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Blog: Homo sapiens neanderthalensis

Blog Overview: The discovery in 1856 of a skullcap and partial skeleton in a cave in the Neander valley near Dusseldorf, Germany in 1864 a new species was recognized: Homo neanderthalensis.

HOMINIIDAE

PHILATELY

2000

Homo sapiens neanderthalensis (also Homo neanderthalensis) or archaic «Palaeoanthropus neanderthalensis»

GIBRALTAR - MILLENNIUM

9.May.2000 - 'The History of Gibraltar' - 'Millennium Stamps'.

5 p., 'The Sandy Plains', 5 p., Megantereon whitei, 5 p., 'The Neanderthals', 5 p. The Berbería monkey (Macaca sylvanus).
Part of a set of 16 in sheet.

Scott: 841b-841c.
Stanley Gibbons: 917-918.
Unificato: 927-928.
Yvert nº.

Also issued in prestige stamp booklet.

Man of Gibraltar

30 000 y. BC

1973

Homo sapiens neanderthalensis

125º Anniversary of the discovery of the skull of a Neanderthal in Gibraltar: skull and reconstitution, scene of the discovery of the fire;

22.5.1973 issue.

4 p., Neanderthal skull, 6 p., reconstruction of Neanderthal head,
10 p., Neanderthal family scene.
The 4 p. value exists with the gold color missing.

Scott: 296-298.
Stanley Gibbons: 310-312.

Yvert nº. 294/296

FDC 22.MAI.1973

2005

75th Birthday of the Gibraltar Museum.
47 p., Pieces from the Gibraltar Museum. Neanderthal skull at left.

Part of a set of 3 vals..

2007

Mi nº. 1233 - Issue in sheets of 20 stamps with 20 labels.
FDC - (26.09.2007)

BIOLOGY

Fossils of Neanderthals were first found in the eighteenth century prior to Charles Darwin's 1859 publication of The Origin of Species, with discoveries at Engis, Belgium in 1829, at Forbes Quarry, Gibraltar in 1848, and most notably a discovery in 1856 in Neander Valley in Germany, which was published in 1857. However, earlier findings were widely misinterpreted as skeletons of modern humans with deformities or disease (Gould 1990). The new species H. neanderthalensis was recognized in 1864.

The discovery in 1856 of a skullcap and partial skeleton in a cave in the Neander valley near Dusseldorf, Germany, signaled the first recognized fossil human form. While it was later realized that several Neanderthal sites had previously been discovered, their remains were not recognized as those of an archaic form of human until the discovery of "Neanderthal Man." In 1864 a new species was recognized: Homo neanderthalensis.

Neanderthals inhabited Europe and western Asia during the latter part of the Pleistocene.

The climate in these regions was much colder than it is today, and several glaciations, or Ice Ages, are known to have occurred during the time of Neanderthal occupation.

Neanderthal localities are known today from Spain to Uzbekistan (near Afghanistan).

Several important sites in the vicinity of Qafzeh Cave, Israel, suggest that Neanderthals arrived in the region after modern Homo sapiens.

This would indicate that the population of modern humans in this area was not descended form Neanderthals, and that there was some period of coexistence, or an alternating series of migrations into this region by the two species.

Neanderthals are known from Europe and western Asia from about 200,000 years to about 30,000 years ago, when they disappeared from the fossil record and were replaced in Europe by anatomically modern forms.

Based on the comparison of modern human mt DNA and that taken from the Neanderthal, evolutionists have argued that the "Neanderthal line" diverged from the line of "hominids" leading to modern humans about 600,000 years B.P. without contributing mt DNA to modern Homo sapiens populations. This strongly implies that Neanderthals were a different species from modern humans.

CONTESTING

However, the above noted interpretation is not scientifically justified. Lubenow (1998) has pointed out that the use of a statistical average of a large modern human sample (994 sequences from 1669 modern humans) compared with the mt DNA sequence from one Neanderthal is not appropriate. Furthermore, the mt DNA sequence differences among modern humans range from 1 to 24 substitutions, with an average of eight substitutions, whereas, the mt DNA sequence differences between modern man and the Neanderthal specimen range from 22 to 36 substitutions, placing Neanderthals, at worst, on the fringes of the modern range. (Neanderthals are Still Human! Dave Phillips, Impact Vol. 323, May 2000)
”

It is possible that Neanderthals contributed to modern human populations, but their mitochondrial DNA sequence disappeared as a result of the loss of genetic diversity. As Kahn and Gibbons write: "Living humans are strangely homogeneous genetically, presumably because ... their ancestors underwent a population bottleneck that wiped out many variations."

The mt DNA differences are at mutational hots-pots where substantial mutational change can occur in short periods of time, resulting in rapid genetic shifts within a population. One Neanderthal mt DNA study concluded: "The separate phylogenetic position of Neanderthals is not supported when these factors are considered [i.e. the high substitution rate variation at these hot-spots]."

Hence, recent mt DNA findings are not in conflict with the conclusion from the evidence of fossil hybrids and artifacts that Neanderthals were fully human.

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My Signature: António Nöel de Vasconcelos Barbosa

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