Talk:Neanderthal

Is there still a fossil gap in MIS 8 (300,000-243,000 years ago)?

There is a sentence here, referenced to a single paper from 1998, that makes a strong claim: "There is a fossil gap in Europe between 300 and 243 ka (MIS 8); no hominin has ever been dated to this period." The paper referenced is entitled On the phylogenetic position of the pre-Neandertal specimen from Reilingen, Germany (1998). Although following the link in our ref gets you to a paywall, you can get the whole paper for free if you search for the title on Google Scholar.

I'm not expert enough to know if this statement is still valid, but I found a paper that says: "Well-dated MIS 8 sites in Europe are rare." The paper's title is: The Emergence of Neanderthal Technical Behavior : New Evidence from Orgnac 3 (Level 1, MIS 8), Southeastern France (2011) (available for free on Google Scholar). It gives a list of Neanderthal sites in Europe, but I don't know which ones have actual fossils or just artifacts. Here is the list from the paper.

France: La Micoque (level L2/3, end of MIS 8?), Baume Bonne (Ensemble II–III), Gentelles (level CLG), Gouzeaucourt, Achenheim (level 20)

Germany: Ariendorf 1

Poland: Rozumice 3 (e.g., Foltyn, Kozlowski, and Maciej 2005; Goval 2005; Tuffreau, Lamotte, and Goval 2008)

Zyxwv99 (talk) 18:38, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

I wrote this sentence. This source is indeed old and new bones are found every year, so an update would be welcome. In the meanwhile, I'll add "As of 1998" in front of the sentence. I'm building a list of Neanderthals on my User Page, but the early Neanderthal section is far from complete. For what it's worth, none, even Biache St-Vaast, is conclusively MIS 8.

Note that the overwhelming majority of Palaeolithic sites have no human bones. Nicolas Perrault (talk) 13:39, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

After having a look, it seems that no new discoveries have been made that would change the situation. There is a fossil gap in the whole of MIS8 (300-243 ka) except for the very beginning and end. For the whole of MIS9 (337-300 ka) there is talk of pre-Neanderthals and Neanderthal-type implements, maybe an occasional paleontologist who goes out on a limb and calls a fossil from this period "Neanderthal" but it seems to be the exception not the rule.

However, this brings up a related problem with this article. There are two definitions of Neanderthal, the older one from morphology, and a new one from cladistics. Both definitions are currently in use and considered valid. Every branch of science has terms with more than one definition, sometimes strongly overlapping but different enough that a distinction needs to be made. In paleontology it's common to have cladistic definitions alongside morophological definitions. Neanderthals by the morphological definition are based on the holotype skeleton Neanderthal 1, and its characters (traits). These can be reliably diagnosed going back to the end of MIS8. By the cladistic definition, Neanderthals begin at the split between Neanderthals and Denisovans (~450 ka or according to one estimate, 465+-15 ka). This is a completely separate issue from the split between the ancestors of anatomically modern humans (AMH) and the Neanderthal/Denisovan ancestors (a branch of Heidelbergensis).

I think it's important for us to not try to reconcile these definitions, since that would be original research. Instead, we should emphasize the distinction. Zyxwv99 (talk) 20:22, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Updated and sourced the range map

Hope you guys like it. Nicolas Perrault (talk) 21:05, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Now I see. You have to click on the map and see the revision history on Wikimedia Commons. Good work. Thanks. Zyxwv99 (talk) 14:33, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Looks good but Sicily should not be in blue, as there is no evidence that the Neanderthals reached the island. Dudley Miles (talk) 15:36, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Y Done. Good eye Dudley. Nicolas Perrault (talk) 15:14, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Neanderthal male modern female interbreeding info outdated and wrong

I have removed statements from this article indicating that there is evidence of interbreding between Neanderthal females and modern human females. This was based on the Mezzena mandible which was said to belong to a late MP Neanderthal hybrid, but which has been re-dated and analyzed genetically and proven to be a Neolithic modern human.

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep29144

There is no evidence of modern human males ever having produced offspring with Neanderthal females. All genetic evidence is consistent with Neanderthal males breeding modern human females.

Thank you for your attention.

OrlandoRegistrar (talk) 06:20, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

The problem is that the converse argument is also true. The argument presented for male Neanderthal/modern females, at least as we present it in the first part of that paragraph, is based on the absence of female-inherited Neanderthal mtDNA in modern humans, suggesting that no female Neanderthal was able to produce fertile offspring by a modern male. However, the exact reverse argument is equally valid - there is no evidence of modern human females ever having produced offspring with Neanderthal females, since no Neanderthal Y-DNA is found in modern humans, which by the same logic means no male Neanderthal managed to produce fertile offspring by a female modern. Yet both can't be true since we know there was interbreeding. That means neither of these parallel arguments is valid. Did you have some other genetic evidence in mind? Agricolae (talk) 06:53, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Neither Neanderthal MTDNA nor Y-DNA in modern living humans are necessary for the interbreeding events to have occured exclusively between Neanderthal males and modern human females. The presence of nuclear DNA has been use to demonstrate paternal bias inheritance in both Neanderthals and Denisovans.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/342/6156/321.full

The genomic evidence suggests that gene flow from the Denisovans may have been largely male-mediated, providing some clues about the nature of the interactions (4)

M. Meyer et al., Science 338, 222 (2012).

The Neanderthals themselves did have modern human MTDNA, which was another recent find which probably does belong in this article. This is a report on a study, not the actual study, which I will post later as it is all I have right now in my tabs:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jul/18/did-human-women-contribute-to-neanderthal-genomes-over-200000-years-ago

Another thing to note is that we don't actually know for sure whether or not we have any Neanderthal Y-DNA. So far only one Neanderthal specimen has actually yielded Y-DNA. That Y-haplotype is not known to occur in any living people, but Neanderthals could have had diverse Y-DNA as modern humans do, and we wouldn't know any better because we have only sequenced one Neanderthal Y-haplotype.

Non-African Y-DNA is suspiciously younger than non-African MTDNA, and the explosion of non-African Y-haplotype diversity does chronologically coincide with the proposed interbreeding events as modern humans left Africa. Greg Downey has an interesting article about this which, although it has no place in this article, is nevertheless an eye opener.

http://blogs.plos.org/neuroanthropology/2010/10/26/the-neanderthal-romeo-and-human-juliet-hypothesis/

Talk to you later. OrlandoRegistrar (talk) 08:18, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Well, let's say nuclear DNA has been used to 'suggest' (not demonstrate) paternal bias inheritance, but that is not what our article says. We say that the absence of Neanderthal mtDNA is evidence for this, which isn't really the case. As to not knowing there are no Neanderthal Y chromosomes, you have to turn some pretty elaborate mental gymnastics to maintain this in the face of the earliest-branching Y-DNA being found in Cameroon with an estimated branching time well after the modern human/Neanderthal split (and well before any dating given for the first modern/Neanderthal interbreeding). That blog post was jumping to conclusions when written and subsequent findings have negated its entire premise. Even were Y chromosome divergence to date from 59,000 years, there was one thing happening at this time, a rapid expansion of non-African modern humans that would independently account for both events without one being the cause of the other. Such an expansion would have independently resulted in the expansion of a single Y lineage, and brought modern humans into contact to interbreed with Neanderthals. There would be no reason whatsoever to hypothesize that it was Neanderthal Y DNA that was expanding, and that it somehow found its way back throughout Africa without taking nuclear DNA with it. And that would be the case even if it was true that Y-DNA was 'suspiciously younger' than mtDNA. I don't even think this was true in 2010, but it is certainly not true in 2017. Indeed, the date of 59,000 years ago used in the blog for the Y-father is well off the mark. The earliest branch of the modern human Y tree is more than 300,000 years back and, as I said, this most divergent lineage is found in Cameroon. One could speculate that this is the result of a now-lost African archaic human lineage interbreeding to introduce it into this village, but Africa is were we would expect the most divergent modern human Ys were it a simple dispersal scenario, without any introgression events, and Occam would favor zero inter-species introgressions over the multiple ones that would be necessary to ad hoc this away. As to 'Neanderthals themselves did have modern human mtDNA', the fact of the matter is that there is no strong consensus on how to make sense of the decidedly odd mtDNA data derived from the ancient DNA work. Agricolae (talk) 11:08, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Fascinating story. When the science is as debatable as this, we ought to rely only on the best consensus (secondary review articles) and avoid all speculation as to what individual research findings may mean. The most we should do is to mention that there is primary research evidence (supplying refs) which is conflicting and hard to interpret. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:08, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Agricolae -- you are confused. I am going to keep this simple to avoid further confusion.

1.) We do not know when the first episodes of Neanderthal interbreeding took place. The presence of modern human MTDNA in European Neanderthals over 200,000 years old proves it happened in locations and at dates which it had been previously unexpected to occur.

2.) An expansion out of Africa is unlikely to result in the appearance of multiple Y-DNA haplotypes instantaneously. It is more likely they had already been evolving outside Africa -- possibly among Neanderthals.

3.) The oldest Y-DNA lineage is not over 300,000 years "back." It is roughly 200,000 years back.

https://www.nature.com/articles/ejhg2013303

However, see point 5.

4.) Neanderthal nuclear DNA is found at low frequencies in Africa, including central and south Africans. Low but non-zero amounts.

5.) New research has revised the human Y-DNA phylogentic tree. The authors of this paper find a high degree of shared alleles between the El Sidron Neanderthal and Y-haplogroups A, B, C, D, and E.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/01/18/101410

OrlandoRegistrar (talk) 18:16, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Not confused, just siding with Occam against this decidedly unlikely scenario you prefer. The 'instantaneous' appearance of a lot of Y haplotypes is absolutely evidence for rapid expansion, whatever its source, and introgression from Neanderthal doesn't explain it at all. Even with a re-dating (which I hadn't seen) the most divergent Y is still found in Cameroon, which again doesn't point to a Neanderthal origin, and unlike northern, eastern and southern Africa, in a region with minuscule amounts of Neanderthal DNA, and what little it has likely due to historical and not prehistorical interactions. Oh, and biorxiv is not a reliable source by its very nature, being entirely self published. If you want to present a new Out Of Europe interpretation, you need to wait until it becomes consensus, or at least an accepted alternative. Agricolae (talk) 20:30, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

It may be worth mentioning that unlike a scientific journal, Wikipedia strongly prefers review papers to primary research, and indeed is wary of accepting anything that is only found in a single primary source. See WP:RS for details of this policy. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:38, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, that's what I was hinting at, but in retrospect I should have been explicit. Passing peer review and formal publication is just the first step. As the Y DNA early branch dating shows, a single scientific report can be wrong, or it can just be so 'out there' that nobody knows what to make of it, and it doesn't represent Wikipedia-worthy consensus opinion or even a noteworthy alternative until other scientist start talking about it that way in secondary sources (and not just at-the-time-of-publication commentary pieces). Only at that point does it merit inclusion, so a biorxive contribution is way early, years early probably, in the process. Agricolae (talk) 21:37, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

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Fully human?

I notice a lot of people call Neanderthals and other groups such as Denisovans as "hominin" rather than "human". Yet they interbred with us and most populations have some of their DNA in their genomes. And it used to be even higher. So shouldn't they be called humans as well? Maybe a subspecies of Homo sapien? Also realize that Neanderthals made clothes, had capability for speech (FOXP2), made string, leather, glue, art and controlled fire. 198.85.118.24 (talk) 19:30, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Several discussions of this question can be found in the archives of this Talk page, most recently here: [1] Yes, humans do those things, but is doing those things what makes us humans or is it possible that a non-human hominin might also be able to do them? As to FOXP2, it is thought necessary for speech, but it is going to far to say it is sufficient, that having that gene automatically means they had the capability of speech. Agricolae (talk) 20:33, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Good point but I would like to point out that Neanderthals had the same or very very close type of FOXP2 as H. sapien sapiens.

Maybe it's possible non human animals to do those things, however since we only see humans do it, I would assume that "hominin" entities that do the same are humans, along with the other points I mentioned above.137.118.104.149 (talk) 01:44, 28 February 2018 (UTC)