Re: Rob Gargett's humanized Neanderthal

On 4/7/2024 11:29 AM, panther2020 wrote:

       Rob Gargett notes that even if you try to draw a more humanized Neanderthal with the eyes and nose as large as the bones inicate they would have to be, what you get is still outlandish:
 https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2F4.bp.blogspot.com%2F-RR3x4KynCzk%2FTslxq4CG_SI%2FAAAAAAAAAgM%2FQvagkM8miUc%2Fs640%2FNewFrontalWithActualNares.png&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=6a7992220fd1694df73b3928621125098d4deb90bfb47a72dd58ec2275f03964&ipo=images
 

Do you have some point that you want to make?  We have sequenced Neanderthal genomes and we know just how closely related they are to Modern Humans.  We know that we interbred with Neanderthal and that you likely have a couple percent Neanderthal DNA in your genome if you are descended from the modern humans that made it out of Africa around 60 to 80 thousand years ago.  We are much more closely related to Neanderthal and Denisovans than chimps are to bonobos.  We split off from Neanderthals and Denisovans only around 500,000 to 800,000 years ago while chimps split from Bonobos around 3 million years ago.
My take is that they have the nose wrong.  Neanderthal were Ice Age survivors.  I never agreed with the way that the Neanderthal noses were depicted.  Humans adapted to arctic conditions have small flat noses, probably because something sticking out is likely to be frozen off.  The extra large nasal opening that Neanderthals have likely supported highly vascularized nasal tissue that probably warmed the nose and the air that was breathed in, so most of what was considered to be the nose was in this nasal cavity.  That tissue likely kept the brain warmer when they breathed in through their noses during glacial intervals.  The nose would have been flatter and most of the nasal structure may have been deeper into the skull than in extant humans.  Neanderthals had survived 7 or 8 glacial periods before they went extinct.
Ron Okimoto