Neanderthal Essay

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For many years, and still even to this day people view Neanderthals as dumb brutes, who knew nothing. People assume that this is why Neanderthals went extinct. When a person is asked to describe a Neanderthal one might say that they are ape-like, dirty, dumb, cannibals, and walk around with a club killing others. Some of these things are true, but some of them are not. So, how closely related are we to Neanderthals?
According to European fossil records, Neanderthals appeared about 400,000 years ago and they evolved and then disappeared around 30,000 years ago. Neanderthals lived in Europe and Western Asia as far east as Southern Siberia and as far south as the Middle East. During this time, it is suggested that Neanderthals came into contact with anatomically modern humans. There is a lot of controversy over whether or not they actually interbred. Morphological features of present-day humans and anatomically modern human’s fossils have been the evidence that is for and against a genetic exchange between Neanderthals and the ancestors of present-day humans. DNA sequence data from present-day humans is also evidence that Neanderthals have made a genetic contribution to present-day humans (Green 1).
Detecting signals of gene flow between Neanderthals and modern human ancestors can be challenging because the two groups share a common ancestor within the last 500,000 years. This is not any more concrete than the nuclear DNA sequence variation of present-day humans. The article goes on to say that Neanderthals share more genetic variants with present-days humans in Eurasia than with present day humans in sub-Saharan Africa (Green 1). This article is very scientific and dense. It becomes extremely hard to understand when it starts talk...

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...ng. There are also “old-earth creationists” who accept that the earth is old, but reject evolution by nature and non-divine means. They believe that Neanderthals were animals not humans. Paabo was surprised that his finding were reaching a much broader audience (Matzke 1). Clearly, Matzke wanted to post this blog to help get himself out there. He wanted to show that he was capable of aiding in a scientific discussion.
This blog shows how there is always going to be two sides to every story. Many, many tests have been done that show evidence of interbreeding. Whether some people like it or not, a small portion of our population has trace amounts of Neanderthal DNA. From the models that scientists have come up with, we look a lot different from Neanderthals, but just because we may not look the same on the outside, doesn’t mean that don’t have some things in common.

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