
What did the Neanderthals do for us? - JacobAldridge
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20151116-what-did-the-neanderthals-do-for-us
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danieltillett
The most interesting part of this article is how much of the Neanderthal
genome is still present in the non African population. I would be really
interested to see the same analysis applied to the Melanesian population who
are 6% or so denosovian [1].

1\.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denisovan](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denisovan)

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blisterpeanuts
What advantages did the Neanderthal genes add (or take away)? The only way to
really find out is to create a modern day living Neanderthal. There's probably
decades of research to do before we can pull that off, but some day it will
happen. We need more than just the genome, unfortunately.

We already know a surprising amount about Neanderthal humans. They were
generally short, around 5'7"/170cm, but their bones and muscle attachment
sites were larger, suggesting bigger and more powerful musculature.

Combine hereditary strength with a vigorous lifestyle during a brutal epoch,
when both predators and prey were dangerous giants, and we are looking at a
truly powerful breed of humans who are thought to have been many times
stronger than modern Homo Sapiens humans.

It seems, though, that this great strength was not a useful enough trait to be
passed on through interbreeding; the modern humans displaced H.
Neanderthalensis after a few thousand years, and we definitely don't have the
musculature they had, not even our Cro Magnon ancestors who were contemporary
with them.

Their huge braincases are another mystery. They averaged 1600 cubic cm, versus
1400 for modern humans. Were the Neanderthals smarter? Or were their brains
larger, as claims one scientist, to accommodate a larger optical center for
their enhanced night vision?

Ah, what we would give to have a way to warp time and visit that bygone era!

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defen
> What advantages did the Neanderthal genes add (or take away)? The only way
> to really find out is to create a modern day living Neanderthal. There's
> probably decades of research to do before we can pull that off, but some day
> it will happen

Do you want to create Khan? Because that is how you create Khan. If you're
averaging a bunch of genomes to do this (e.g simple rank-based voting), and
assuming most mutations are deleterious, you're probably going to end up with
some sort of super-Neanderthal who is way smarter and stronger than the
average human.

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kiba
Fictional sources are not evidence in a debate or argument.

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defen
The Khan part is a joke but the rest is serious. Nearly all mutations are
unique and deleterious. So if you average them all out, you'll end up with an
organism that is significantly more fit than average.

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lholden
"It may seem strange that we inherited disease-causing genes at all. After
all, only beneficial genes should survive, so surely over hundreds of
generations we should have shaken off these unwanted contributions?"

Certainly not my field, but my understanding is that unless a mutation has a
direct impact on survival and fertility... then there is no evolutionary drive
for it to go away.

All animals have negative genes that just stick around as random "junk" which
has accumulated over the years. It's not surprising that we have picked them
up too.

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BurningFrog
> Certainly not my field, but my understanding is that unless a mutation has a
> direct impact on survival and fertility... then there is no evolutionary
> drive for it to go away.

Well, genes get corrupted by random mutations, and if they have no survival
value, there is no correcting force. So they drift out of the genome.

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rtl49
Are you referring to genetic drift? This is a statistical phenomenon by which
alleles that are near neutral for viability change in frequency until one
becomes fixed. This doesn't mean that neutral mutations will invariably push
the wild type out of the genome. Actually, that would be improbable in the
absence of a selective pressure or an accident of history.

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BurningFrog
I'm saying genes that have no survival-value will fade away due to
accumulating random mutations.

That's probably different from whatever you're describing.

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carsongross
This is a very interesting topic, but the article is fluff: smoking, red hair,
some diseases.

 _I am 2.5% Neanderthal._

Pffff. If you are < 3% are you even european? ;)

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puredemo
If she had over 3% she would have written a smarter article. ;)

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Retric
We share a lot more than 20% of our DNA with Neanderthal's ~99%. So, it's not
clear exactly what they mean by this article.

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crusso
They factor out genes attributable to common ancestors we had with
Neanderthals.

They're talking about genes that were specifically modified along the
Neanderthal branch of evolution and then added back to us.

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Retric
Considering we are the same species and would interbreed, I don't think it's
that clear which line started a given mutation. Unless they had a lot of
samples to work with.

IE, did a trait start with us and move to them. Or did it start with them and
move to us.

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clouddrover
The Tibetan adaptation to high altitudes is a good example of introgression
from Denisovans:
[http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/07/140702-genet...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/07/140702-genetics-
tibetan-denisovan-altitude-science/)

