Frank Valoy- Chapter 12: The Madness Gene

             In chapter 12, Neanderthal bones were found in Neander Valley. Eventually, they were found all over Europe and the Middle East. Possible theories were made about the extinction of the Neanderthals such as there being a disease. After speculating, it was found that humans were the primary cause.
             Kolbert explains that modern humans first arrived in Europe 40,000 years ago and outcompeted the Neanderthals. (C) This can be connected to Darwin’s theory of evolution and how species that are most adapted to a specific environment will survive. Swedish biologist Svante Pääbo performed many projects that revolved around extracting DNA from bones of different species. His latest project involved extracting DNA from bones of the Neanderthal and comparing it to modern human DNA. He found that both of their DNA were similar, but the modern human DNA demonstrated a mutation that allowed them to have more of an advantage. More bones were found such as skulls that were much thicker than the skull of a modern human. Some believed that Neanderthals were very hairy and walked with a slouch.
             During the genome project, Pääbo got Neanderthal bones and extracted their DNA. He found that the DNA was most similar to Europeans and Asians. Then, Kolbert mentioned the theory about how all modern humans came from a small population in Africa and part of this population migrated around the globe towards the East and North. It was believed that modern humans encountered Neanderthals through this migration and the modern humans eventually replaced them.
            The Leipzig Zoo began performing live experiments with chimpanzees, apes, and orangutans. When Kolbert visited the zoo to see an experiment on an ape, she saw that the results of ape were compared to the results of kids who also participated in the experiment. It was noticed that the kids outscored the apes with reading social cues. It turns out that apes don’t usually work with each other.
            Kolbert began talking about how Neanderthals would migrate as well, but they’ll stop when they encountered the ocean. However, modern humans were able to simply travel across the ocean in ships. (P) Based on this finding, I predict that this demonstrates an advantage that modern humans had over Neanderthals because of the mutation in their DNA.
Pääbo performed another experiment where he extracted DNA from a 40,000-year-old finger bone that was found in Siberia. It was discovered that this bone neither belonged to a modern human nor a Neanderthal. It was from a new group of hominids called Denisovans. He found that humans actually interbred with Denisovans.
             A quote that I found significant stated, “A tiny set of genetic variations divides us from the Neanderthals, but that has made all the difference”(Pg. 258). (E) Kolbert is trying to say that modern humans were able to out-compete Neanderthals because of their DNA, demonstrating another example of how humans caused another species to go extinct. This connects to the theme “Humans have had an impact on the environment for millions of years” because modern humans were able to survive better than Neanderthals, causing the human-dominated Anthropocene era.

Neanderthal Fossils