Europeans never had Neanderthal neighbors. Russian find suggests Neanderthals died out earlier.

Nature News ^ | 05/11/2011 | Ewen Callaway

[allmendream]

Green = human-human comparison
Red = human - neanderthal comparison
Blue = human - chimp comparison

[allmendream]

Chimps (pan pan and pan bonobo) share a recent common ancestor with humans from the same time - they share a much more recent common ancestor with each other. 1.6% is often rounded up to 2% - it is roughly the same amount of difference between human and panpan and human and panbonobo - reflecting the same time of most recent common ancestry.

Yes, we thought WE were the ape that liked sex the most until we saw what those bonobos were doing. They like it face to face, face in the dirt, face to my stuff, your stuff in my face, stuff to stuff (female on female), etc, etc. Kinky little bastards!

[allmendream]

Chimps are an excellent example of speciation also - and show exactly the genetic marks one would expect from animals of common ancestry. It is a pattern - in miniature - of the same markers that show our common ancestry with both species.

These markers can also be seen in dogs and wolves - two creatures of known common ancestry.

These same markers are seen in human populations of various degrees of common ancestry.

They follow the pattern predicted by the theory. Time and time again.

Apparently once there was just one population of chimps - then a river jumped its bed and ran through the middle of their range. Chimps don't swim the river.

DNA differences accumulate in separate populations over time - and over that time - chimp panpan and chimp bonobo became physically distinct with different innate characteristics - like having sex out of estrus and face to face and rather frequently as a way of ‘lubricating’ social interactions. Chimp panpan don't do that!

[gleeaikin]

Thanks for posting the better chart for me. The description is found somewhere in the middle of my Comment #54. Green is human, red is Neanderthal, and blue is chimp.

If, in fact, bonobo divergence from chimp occurred at a very specific time, that raises an interesting question. Is there a gene or cluster of genes for sexy behavior that we both mutated to, or was there something different about the bonobo environment and our own that caused a different evolutionary path than that of the other chimps?

[allmendream]

I think it was just something that ‘worked’ for them - who knows what the more ancestral trait was - hard to tell.

Human sexuality is about the pair bond - thus the face to face - the enlarged sexual display at the front of the female, etc. Also the females and males of our species are very close in size - which is a good indication of a pair bonded species - the larger a male is in proportion to the female the larger the expected “harem” size each male will achieve. Our testicle size in proportion to our body size is compatible with our pair bond - but with a ‘crypto-paternity’ rate of 10%; while both species of chimps have large testicles to represent their promiscuity among the band - gorillas are much smaller (harem) - gibbons as well (pair bond -100%).