Comments on: When Eve met Creb

By: Razib Khan

Razib Khan — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:36:33 +0000

#5, yeah. henry harpending says there are some signs on the bones of neanderthals that babies may have grasped on to their fur, like apes.

By: ackbark

ackbark — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:21:38 +0000

That’s something I was wondering,

is there any indication of how hairy Neanderthals were? Or if they had long beards, or just a general fuzziness?

By: Razib Khan

Razib Khan — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:33:54 +0000

#2, probably true. unless they are hairy.

By: marcel

marcel — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:57:19 +0000

It is very likely that Europeans ~35,000 years ago did not look like Daryl Hannah.

Do you have to go and burst every balloon?

By: toto

toto — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:55:42 +0000

Why exactly do we think that people ~150,000 years ago looked anything like modern East Africans?

Well… if we accept that the pigmentation of modern East Africans is largely determined by selective pressure / stabilizing selection, and that dark pigments are not a recent evolutionary development, then it would make sense that their ancestor of 150Ky ago (or even before that, including archaics), living at the same place, would have roughly the same pigmentation?

By: jb

jb — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:27:56 +0000

“She’s awfully pale for an East African.” This is true on the merits, but the logic is kind of dumb. Why exactly do we think that people ~150,000 years ago looked anything like modern East Africans? No worries! I was curious why some of the article's commenters wanted to kick Ronald Moore in the balls, and this led me to the Wikipedia page for Battlestar Galactica, where I learned that The new Earth is found to be inhabited by early humans, who are genetically compatible with the humans from the Galactica and the rest of the fleet... . Human beings had apparently independently evolved on Earth and Kobol. So you see, even if the Mitochondrial Eve was a pale skinned little girl from another planet, her descendents could still get their East African looks from the locals. Perfectly logical! Problem solved!