
Recently, genetic biology discovered a stunning gender asymmetry in the history of mankind. All Neanderthal genes carried by Eurasian and American peoples are due to Neanderthal males only. Why is there no evidence of hybrid progeny from Neanderthal females? An even more spectacular gender asymmetry occurred in the history of Neanderthals. In contrast to the previous example, this horizontal gene-transfer event occurred only once, about 300.000 years ago. Anatomically modern mothers bore hybrid progeny to Neanderthal fathers, and were adopted in a Neanderthal tribe. From all Neanderthals to survive until 30.000 years ago, none were children of Neanderthal mothers living at the time of the gene-transfer event. These two discoveries are mind-boggling for geneticists, focused as they are on point mutations in genes. The latter cause structural mutations in the organism, because genes code for the biological structure of the individual, at all stages of its development. On its own turn, structural innovation opens up avenues for novel behavioral characteristics. As genetic biology stands today, it has hardly come of age, in the sense that nobody is able to tell, from a given genome, whether its owner is good looking or ugly; has talent for playing piano, climbing mountains, doing business, or solving complex mathematical problems; will get cancer at age 40, and so forth. Geneticists know basically nothing of all this, and probably will not, for at least one full century to go. This state of the art explains the reluctance of geneticists to consider behavior in the scientific evaluation of gender asymmetry.Geneticists do not realize what everyone else around them already realize since long: the explanation for the fact that all hominins have gone extinct, except us, must be found in how genetic mutations determine behavioral capacities. Consequently, geneticists time and again voice their perplexity with respect to Neanderthal extinction, while that is hardly an issue
Page Count:
186
Publication Date:
2021-03-18
Publisher:
BookPatch LLC
ISBN-10:
1637902131
ISBN-13:
9781637902134
No comments yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!