Out Of Africa and Neanderthal Effects On Human Looks?
The world is changing so fast with technology advancements that are changing everything that I thought that I knew in such a short time frame. DNA is turn the tide of human evaluation as scientist around the world are taking old bones from Neanderthals and other man like bones and having them tested. The DNA results are amazing. They are changing history books quicker then they can be written.
I have been overwhelmed with the information as to where to start my post and move forward into history. The biggest issue with history is that you can’t understand the why’s who’s what’s when’s if you don’t know the past. It is like meeting your parent all over again when you are an adult. You know who they are kinda as you grow up. They have certain ways about them. But as you become an adult, you learn the why they are the way they are if you watch them and listen to the stories. Plus those that are told to you from the family and friends that know them as they grow up.
For example, at Thanksgiving is a time that family comes together and everyone has that dish that they have to have with the turkey, cranberries, and stuffing. But then if you look at the sides then you might see were your parents are from. Things like Oyster Stuffing, Hasty Pudding, or Mussels, then one of your parents might be from New England. If you are having Okinawan Style Sweet Potatoes, Pineapples, or Octopus and Green Beans, then one of your parents might have came from Hawaii. If you are having Casseroles (Green Bean, Potato, Sweet Potato, Pickled Okra), Gumbo, Potato Rolls, or Pecan or Key Lime Pies, then you have might have a Southern parent. If your having Goose, Salmon, Herring Egg Salad, or Moose or Reindeer meat, then you might have an Alaskan parent.
Each choice we make in life is one part you and a partly how you were raised, your background, and your parents and parents parents background to the beginning of human kind parents. But it also comes from were you live and what resource that the area has. For example, I don’t know how many of you have had pineapple with your Thanksgiving Dinner but I always have. Not at the table but as an add to my sweet potato pie.
I don’t know were that came from but I have always cooked the sweet potatoes in the oven. Put them in a bowl, added brown sugar plus a can of Dole crushed pineapple and mixed them together. Put them in a oven dish, covered that mixture with marshmallows and cooked it until the marshmallows were golden brown. (Not to close to the oven coils. This can start a fire. lol) I don’t actually know where I got the recipe but I started doing it when I was about 10 years old so I guessing that my mother taught me.
But I would not have been able to add that my recipe if it had not been for Dole shipping them from Hawaii and other tropical places. If you look over the list of where your parents might have been from, then you can see that most of those specialties come from where things were grown.
It looks like Neanderthals is about my starting point because that is were I am with modern human history. But more importantly, this is were a major events happen that effect us today. With new DNA technology, it looks like Neanderthals might be part of the reason that we have blue eyes red blonde hair and lighter skin. But this is just coming out.
What did Neanderthals look like?
If you go to the local museum, they are very tan with dark brown to black hair with dark brown eyes. This has been what has been shown through history based on European political and social norms at the time that the first bones were found and put into museums. These standards found there way to the Americans and beyond. But recently, DNA technology is changing this belief.
The DNA is tell a very different story. It is saying that they were, and not all, light skinned reddish blonde haired with blue eyes. This is radically different that the image that I grow up to known as fact. The research is still very much in the beginning stages but the Neanderthals were in colder climates in Europe and the Mediterranean areas.
Skin color is mainly determined by a pigment called melanin and/or rare conditions. The more melanin that you have the darker your skin tone is. In places like Africa, the original people mostly had dark brown skin which help protect them from the sun. Melanin is lower in groups of people that lack sunlight and gives them lighter skin eyes and the hair colors. Melanin goes from dark brown to very light colored skin tones. Depending on your skin tone, the sunlight is either pulled in fast or slow. Sunlight help stimulate the skin to produce vitamin D3 which is essential for bone health.
As it is believed that modern humans started in Africa and circled the world, it would mean that most modern humans had dark brown skin ancestors at some point down the family tree. Skin color changed due partly from what your parents give you and partly from environmental changes to the places that your ancestors lived through history. Therefore, if the modern human came out of Africa and move to Northern Europe which had extremely lower light in the cold environments, they started to produce children with lighter skin through time, or at least, those children that survive are lighter and lighter as they needed lighter skin get more sunlight into their bodies.
The rarest skin color is actually blue and had less to do with Melanin. This condition is called methemoglobinemia which is actually a condition that not enough oxygen get to the blood and the person has blue blood and not red. The blue blood make the person appear blue. This can be caused by parents that have the gene or by the environment causes. These days, we have medical advancements that cure this condition. But check out the Blue Fugates which was a family that lived in Kentucky. Two people meet in 1820 and both had the gene that produced this blue skin. They had 9 children and 4 of those were blue. It wasn’t until the 1960’s that the medical world found out about the family. In the 1970’s, the last of the blue descendants was born blue but with medical help, it seems that this condition has been solved or stronger genes from other spouses have taken this gene out of the gene pool.
Every now and then, someone is born with a rare genetic condition which cause them to have white hair, skin, and light blue eyes. This condition is call albinism and people with this condition can have issues with people around them today and in the recent past history. For example, in the 1800’s, missionaries who were visiting Africa were told that if a mother was to give birth to such a child, she was expected to kill it or be excommunicated from the villages that they lived in. In some cases, even today, both the women and the child are killed in brutal ways in Africa. There is a superstition that the women have lain down with a witch to produce such a child. This witch part is most likely part of the Hebrew religion that is part of the African culture. But how far back did this belief go, we will never know for sure but it is part of the culture.
This could be one of many reasons that people might have moved out of Africa and up to the Northern Hemisphere, i.e. most of Europe and the Mediterranean areas that the Neanderthals lived. Other reasons being natural disasters, following herds for food, just wanting to travel, wars, overpopulation of an area, etc. As much as things have changed, a lot of things are the same for humans. We move when things happen. Some times because we want to, some time for better opportunities, and some times by force.
Whatever reason or reasons that people moved out of Africa, they mixed with the Natives of the area, i.e. the Neanderthal’s and other human like people in other areas of the world. In other parts of the world, they are finding that the Neanderthals were not the only human like people and that modern humans mixed with them as well. The modern human are just the dominants humans that became the top of the family tree and blended other humans into the modern human with parts of our DNA being from those other humans. DNA is proving that the modern human has about 2% of Neanderthal DNA. It is not that Neanderthals completely disappeared but rather they joined into the modern human race. It is very interesting what DNA is tell us today and changing our understanding of history and ourselves.
DNA is the building block which turns on the color of our skin, hair, and eyes. Modern humans with red and/or blonde hair, light skin, and blue eyes; might have gotten these from Neanderthals and humans mixing. Some humans might have gotten it on a different DNA path. We might also have gotten changes to our noses which allow us to be in cooler climates. In addition, historically European women who have this one Neanderthal gene variant have increase fertility and are less likely to have miscarriage. But they might have also giving us other side effects as well. Studies are still being done which also give humans with Neanderthal gene variants things like hair loss, type 2 diabetes, lupus, Crohn’s disease, depression, etc.
These studies have just been coming out in about the last 15 years or less. So, I don’t want to put to much weight on them as they have yet to have enough papers that agree or disagree with the conclusions. But I am so very interesting in reading more about Neanderthals and how they might have effected human history. Most of the studies say the humans and Neanderthals did not meet just once but rather several times over the course of history.
It leads me to wonder so many questions about our relationships with them. We will never know what kind of relationship that humans and Neanderthals had as history has erased that from our memories. But DNA is saying that we had some kind of relationship to them as modern humans still carry part of their DNA. I am going to think of them as just another group of people that I want to meet and learn about their culture. I am sure that they were strangers who became friends, lovers, family, and even enemies to humans. But they could not have been that different or we would not have traces of their DNA still running though our vines.