Posted on 02/14/2006 3:31:25 PM PST by blam
European Faces Reflect Stone Age Ancestry, Study Says
James Owen
for National Geographic News
December 20, 2005
Europeans inherit their looks from Stone Age hunters, new research suggests.
Scientists studied ancient skeletons from Scandinavia to North Africa and Greece, comparing ancient and modern facial features.
Their analysis suggests modern Europeans are closely related and descended from prehistoric indigenous peoples.
Later Neolithic settlers—notably immigrants who introduced farming from the Near East some 7,500 years ago—contributed little to how Europeans look today, the researchers add.
The scientists described their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online Early Edition.
The study suggests that the arrival of farming did not signal a broad wave of colonization as some scientists had thought. Rather, native hunter-gatherers absorbed the farming way of life and those who brought it.
The findings are based on 24 face measurements of modern-day Europeans compared with those of their prehistoric predecessors.
The team focused on facial dimensions which are "neutral" and don't change as human populations adapt over time to different environments and lifestyles.
Because these features are passed down generation to generation, they are good markers of human ancestry, according to lead study author Loring Brace.
The University of Michigan anthropologist says the craniofacial remains of late Stone Age Europeans reflect those of earlier inhabitants who lived 35,000 to 10,000 years ago.
"They're really fairly close," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalgeographic.com ...
Ancient peoples had heavier brow ridges than modern Europeans. "The faces were also broader and the jaws were heavier," Brace added.
Skeletal remains from Greece and elsewhere are thought to represent Neolithic settlers who introduced farming from modern-day Syria, Jordan, and Israel. Brace said these remains have facial measurements that don't match those of most present-day Europeans.
The anthropologist added that despite some similarities with modern Mediterranean populations, "the farther north and west you get, the less they resemble the people living there now."
"Modern Europeans don't look like the incoming Neolithic [farmers]," he said. "It's pretty clear that there's a much larger component of the indigenous foraging peoples across Europe, and they existed in far greater numbers than the archaeological record had led us to believe."
The study suggests that Neolithic remains, which have been taken as evidence of large-scale colonization, are misleading.
Brace says pots associated with Neolithic farmers tended to disintegrate into countless shards, creating the impression of a larger presence than was actually the case.
Early farmers also buried their dead together, unlike the native inhabitants, leaving groups of bodies for archaeologists to later uncover along with other artifacts.
Hunter-gatherers
The researchers say the fact that incoming settlers didn't pass on telltale facial characteristics to later Europeans suggests that they were absorbed by the indigenous hunter-gatherers.
"They absorbed them genetically—and their way of life," Brace said. "Molecular biology is telling us the same story."
Recent DNA analysis of the skeletons of prehistoric farmers found buried in Germany, Austria, and Hungary appears to show that they contributed little to the European gene pool. (See related story.)
A quarter of those analyzed remains share a DNA signature that is now extremely rare worldwide and which has left virtually no trace on living Europeans.
Those findings, described last month in the journal Science, suggest that "the contribution of early farmers could be close to zero," according to Peter Forster, archaeology research fellow at Cambridge University, England.
Other experts now broadly agree that the spread of farming across Europe represents more of a cultural legacy than a genetic one.
"Personally, I think it's a question that can be answered only on a regional basis," said Marek Zvelebil, professor of archaeology at the University of Sheffield, England.
"In some areas, particularly parts of the East Mediterranean and central Europe, you do have small groups of people migrating from the Near East," he said.
"But in most other parts of Europe, particularly western and northern Europe, you have local hunter-gathering people adopting farming."
ping?
GGG Ping.
PING
BTTT
This is getting confusing. Last week the faces were getting smaller. Now they are remaining the same.
red hair is a neanderthal gene.
I like to think that my European ancestors were different from other peoples from other parts of the world and that difference is why Western Civilization is the Gold Standard round the globe.
http://home.entouch.net/dmd/neanev.htm
Somebody post a picture of Mike Tyson.
Great tag line. There is a thread about it - will see if I can find it.
You would not believe how pissed off my redhead kids were, when I told them they are not human...LOL
Robert Ardrey wrote several interesting books on anthropology. I think he wrote once that if an average Neanderthal male had a haircut and a Brooks Brothers suit, he would not look out of place on Wall Street, or something to that effect.
Their analysis suggests modern Europeans are closely related and descended from prehistoric indigenous peoples.
Well, DUUUUUUUUUUUUH! And here I thought we were descended from the space aliens who built Stonehenge...
;^)
"Their analysis suggests modern Europeans are closely related and descended from prehistoric indigenous peoples."
Hilarious, isn't it? As if modern Europeans could've descended in any other way.
Reflects Stone Age Ancestry my a$$!
Yep, that's a French restaurant alright...
Thanks - saved me from hunting for it. ;)
In many cases there are vast differences between what people "like to think" and reality.
No evidence of neanderthal ancestry for modern humans, though it's clear there's a fringe obsessed with this idea.
You sapiens are good at this fore brain stuff. LOL.
Hey. Play nice. (I'm part of that fringe)
I'll need research, supporting articles, and a sample of the hair.
Follow the thread - everything except the hair sample is there. ;)
WILMAAAA!
The Neandertal EnigmaFrayer's own reading of the record reveals a number of overlooked traits that clearly and specifically link the Neandertals to the Cro-Magnons. One such trait is the shape of the opening of the nerve canal in the lower jaw, a spot where dentists often give a pain-blocking injection. In many Neandertal, the upper portion of the opening is covered by a broad bony ridge, a curious feature also carried by a significant number of Cro-Magnons. But none of the alleged 'ancestors of us all' fossils from Africa have it, and it is extremely rare in modern people outside Europe." [pp 126-127]
by James Shreeve
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
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Quite a list of negative traits -- Neandertals were cannibals; they ate raw meat; they were violent; and of course, it's implied that they were small-brained. Elsewhere some vegetarians wrote that Neandertal ate too much meat and went extinct, while others said that our ancestors learned to eat fish, which is brain food (I'm not makin' that up). The (fortunately) late Allan Wilson of the mtDNA crowd produced the claim the Neandertal was "the village idiot" who couldn't talk because of his/her mtDNA, and therefore went extinct. In the Encyclopedia Brittanica (in the early 1970s, perhaps later) Celts are described as a group that spent all its time drinking mead and were "incapable of concerted action." My leftist sister (a professor) said the Irish had perfected just one thing -- public drunkeness. Y'know, I'm beginning to think there's a real attitude problem among academics. ;')Redheads 'are neanderthal'RED hair may be the genetic legacy of Neanderthals, scientists believe.
by a correspondent
FreeRepublic topic
Researchers at the John Radcliffe Institute of Molecular Medicine in Oxford say that the so-called “ginger gene” which gives people red hair, fair skin and freckles could be up to 100,000 years old.
They claim that their discovery points to the gene having originated in Neanderthal man who lived in Europe for 200,000 years before Homo sapien settlers, the ancestors of modern man, arrived from Africa about 40,000 years ago.
Rosalind Harding, the research team leader, said: “The gene is certainly older than 50,000 years and it could be as old as 100,000 years.
“An explanation is that it comes from Neanderthals.” It is estimated that at least 10 per cent of Scots have red hair and a further 40 per cent carry the gene responsible, which could account for their once fearsome reputation as fighters.
Neanderthals have been characterised as migrant hunters and violent cannibals who probably ate most of their meat raw. They were taller and stockier than Homo sapiens, but with shorter limbs, bigger faces and noses, receding chins and low foreheads.
The two species overlapped for a period of time and the Oxford research appears to suggests that they must have successfully interbred for the “ginger gene” to survive. Neanderthals became extinct about 28,000 years ago, the last dying out in southern Spain and southwest France.
so do i have to ask a dentist to find out if i am neandertal, or is my red hair proof enough?
uh-oh .. i had a bloody rare rib steak for dinner tonight. No, not on a date - it was something I cooked myself after an 11 hour workday. Just another Tuesday......
so do i have to ask a dentist to find out if i am neandertal, or is my red hair proof enough?Dentists are about as much fun as a sock in the jaw.
it was something I cooked myself after an 11 hour workday.I hope eating rare steaks is a rarity. :')
bloody rare steak = YUMMY!!
OK
Ginger gene? How 'bout Cinnamon? <:-)
I wanna live with a cinnamon girl
I could be happy the rest of my life
With a cinnamon girl.
A dreamer of pictures I run in the night
You see us together, chasing the moonlight,
My cinnamon girl.
Ten silver saxes, a bass with a bow
The drummer relaxes and waits between shows
For his cinnamon girl.
A dreamer of pictures I run in the night
You see us together, chasing the moonlight,
My cinnamon girl.
Pa sent me money now
I'm gonna make it somehow
I need another chance
You see your baby loves to dance
Yeah...yeah...yeah.
it's implied that they were small-brained
What? Neanderthals had bigger brains than modern humans.
It's the quality of brain that is being questioned.
Early Homo erectus in Africa (from about 1.7 to 1 million years ago) averaged 900 cc in brain size
Late Homo erectus specimens from .5 million years ago average 1100-1200 cc, which falls within the range of the brain size of modern humans.
The earliest or archaic forms of Homo sapiens, the species to which we belong (top center skull), dates to 300,000-400,000 years ago and averages over 1200 cc.
The Neanderthal skull, second from right, has a brain size of 1500 cc, which is actually larger than the brains of most modern humans.
The average for ourselves, Homo sapiens sapiens, is around 1400 cc
Some of the Australian Aboriginies (today) have brow ridges that are as 'severe' and in some cases, more severe than the Neanderthals.
There is one human race and everything that we ever were is still here in us all but in bits & pieces spread out over the globe.
Image: JOHN GURCHE PORTRAIT OF A PIONEER With a brain half the size of a modern one and a brow reminiscent of Homo habilis, this hominid is one of the most primitive members of our genus on record. Paleoartist John Gurche reconstructed this 1.75-million-year-old explorer from a nearly complete teenage H. erectus skull and associated mandible found in Dmanisi in the Republic of Georgia. The background figures derive from two partial crania recovered at the site.
"It's the quality of brain that is being questioned."
No, that's not something that can be answered, so it's merely avoidance.
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