Talk:Neanderthal
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The above quote is out of date. Mitochrondrial DNA was sequenced from another Neanderthal specimen in 2000, with similar results. The second specimen did share 19 substiutions with the first, despite the fact that they were found 2500 miles away from each other. It seems pretty clear that at the minimum, neanderthals were pretty reproductively isolated from homo sapiens sapiens.
It is still possible that some interbreeding occurred, and it remains debatable whether they shuold be considered a spearate species or merely a subspecies.
Neither of these conclusions contradicts the creationist model AFAIK - creationists believe that variants with in a kind can occur _extremely_ rapidly, which is key to the ark+flood model.
Neanderthal-human "hybrid"
The claim that "Yet, the 1998 discovery of a Neanderthal-human "hybrid" skeleton at Abrigo do Lagar Velho in Portugual indicates that humans were indeed capable of interbreeding with Neanderthal" appears to be wrong and is contradicted by a major new finding:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2007/12/10/2114205.htm?site=science&topic=latest
which indicates that pretty much all of the tiny handful of remains which anybody had ever thought might represent a human/neanderthal hybrid were basically modern humans.
This is similar to the situation with "intermediate fossils" in which only a tiny number of questionable cases had ever turned up while the theory in fact demanded that the bulk of all fossils be intermediates. As James Shreeve noted, humans and neanderthals had lived in close proximity for long periods of time and hence the lack of evidence of crossbreeding had always been a mystery since much such evidence had been expected:
http://discovermagazine.com/1995/sep/theneanderthalpe558
All of this adds up to an overwhelming argument against the idea of human evolution. In order to be descended from something via any sort of process resembling evolution, at some point, you have to be able to interbreed with the something and the evidence indicates that we could no more interbreed with neanderthals than we could with horses. For this reason, the neanderthal has generally been eliminated as a plausible human ancestor, i.e. the genetic gap is simply too wide:
Neanderthal DNA is generally described as being "about halfway between ours and that of a chimpanzee". Moreover, all other hominids were further removed from us THAN the neanderthal. That leaves precisely nothing on this planet from which modern man could plausibly have evolved. Evolutionists have not been willing to confront this fact yet. The claim you see generally is that both modern man and the neanderthal must have descended from some more remote ancestor. Nonetheless the claim is basically nonsensical; it's like claiming that dogs could not be descended from wolves and must therefore have evolved directly from fish. Icebear 17:45, 24 December 2007 (EST)
Neanderthals
On the CreationWiki page for Neanderthal, examples of flaws in mtDNA studies and the existance of Homo Sapiens-Neanderthalensis hybrid fossils are listed as evidence that the two groups were genetically compatible and interbred. But I've found some information which seems to contradict those theories.
Fossils originally listed as hybrids are now being reconsidered to be Homo Sapiens fossils. Researchers claim that while the fossils show marked inregularities with most Homo Sapiens, the differences are not distinctive enough to label them as hybrids, and could be seen as signs of natural variation within Homo Sapiens.
I've also read that further testing of Neanderthal mtDNA still indicates that the difference between Homo Neanderthalensis and Homo Sapiens DNA is significant.
There is still possibility that they were capable of interbreeding and did so, but the evidence appears to be minimal.
I think that the page on Neanderthals should be reworked to accommodate these findings.
If there is any evidence which discredits these findings, I'd like to hear of them.
Thanks.--Anima 07:11, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
Article update time
Alright, everyone that believes this article should be updated, please contact me via e-mail tylerdemerchant@yahoo.com So we can collaberate.--Tylerdemerchant 00:25, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
