"Neanderthal Populations Were Genetically and Socially" Topic

…Isolated for Tens of Thousands of Years

"In 2015, archaeologists discovered the fossilized remains of a Neanderthal individual at Grotte Mandrin, a rockshelter located in Mediterranean France directly overhanging the Rhône River Valley. Nicknamed Thorin, it is one of the best-represented Neanderthal individuals found in France since the discovery from Saint-Césaire in 1979. Combining archaeological, chronostratigraphic, isotopic, and genomic analyses, Globe Institute researcher Martin Sikora and his colleagues show that Thorin belonged to a Neanderthal population that had stayed genetically isolated for 50,000 years. Separate from the Thorin lineage, they found evidence for gene flow from another lineage, which diverged from the ancestral lineage of the European Neanderthals over 80,000 years ago, in the genome of the Les Cottés Neanderthal. The results suggest the presence of multiple isolated Neanderthal communities in Europe close to their time of extinction and shed light on their social organization, with limited, if any, level of interactions between different Neanderthal populations in their last millennia, even though these populations were geographically very close to each other…"

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Armand

Thanks for sharing! It's interesting that the establishment view on Neanderthal being a separate species is being challenged and there's a movement building to reclassify Neanderthals as Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis (a subspecies of Homo sapiens) -- and that could also lead to reclassifying the Denisovans as Homo Sapiens Denisova. That would push the age of the Human species out to 500,000 years old.

A votre service mon cher ami ….

Armand

I'm amazed that they can make so many assumptions from such small scraps.
I'm not saying they're wrong. I'm just saying it's amazing.
It's like deriving Dark Energy from the equations not coming out exactly right. 🤷

Archeology is amazing per se….

Armand

Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis

Makes sense to me since they did interbreed. Lots of people have some neanderthal dna…some to their detriment :O <lol>

(smile)

Armand