55,000 year old skull found in Galilee.

slowburner

http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/28694/55000-year-old-skull-discovered-israel-missing-link-health-and-science/#2e8WAwP8DefpAiVi.97

Wibbs

Odd link that one SB. Starts off fine, then gets into Adam and Eve biblical stuff.

Cool discovery alright and hopefully they may find more of the individual at the site. I'm dubious about the claims of early European features though. Why not Asian for example? Given that the early moderns that made it to that area would have given rise to all non African populations. Then again, maybe not. There was quite the bit of tooing and froing of different human populations in that area over tens of thousands of years(not including the previous hominids that went through that area on their way out of Africa). I suspect we'll find that modern human expansion and migration had quite a few events and that's before we get to the making whoopee with other human subspecies.

Poor Uncle Tom

Wibbs wrote: »

Odd link that one SB. Starts off fine, then gets into Adam and Eve biblical stuff.

The 'biblical perspective' in the news title put me right off, it's like saying, science from a make believe perspective...

dubhthach

The oldest genome we have is a 45k year Ust-Ishim sample, it would be interesting if some more of this 55k remains were found, if some viable ancient-DNA was recovered it could help pinpoint Neanderthal admixture even more (Ust-Ishim had neanderthal admixture, in considerably larger chunks then modern populations)

Wibbs

dubhthach wrote: »

(Ust-Ishim had neanderthal admixture, in considerably larger chunks then modern populations)

As did the much more recent Otzi the Iceman. nearly 7% rather than the 4% of today IIRC.

dubhthach

Wibbs wrote: »

As did the much more recent Otzi the Iceman. nearly 7% rather than the 4% of today IIRC.

Sure well the key thing is the older the genome that's been sequenced the closer you are to the admixture event.

When you think about it you would have 1st gen crosses who were 50:50, next generation the percentage would have dropped, eventually of course what happens is everyone in the "neighbouring gene pool" has some admixture so you end up with equilubrium been reached. (eg. when both parents are circa 4-5% neanderthal it's nearly guaranteed the children will be in same range)

Wibbs

I've often wondered and Dubh you may be able to answer this; could they use a genetic "clock" to work out when this admixture event started(or stopped)? Naturally it wasn't just one couple or at one time, there were probably quite the number of such events, but it might be interesting to see by counting backwards when the last Neandertal input occurred. It would get very interesting if it was more recent than the last archaeological evidence for Neandertals so far found.

dubhthach

Wibbs wrote: »

I've often wondered and Dubh you may be able to answer this; could they use a genetic "clock" to work out when this admixture event started(or stopped)? Naturally it wasn't just one couple or at one time, there were probably quite the number of such events, but it might be interesting to see by counting backwards when the last Neandertal input occurred. It would get very interesting if it was more recent than the last archaeological evidence for Neandertals so far found.

Abstract
Abstract• Accession codes• References• Author information• Supplementary information
We present the high-quality genome sequence of a ~45,000-year-old modern human male from Siberia. This individual derives from a population that lived before—or simultaneously with—the separation of the populations in western and eastern Eurasia and carries a similar amount of Neanderthal ancestry as present-day Eurasians. However, the genomic segments of Neanderthal ancestry are substantially longer than those observed in present-day individuals, indicating that Neanderthal gene flow into the ancestors of this individual occurred 7,000–13,000 years before he lived. We estimate an autosomal mutation rate of 0.4 × 10−9 to 0.6 × 10−9 per site per year, a Y chromosomal mutation rate of 0.7 × 10−9 to 0.9 × 10−9 per site per year based on the additional substitutions that have occurred in present-day non-Africans compared to this genome, and a mitochondrial mutation rate of 1.8 × 10−8 to 3.2 × 10−8 per site per year based on the age of the bone.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v514/n7523/full/nature13810.html?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20141021