/B00GJ9XR7O/)

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walterbell
That's also a good book on the politics of such research.

"The Neanderthals Rediscovered", by Papagianni and Morse, has a good
chronology of the species based on what is known to date.

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/0500051771/](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0500051771/)

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defen
Perhaps not entirely surprising, when you consider how much better Tibetan
high-altitude adapations are when compared to Andean people's. So the idea
that they evolved in the span of 3,000 years seems suspect. Very interesting
that they seem to have picked them up from a relict population - perhaps this
is related to the Yeti stories?

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winestock
Greg Cochran has been making that argument for some time now. Here's his take
on the issue: [http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2014/07/03/rasmus-
nielsen/](http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2014/07/03/rasmus-nielsen/)

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mtdewcmu
I wondered this about Neanderthals, now Denisovans: in what sense are they
extinct if their progeny still walk the Earth?

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meric
The same sense dinosaurs are extinct while their progeny still walk/fly on
earth.

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mtdewcmu
That is a different sense. Totally different timescales, and dinosaurs were
many species.

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netcan
I think it captures the general fuzziness of it all. "Species" don't really
exist. All the classifications and taxonomies are fuzzy, to various degrees.
Even parent-offspring is a tricky concept.

Is the Tasmanian Devil facial cancer a new species? Did it evolve/mutate from
tasmanian devils? Is it an offspring of a specific devil?

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kinleyd
There's a subgroup of Asians spanning the Himalayas and east Asia that have
blue bottommed babies that is generally believed to denote an ancestry that
shares Genghis Khan, iirc. Anyone know whether this group is the same as the
one that shares the Denisovan gene?

There's one other thing that I think people living in the Himalayas have,
myself included, that helps and that is proportionately humongous lungs. This
is probably evolution at work over the course of centuries.

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hcarvalhoalves
> There's a subgroup of Asians spanning the Himalayas and east Asia that have
> blue bottommed babies

That's funny. I had to Google it because I never heard about that before, but
apparently it's extremely common!

According to Wikipedia this trait is common not only on asians but also native
americans, so it predates Genghis Khan.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_spot#Prevalence](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_spot#Prevalence)

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kinleyd
That makes sense actually, given the belief that native Americans came from
central Asia before the ice melted on the Bering Straits. When you compare
native Americans with Asians from around the Himalayan region, the features
are strikingly similar. I wonder if native Americans also have the high
altitude gene at the same level of probability as Tibetans, given their shared
blue bottoms? :)

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hcarvalhoalves
Possibly. Look at the Inca Empire. Peru, Bolivia, Chile are all above sea
level. Machu Picchu peak is at 2.5km.

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qwerta
> Extinct Humans Passed High-Altitude Gene to Tibetans

Extinct? Hmmm. Get over it we are partly neanderthals, denisovans and so on.

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alexandros
...And I can't. Not yet anyway. Not until we clone one of them.

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gnerd
Pity we didn't acquire Neanderthal genes for their 1600 cc brains, the largest
of any primate species found to date. [1]

Edit: Apologies to the downvoter, I should have substantiated that claim. I
have added a source.

[1]
[http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/society/neanderthal-m...](http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/society/neanderthal-
man.html)

