There's a bit of caveman in all of us: yabba-dabba-do!

What is the essence of humanity?

Many great debates have been put forth about human’s origins. Some scoff at the idea of humans stemming from apes while others are partial to the idea of humans spawning off Neanderthals. The recent discovery of a near-complete remain of a Stone-Age boy in Portugal have fuelled the idea that there once was a human-Neanderthal hybrid.

Surely you jest?

Our great-great-ancestors would not be interested in inter-breed sex?

The Stone-Age boy had prominent chin and facial features of the modern human but also the stocky physique and stumpy legs reminiscent of Neanderthals. The proposed answer to this was that he was the progeny of an extensive interbreeding between the Neanderthals and the Europeans. There has been genetic evidence to support this theory. Genes such as PDHA1 and microcephalin are “completely incompatible with a model in which human derive from a single population” (Jones, D. 2007). These genes have split off from human evolutionary lineages and then miraculously jumped back in 40,000 years ago. Such repeated finding suggests that modern humans evolved from a single hybrid population.

With the possibility of $1000 genome sequencing on the horizon, the chances of expanding the genomic bank to include a complete sequence of the Neanderthal genome are vast. With that in mind, we may finally venture into an evolutionary epiphany that we all do indeed have a little bit of cavemen in all of us.

Hannah Kwong (41412222)

Primary source:
Jones, Dan. The Neanderthal within: did our ancestors interbreed with other species of human? We might be more of a hybrid than we'd care to believe. New Scientist 193.2593 (March 3, 2007): 28(5). Expanded Academic ASAP. Gale. University of Queensland. 28 May 2008

Secondary source:
Jones, Dan. The Neander code: for a while, we were neck-and-neck in the human race. But we won, and they vanished. How like us were they? Dan Jones looks for the answers in Neanderthal DNA. New Scientist 192.2577 (Nov 11, 2006): 44(4). Expanded Academic ASAP. Gale. University of Queensland. 28 May 2008

Harvati, K. Gunz, P. Grigorescu, D. 2007. Cioclovina (romania): affinities of an early modern European. Journal of Human Evolution: December, Vol. 53, pp. 732-746.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal.