A high-coverage Neandertal genome from Chagyrskaya Cave | Hacker News Reader

A high-coverage Neandertal genome from Chagyrskaya Cave

pnas.org

32 pointsdiodorus21 comments

>Analyses of their genomes showed that they contributed genetically to present-day people outside sub-Saharan Africa

This is wrong. Recent analyses (https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)30059-3) have shown Neanderthals have also contributed to Sub-Saharan DNA. Maybe the authors weren't aware of the latest findings at the time of writing and no one ever thought of correcting that part.

Or, because that is a new finding, using (by the authors' own description) a "novel" method of deducing it, they just aren't convinced yet. It is a tricky business to do, and especially without any human-but-0%-Neanderthal sample to compare against. Maybe the authors of the Cell paper have done it, but it wouldn't totally shock me if the rest of their field is not convinced.

Well if the paper made it to Cell at least two other people in the field are convinced.

Technically it would just mean that at least the reviewers were convinced it was important work which should get looked at by the rest of the field, i.e. worth publishing. I'm not saying it isn't. I'm just saying that even things which get published in major publications like Cell don't always hold up, and a major revision of the understanding prior to that article is probably more likely than most to be a case of that.

Although, for my part, I find it entirely plausible that if sapiens interbred with neanderthals in Europe, some of that found its way back into Africa. But it is not a major miss of some sort in the parent article to not take that as demonstrated yet.

> Recent analyses have shown Neanderthals have also contributed to Sub-Saharan DNA.

To what extent?

At least 17Mbp (vs. ~50Mbp in Eurasians)

Imagine the furore if someone manages to make this genome into a living creature... Will they get a passport? Will they get the vote? Will any children be allowed to be called humans?

From the abstract:

> Neandertals and Denisovans are the closest evolutionary relatives of present-day humans. Analyses of their genomes showed that they contributed genetically to present-day people outside sub-Saharan Africa

So there is already Neandertal hybrids walking around (I'm one of them). I think they should get full human status.

The distinction between Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo sapiens sapiens is more or less a legacy from a time where we didn't know how fuzzy the definition of 'species' was. For all intents and purposes all three are the same species of full-fledged humans and there's scant evidence humans from either denomination would even treat each other differently.

Well there are plenty of other cases where we are completely comfortable calling them distinct species, even though we know they can interbreed. The term "species" is certainly fuzzier than we were taught in school in the 70's, but it's not as if biologists have stopped using the concept.

Ring species are an interesting case to consider, in which A and B can interbreed, and B and C can interbreed, but A and C cannot. Gene transfer between A and C remains possible, but indirect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species

They were different species and any argument to the contrary rests on adherence to a rigid definition of species not even accepted by all biologists, let alone anthropologists.

>there's scant evidence humans from either denomination would even treat each other differently.

Are we supposed to believe it was a big egalitarian paradise?

>They were different species and any argument to the contrary rests on adherence to a rigid definition of species not even accepted by all biologists, let alone anthropologists.

There is no single definition of species. People who study bacteria have their own, so do people who study plants, birds, insects, and so on. Sure, Neanderthals and Homo sapiens sapiens, who coexisted and interbred in the same ecosystems, are different species. Whatever that means.

>Are we supposed to believe it was a big egalitarian paradise?

Lol what does that have to do with what I said?

> The distinction between Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo sapiens sapiens is more or less a legacy from a time where we didn't know how fuzzy the definition of 'species' was.

Not at all; that time ended long before the distinction was drawn. In the case of Denisovans, hundreds of years before.

Neandertals were a type of humans, well hominids to be exact. A bunch of neadertal DNA is present in populations outside Africa because we interbreed.

> Imagine the furore if someone manages to make this genome into a living creature...

if some mad scientist indeed makes a cross between a Neandertal and a Pig will they be allowed to be called humans?

Why would terminology suddenly change? They are currently called Neanderthal and Denisovan. Why would a living specimen change the terminology?

Horses and jackasses aren’t merged into one species because they can breed.

I really would love to know more about them, what if they were smarter than we are, in all or some of the ways we recognise, and were they simply overwhelmed by us swarming like locusts from the south?

Considering most/all of us have some Neanderthal DNA I'm sure they'll be considered human.

I remember having read that south East Asians have more neanderthal DNA than Europeans.

All of us also have some cabbage DNA.

No - we share DNA with cabbage, because we had a common ancestor a really really really long time ago. We don't have cabbage DNA.

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