I'm not convinced: Neandertals still might have interbred

The nail in the coffin of theory that Neandertals interbred with modern humans is typically the mitochondrial DNA which typically shows that Neandertals broke off of the human family tree prior to modern humans. We typically use 100,000 years as a demarcation for human, although in reality our ancestors have always been the same species as far as you go back even if that species is a type of fish or worm. Deciding when during an evolution to say this is a new species is an arbitrary point. Anyhow it seems on pretty good authority that Neandertals last shared a common ancestor with humans 660,000 years ago, so they certainly aren't an ancestor but a near cousin (in the same sense that the tree out my window is a distant cousin). Mitochondrial DNA (as you well know because you're smart (if not you will be)) is passed from mother to child along a material line all the way back to the mitochondrial eve (scientists need to stop calling shit Adam or Eve they make for really bad names).

Now this seems pretty clear that no genetic material was passed around between the neandertal population and the human population when the human population left Africa for Europe, right? Well, I'm not convinced. Neandertals were strong, really strong, Arnold Schwarzenegger Mr. Universe strong and this holds true for the women as well. In order to get our mitochondrial DNA to show signs of Neandertal interbreeding we need to posit that a man had sex with a fairly ugly brow face woman capable of breaking him in half and that from that union somehow the kid got taken care of from the human side (even though mommy would raise him) and that from that there is a *direct* maternal line going back at least 15,000 years and these one of these individuals wasn't picked up by a small sampling of the human population.

1) Neandertal men + human women = much more likely.
2) Sample size might be too small to find mRNA traces within human population.
3) The traces might have just been lost.

I don't mean this to sound like special pleading by any extent, rather I just don't find mitochondrial DNA to be a nail in the coffin. We really might have had plenty of interbreding with the local population and bear no signs within our mitochondrial DNA.

Will cook for brains.

I have had a passing interest in human evolution ever since I became human (don't ask). Well, it seems as though the link between cooking and brain size has become less speculative. Not that it was that bad anyhow, it's simply a bit more obvious.

There seems to be a rather massive shift in human evolution about 1.8 million years. Certainly adaptations for running, taller, less muscle bound, secondary adaptations. Probably all kicked off from fire.

Fire allows cooking. Cooking gives more calories from typically inedible food. Less muscles are needed. Running with improved calories and bipedalism becomes improved strategy for scavenging and for running down prey (you could chase an animal until it can't run marathon style). Hairlessness evolves as to improve sweating ability and regulate heat better for running and existence in the savanna, downside of freezing at night countered by shelter and fire. Humans then are quite efficient. Able to hunt successfully and have a much more broad range of possible foods and do not require large digestive tracts or half a face of muscles to chew (don't let a chimp bite your finger). This extra time, allows humans to sit around the camp fire solving sodukos and jumbles, until their brains got big.

Okay, needs a bit better picture for that last step. Having the resources to do well in many climates why an absolutely massive brain? No other improvement rendered any greater survival rates? Socialization significantly advantageous? Prediction of resources? Necessity to replicate the acts of making tools and fire? Need for complex language to help describe the processes required? Our brains do largely differ in our mirror neuron systems so we are more able to replicate and learn by seeing the acts of others. Needed success in a new arms race between groups, required intelligence to accelerate the evolution of tools and strategies?

Or, if one is to believe the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis, all this research is just poppycock and the truth has something vague to do with water.

Chimp-Gorillia split conflated to be something amazing.

So, there I am surfing my forums and such and I see that human-chimp split is pushed back to 10 million years as a thread title. Now this just doesn't work. First, humans aren't that different from chimps. I mean very little evolution and 10 million years is just too big. So I check out the article which actually says ape-human split, based on some 10 million year old fossil find of teeth that look vaguely gorilla.

So, in the end, no. First off, humans never split from the ape group, that's a lie we tell people because, telling them they are a type of ape kind of pisses them off. The last thing we apes like is having poo tossed at us, so we tend to cut humans out of the entire animal kingdom.

'Apes' is a pretty big category. Because it includes gorillas, chimps and orangutans means it obviously includes humans, if it's not specifically excluding them for no reason at all. This part of the family tree is called chimps (two out of the three have chimp in the name), calling it human-ape is just confusing on both sides. First it's the chimp side and second it's still all within the ape group.


The traditional date is 8 million years for the gorilla-chimp split. This fossil suggests, with extremely weak evidence, that we should say it's 10. These are obvious ape teeth from something that had a gorilla like diet, beyond that who knows.

--Apes----------------------------------------Gorillia
                \
                   ---------------------------Chimps
                            \           \
                              \            -- Bonobos
                               \
                               ---------------Humans

(not to geologic scale, excluding lots of critters)