Neanderthal Theory - any credibility?

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deltafunction
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05 Jun 2012, 12:08 pm

jonny23 wrote:
deltafunction wrote:
But I find it hard to believe that some physical substance could change the way so many of us think.


Look up Toxoplasmosis


Fair enough, but if it's caused by some sort of drug or virus, then that suggests that autism can be cured. Wouldn't you think so?



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05 Jun 2012, 12:13 pm

McAnulty wrote:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/08/080812-neandertal-dna.html

This article says we didn't breed with neanderthals


This article focuses on Mitochondrial DNA, which is passed by the mother only. Saying that they haven't found any of the known Neanderthal Mitochondrial DNA in modern humans isn't that significant. It only means that if any descendants of these women exist, they haven't been found.

There was one article that suggested that the RH factor was Sapiens, and the Neanderthals were RH-. If this is the case, there would be very few surviving results of any Sapiens male with Neanderthal female encounters



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05 Jun 2012, 12:27 pm

deltafunction wrote:
jonny23 wrote:
deltafunction wrote:
But I find it hard to believe that some physical substance could change the way so many of us think.


Look up Toxoplasmosis


Fair enough, but if it's caused by some sort of drug or virus, then that suggests that autism can be cured. Wouldn't you think so?


I agree it is probably many factors. I'm just pointing out that our behavior can be changed by a bacteria. I'm not sure at this point if Toxoplasmosis can be cured. I know that researchers cut the vagus nerve in mice and it seemed to remove the affects of the bacteria



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05 Jun 2012, 12:36 pm

Sirunus wrote:
I have an friend who has asperger's who seems to be convinced that he is a throwback to the Neanderthals. This is the site he gave me the link to:

Neanderthal Project

To me, the article came off as slightly racist, implying that we "hybrids" are genetically superior to pure homo sapiens living in sub-Saharan Africa (black people, in other words). In other words, the article seems to suggest that Western civilization owes its success to the Neanderthal genes white people inherited which gave them the edge over black people, and as the article says, "We hybrids dominate the planet, and have outpaced our pure cousins."

The article also makes a very questionable statement:

"If you want to know what a modern human looks like who doesn’t have any Neanderthal DNA, then look at the Sub-Saharan Africans. Everyone else is carrying between 1% and 5% Neanderthal DNA. This is a fact, and you’ll just have to find a way to deal with it. In fact, Europeans appear to be more closely related to Neanderthals in some portions of their genome than they are to modern Sub-Saharan Africans!"

Is it just me, or is this racist? But of course, saying something is racist does not disprove it.

Now, my friend is convinced that it is a proven fact that the Neanderthal genes the Eurasian population inherited are what causes autism and Asperger's. The fact that the Eurasian population have higher rates of autism and have Neanderthal genes makes him believe that he is a homo sapien and Neanderthal hybrid.

So, my question is, is this Neanderthal Theory taken seriously by the scientific community? If it's a fact that autism is caused by Neanderthal genes, wouldn't there be a scientific consensus? If there's any evidence for this theory, please let me know. Has it been more or less proven that Neanderthal genes caused autism and made white people dominate the planet? Or has my friend been smoking something? If it's nonsense, can you link me to any articles or essays destroying the theory?


I have this problem with the neanderthal/human theory too. It really can facilitate racist ideas. Although I think it's super humorous that since they found out Neanderthals had light skin and fair hair, some people began viewing neanderthals as this "hybrid" that may be responsible for higher math skills etc.

When I was a kid, I never saw images of neanderthals that had blond or red hair, and fair, anglo-like features. Their primitive, brutish, depictions were always accompanied by dark hair and skin--and non-anglo looking features.

Now, suddenly, when we figure out neanderthals had red hair and fair skin, people are popping out of the woodwork to assign some kind of intellectual superiority to the neanderthals.

Obviously, we should have already considered that neanderthals would have fair eyes, skin, and hair before discovering the genome. This is b/c they evolved in the northern latitudes and would have gotten vit. D deficiency with dark features. But what hollywood producer or even scientific illustrator could bring himself to assign anglo features to the epitome of "primitive man"? No way--they must have "primitive" features like dark eyes and hair. I just think the whole depiction of neanderthals over time reeks of racism, even without these new ideas of neanderthals being responsible for "high math" skills in humans.

And no, I don't think it's widely accepted that neanderthals are linked to autism. The DNA evidence is too scanty. Lots of people still don't accept that neanderthals were able to reproduce with humans.



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05 Jun 2012, 12:37 pm

jonny23 wrote:
deltafunction wrote:
jonny23 wrote:
deltafunction wrote:
But I find it hard to believe that some physical substance could change the way so many of us think.


Look up Toxoplasmosis


Fair enough, but if it's caused by some sort of drug or virus, then that suggests that autism can be cured. Wouldn't you think so?


I agree it is probably many factors. I'm just pointing out that our behavior can be changed by a bacteria. I'm not sure at this point if Toxoplasmosis can be cured. I know that researches cut the vagus nerve in mice and it seemed to remove the affects of the bacteria


Yeah.... But I mean stuff like vaccines is too general to say that any kind of dead pieces of a virus can cause a disorder IMO.... I was talking about stuff like eating certain foods during pregnancy, or being exposed to small doses (lower than health policy limits) of chemicals in an environment, physical things which some parents seem to be paranoid about because they believe it will cause autism...



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05 Jun 2012, 1:04 pm

Zinia wrote:
I have this problem with the neanderthal/human theory too. It really can facilitate racist ideas.


If it's proven that everyone but sub-Saharan Africans carry neanderthal DNA then it's not racist it's just a fact.



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05 Jun 2012, 1:15 pm

jonny23 wrote:
Zinia wrote:
I have this problem with the neanderthal/human theory too. It really can facilitate racist ideas.


If it's proven that everyone but sub-Saharan Africans carry neanderthal DNA then it's not racist it's just a fact.


I don't assume that the whole theory on Neanderthal and Homo S. Sapien inter-breeding is based in racism. But my argument was that the popular view of neanderthals, and how it's changed, is tinged with racism.

But, it's not exactly a fact. There are still some high-standing scientists who do not believe the DNA evidence is substantial enough to conclude this fact. It is my understanding that the study that proves that fact is actually very small and samples a small population of humans. That makes sense since it's very time consuming to study DNA.

From Wikipedia about the study, "This research compared the genome of the Neanderthals to five modern humans from China, France, sub-Saharan Africa, and Papua New Guinea. The finding is that about 1 to 4 percent of the genes of the non-Africans came from Neanderthals, compared to the baseline defined by the two Africans."

I personally think it's exciting and interesting evidence. And I am inclined to believe that they did inter-breed. But it's not an absolute solid "fact."



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05 Jun 2012, 1:22 pm

deltafunction wrote:
What this does not explain for me is why Autism diagnosis is on the rise.

People started getting an Aspergers diagnosis 19 years ago(in 1993, if I'm not mistaken), and then it was mostly children. There are many adults with Asperger that are getting a diagnosis later in life. So, lets say ex. that for every children that are diagnosed with AS, there are one adult aswell, that would mean that the actual number of new people getting AS is actually half of what the statistics say. If the current diagnosis criteria would stay the same for another 45 years or so(when children of 1990 are 67 years old since most wont get a diagnosis before the age of 3, and most wont seek a diagnosis after retirement) then we would see the actual number of new people with AS. Or we could just exclude all the people who are getting a diagnosis later than(random limit) 10y old, and see if it is still true that autism diagnosis is on the rise.

I don't know if adults are excluded from autism diagnosis in the research that claim autism is on the rise(?), but I guess it should be, if they thought about it twice. But.. there is always a chance they didn't.

So possible reasons:
-Adults gets diagnosed
-Autism is more popular, and therefore more people and doctors see and react to the symptoms
-Cellphones(?)
-Computer geeks get together in the workplace and make like bunnies
-The internet enables the less sociable to connect and multiply


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05 Jun 2012, 1:32 pm

Blownmind wrote:
deltafunction wrote:
What this does not explain for me is why Autism diagnosis is on the rise.

People started getting an Aspergers diagnosis 19 years ago(in 1993, if I'm not mistaken), and then it was mostly children. There are many adults with Asperger that are getting a diagnosis later in life. So, lets say ex. that for every children that are diagnosed with AS, there are one adult aswell, that would mean that the actual number of new people getting AS is actually half of what the statistics say. If the current diagnosis criteria would stay the same for another 45 years or so(when children of 1990 are 67 years old since most wont get a diagnosis before the age of 3, and most wont seek a diagnosis after retirement) then we would see the actual number of new people with AS. Or we could just exclude all the people who are getting a diagnosis later than(random limit) 10y old, and see if it is still true that autism diagnosis is on the rise.

I don't know if adults are excluded from autism diagnosis in the research that claim autism is on the rise(?), but I guess it should be, if they thought about it twice. But.. there is always a chance they didn't.


I guess what I meant to say was that considering how small the Neanderthal population was (10,000 max) compared with the human population (30,000 in the area at the time?)... and who knows how many occurrences humans breeding with Neanderthals happened... The length of time that has passed and the growth of the human species would, most likely, make the percentage of Neanderthal dna in humans much smaller than it would be for the first generation. So if we weren't looking at any other factor except for Neanderthal DNA causing autism, then cases would get milder and milder until autism didn't exist at all.



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05 Jun 2012, 1:37 pm

Zinia wrote:
jonny23 wrote:
Zinia wrote:
I have this problem with the neanderthal/human theory too. It really can facilitate racist ideas.


If it's proven that everyone but sub-Saharan Africans carry neanderthal DNA then it's not racist it's just a fact.


I don't assume that the whole theory on Neanderthal and Homo S. Sapien inter-breeding is based in racism. But my argument was that the popular view of neanderthals, and how it's changed, is tinged with racism.

But, it's not exactly a fact. There are still some high-standing scientists who do not believe the DNA evidence is substantial enough to conclude this fact. It is my understanding that the study that proves that fact is actually very small and samples a small population of humans. That makes sense since it's very time consuming to study DNA.

From Wikipedia about the study, "This research compared the genome of the Neanderthals to five modern humans from China, France, sub-Saharan Africa, and Papua New Guinea. The finding is that about 1 to 4 percent of the genes of the non-Africans came from Neanderthals, compared to the baseline defined by the two Africans."

I personally think it's exciting and interesting evidence. And I am inclined to believe that they did inter-breed. But it's not an absolute solid "fact."


Never said it was fact. Also, I'm sure there are people that think it somehow proves some sort of racial superiority one way or the other but you're going to find them quoting all sorts of studies trying to prove their point.



Last edited by jonny23 on 05 Jun 2012, 1:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

anomy
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05 Jun 2012, 1:38 pm

Sirunus wrote:
I have an friend who has asperger's who seems to be convinced that he is a throwback to the Neanderthals. This is the site he gave me the link to:

Neanderthal Project

To me, the article came off as slightly racist, implying that we "hybrids" are genetically superior to pure homo sapiens living in sub-Saharan Africa (black people, in other words). In other words, the article seems to suggest that Western civilization owes its success to the Neanderthal genes white people inherited which gave them the edge over black people, and as the article says, "We hybrids dominate the planet, and have outpaced our pure cousins."

The article also makes a very questionable statement:

"If you want to know what a modern human looks like who doesn’t have any Neanderthal DNA, then look at the Sub-Saharan Africans. Everyone else is carrying between 1% and 5% Neanderthal DNA. This is a fact, and you’ll just have to find a way to deal with it. In fact, Europeans appear to be more closely related to Neanderthals in some portions of their genome than they are to modern Sub-Saharan Africans!"

Is it just me, or is this racist? But of course, saying something is racist does not disprove it.

Now, my friend is convinced that it is a proven fact that the Neanderthal genes the Eurasian population inherited are what causes autism and Asperger's. The fact that the Eurasian population have higher rates of autism and have Neanderthal genes makes him believe that he is a homo sapien and Neanderthal hybrid.

So, my question is, is this Neanderthal Theory taken seriously by the scientific community? If it's a fact that autism is caused by Neanderthal genes, wouldn't there be a scientific consensus? If there's any evidence for this theory, please let me know. Has it been more or less proven that Neanderthal genes caused autism and made white people dominate the planet? Or has my friend been smoking something? If it's nonsense, can you link me to any articles or essays destroying the theory?


Yes, I think the scientific community takes these studies very seriously. They are published in peer reviewed research journals and the work is presented at mainstream conferences. I've read some of the original scientific papers and I am very convinced that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens mated and their offspring survived. I think the evidence is overwhelming at this point.

Something else to consider is that there is no question that Neanderthals and homo sapiens share a common ancestor so even before they met again, they already shared most of their genes. The Neanderthals, having lived in a very different environment than the Homo sapiens who migrated out of sub-Saharan Africa for a few 10's of thousands of years, had genes that had diverged and these are the genes we are taking about in the 1-5%.... but we share far more than this. It is also worth mentioning that scientists still don't all agree on whether or not Neanderthals were a sub-species of Homo sapien or a separate species. It is splitting hairs to say one way or the other and so the important point to me is that they were so similar genetically that they could mate and produce viable offspring.

Regarding the racist comments.... I think a lot of that stems from how people react to what they are reading than from the actual intent of the author. To me, this is totally understandable given our human history but I hope we can get past it and discuss this fascinating work without injecting racism into the discussion where that is not the intent. I also think that sometimes authors who write about the Neanderthal theory are either intentionally or sub-consciously trying to state it in a way that won't be offensive to someone who may be on the spectrum since there has been in the past and still remains today to some degree a negative image of Neanderthals as "primitive." In their efforts to over-compensate to not offend neurodiverse individuals (and NT's who might also be offended), some of their comments may come out as sounding racist when in fact they don't mean it that way. That's my two cents anyway. :)



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05 Jun 2012, 1:42 pm

deltafunction wrote:
considering how small the Neanderthal population was (10,000 max) compared with the human population (30,000 in the area at the time?)... and who knows how many occurrences humans breeding with Neanderthals happened... The length of time that has passed and the growth of the human species would, most likely, make the percentage of Neanderthal dna in humans much smaller than it would be for the first generation. So if we weren't looking at any other factor except for Neanderthal DNA causing autism, then cases would get milder and milder until autism didn't exist at all.

Well, thats where evolution comes in. The strongest attributes survive. :D

"the growth of the human species", if the DNA had already been mixed, then the growth of the population wouldn't matter, since everyone would have that mixed DNA already.

If someone with 50% / 50% DNA breeds with 50% / 50% DNA, then the offspring could still be 50% / 50% DNA, couldn't it? That way the Neanderthal DNA won't deteriorate.


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05 Jun 2012, 2:59 pm

My question was not whether we are part Neanderthal, as I think it has been quite well established that Eurasians ARE, but whether we inherited autism from the Neanderthals, which I thought is a bit of a stretch.

The grieviances in regards to racism in the article was not that Eurasians have Neanderthal genes and Sub-Saharan Africans don't, but that it was implying that Eurasians were some sort of super hybrid race that was both superior to Neanderthals and pure Homo sapiens (Sub-Saharan Africans, in other words, black people). The article implies that white people became the superior race thanks to the Neanderthal blood in them, and even says the success of Western Civilization that dominated the globe came from the Neanderthal blood European people had in them at the price of autism and other neurological disorders. It also struck me as treating Sub-Saharan Africans like almost a different species, even saying white people might be more closely related to Neanderthals than to black people.



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05 Jun 2012, 3:14 pm

Sirunus wrote:
My question was not whether we are part Neanderthal, as I think it has been quite well established that Eurasians ARE, but whether we inherited autism from the Neanderthals, which I thought is a bit of a stretch.

The grieviances in regards to racism in the article was not that Eurasians have Neanderthal genes and Sub-Saharan Africans don't, but that it was implying that Eurasians were some sort of super hybrid race that was both superior to Neanderthals and pure Homo sapiens (Sub-Saharan Africans, in other words, black people). The article implies that white people became the superior race thanks to the Neanderthal blood in them, and even says the success of Western Civilization that dominated the globe came from the Neanderthal blood European people had in them at the price of autism and other neurological disorders. It also struck me as treating Sub-Saharan Africans like almost a different species, even saying white people might be more closely related to Neanderthals than to black people.


A quick google search for "IQ race graph" shows differences, some sources might be extremists spreading false information of course, but you are free to do a search like that yourself. I do not know what they define as superior, but IQ might be the easiest, and best documented way to distinguish races. Please spare me all the "IQ is just a number" flaming please, and rather suggest another way to define "superior super hybrid race" instead. I'm not saying I believe one way or another, I only suggest possible reasons why some may or may not believe it.

Whats the percentage of Neadnerthal in each race? Do they correlate to the IQ graphs?


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05 Jun 2012, 5:36 pm

Just to add my three penn'orth to the question of why autism is/appears to be on the increase (and taking it as read that it's genetic in origin, which a quick glance at my family tree would seem to suggest): isn't it the case that the genes associated with such conditions actually require some kind of 'activation' in order for the conditions with which they are associated to be manifested?

If they didn't, and if the disorders they are associated with arise from whole as opposed to damaged genes, then surely conditions like autism would be very rare indeed. At least, that's what my common sense (as opposed to knowledge of genetics!) tells me. People who are severely affected by autism are far less likely to breed than other members of the population; people affected by AS are probably rather less likely to breed. This would mean that conditions like severe regressive autism would largely be 'bred out' after hundreds of thousands of generations, and only AS would still be occurring, possibly in reducing numbers.

But if in most cases activation is needed, and the conditions for that activation weren't present aeons ago, then the genes could have been passed on silently. Only when the conditions were right for activation would the disorders become visible, and the better those conditions, the greater the numbers of individuals involved.

If this theory, or some version of it, is right, it means that in recent decades we've been experiencing those conditions very acutely and that's part of the reason (along with increased likelihood of diagnosis) for the apparent increase in autism. It also means we can't really blame the Neanderthals. The genes were perfectly all right when they had them!



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05 Jun 2012, 6:13 pm

I think a combination of genetics and environmental factors is then only explanation that makes sense, and this seems to be the consensus of the scientific community.