Olha Vynohradova. ACR essay

The place of Neanderthals in human evolution

According to paleoanthropology and evolutional biology, modern humans belong to the genus Homo, whose evolution continued during the long period of time since 3-2,5 million years ago. However, not all existed human species were involved in evolution–some of them were its deadlock`s branches, like Homo floresiensis or Homo rudolfiensis. Moreover, the whole genus Homo neanderthalensis is under the consideration of being the part of modern human evolution. Discussion around this problem began in the middle of the XX century and widely spread around the world in the XXI century, when DNA researches emerged.

The majority of scientists exclude Neanderthals from the process of human evolution in the regard of their special features and time of their appearance on the Earth. In 2008 evolutional biologists managed to decipher Neanderthals` mitochondrial DNA that is located in women`s cells. As a result, 206 distinctions accrued between Neanderthals` and humans` DNA, which means that Neanderthal is different from modern human in 98 per cent (Zalizniak 54). Another essential detail is that Neanderthals emerged in Europe 200,000 years ago, whereas Homo sapiens appeared in the Africa about the same time (Segeda 157). This argument shows that those two species could not be sequential. It should be added that Neanderthals had archaic appearance and structure of the body that could be explained by severe climate of glacial Europe. Homo sapiens that were developing at the same time had gracile constitution. So, even morphologically those two species were far from each other.

 Nevertheless, not all scholars agree with that point of view. In 2010-2011 the group of genetics deciphered another part of DNA, but this time it was located in men`s cells. Considering this research, it was proved that 1-4 per cents of Neanderthals` genome were similar to the genes of Homo sapiens (Zalizniak 59). They insist that a small part of Neanderthals were involved in human evolution. Such scholars also explain the approximate time of appearance of those two species on the Earth by arguing that not all human remains were found and the dating is rather controversial. In such way, the first Homo sapiens in their views were archaic one`s and could be named as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis (Sytnyk 78-79). For them, being morphologically different, is another evidence, that those two species were sequential, even though the time of their occurrence is almost the same.

Considering all those arguments and counterarguments, it should be admitted that similarities between Neanderthals` and modern humans` DNA indicates only that they had one mutual ancestor. That ancestor is still living in Africa and does not have Neanderthal genes at all. The line divided into two 600,000 years ago on the territory of the Middle East when after another 200,000 years Neanderthals settled in Europe and Homo sapiens went to Asia (Sytnyk 103).  The simultaneous development of Neanderthals in Europe and Homo sapiens in Asia is actually proving that theory. It should be added that the use of the term ‘Homo sapiens neanderthalensis’ is not correct, because we do not have any human remains with both features of Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens, that could also be an evidence that they had not any sexual intercourses between them.

Based on that arguments and counterarguments, discussion about Neanderthal`s part in human evolution is still continuing and attracts new researchers. Therefore, any discussions about this topic should be reasoned strongly.

Argument	Counterargument	Rebuttal
Neanderthal`s DNA differs from modern human`s in 98%	2 % of Neanderthal`s DNA is similar to modern human`s	It actually confirms that two species had one mutual ancestor, but does not mean, these two were  sequential
Neanderthals had archaic appearance and body constitution	Being morphologically different is another evidence, that those two species were sequential, because they had interbreeding	The science does not have any archaeological evidences that Neanderthal and Sapiens had any sexual intercourses between them
Neanderthals and Homo sapiens appeared on the Earth precisely around the same time – they could not be sequential	The dating is rather controversial	The development of Neanderthals in Europe and Homo sapiens in Asia was simultaneous

References:

Segeda, Sergii. Anthropology. Kyiv: Lybid`, 2009. Print.

Sytnyk, Olexandr. Cultural anthropology: human and society origins. Lviv: Lviv polytechnic press, 2012. Print.

Vynohradova, Olha. "ACR paragraph. Olha Vynohradova." Academic writing blog. 7 Feb. 2013. Web. 27 Feb. 2013

Zalizniak, Leonid. The ancient history of Ukraine. Kyiv: Tempora, 2012. Print.