Today I’m going to
explain in both a genetic and evolutionary level the very reasons that may
explain why my queen M. fears me (maybe her own insanity or TBI
in the end….)
Both Neanderthals and modern humans were initially thought to have evolved from
Homo erectus between 300,000 and 200,000 years ago (WOW that’s
truly nothing on an evolutionary scale). Homo erectus had emerged around 1.8 million years ago, and
had long been present, in various subspecies throughout Eurasia.
In Eurasia,
interbreeding between Neanderthals and Denisovans with modern humans took place
several timesJ. The introgression event that evolved
into modern humans (us….) is estimated to have happened about
47,000–65,000 years ago (another WOW…..but wait now….) with Neanderthals and about
44,000–54,000 years ago with Denisovans.
Many of these traits are
present in us can be explained to varying extent due to both archaic admixture
and the retention of ancestral hominid traits shared with Neanderthals and
other archaic humans. Nothing is certain (what’s
new??) about the shape of
soft parts such as eyes, ears, and lips (or penises J) of Neanderthals.
Neanderthals have
contributed approximately 1-4% of the genomes of non-African modern humans,
although a modern human who lived about 40,000 years ago has been found to have
between 6-9% of Neanderthal DNA.
Fossil teeth from Italy
(me!), are among the oldest human remains on the Italian
Peninsula, they show that Neanderthal dental features had evolved by around
450,000 years ago. A few years ago a handful of teeth dated to around 450,000
years ago were examined by scientists and found to have a striking resemblance
to those of Neanderthals -like-CarloJ.
Some of the oldest human
remains ever found in Italy have provided fresh insights into the human evolution
in Europe. The Italian teeth are distinct from any others found across the
Eurasian landmass at this time, suggesting that various human lineages were
found across the region. One calcite-encrusted skeleton of an ancient human,
still embedded in rock deep inside a cave in Italy, has provided the oldest
Neanderthal DNA ever found (my great – great – great grandpaJ). In the Monti Lessini (North East Italy, Verona) was found in 1957 an ancient jaw with mitochondrial
DNA. The analysis performed on this jaw and on other cranial fragments showed
at the same stratigraphic level has led to the identification of the only
genetically typed Neanderthal of the Italian peninsula and has confirmed
through direct dating that it belongs to a late Neanderthal individual.
Situated in the southern
slopes of the Alps, at Castenedolo (my dad’s birds hunting
area), six miles southeast
of Brescia (my birth town), lays a low hill called Colle del
Vento (hill of the wind, in Italian), where millions of years ago
during the Pliocene period, layers of
mollusks and coral were deposited by a warm sea washing in (what? where?).
The bones from
Castenedolo, near Brescia, belong to several
skeletons of men, women, and children and were found on various occasions in a
shelly bed of sand and clay, of marine origin and of Pliocene age. In 1899, the
discovery of a new human skeleton was the subject of an official report by
Professor Issel, who then observed that the various fossils from this deposit
were all impregnated with salt, with the sole exception of the human
fossils.... It seems certain that at in Castenedolo we are dealing with
burials. What we know today, is that Neanderthal people cared for their
children, teaching them what they needed to know. They also cared for the
injured (like me now) and sick, and when Neanderthals died — particularly children
and infants — they were buried with care and respect. Children learned how to make toy axes
too. This not only taught them how to use the tools but instilled a social
context. More than a third of Neanderthal graves found contain children under
the age of 4, typically showing great care in their burials.
It’s also assumed that
Neanderthals had some form of marriage because pair-bonding between men and
women, and joint provisioning for their offspring, had been a feature of men in
social life for over a million years already. They also protected corpses by
covering them with rocks or placing them in shallow pits, suggesting the kinds
of intimate, social and cognitive interaction typical of our own family life. The
symbolism, complexity and time invested in the objects and jewelry found buried
with the remains also suggests that it is possible that they developed rules,
ceremonies and rituals to accompany the exchange of mates between groups, which
perhaps foreshadowed modern marriage ceremonies, and may have been similar to
those still practiced by hunter-gatherer communities in parts of the world
today. In short we’ve had weddings and funerals for about 80.000 years (if not more)
AND men have been taking care and be jealous
of their mates (= our wives) for about the same amount of time!!
A cognitive ability that
evolved in modern humans as a result was the “cheater
detection JJJ” ability (that’s why
I’m still a f…..ing Neanderthal).
Neanderthals were likely
to have practiced patriarchal mating behavior. It was clearly found that
no single hybridization occurred in the "late" phase of contacts in
Europe since 45,000 years. In the reverse case there was no single DNA trace
from Homo sapiens found in the fossils of European Neanderthals. The Neanderthal
man stood with his peers and the woman continued a so called monogamous partnership
in her clan and nobody would know (unless the baby looked different).... This makes already two
interpretations at the level of interspecific mating behavior. It's been
suggested that encounters between modern humans and Neanderthals were rare and
happened in the Middle East or the Arabian Peninsula after modern humans went
out of Africa, but before they spread widely. When moderns did expand all over
Eurasia, they carried Neanderthal DNA in their cells. Later studies of ancient
DNA from a 45,000-year-old modern human in Romania helped to pinpoint the time
of that encounter to between 50,000 and 65,000 years ago (only??J).
New research has found that
early humans seem to have recognized the dangers of inbreeding at least 34,000
years ago, and developed surprisingly sophisticated social and mating networks
to avoid it.
I’d truly be interested in
the reason my former queen M. may have about my saying that she was my wife
is unacceptable “because people cannot be owned like a car or some other objects, “people
are people”.
My reply from now on is
simply going to be (IF and when I’ll ever see her again….): “haven’t you understood that I’m still here alive ONLY
because my Neanderthal genes are still active, you’d be visiting a cemetery if
I was like your lover B. (dick M.D.) I'd be surely be already dead... just like B. is going to be sooner than later😎!!
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal
- https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2011/aug/25/neanderthal-denisovan-genes-human-immunity
- https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24988-humanitys-forgotten-return-to-africa-revealed-in-dna/
- https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2011/nov/16/dear-professor-husband-neanderthal
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_Italy
