Who's Your Great-Great-Grand-Daddy?

The other day at the gym I was surprised to see an issue of the journal Science among the normal fitness/body building ones in a basket in the lobby. I was a little early for yoga, so I sat down for a quick read. As I thumbed through some of the shorter articles I came across one discussing the recently-complicated family tree of we humans that was pretty neat.
For the past 100,000 years or so we have been tooling around the earth doing our "thing" which involved learning, creating culture, reproducing and all that fun stuff. But many of us forget (or maybe never realized to begin with) that we weren't the only folks around at that time. In the past 35,000 years there were Neandertals for one, and archaic humans called the Denisova hominin in addition to ourselves. And if you go back to the beginning of that 100,00 years when Homo sapiens emerged there were probably a few of our older ancestors still running around, like Australopithecus sediba and so on.
Anyway, for almost the entire history of anthropology it was thought that we humans never mated with any of our  early neighbors. But DNA sequencing is turning that idea on it's head. Recent study comparing modern human DNA to Neandertal and Denisovan DNA has produced the following results:

• Eastern Europeans and Asian people have inherited 2%-6% of their DNA from Neadertals.
• Peoples of Southwest Asia have inherited about 5% of their DNA from the Denisovans, and another 4-6% from Neandertals. (Another study found this same distribution in people in the Philippines, Southeast Asia, and Melanesia.) (That's about 10% total!!!)
• Denisovan DNA was found in Australian aboriginals
• Three isolated African groups inherited DNA from an unknown archaic people, long after modern humans arose.
• It has been discovered that over half of the human genes that code for leukocyte antigen proteins, (i.e.the ones that help detect pathogens in the blood) came from some or another "archaic" human.

I guess maybe I should point out before closing what is meant by archaic humans. They were still Homo but their DNA shows them to be distinct from us modern humans. They appear to have evolved from the same ancestors as Neandertals, but were closely enough related to humans to be able to reproduce.

Note: You may notice that I spell Neandertal with a "t" rather than a "th". I believe the "th" is the American version, but in all of my readings (both in school, and in scientific journals) always uses the "t" version, and I figured if it's good enough for Science it's good enough for me.

Poor Lucy

Lucy Temerlin was not a movie star, or a human even. Lucy was a chimpanzee born in 1964 and part of an experiment conducted by Dr. Maurice Temerlin, and his wife Jane to see what would happen if a chimp was raised as a human child. The following might sound unbelievable, and sad but it's all true.
So Lucy was raised as a little girl, and lived with the Temerlin's for 12 years. She wore clothes, and was potty trained. She ate with silverware at the dinner table. She learned 120 signs in sign language. She would make tea (boil water, get tea bags out of pantry, the whole thing from start to finish) for guests that came over to visit her. She had a pet cat which she took care of. She loved gin and tonics, and mixed her own. She could lie, and did so frequently when she thought she was going to get in trouble. She watched TV, and liked to color and flip through magazines. Like a normal child she was terrified when they introduced her to another chimpanzee, and said she thought it was ugly. Lucy thought she was a human. When separating pictures of animals and humans she was 100% accurate except when she placed her own photo on the "human" pile. She was not attracted to chimps but rather human men, and she masturbated to PlayGirl magazine, and ads with attractive men in them. She was very perceptive to human moods and often tried to make people feel better by giving lots of hugs and being silly to "cheer them up".
She was, for all intents and purposes, a little girl with friends, hobbies and all the normal little girl things.
But after 12 years the experiment had run it's course. So Dr. Temerlin and his wife took Lucy to a chimpanzee reserve in Africa where they basically abandoned her. They stayed a week to help their "daughter" adjust to living in the jungle, and then went home and got on with their lives. Lucy who had been a raised as a human child, who lived in a house and slept in a bed, who had a mom and dad, who liked to have tea parties and watch movies, was literally dumped by her parents into the middle of the jungle all on her own. She was terrified. She didn't know how to forage for food and she was afraid of the other chimps.
Luckily there was a woman named Janis Carter who stayed with Lucy for several years and helped her adjust.
There was no happy ending for Lucy though. In 1987 Lucy's body was found by Janis. She had been skinned and her hands and feet had been cut off. And that's the end of the story.

When I read about this I was outraged. I still am. That poor little chimp. That a supposed scientist (a psychotherapist, if you can believe that) could be so cruel and heartless is beyond my imagination. How could they raise her like a child and then treat her like an animal afterward? It just boggles my mind. The traditional superiority that we have when we think about our place in the animal world is wrong. These kinds of experiments would never happen if we didn't incorrectly label humans and animals as two separate things. I don't know if this kind of experimentation still happens or not, but I certainly hope it doesn't. I'll tell you something, some days I feel privileged to be a member of my species, and some days I am ashamed of it. The day I "met" Lucy I was the latter.

Race

I was thinking about my previous post, and for the same reason that I was criticizing racism in my last entry (the extreme sensitivity of others) I feel the need to state clearly my feelings/ thoughts on race.
I do not, nor have I ever thought there was anything other than superficial differences between people of varying skin tone. I was not raised to believe that, and in my adult life, and as a scientist I know that to be the truth. To a tenth of a percent all humans on the planet are identical. We are simply not different.
In culture and religion is where the majority of our diversity lies, and in that context my views are not as clear and absolute. But in terms of potential and ability, both mental and physical I see no difference between anyone who falls under the umbrella of Homo sapien.
The belief in racism is completely unfounded in our society. The supposed difference are scientifically proved to be untrue. This is not only my opinion, but the actual physical truth on the matter.

Gooooooooooooaaaaal!

I am watching the USA vs. England futbol (i.e. soccer) game. The score is 1 to 1. I must confess both that a.) I really am not a huge soccer fan, and b.) that the broadcast I am watching is in Spanish, so the only words I really understand are: Goal (pronounced gooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaal!), shoe, and ball. Surprisingly that's pretty much all you need to get the gist of what is being said.
Anyway, like I said, I am not much of a fan of futbol, but like most sports, I can certainly appreciate the skill and physical conditioning required to compete in such a venue.
I find myself shouting "Go USA!" and clapping when my country scores. I feel like I am a part of something, and I feel proud (in a childish, fuzzy sort of way) of my country and the players on the team.
Why do I feel that way? In my reading I have come across a lot of theories on why humans have developed certain traits. Nationalism is a modern form of the very ancient practice of social groupings which are very deeply embedded in our brains. Groups are important because they provide protection for individually weak animals, and they provide a stability that allows several species (including our own) to reproduce and care for young that are essentially helpless. There is almost nothing, besides maybe familial relationships that are more successful in binding a group of individuals together than a common enemy.
As we all know, if you spend too much time in a group, conflicts and problems arise. People get on your nerves, you have disagreements etc. But some species depend on their group in order to survive. If the group is gone, so are they and their genes. Therefor there needs to be a mechanism that stops groups from breaking apart....and that may be where our deep feelings of nationalism and "team spirit" come from.
"I may be saying "Go USA!" But maybe what I really mean is "It makes me feel good to see members of my species fighting (i.e. playing) on behalf of myself and our mutual group which in turn provides safety, continuity and opportunity to me as an individual!"
Well...whatever. GO USA:)