03-04-2024, 05:47 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-04-2024, 05:48 PM by Horatio McCallister.)
I have a hard time buying that Neanderthals really did lose their native Y and Mtdna from introgression from humans. How is it possible that such foundational building blocks of genetic code would be swept out by foreign analogs, why should human Y and MtDna be more optimal against Neanderthal's genetic background compared to their own native Y/Mt? I don't believe the explanation is due to genetic load being higher in Neanderthals, genetic load while very real can be offset salvage mutations which cancel out accumulated deleterious mutations, if Neander Y and mtDNA were really that messed up I find it more likely that they would have native salvage replacements than acquiring new ones from modern humans. Nevermind that I don't think anyone's seriously done a deep dive into Neander Y and MtDNA to see if they were actually significantly messed up to begin with...
What if instead of introgression, Neanderthal and humans are actually just a clade together, with Neanderthal just being sort of hybrid between some proto-human and Denisovan-like groups?
What if instead of introgression, Neanderthal and humans are actually just a clade together, with Neanderthal just being sort of hybrid between some proto-human and Denisovan-like groups?