Neanderthals and Bears have Something in Common

Although some believers in universal common ancestry deny reality and insist that modern humans and Neanderthals are only distantly related, a recent genetic study gives lie to their beliefs. What do bears have to do with it?

Image cropped and enhanced, original: Flickr / Clemens Vasters (CC BY 2.0)

Some owlhoots reluctantly admit that Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern humans were able to interbreed, but they try to rescue Darwin by saying that this was essentially a fluke — on the edge of biological compatibility. (I reckon they're desperate to deny recent creation.) Come on, man, that's a bunch of malarkey!

Values for genetic distance were studied, including various bears and relatives of dogs. What do bears and Neanderthals have in common? This study. It affirms not only that they could interbreed and apparently were happy to do so (we all have some of their DNA), but we are more closely related genetically to Neanderthals than some bears are to each other. Biblical creationists are pleased by the recent creation-affirming results, naturally. Secularists should stop fighting the truth.

In this new study, the researchers developed a genetic distance metric to predict the fertility of the first generation of hybrid offspring between the mating of any two mammalian species. They did this by analyzing genetic sequence from different mammal species that were already known to produce viable hybrid offspring. By correlating genetic distance with offspring fertility, they showed that the greater the genetic distance, the less likely it would be that the offspring would be fertile. Then the researchers effectively used the genetic distance values to determine thresholds of fertility for various mammals.

You can read the full article by clicking on "Humans and Neanderthals More Similar Than Polar and Brown Bears". Also, other links to articles demonstrating that Neanderthals were fully human can be found at "Those Sophisticated Neanderthals".