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#16
02-28-2011, 12:53 PM
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Sources please. Or even just singular: source. Just one accredited source from "Anthrology" or wherever it is that you're getting your "facts." 
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#17
02-28-2011, 12:56 PM
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I've always wondered why there's so much vitriol directed at celebs who wear fur. I don't so much mean here, but it feels like every picture of an actress in a fur coat is followed by 50 comments criticizing it. I'd argue that eating sushi daily and supporting the fishing industry is more harmful than owning a mink coat, no? Certainly I don't *love* the idea of fur, but I own leather boots and jackets--I don't feel like I'm in a position to judge.
__________________
"Just to hear Lindsey's voice with mine and Stevie's, I get goosebumps the size of chicken eggs." --CM
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#18
02-28-2011, 12:59 PM
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Here is just one article from the New York Times, but actually there some kind of special about it on tv. Of course, I paid attention since it was a specialization of mine in college. Neanderthals mated with some modern humans after all and left their imprint in the human genome, a team of biologists has reported in the first detailed analysis of the Neanderthal genetic sequence. RSS Feed Get Science News From The New York Times » The New York Times Max-Planck-Institute EVA The Neanderthal DNA that Svante Pääbo analyzed came from these three bones. The biologists, led by Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have been slowly reconstructing the genome of Neanderthals, the stocky hunters that dominated Europe until 30,000 years ago, by extracting the fragments of DNA that still exist in their fossil bones. Just last year, when the biologists first announced that they had decoded the Neanderthal genome, they reported no significant evidence of interbreeding. Scientists say they have recovered 60 percent of the genome so far and hope to complete it. By comparing that genome with those of various present day humans, the team concluded that about 1 percent to 4 percent of the genome of non-Africans today is derived from Neanderthals. But the Neanderthal DNA does not seem to have played a great role in human evolution, they said. Experts believe that the Neanderthal genome sequence will be of extraordinary importance in understanding human evolutionary history since the two species split some 600,000 years ago. So far, the team has identified only about 100 genes — surprisingly few — that have contributed to the evolution of modern humans since the split. The nature of the genes in humans that differ from those of Neanderthals is of particular interest because they bear on what it means to be human, or at least not Neanderthal. Some of the genes seem to be involved in cognitive function and others in bone structure. “Seven years ago, I really thought that it would remain impossible in my lifetime to sequence the whole Neanderthal genome,” Dr. Paabo said at a news conference. But the Leipzig team’s second conclusion, that there was probably interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans before Europeans and Asians split, is being met with reserve by some archaeologists. A degree of interbreeding between modern humans and Neanderthals in Europe would not be greatly surprising given that the species overlapped there from 44,000 years ago when modern humans first entered Europe to 30,000 years ago when the last Neanderthals fell extinct. Archaeologists have been debating for years whether the fossil record shows evidence of individuals with mixed features. But the new analysis, which is based solely on genetics and statistical calculations, is more difficult to match with the archaeological record. The Leipzig scientists assert that the interbreeding did not occur in Europe but in the Middle East and at a much earlier period, some 100,000 to 60,000 years ago, before the modern human populations of Europe and East Asia split. There is much less archaeological evidence for an overlap between modern humans and Neanderthals at this time and place. Dr. Paabo has pioneered the extraction and analysis of ancient DNA from fossil bones, overcoming daunting obstacles over the last 13 years in his pursuit of the Neanderthal genome. Perhaps the most serious is that most Neanderthal bones are extensively contaminated with modern human DNA, which is highly similar to Neanderthal DNA. The DNA he has analyzed comes from three small bones from the Vindija cave in Croatia. “This is a fabulous achievement,” said Ian Tattersall, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, referring to the draft Neanderthal genome that Dr. Paabo’s team describes in Thursday’s issue of Science. But he and other archaeologists questioned some of the interpretations put forward by Dr. Paabo and his chief colleagues, Richard E. Green of the Leipzig institute, and David Reich of Harvard Medical School. Geneticists have been making increasingly valuable contributions to human prehistory, but their work depends heavily on complex mathematical statistics that make their arguments hard to follow. And the statistical insights, however informative, do not have the solidity of an archaeological fact. “This is probably not the authors’ last word, and they are obviously groping to explain what they have found,” Dr. Tattersall said. Richard Klein, a paleontologist at Stanford, said the authors’ theory of an early interbreeding episode did not seem to have taken full account of the archaeological background. “They are basically saying, ‘Here are our data, you have to accept it.’ But the little part I can judge seems to me to be problematic, so I have to worry about the rest,” he said. In an earlier report on the Neanderthal genome, the reported DNA sequences were found by other geneticists to be extensively contaminated with human DNA. Dr. Paabo’s group has taken extra precautions but it remains to be seen how successful they have been, Dr. Klein said, especially as another group at the Leipzig institute, presumably using the same methods, has obtained results that Dr. Paabo said he could not confirm. Dr. Paabo said that episode of human-Neanderthal breeding implied by Dr. Reich’s statistics most plausibly occurred “in the Middle East where the first modern humans appear before 100,000 years ago and there were Neanderthals until 60,000 years ago.” According to Dr. Klein, people in Africa expanded their range and reached just Israel during a warm period some 120,000 years ago. They retreated during a cold period some 80,000 years ago and were replaced by Neanderthals. It is not clear whether or not they overlapped with Neanderthals, he said. These humans, in any case, were not fully modern and they did not expand from Africa, an episode that occurred some 30,000 years later. If there was any interbreeding, the flow of genes should have been both ways, Dr. Klein said, but Dr. Paabo’s group sees evidence for gene flow only from Neanderthals to modern humans. The Leipzig group’s interbreeding theory would undercut the present belief that all human populations today draw from the same gene pool that existed a mere 50,000 years ago. “What we falsify here is the strong out-of-Africa hypothesis that everyone comes from the same population,” Dr. Paabo said. In his and Dr. Reich’s view, Neanderthals interbred only with non-Africans, the people who left Africa, which would mean that non-Africans drew from a second gene pool not available to Africans.
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#19
02-28-2011, 01:00 PM
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There is so much wrong with this system- food, health, environment, economics, politics... that it drives me crazy when people go around spouting untruths about the situation. Again, eating meat is a personal choice. But at least be willing to consider the consequences of your choices at face value without trying to cloud it with some kind of irrelevant conservative talking points.
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#20
02-28-2011, 01:01 PM
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Oh this one is from the Christian Monitor
Study suggests humans mated with Neanderthals A study of DNA from humans living today has found signs of Neanderthal genes, suggesting that interbreeding occurred between the two species. Humans today could be part Neanderthal, according to a new study that found our ancestors interbred with an extinct hominid species some millennia ago. X Woman: Not human, not Neanderthal, what is she? Jewelry: so easy a cave man can do it Fossil DNA tells tales of red-haired Neanderthals Neanderthals walked the Earth between about 130,000 and 30,000 years ago. While they co-existed with modern humans for a while, eventually they went extinct and we didn't. There has been intense scientific debate over how similar the two species were, and whether they might have mated with each other. "The issue has been highly contentious for some time," said University of New Mexico genetic anthropologist Keith Hunley. Last week at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Albuquerque, N.M., Hunley and colleagues presented the results of a new study that found evidence for interbreeding between modern humans and some other extinct ancient human species – either Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) or another group such as Homo heidelbergensis. The research was first reported by NatureNews. The researchers looked at DNA samples from humans living today, and found signs of leftover Neanderthal genes introduced from this interbreeding. They looked at genetic data from almost 2,000 people around the world, and calculated how much genetic variation existed between samples. The results indicate that some extinct group of hominids mixed their genes with ours at two points in history, Hunley said. One period of interbreeding probably occurred shortly after Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa around 60,000 years ago. The researchers found an excess of genetic diversity in all modern people except Africans, suggesting that the influx of Neanderthal-like DNA came after the exodus from Africa. A second period of interbreeding is suggested by the fact that the researchers measured even more genetic diversity among people of Oceanic descent – people from Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea and other Pacific islands. "I think we show there's clear evidence in the genome of living people of this mixture," Hunley told LiveScience. "The fact that there's a clear signal implies that there was some significant amount" of interbreeding, he said. This work is the first time scientists have used DNA from living people to look at this question, Hunley said. In an earlier study, Erik Trinkaus of Washington University in St. Louis found suggestions of Neanderthal and modern human interbreeding by comparing ancient bone fossils from the two species. Trinkaus said the new work fits into his findings, though he hasn't reviewed the details yet since Hunley's paper has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal. "The conclusion makes sense and fits with the majority of the data available," Trinkaus said. Another anthropologist who has studied Neanderthal anatomy agreed. "I have been arguing for this position throughout my career, ever since I began to study Neandertals and other populations," said Milford Wolpoff of the University of Michigan. "It has always seemed clear that some Neandertal anatomy appears in living populations." Not everyone, though, will be easily convinced yet, Hunley said.
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#21
02-28-2011, 01:06 PM
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__________________
I'm not the man you think I am. My love has never lived indoors - I had to drag it home by four, hired hounds at both my wrists, damp and bruised by strangers' kisses on my lips. But you're the one that I still miss. Neko Case
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#22
02-28-2011, 01:08 PM
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__________________
I'm not the man you think I am. My love has never lived indoors - I had to drag it home by four, hired hounds at both my wrists, damp and bruised by strangers' kisses on my lips. But you're the one that I still miss. Neko Case
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#23
02-28-2011, 01:09 PM
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"I cannot freaking these believe these people..." for what? For being so incendiary as to ask for sources, and not about Neanderthals, who, are completely irrelevant to this conversation and are likely 98% irrelevant to our lineage?
Are you so attached to your happy meal that you must keep creating diversions to what is essentially a simple equation? World overpopulation? Sure it's a problem -- not sure what you're going to do about it in say, China or Latin America, where it's epidemic. Neanderthals? Or course they ate meat and so did our primary ancestors, the Cro-Magnons (they drew it on their cave walls), but what about before that? We have always been primarily a vegetarian species -- overwhelmingly so -- until the stone age, and even then, we simply added a little meat when we could. But we don't need to now. We have simply become used to it, because now we don't hunt...we just buy. And buy, and buy, in huge Costco portions that are making us fatter and ruining our environs. At least when we hunted, we didn't cause the animal lifelong discomfort, or in many cases, agony. We should pay attention to what we are eating and why we are eating it. This is all I am saying. If you choose to eat an extra bit of burger today out of spite, so be it. But why not cut down? It simply makes a lot more sense. Last edited by Pyewacket; 02-28-2011 at 01:14 PM..
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#24
02-28-2011, 01:09 PM
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 Have you seen The Cove? Definitely essential viewing. It just goes to show you that people have the capacity to be completely barbaric and shameless when money is involved.
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#25
02-28-2011, 01:14 PM
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#26
02-28-2011, 01:17 PM
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ok, here is another source. And I'm doing this to show that science is tit for tat. Someone can quote a scource and then another person can quote another source with a different take or different perspective. Science is a lot like religion. You have to have faith.
Humans are Omnivores Adapted from a talk by John McArdle, Ph.D. There are a number of popular myths about vegetarianism that have no scientific basis in fact. One of these myths is that man is naturally a vegetarian because our bodies resemble plant eaters, not carnivores. In fact we are omnivores, capable of either eating meat or plant foods. The following addresses the unscientific theory of man being only a plant eater. Confusion between Taxonomy and Diet Much of the misinformation on the issue of man's being a natural vegetarian arises from confusion between taxonomic (in biology, the procedure of classifying organisms in established categories) and dietary characteristics. Members of the mammalian Order Carnivora may or may not be exclusive meat eaters. Those which eat only meat are carnivores. Dietary adaptations are not limited by a simple dichotomy between herbivores (strict vegetarians) and carnivores (strict meat-eaters), but include frugivores (predominantly fruit), gramnivores (nuts, seeds, etc.), folivores (leaves), insectivores (carnivore-insects and small vertebrates), etc. Is is also important to remember that the relation between the form (anatomy/physiology) and function (behavior) is not always one to one. Individual anatomical structures can serve one or more functions and similar functions can be served by several forms. Omnivorism The key category in the discussion of human diet is omnivores, which are defined as generalized feeders, with neither carnivore nor herbivore specializations for acquiring or processing food, and who are capable of consuming and do consume both animal protein and vegetation. They are basically *opportunistic* feeders (survive by eating what is available) with more generalized anatomical and physiological traits, especially the dentition (teeth). All the available evidence indicates that the natural human diet is omnivorous and would include meat. We are not, however, required to consume animal protein. We have a choice. The Great Apes There are very few frugivores amongst the mammals in general, and primates in particular. The only apes that are predominantly fruit eaters (gibbons and siamangs) are atypical for apes in many behavioral and ecological respects and eat substantial amounts of vegetation. Orangutans are similar, with no observations in the wild of eating meat. Gorillas are more typically vegetarian, with less emphasis on fruit. Several years ago a very elegant study was done on the relationship between body size and diet in primates (and some other mammal groups). The only primates on the list with pure diets were the very small species (which are entirely insectivorous) and the largest (which specialize in vegetarian diet). However, the spectrum of dietary preferences reflect the daily food intake needs of each body size and the relative availability of food resources in a tropical forest. Our closest relatives among the apes are the chimpanzees (i.e., anatomically, behaviorally, genetically, and evolutionarily), who frequently kill and eat other mammals (including other primates). Evidence of Humans as Omnivores Archeological Record As far back as it can be traced, clearly the archeological record indicates an omnivorous diet for humans that included meat. Our ancestry is among the hunter/gatherers from the beginning. Once domestication of food sources began, it included both animals and plants. Cell Types Relative number and distribution of cell types, as well as structural specializations, are more important than overall length of the intestine to determining a typical diet. Dogs are typical carnivores, but their intestinal characteristics have more in common with omnivores. Wolves eat quite a lot of plant material. Fermenting Vats Nearly all plant eaters have fermenting vats (enlarged chambers where foods sits and microbes attack it). Ruminants like cattle and deer have forward sacs derived from remodeled esophagus and stomach. Horses, rhinos, and colobine monkeys have posterior, hindgut sacs. Humans have no such specializations. Jaws Although evidence on the structure and function of human hands and jaws, behavior, and evolutionary history also either support an omnivorous diet or fail to support strict vegetarianism, the best evidence comes from our teeth. The short canines in humans are a functional consequence of the enlarged cranium and associated reduction of the size of the jaws. In primates, canines function as both defense weapons and visual threat devices. Interestingly, the primates with the largest canines (gorillas and gelada baboons) both have basically vegetarian diets. In archeological sites, broken human molars are most often confused with broken premolars and molars of pigs, a classic omnivore. On the other hand, some herbivores have well-developed incisors that are often mistaken for those of human teeth when found in archeological excavations. Salivary Glands These indicate we could be omnivores. Saliva and urine data vary, depending on diet, not taxonomic group. Intestines Intestinal absorption is a surface area, not linear problem. Dogs (which are carnivores) have intestinal specializations more characteristic of omnivores than carnivores such as cats. The relative number of crypts and cell types is a better indication of diet than simple length. We are intermediate between the two groups. Conclusion Humans are classic examples of omnivores in all relevant anatomical traits. There is no basis in anatomy or physiology for the assumption that humans are pre-adapted to the vegetarian diet. For that reason, the best arguments in support of a meat-free diet remain ecological, ethical, and health concerns. [Dr. McArdle is a vegetarian and currently Scientific Advisor to The American Anti-Vivisection Society. He is an anatomist and a primatologist.]
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#27
02-28-2011, 01:25 PM
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#28
02-28-2011, 01:26 PM
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Neanderthal man could be part of our DNA. Many vegans claim that what we evolved from creatures that did not eat meat. Well, I highly doubt that is true. Many animals that are considered carnivores eat plants and vice versa. Anyway, Neanderthal ate very little plants (if you believe the science). They basically lived off meat. If they are part of our DNA then man may be even more inclined to eat meat. It doesn't really matter. Humans are neither a herbivore or carnivore. "They didn't have the intellectual capacity to prevent their own extinction." Modern man doesn't seem to have it either. No checks and balances. Hell, 9 billion in 2050. In 2100 will it be 12 Billion. UGG!
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#30
02-28-2011, 01:36 PM
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So...animal cruelty is a recent development, say in the last 100 years?
Animal dependency leads to animal cruelty. And wars have been around forever and are not always caused by competition for resources. Many have been ideological (no, I am the king) or religious (yay, religion!). Overpopulation is a sidebar, and a distraction. It has less to do with "eating animals" than "not eating animals" does. Last edited by Pyewacket; 02-28-2011 at 01:40 PM..
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