My last day of Zen…..with all the completely bonehead politics these days…I need that 2 days of mental serenity…….

My daughter and I have been arguing about Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon…I say the Nedies are a sub specie and my daughter says they aren’t….and of course me being the Daddy I am right……..we agree that man started its life in Africa and eventually set off Northeast and around the East end of the Mediterranean and eventually made their way to Southern Europe where we have all the cave paintings and artifacts…….I say the Cros made the trip and found the Nedies already in Southern Europe….thus the Cros started in Africa and the Nedies from some place else…..we, my daughter and I, get into shouting matches whenever the subject comes up…..and this post may do again….

The question now is, since they occupied the same area, at least for awhile, did the bump uglies with each other?

The Week Magazine has a few answers to this question……

Are scientists sure we mated with Neanderthals?
Yes: The proof is in our DNA. As much as four percent of the DNA in some people now living was originally Neanderthal, according to the study. Importantly, some of that DNA is found in the part of the human genome known as the HLA (human leucocyte antigen) sequence of genes, which plays a critical role in our immune defenses. “The cross-breeding wasn’t just a random event,” says lead researcher Peter Parham of Stanford University, as quoted in the Daily Mail. “It gave something useful to the modern human.”Ancient groups of Neanderthals living in Europe and Asia were exposed to a number of viruses and bacteria that weren’t found in Africa. They developed a resistance to these infections that Homo sapiens living in Africa didn’t possess. When modern humans migrated out of Africa into Europe and Asia, scientists theorize, interbreeding allowed them to quickly pass on the local Neanderthals’ immune defenses to their children.

Are Neanderthals the only group we humans interbred with?
No: We apparently had a wandering eye, and also bred with another ancient group of now-extinct cousins called the Denisovans, who are known only through the DNA found in a single tooth and finger bone fragment discovered in a Siberian cave in 2008. This back-and-forth pattern of migration and interbreeding shows that human history was “a lot more complex and interesting” than previously thought, says anthropologist Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, as quoted by Discovery News.

There you are….there is proof that the two sub species cross mated….and that could explain where such individuals like Perry, Breitbart and Beck came from…take a look at Perry…the features are more Nedie than Cro…..I’m just saying!