Genetic structure and Outbreeding Depression

Posted by Torgrim on March 29, 2007, 06:10 AM | #

So, as I see it, a person from Northern Scandinavia, with a blood type, A2, if mixed with a person from Sub Saharan Africa, neither would be very adaptive to either climes?

Posted by Alex Zeka on March 29, 2007, 08:43 AM | #

Even w/o outbreeding depression, a person of Afro-Nordic blood would be only averagely adapted to either environment. Evolution is divergence.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on March 29, 2007, 01:46 PM | #

“Offspring between parents from two different populations may have phenotypes that are not good for any environment.” (—from the log entry)

This is the case with Euro-Negro interspecies hybrids and is what’s the matter with bimbos such as Heidi Klum succumbing to tribal-war propaganda stealthily aimed ("stealthily" because it’s done via a version of the stealthy Gordian-worm strategy) at extinction of the True European races through inducing their mentally weaker members to breed with what amount to interspecies hybrids (interspecies hybrids that grow every generation more dilute through continued miscegenation are still interspecies hybrids).  We see here the further symbolism of the appearance at this juncture of the film 300 about ancient Greece:  in ancient Greece the man who succeeded in untying the Gordian knot would, as a reward, rule in peace, prosperity, and happiness over his kingdom; likewise, the society which succeeds in untying today’s Gordian “knot” will be rewarded with happy, peaceful, prosperous existence as a society and nation.

Outbreeding depression presumably explains why we don’t still see the interspecies hybrids between primitive humans and chimps that Harvard Prof. Reich deduces were around as recently as four million years ago:  there wasn’t a niche that called for them, only niches that called for the chimp line and the human line.  Is there a niche today that calls for the offspring Prof. Ziv calls for and Mrs. Seal is obediently producing?  Or are the available niches reserved for non-hybrids?

Outbreeding depression doesn’t always, of course, produce mixes that die out as the chimp-human ones did:  some lead to lines with long-term viability:  see the following.  (But do we want to incorporate more primitive traits into our own line?  No, for a whole variety of what should be very obvious reasons.)
______

The same phenomemon, that is, newly-emerging species continuing to breed with progenitor species before the completion of speciation or even after completion, was seen millions of years later in the process in which our species, Homo sapiens sapiens, emerged from the pre-human progenitor species:

“The speciation event that produced Homo sapiens sapiens could not have occurred contemporaneously in more than a very few individuals. It follows that those few s. sapiens would have possessed a very restricted sample of the progenitor species’ genetic diversity. However, the diversity observed in current populations implies that there were never fewer than several thousand breeding pairs in the human ancestry (Harpending et al., 1998). Accordingly, the founding s. sapiens and their descendants must have interbred with the progenitor species (and perhaps other pre-human populations) in order to preserve the diversity which exists today. While some changes in the genome must have occurred after the speciation event, the ‘lifetimes’ of the genetic elements considered (in the works cited here) are far longer than new estimates of s. sapiens’ age (Mountain et al., 1994). As a consequence, most of the current diversity must be the result of interbreeding with pre-human populations.”

The author of the linked article, R. Fonda, thinks there’s evidence H. sapiens sapiens bred with pre-human species possibly including H. erectus, producing certain modern populations which are in fact interspecies hybrids. I see every reason he might be onto something. Certain of his ideas are, needless to add, shunned by the politically correct among the scientific community. But truth always outs in the end: the days of lies are always numbered.

Here’s what Fonda’s article says about that last issue I referred to (this article is something like five or six years old but I don’t think he’s changed his mind):

“The radiation of low-diversity s. sapiens from Eurasia is also the best explanation for the discoveries, dates, morphology and genetic data in S. E. Asia. There, s. sapiens and H. erectus lived in proximity for as long as 20,000 years (Swisher et al., 1996), evidently interbreeding to produce extant population types. [Emphasis added, here and below.] Many students of fossil morphology have long contended that there is continuity between S. E. Asian Hominid fossils and extant indigenous peoples.8 Genetic data show these populations are distinct from northern Asian populations and of comparable diversity to Africans (Chang et al. 1996).9

“The Ngandong specimens, in particular, have occasioned much debate on account of their mixture of s. sapiens and erectus traits and their affinities with extant Australian populations.10 We would expect that the skulls of such hybrids would show affinities to both species, and that is why these fossils are so hard to classify. Some authorities say they are clearly erectus, while others point to modern traits, and especially that very similar skulls (from overlapping dates) are found in Australia. Moreover, the traits in question occur in the modern population. This is not merely consistent with, but constitutes strong evidence for, the view that radiating, low-diversity s. sapiens interbred with relic erectus populations to the extent that they acquired near-African diversity. Primitive morphological traits are manifest in the Asian fossil record and in living people.

“The hypothesis presented here uniquely explains one particular aspect of the Australian fossil record. The oldest fossils from Australia are the most modern in morphology. On this view, this is explained by the fact that the first humans that passed through S. E. Asia on their way to Australia were less hybridized with resident erectus populations because they spent less time living among them. Populations that settled Australia later (leaving the Kow Swamp-type skulls) had been living in S. E. Asia for as much as 20,000 years and were far more hybridized in consequence.

“Wolpoff accepts that the Ngandong skulls are representative of the population which produced the Kow Swamp-type specimens, and left descendants in the modern population. But he explicitly rejects the view, as set forth here, that there was inter-species gene flow, and calls it ‘unacceptable.’ This, however, is a socio-political rather than a scientific statement. He does not contend that it is an unreasonable construction of the data, but rejects it on grounds of dogma, because of its implication that some modern populations express a more primitive genome. Wolpoff considers that the hypothesis of hybridization is ‘unacceptable’ because it ‘raises the specter that some human populations can be interpreted to differ from others because they have more genes from an extinct, primitive human species.’ Thus, according to Wolpoff and other adherents of this doctrine, scientific truths which conflict with their politically-correct ‘just so’ paradigm are outside the bounds of contemplation.”

Posted by Svyatoslav Igorevich on March 29, 2007, 05:09 PM | #

In this case, adaptive gene complexes in wild populations are simply being displaced by the immigration of genes that are adapted to the hatchery environment or to some other locality.

First thing I thought after reading that was, “doesn’t this suggest the strong possibility that for Euros, all outbreeding results in depression?”

Posted by Pi on March 29, 2007, 07:26 PM | #

I think the problem would be more pronounced when you cross mongrels.  If you’re a mongrel and want to minimize (but not eliminate) this problem for your progeny then you should backcross into one, or the other of your pure blood parental lines.  In this way you will always have a full set of pure blood genes of one of the pure lines.  Never cross with another mongrel or you’re really tempting fate.

-Pi

Posted by James Bowery on March 29, 2007, 08:39 PM | #

Well actually, the way new breeds are created by breeders is to first hybridize and then intensively inbreed the hybrids and kill the “junk” resulting from the inbred hybrids.  The “junk” is defined in terms of those offspring not exhibiting the desired characteristics of the parent breeds.  This can take multiple generations of intensive inbreeding to weed out the “junk”.

Of course, NONE and I mean NONE of the proponents of human heterosis would tolerate this realistic approach to creating new breeds from hybridization.

Nor will they tolerate the other realistic approach to heterosis which is the “backcross” (usually rotating between at least 3 different pure breeds) from pure breeds you mention—during which you MUST maintain your best of pure breed breed females as a best of pure breed line.  Nor, in the unlikely event that they allowed that, would they allow the restriction that farmers use which is to keep the hybrid breeders ALL FEMALE and send the hybrid males NONBREEDING, ie: destined for market.  (I’m not counting terminal cross systems here since those lineages always terminate.)

This is because they don’t really promote the advantages of hybridization for humanity—they merely want to fuck our women with the protection of our governments and aid of our transportation and habitation technologies.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on March 31, 2007, 02:53 AM | #

Outbreeding depression:

“Gene flow between these populations may lead to individuals with intermediate body sizes, which may not be adaptive in either population. [...] Offspring between parents from two different populations may have phenotypes that are not good for any environment.” (—from the log entry)

“I think the Mormons in general are very racially aware, more so than other religious groups in America.  They’re very outspoken against miscegenation, for example — all the Mormons I have met — and they definitely discourage that practice.  And they procreate >b>a lot within their own race — which is definitely a fact — and they uphold traditional, I would almost say conservative, pre-1950s American values which have now been lost in the general populace.” (—Constantin v. H.)

Posted by Fred Scrooby on April 01, 2007, 02:47 PM | #

Anyone know if Michael A. Hoffman II is Jewish?  I think it’s 60-40 (or better) likely that he is.

I just discovered him and his site the day before yesterday and I highly recommend his stuff except for the tinfoil hat stuff on the Masons, etc.  A small fraction of his stuff is mystical in a wacko, possibly paranoid way (such as that what made the British Empire take off was a pact made between an Elizabethan mystic named Dee and a group of Kabalistic Jews), but if you ignore that and absorb the genuine stuff you come away having learned a great deal about stuff few others delve into and summarize as he does.  (Hey Isaac Newton was a little wacky too, and in the same mystical kind of way.)

Posted by anon on April 02, 2007, 06:22 AM | #

Fred,
Jews tend not to name their children “Jr” or “III”.
There is some sort of proscription from naming after living relatives and ancestors.  They choose dead others to name their children.
My guess is no.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on July 21, 2007, 09:55 AM | #

I think it’s pretty clear at this point that Dienekes favors “Out of Africa” over “Multiregionalism”:  he seems to tout the former at every opportunity.  (Why “Out of Africa” would serve his general pro-Greek bias better than “Multiregional” I don’t quite get, though one could speculate.) Unfortunately, the new paper in question lacks merit.

Posted by Der Dienekes on July 21, 2007, 10:30 AM | #

Yeah, Fred, but note what Hawks says about environmental selection influences on skull variability (not to mention of course sexual selection for phenotypic features).

About Dienekes: it has long been apparent that his blog has a political subtext (although much attenuated in recent years).

Nothing wrong with that - as long as you are honest about it. 

It’s left open to the long time reader of Dienekes’ site as to whether he’s been upfront about the biases that inform his commentaries about, for example, out of Africa, IQ and race, and Salter’s work.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on July 21, 2007, 03:18 PM | #

“but note what Hawks says about environmental selection influences on skull variability” (—Der Pustulemeister)

Yeah I saw that.  He says it’s between 25% and 75% environmental.  That’s OK:  he allows us the choice so I’ll choose 25%.  (Hey it’s better than Franz Boas who claimed it was 100% environmental.)

Look, I have no illusions about Hawks:  he definitely slants left, and it goes without saying he dwells in a universe in which the notion of race essentially does not exist — or at least any mention of it whatsoever is painstakingly avoided.  That doesn’t detract from the value of perusing his site from time to time.  He’s no C. Boring Disgrace, that’s for sure. 

“About Dienekes: it has long been apparent that his blog has a political subtext”

Dienekes doesn’t accept inheritance of IQ:  he thinks it’s all environmental and disregards the twin studies.  He’s jaw-droppingly wrong about that, of course:  to reject those studies you have to fundamentally misunderstand statistics, which he certainly uses in other regards and understands, so it’s a mystery.  He also, unless I’m mistaken, doesn’t accept inheritance of Greekness:  he thinks Turks can be as Greek as Greeks if they adopt the culture and language sufficiently.  I assume this is because he himself is part Turkish (as everyone knows, he’s of Pontic-Greek/Greek-Orthodox family background) and sees this exclusively cultural interpretation of Greekness as the way to consider himself as Greek as any Greek who isn’t part Turkish.  This may be the motivation for his blindness on the IQ twin studies:  if Greekness is environmental it’s only a short step from there to saying intelligence is.  Greekness for him is so environmental, in fact, that he’s either implied or said outright (I can’t remember which) that a Negro can be a Greek.  On the other hand, the thing he loathes most in the known universe is the claim that Greeks have Negro blood (which is strange since, if everything about being Greek is environmental, there can be no “non-Greek blood").  The thing he loathes second-most in the known universe is nothern Europeans who think they’re better than Greeks because they consider that they have no Negro blood.  For this last reason he always posts anything he finds claiming that northern Europeans (Europeans north of Greece) or the peoples of the Anglosphere countries have Negro blood (he just the other day posted one claiming the Boers have Negro blood).  He loves doing this because, for him, 1) it gets back at northern Euros for the insult they offer Greeks in this regard — throws it right back in their faces, and 2) it shows that, if Negro blood makes a race inferior, the northern Europeans and not the Greeks are the inferior race.  Dienekes also has a certain narrowness of mind — he’s not really a broadminded guy — and definitely tends leftward politically, which is unfortunate.

That said, he has to my satisfaction debunked the century-old claim of the so-called “nordicists” that Greeks have Negro blood, he has not hesitated to debunk the race-deniers’ unbelievably brazen “races-don’t-exist-because-of-clines” word-game, he loves Greek culture and history, he’s not intimidated whatsoever by Jews (though at the same time utterly disdaining what are commonly called “anti-Semites,” a term which I myself reject) and is in general completely fearless before the PC police in those areas in which he violates PC, he has come up with reliable race-predicting algorithms using only distance measurements of skull and face, he runs an interesting blog and maintains other sites that contain hugely valuable information on race, Greek history and culture, etc. 

His support for Out of Africa over Multiregional is a mystery in the sense that, if that support conforms to the pattern he’s shown, Out of Africa must in his view somehow benefit Greece or bolster his conceptions of Greekness and so on or, alternatively, must bolster his favorite of all views in the known universe:  that northern Euros have Negro blood (or that Greeks have none).  But I don’t see how it does those except possibly in the most indirect ways, by the most tortuous logic.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on July 21, 2007, 04:34 PM | #

Dienekes was also the first blogger-pundit I’m aware of to make these clarifications about the Out of Africa theory (a theory I no longer support): 1) there’s no evidence the Africans who left northeastern Africa to spread over the world as modern humans were the same as today’s True West-Central African Negroes or even today’s East-African Negroes; 2) later waves of back-migration of fully-modern non-Negro southwest Asians into northeastern Africa contributed significantly to the genetic make up of today’s peoples of the latter region who didn’t get the way they are purely by indigenous evolution in situ.

He also rightly opposes the claim that the Semitic languages originated in Africa then spread to Western Asia rather than the other way around.  Furthermore, his (and “Race Realist’s,” who got it from him) averaging up of the faces of national soccer teams to see what each Euro race looks like was pretty good.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on July 21, 2007, 04:53 PM | #

Both Hawks and Dienekes are worlds better than Carl Zimmer, a Jewish anti-Euro bigot, race-denier, and race-replacement advocate (and yes, Jews are typically both race-deniers and race-replacement advocates:  you’d think the two would be mutually exclusive but in the twisted Jewish academic/scientific race-denial anti-Euro universe they’re not).

Posted by Fred Scrooby on July 21, 2007, 06:12 PM | #

I just noticed there’s an entry on that Manica paper over at The Civic Platform, linking to an article discussing it.

Posted by der pustule on July 21, 2007, 06:31 PM | #

Fred, Hawks is taking about selection from environmental pressures, not lamarckian ideas of environment directly influencing skull development in the individual.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on July 21, 2007, 07:03 PM | #

Right, thanks and I certainly understood that.  Did something I said give the impression I thought otherwise?  Apart from the possibility of there being something to these very latest Lamarckian theories that have been coming out the past year or so, I join everyone with a high-school biology education on the non-Stalinist planet Earth (aside from Arthur Koestler in “The Case of the Midwife Toad”) in being no Lamarckian.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on July 21, 2007, 07:06 PM | #

(Or did you mean ”Boasian ideas of environment influencing skulls”?)

Posted by Der Lace on July 21, 2007, 08:36 PM | #

Fred, you referred to Boas; that’s not what Hawks is talking about.

Here is a list of Brace’s “neutral” measurements:
Variable no. Description
1 Nasal height
2 Nasal bone height
3 Piriform aperture height
4 Nasion prosthion length
5 Nasion basion
6 Basion prosthion
7 Superior nasal bone width
8 Simotic width
9 Inferior nasal bone width
10 Nasal breadth
11 Simotic subtense
12 Inferior simotic subtense
13 FOW subtense at nasion
14 MOW subtense at rhinion
15 Bizygomatic breadth
16 Glabella opisthocranion
17 Maximum cranial breadth
18 Basion bregma
19 Basion rhinion
20 Width at 13 (fmt fmt)
21 Width at 14
22 IOW subtense at nasion
23 Width at 22 (fmo fmo)
24 Minimum nasal tip elevation

There are differences that will have a profound influence on physical appearance, which is modulated by sexual selection, if not natural selection.  Actually, given some of these metrics, with an emphasis on the nose, there are a number of environmental influences that can exert selective pressure. “Nasal breadth” is not influenced, for example, by climate?

Then we have the problem of Neanderthals.  Yes, the paper Hawks criticizes is flawed.  But what can one say about someone who thinks Europeans are gracilized Neanderthals, of direct descent, when _all_ of the genetic evidence that exists as of today suggests that, at most, there _may_ have been some introgression, but this was limited.

One can use the word “evidently” in their “papers”; it does not make it true.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on July 21, 2007, 11:16 PM | #

“Yes, the paper Hawks criticizes is flawed.  But what can one say about someone who thinks Europeans are gracilized Neanderthals, of direct descent,” (—Der Lace)

You mean Brace here, right?  Are you saying Hawks thinks this?

I just want to add (not for “Der Lace,” who already knows) that:

1) the reason this study is getting publicized on MSNBC and the reason the outcomes of all this type of “African Eve” research seem to get hyped (by ... what else?  the Jewish-owned-and-controlled media) is race-replacement-promoting Jewish media honchos love whatever sounds as if it’ll help promote white-Negro miscegenation and to them and lots of others “Out of Africa” sounds like that;

2) no matter which theory proves true in the end, opposition to race-replacement stands on firm ground since neither Out of Africa nor Multiregional has any bearing whatsoever on that question, none, zip, nada, zero, nil;

3) bear in mind what’s being debated isn’t whether the original human stock came out of Africa — everyone agrees it did — but only whether today’s modern humans came exclusively from there (later differentiating into the races we see today), as opposed to having evolved toward today’s modernity in more than one place outside of Africa from local older ancestors that did, in turn, originally come out of Africa if you go back further.  So no matter which theory “wins,” we ultimately came “Out of Africa” anyway if you go back further.  The question has absolutely no bearing on race-replacement, opposition to which is totally untouched by any of this debate.

Posted by Der Lace on July 21, 2007, 11:25 PM | #

“The question has absolutely no bearing on race-replacement, opposition to which is totally untouched by any of this debate.”

That is indeed a major point.  Differences between groups exist, regardless of how they came to be.

However, obviously incorrect commentaries about modern human origins, which fly in the face of modern science, and expose an “academic’s” ignorance of genetics, does have some bearing on that “academic’s” trustworthiness as a source.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on July 21, 2007, 11:42 PM | #

You’re talking about Brace, I assume.

Posted by lace on July 21, 2007, 11:57 PM | #

Fred, yes. Brace.

Posted by Hawkmeister on July 22, 2007, 11:17 AM | #

Hawks: “The phenotypic variance of craniometric characters is somewhere between 25 and 75 percent environmental. So from the outset, there is a large component of variance that isn’t explained by allele frequencies. More problematic, although phenotypic variance is the sum of genetic and environmental variances, reducing the genetic variance does not tend to reduce the phenotypic variance by an equal amount. This is because a reduction in variation in the genetic background tends to increase a third component of the variance, the genotype-environment interaction variance.

Consider a field of hybrid corn. All the plants are genetically uniform, and this elimination of genetic variance tends to vastly decrease the phenotypic variance. At least, as long as the environment is also uniform. But introduce variation in the environment—low spots in the field with standing water, patches toward the edge with greater pest damage, and so on—and the variance in the genetically uniform field may be disproportionately great compared to the effects of the same factors in a genetically diverse field.

All this is to say that if you want to use phenotypic variance to measure genetic variance, then you have to ensure that the environmental variance is equal. Of course, that’s a problem for human crania, since people manifestly live in different environments, arguably with greater variability (at least with respect to diet and climate) in Africa.”

In a nutshell: there is a difference between an ecotype and a kinship based racial group.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on July 22, 2007, 03:04 PM | #

Speaking of Dienekes, just a little aside:  mental midget “NuSapiens” who is linked in Dienekes’ blogroll (and for reasons I cannot begin to fathom, in Steve Sailer’s too) is publishing his site’s race-replacement advocacy now in Thai (click on his site at Steve’s or Dienekes’ blogroll link).  If he was secretly Thai, that might of course have something to do with his pro-race-replacement stance (as far as I know he was assumed to be white).

Posted by Mark on July 26, 2007, 04:53 PM | #

Thai women age better than other ethnic groups.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on August 08, 2007, 03:09 AM | #

A further challenge to “Out of Africa” claims Euros are not (as maintained by that PC-friendly theory) simply Africans who migrated out of that continent 70-100K y/a and replaced what pre-modern Eurasians they encountered, but descend instead from Asian lineages that were distinct from Africans already a million years ago ("early Pleistocene") and were not replaced a hundred K years ago by Africans. 

It’s clear that Out of Africa is not going to survive scrutiny much longer.  Again, whether it survives or not makes absolutely no difference to opposition to forced race-replacement.  But you have to admit it’s always nice to see a highly PC theory get flamed.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on August 08, 2007, 03:18 AM | #

Notice where Hawks says at the end of his log entry that there are theories that not even the original genus Homo came out of Africa, but the whole line evolved on the continent of Asia.  I wasn’t aware there were any such “radical anti-Out-of-Africa” theories.  That’s a complete negation of even “Out of Africa, Light” according to which we may not have come out of Africa a hundred K years ago, but if you go back far enough we did.  This says the genus Homo never came out of there no matter how far back you go.  That would be a decidedly un-PC theory, to say the least.  Which is why I love it so much:  it’s LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT!

Posted by Fred Scrooby on August 08, 2007, 04:20 AM | #

“Thai women age better than other ethnic groups.” (—Mark)

Maybe, maybe not, Mark — but even it that’s so, our women are more than twice as beautiful as theirs to begin with, which more than makes up for it, so they still come out better looking when they’ve arrived at “a certain age.”

Posted by Fred Scrooby on August 08, 2007, 01:21 PM | #

“A further challenge to ‘Out of Africa’ claims Euros are not (as maintained by that PC-friendly theory) simply Africans who migrated out of that continent 70-100K y/a and replaced what pre-modern Eurasians they encountered” (—my comment above)

Of course the more PC types especially relish the claim among some specialists that our “African ancestry” goes back to only 40 K years ago, prior to which we were Negroes. 

According to them ...

Riiiiiiight .......................

Sure ..................

Any day now ..........................................

Posted by Fred Scrooby on August 15, 2007, 10:01 PM | #

Out of Africa is finished, dead. 

IS THE OUT OF AFRICA THEORY OUT?

An examination of over 5,000 teeth from early human ancestors shows that many of the first Europeans probably came from Asia

By Nikhil Swaminathan

All the ancestors of contemporary Europeans apparently did not migrate out of Africa as previously believed. According to a new analysis of more than 5,000 teeth from long-perished members of the genus Homo and the closely related Australopithecus, many early settlers hailed from Asia.

Erik Trinkaus, a physical anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis (who was not involved in the study) says most evolutionary biologists and anthropologists believe there were three major waves of migration from Africa to Europe: the first occurring about two million to 1.5 million years ago during the late Pliocene and early Pleistocene epochs; a second during the mid Pleistocene, roughly one million to 500,000 years ago; and ending with the spread of modern humans, 50,000 to 30,000 years in the past.

The new findings, published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, casts doubt on the second migration out of Africa. “[The researchers] are not denying that it happened,” Trinkaus says, “just that it was less important than movement across Eurasia.”

The study was led by Maria Martinón-Torres, a paleobiologist at the National Research Center on Human Evolution in Burgos, Spain. The research team analyzed the choppers of human ancestors from the Pleistocene and late Pliocene epochs.

“Teeth are the best genetic marker that we have in the fossil record itself,” Trinkaus says, because “they are as close as we can get to a reflection of the individual’s genetic makeup.” The reason: Tooth crowns are genetically determined — and thus reflect an individual’s genotype — and are not affected by environmental stress during development.

Scientists found that teeth from African specimens were a different shape or morphology than those from Eurasian samples. The researchers wrote that teeth toward the front of the mouth from Eurasians had more “morphological robusticity,” such as a triangular, shovel shape. Their back teeth were smaller and had smoother chewing surfaces; the rear teeth from African samples were larger and the chewing surfaces on them more pointy and jagged.

“The continuity of the ‘Eurasian dental pattern’ from the early Pleistocene until the appearance of upper Pleistocene Neandertals suggests that the evolutionary courses of the Eurasian and the African continents were relatively independent for a long period and that the impact of Asia in the colonization of Europe was stronger than that of Africa,” the researchers wrote in the new report. “This finding does not necessarily imply that there was no genetic flow between continents, but emphasizes that this interchange could have been both ways.”