Many anthropologists reject Neanderthal from the ancestry of modern humans. This is based upon three arguments. There is the supposed major morphological differences between Neanderthal and anatomically modern men. Such features as facial shapes, and nose bones are supposed to separate us into separate species. The second argument involves the mitochondrial differences between Neanderthal and living humans. First there is the evidence that the mutations within the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) imply that all of the modern mtDNA was derived from a single sequence of mtDNA which existed 200,000 years ago or so. Secondly, there is the mtDNA data which shows that at least one Neanderthal had a mtDNA sequence which was significantly different from living humans (Krings 1997). The third argument involves the lack of time for Neanderthal to transform or evolve into modern man. This post will deal with this last issue as other posts have dealt with the other two.

What is called the "Neanderthal problem" involves the issue of our relation to them. What set the stage for this problem was the fact that Neanderthal was the first hominid found and the difference between him and us was exaggerated. The data which follows is much more understandable in light of a very recent discovery of a possible Neanderthal/Human hybrid. The Child of Lapedo was found in the fall of 1998 in Portugal. it is said to have both modern human and Neanderthal traits. The report has been submitted to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. Dating 24,500 years the approximately 4-year old child is from a time only 4000 years after the last Neanderthal skeleton. (Bower, 1999). If there was hybridization between Neanderthals and humans, then there should be more evidence in the skeletons of their descendants. As we shall see, there is.

As noted above, the differences between us and Neanderthals has been greatly exaggerated. Frayer writes:

"Nearly three decades ago Brace documented much of this thinking, arguing that from the moment of their discovery Neanderthals have been consistently and unjustly ridiculed and rejected. Others on both sides of the replacement vs. continuity issue show this attitude continues to the present. It is my contention that Neanderthals from Europe have been unfairly driven from the human tree, and that, while different from the humans who followed them, Neanderthals represent the most likely ancestors of 'modern 'Europeans."(Frayer, 1997, p. 220

The first argument for our separation from Neandertals concerning morphology can be answered in two ways. First there are modern human skulls from Europe, especially from Eastern Europe, which are mixtures of traits. Mladec 5 is ostensibly a modern human, descended from the African invaders, yet he has significant neanderthaloid traits. Neanderthals were known for having an occipital bun, a different shape to the back of the cranium. Mladec 5 had such a bun (Trinkaus and LeMay 1982). Mladec 4,5 and 6 all were very robust massive supraorbital bones, and low vaults. None of these are modern traits. Smith states:

"The supraorbital superstructures are basically modern (i.e., somewhat divided into superciliary arches and superorbital trigones) but, especially in Mladec 5 closely approach the condition of a Neandertal supraorbital torus, particularly that of late Neandertal tori in South-Central Europe. Wolpoff notes that the cranial contour of Mladec 5 is similar to that of La Chapelle-aux-Saints except for a slightly higher forehead and less projecting occiput." (Smith 1982, p. 678

Frayer notes:

"While there is more evidence than just Mladec 5 and the comparisons shown in Figure 16.1, it is apparent to me in 1995 just as it was in 1974 that Neanderthals must have had some relationship to the early Upper Paleolithic Europeans. Otherwise, specimens like Mladec 5, if uniquely descended from Qafzeh 9-like populations and unrelated to populations represented by specimens such as Spy 2, would have had to develop many of the same features that are commonly found in European Neanderthals. W. W. Howells (1974) once observed that Upper Paleolithic humans are 'instantly recognizable as anatomically modern.' I have always disagreed with this observation and to the contrary concluded in 1974 that Mladec 5 was 'instantly recognizable' as having Neanderthal ancestors." (Frayer, 1997 p. 221-222)

Frayer continues,

"According to Trinkaus, the Neanderthal condition is highly variable and 'more than half of the European "classic" neanderthals have their mental foramen mesial to M1,' which is typically the 'modern' position. Beyond this, Wolpoff has itemized a series of facial, cranial, and postcranial characters which link--not separate--European Neanderthals from the People who follow them. Thus, considerable evidence points to the persistence of these 'neanderthal autapomorphies and common traits' into the Upper Paleolithic populations which succeeded the Neanderthals in Europe. "At the same time, these identical features are generally absent in the human fossils from Africa (Omo, Border Cave, and Klasies River Mouth) and the Near East (Skhul and Qafzeh) who reputedly represent the source populations for the early Upper Paleolithic people of Europe. For example, the H-O trait is absent in the African and Levantine mandibular samples. While these samples are small, the absence of these features has been used to define them as modern, which is generally true except for the early Upper Paleolithic people who possess the 'unique' Neanderthal features. The fact that the so-called Neanderthal autapomorphies occur in the early Upper Paleolithic of Europe and not in the known 'Eve' populations presents some formidable problems for the advocates of total replacement. These authors discount any interbreeding between the resident European Neanderthals and the invading 'moderns,' so the Neanderthal unique features could not be due to gene flow. Thus, while Stringer and Gamble argue that the last Neanderthals were able to get close enough to the invading moderns to copy their tools, the two groups were apparently not capable of breeding with each other. Some even attempt to sustain the argument that Neanderthals and 'moderns' existed 'side-by-side for 50,000 years and never [had] sex'. Leaving aside the whole question of violation of competitive exclusion, the existence of the Neanderthal features in Upper Paleolithic skeletons undermines the logic of this position and creates the highly unlikely requirement that the identical features evolved independently a second time in European people who followed a supposedly nonancestral population which nonetheless had exactly the same traits. And, following the reappearance of these identical traits, they rapidly decreased again in their incidence in the descendant populations. No amount of genetic analysis or replacement thinking can get around the fact that Neanderthal 'unique' features appear in the early Upper Paleolithic. An alternative, more direct conclusion is that Neanderthals contributed to the Europeans who followed them and no abrupt replacement occurred between the Mousterian and the Upper Paleolithic. There is no easy way to dismiss the importance of these persisting features and, unless one simply ignores the presence of these 'unique' Neanderthal anatomical traits in the early Upper Paleolithic fossils, there is no reason to question the links between Neanderthals and early Upper Paleolithic Europeans." (Frayer,1997, p.224-225)

Frayer also notes that the H-0 mandibular foramen is almost unique among European Neanderthals, being unknown outside of Europe at that time. The supposed invaders, the earliest modern humans also had this characteristic Neanderthal trait. In an earlier article Frayer has the following info.

European                H-O         Normal
                      Foramen      Foramen
                         %            %

Neanderthal             53            47
African Eves             0           100 (the invaders)
Skhul/Qafzeh             0           100 (the invaders)
Early U. Paleolithic    18            82 (supposedly genetically separate)
Late U. Paleolithic      7            93
Mesolithic               2            98
Medieval Europeans       1            99

David W. Frayer, "Evolution at the European Edge: Neanderthal and Upper Paleolithic Relationships," Prehistoire Europeenne, 2:9-69, Table 7, p. 31

I would suggest that the data implies interbreeding did occur.

The second argument I raised was that of the mtDNA. The fact that all modern mtDNA appears to have descended from a single sequence which dates between 130 and 200 thousand years ago is often used by Christians to suggest that God created mankind during this period and that we are genetically unrelated to the previous hominids. What is overlooked is that if the coalescence time for mtDNA is 200,000 years, the coalescence time for nuclear DNA is several times that period!

"Moreover, as will be discussed shortly, molecules that do not recombine (such as mtDNA but not nuclear DNA) show a strong bias towards even shorter coalescence times. If the coalescence time of mtDNA is truly about 200,000 years ago, then the expected coalescence time of almost all nuclear genes are going to be commonly greater than one or two million years. This places the expected coalescence times of much nuclear DNA into a period in which all humans probably lived in Africa. Hence, studies on nuclear DNA are expected to have an African root under all hypotheses of modern human evolution." (Templeton, 1997, p. 353)

Given the observed variability of our nuclear genes, and the way they are transmitted, our genetic history MUST be over a million years old, meaning not only are we related to Neanderthal but also to Homo erectus and most likely Homo habilis. The mtDNA cannot be used to exclude H. erectus from our ancestry because it does in fact support that ancestry. And since Neanderthal by everyone's estimation is ultimately a descendant of H. erectus, at the very least, Neanderthal is related by common descent. And thus the differences between us and the Neanderthal reported by Krings, et al (1997) (which are not greater than the observed mtDNA variations among all chimpanzees and yet they are of one single reproductive species(Wong, 1998, p. 30)) are not sufficient reason to separate them into another species.

Given this, the argument made by Christians that somehow the mtDNA data marks when humans were created, becomes hollow. If one desires a common descent from the first humans, it can not have happened within the past million years! Christian apologetics must accommodate this concept, that human genes have been on earth for at least as long as 2 million years.

The third argument against the inclusion of Neanderthals into humanity concerns the lack of time required for Neanderthals to have evolved into humanity. Frayer tackles this issue head on. He states (his second argument):

"A second argument against the inclusion of European Neanderthals as ancestors involves evolutionary rates. It is odd that the same scholars so willing to accept an abrupt punctuational event for the origin of modern humans (as is required in the Eve theory), or for the rapid appearance of racial (geographic) characteristics after the establishment of moderns in replacement models, argue that Neanderthals could not be ancestral to modern humans because there is not enough time for one to evolve into the other. Yet, it is a common, decades-old argument that European Neanderthals differed so profoundly from modern hominids that there was insufficient time to allow them to evolve into Upper Paleolithic humans." (Frayer, 1997, p. 225)

Frayer uses measurements from the various skulls to show that this is not the case. He uses the definition of the darwin, a measure of morphological change to show that to change from a Neanderthal to a modern human requires slower evolution than to change from a pre-farming modern human into a farmer! He defines:

"Evolutionary rates were calculated using Haldane's (1949) formula for a darwin (d)

[loge x2 - loge x1]/t

where x1 and x2 are the sample means and t is the time interval between the two samples expressed in millions of years." (Frayer, 1997), p. 227 ** "Despite the contention of those who argue for elevated evolutionary rates, the rates of change in these fourteen measurements for the Neanderthal-Upper Paleolithic comparison are consistently low compared with those of other samples. For example, the maximum rate observed for the European Neanderthal-early Upper Paleolithic comparison is 1.8 darwins, which is lower than seven of the fourteen rates for the early to late Upper Paleolithic transition and five of the fourteen rates for the early Upper Paleolithic-Mesolithic comparison. Moreover, the average rate of change between the European Neanderthals and the early Upper Paleolithic is .8 d, which is substantially below the average rates for the two post-Mousterian comparisons. The rate between the Neanderthal and early Upper Paleolithic sample is less than half the average darwin between he early-late Upper Paleolithic (1.8d) or between the early Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic (1.6 d). Two unambiguous conclusions can be drawn from the rates for these measures of craniofacial change: (1) neither a 'tremendous acceleration' nor even a rapid evolutionary rate is required for the transition of European Neanderthals into the early Upper Paleolithic, and (2) these rates of change show that anything but stasis characterizes the post-Neanderthal period in Europe, which exhibits substantial reduction in facial projection from the auricular point. Some of these rates are affected by the time interval, but following Gingerich's logarithmic scale, the average rate and highest rate for the Neanderthal-early Upper Paleolithic proposed transition is well within his observed limits and comparable to change within other lineal taxa. In short, the Neanderthal-early Upper Paleolithic rates fit comfortably in his 'Domain IV' post-Pleistocene rates of change, indicating that they are not excessively high." (Frayer, 1997, p. 228)

Here is the data from his article.
"Rates of Change (in Darwins) for Facial Measurements from the Auricular Point

              Neanderthals to    Early to Late         Early Upper
              Early Upper        Upper Paleolithic     Paleolithic to
              Paleolithic                              Mesolithic

Auricular point to:

prosthion            1.1                1.9                1.6
nasospinale          1.0                1.9                1.8
nasion                .9                1.4                1.3
glabella              .8                1.4                1.3
zygomaxillarae       0.0                1.3                2.0
M1/M2                1.8                1.0                 .8
P3/P4                1.2                2.0                1.3
I2/C                 1.1                1.8                1.3

inferior
nasomaxillary suture  .6                1.6                1.9

jugale                .7                2.8                2.4
frontomalareorbitale  .4                1.9                1.8
alare                 .7                1.6                1.6
palatine suture cross .6                1.8                1.7
post-orale            .5                2.4                1.9

average change        .8                1.8                1.6

David W. Frayer, "Perspectives on Neanderthals as Ancestors," in G. A. Clark and C. M. Willermet, ed., Conceptual Issues in Modern Human Origins Research, (New York:Aldine De Gruyter, 1997), pp 220-234, p. 228

"Table 16.2 Rates of Change in Mandibular Incisor and Canine Mesio-Distal Lengths and Labio-Ligual Breadths between selected Groups, as Measured by Darwins

                                     Il lt   Il Br  I2 Lt  I2 Br  C Lt   C Br Mean Mandible

Neanderthals to early                  .2     1.6      .3    1.1    .9     .3       .8
Upper Paleolithic

Late Neanderthals to early Upper      2.1     6.1     3.1    5.1   4.8    1.5      3.8
Paleolithic

Early to Late Upper Paleolithic       1.9      .6     2.2    1.5   2.0    2.5      1.8

Mesolithic to Neolithic              27.1    14.6    19.6   13.7  17.3    7.5     16.6

Early Upper Paleolithic to Neolithic  2.3     1.9     2.4    2.2   2.4    2.8      2.3

Maxilla Neanderthals to early          .3     1.0     1.0    1.6    .7     .8       .9
Upper Paleolithic

Late Neanderthals to early Upper       .9     1.1     2.7    4.9   1.5    1.8      2.1
Paleolithic

Early to Late Upper Paleolithic       2.3      .5     2.0    4.1   1.7    1.9      2.1

Mesolithic to Neolithic              29.8    11.9    25.6    0.0  15.0   10.3     15.4

Early Upper Paleolithic to Neolithic  2.6     1.7     2.4    2.4   1.8    2.1      2.2

David W. Frayer, "Perspectives on Neanderthals as Ancestors," in G. A. Clark and C. M. Willermet, ed., Conceptual Issues in Modern Human Origins Research, (New York:Aldine De Gruyter, 1997), pp 220-234, p. 230

"Table 16.3 Rates of Change in Mandibular and Maxillary Tooth Areas between Selected Groups, as Measured by Darwins (Tooth Areas = Mesio-Distal Length x Bucco-Lingual Breadth)

                                    Canine   P3   P4    M1   M2   M3   Mean Mandible

Neanderthals to early                 1.3   1.8   1.1   .1   1.1  1.3      1.1
Upper Paleolithic

Late Neanderthals to early Upper      1.9   4.8   3.1   .6   3.2  5.3      3.2
Paleolithic

Early to Late Upper Paleolithic       4.1   2.7   3.0  1.1   1.5  1.3      2.3

Mesolithic to Neolithic              23.5  27.1  17.8 30.1  27.8  12.5    23.2

Early Upper Paleolithic to Neolithic  5.2   4.1   2.9  2.7   3.4   3.5     3.6

Maxilla Neanderthals to early         1.6   1.4   1.5   .8    .8   1.3     1.2
Upper Paleolithic

Late Neanderthals to early Upper      3.1   1.5   3.4  1.0   2.4   2.9     2.4
Paleolithic

Early to Late Upper Paleolithic       3.4   4.2   3.2  1.0   2.5   3.0     2.9

Mesolithic to Neolithic              27.7  32.9  26.1 27.0  32.1  26.3    28.7

Early Upper Paleolithic to Neolithic  4.2   4.6   3.7  3.1   4.5   3.9     3.9

~David W. Frayer, "Perspectives on Neanderthals as Ancestors," in G. A. Clark and C. M. Willermet, ed., Conceptual Issues in Modern Human Origins Research, (New York:Aldine De Gruyter, 1997), pp 220-234, p. 231

Frayer's discussion notes that the fastest rates are DURING the period in which anatomically modern man was alone on earth!

"For anterior tooth lengths and breadths (Table 16.2), rates expressing change between the total Neanderthal sample and the early Upper Paleolithic never represent the highest evolutionary rate. Rather, mean differences between the Mesolithic and Neolithic show the highest darwin values, in each case for individual anterior tooth lengths and breadths. For example, in the mandibular anterior teeth the highest rate between the Neanderthal and early Upper Paleolithic sample is 1.6 d for I1 breadth and the mean rate of change of the six dimensions is .8 d. In the same six dimensions, the highest rate of change between the Mesolithic and Neolithic is 27.1 d and the average rate of change is 16.6 d. "(Frayer, 1997, p. 229)

"Nevertheless it is useful to compare rates which are calculated over approximately the same time interval to determine if an excessive amount of change is required to allow for the transformation of Neanderthals into Upper Paleolithic people. In this regard, the late Neanderthal-early Upper Paleolithic rates can be compared with the early to late Upper Paleolithic rates( both sampled over about the same time period of 10,000 years) or to the early Upper Paleolithic-neolithic rates, which are sampled over about twice that length of time(20,000 years). Both of the latter comparisons involved change within a species (no one questions that Upper Paleolithic and neolithic humans belong to Homo sapiens), and it is apparent from the rates that the Neolithic, like the late Upper Paleolithic, has undergone marked dental reduction."~David W. Frayer, "Perspectives on Neanderthals as Ancestors," in G. A. Clark and C. M. Willermet, ed., Conceptual Issues in Modern Human Origins Research, (New York:Aldine De Gruyter, 1997), pp 220-234, p. 231-232 ** "In the maxillary anterior tooth dimensions, the late Neanderthal-early Upper Paleolithic average rate (1.8 d) is less than both the early to late Upper Paleolithic (2.1 d) and the early Upper Paleolithic-Neolithic (2.2 d) comparisons. One maxillary dimension for Neanderthals (I2 breadth) slightly exceeds the highest rate in the early-late Upper Paleolithic comparison. It is apparent from the data on rates of change in the incisor and canine dimensions of both jaws that the transition between the Neanderthals and the early Upper Paleolithic involved relatively high rates of change for some specific dental dimensions, but that the overall or mean rate of change was comparable among all three sampled intervals."(Frayer, 1997), p. 232

Further, he concludes,

"Thus, contrary to the commonly stated argument that not enough time exists for European Neanderthals to be ancestral to subsequent Europeans, these data clearly demonstrate that there was no 'tremendous acceleration' in rates of change between the Neanderthals and the Upper Paleolithic Europeans. For me, these data falsify the argument that European Neanderthals as a group cannot be ancestral to subsequent Homo sapiens in Europe (at least with respect to metric features of the face and teeth) because too much change is required over too little time. Moreover, based on the rates of dental evolutionary change, there is nothing to support the contention that European Neanderthals represent a separate species. Such a conclusion would only hold if one is also willing to accept a speciation event between the early and late Upper Paleolithic, between the Mesolithic and Neolithic, or between the early Upper Paleolithic and Neolithic, since all of these comparisons have similar, or in some cases considerably higher, average or individual evolutionary rates." "While rates of dental evolutionary change by themselves do not prove that Neanderthals are ancestral to early Upper Paleolithic Europeans, these results do indicate that European Neanderthals cannot be eliminated as possible ancestors based on speculations which require grossly elevated evolutionary rates. Moreover, the period following the Neanderthals in Europe is not characterized by absolute or relative stasis but by marked change within the Upper Paleolithic and from the Upper Paleolithic to the Neolithic. These observations should put to rest both the contention that differences between the European Neanderthals and the early Upper Paleolithic require an exorbitant rate of change and the unsupported claim that tooth size shows little absolute or relative change after the appearance of the Upper Paleolithic. Those who still maintain that European Neanderthals are unrelated to subsequent European Homo sapiens must look to other data; these data do not include the presence of so-called Neanderthal autapomorphic traits or exorbitant rates of change."(Frayer, 1997) p. 233

While I don't know how much Neanderthal ancestry is in the modern human race and am uncertain how it got there, interbreding or evolution, the above data seems to indicate that the apologetical position which tries to separate the archaic hominids from anatomically modern men fail for several reasons. Christian theology ignores this data at its peril.

DMD Publishing

References

Bower, Bruce, "Fossil may expose humanity's hybrid roots", Science News, Vol. 155, No. 19, May 8, 1999, p. 295

Krings, Matthias, et al, 1997. "Neandertal DNA Sequences and the Origin of Modern Humans," Cell, 90:19-30

references

Frayer, David W. "Perspectives on Neanderthals as Ancestors," in G. A. Clark and C. M. Willermet, ed., Conceptual Issues in Modern Human Origins Research, (New York:Aldine De Gruyter, 1997), pp 220-234

Krings, et al., Matthias "Neandertal DNA Sequences and the Origin of Modern Humans," Cell, 90(1997):19-30

Smith, Fred H. "Upper Pleistocene Hominid Evolution in South-Central Europe: A Review of the Evidence and Analysis of Trends," Current Anthropology 23(1982):6:667-703, p. 678

Templeton, Alan R. "Testing the Out of Africa Replacement Hypothesis with Mitochondrial DNA Data," in G. A. Clark and C. M. Willermet, ed., Conceptual Issues in Modern Human Origins Research, (New York: Aldine de Gryuter, 1997), pp. 329-360

Trinkhaus, Erik and Marjorie LeMay, "Occipital Bunning Among Later Pleistocene Hominids," American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 57:27-35(1982), p.28-29

Wong, Kate "Ancestral Quandry," Scientific American, January 1998, p. 30