Retrograde
2023-12-20 01:47:27 UTC
From the «conjecture probably» department:
Feed: SoylentNews
Title: Neanderthals May Have Been Morning People
Author: hubie
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2023 14:07:00 -0500
Link: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=23/12/16/2121235&from=rss
taylorvich[1] writes:
https://phys.org/news/2023-12-neanderthals-morning-people.html[2]
A new research paper finds that genetic material from Neanderthal ancestors
may have contributed to the propensity of some people today to be "early
risers," the sort of people who are more comfortable getting up and going to
bed earlier.
The findings are published[3] in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution.
All anatomically modern humans trace their origin to Africa around 300,000
years ago, where environmental factors shaped many of their biological
features. Approximately 70,000 years ago, the ancestors of modern Eurasian
humans began to migrate out to Eurasia, where they encountered diverse new
environments, including higher latitudes with greater seasonal variation in
daylight and temperature.
But other hominins, such as the Neanderthals and Denisovans, had lived in
Eurasia for more than 400,000 years. These archaic hominins diverged from
modern humans around 700,000 years ago, and as a result, our ancestors and
archaic hominins evolved under different environmental conditions. This
resulted in the accumulation of lineage-specific genetic variation and
phenotypes. When humans came to Eurasia, they interbred with the archaic
hominins on the continent, and this created the potential for humans to gain
genetic variants already adapted to these new environments.
[...] The Eurasian environments where Neanderthals and Denisovans lived for
several hundred thousand years are located at higher latitudes with more
variable daylight times than the landscape where modern humans evolved before
leaving Africa. Thus, the researchers explored whether there was genetic
evidence for differences in the circadian clocks of Neanderthals and modern
humans.
[...] This indicated that there were likely functional differences between in
the circadian clocks in archaic hominins and modern humans. Since the
ancestors of Eurasian modern humans and Neanderthals interbred, it was thus
possible that some humans could have obtained circadian variants from
Neanderthals.
Read more of this story[4] at SoylentNews.
Links:
[1]: https://soylentnews.org/~taylorvich/ (link)
[2]: https://phys.org/news/2023-12-neanderthals-morning-people.html (link)
[3]: https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evad203 (link)
[4]: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=23/12/16/2121235&from=rss (link)
Feed: SoylentNews
Title: Neanderthals May Have Been Morning People
Author: hubie
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2023 14:07:00 -0500
Link: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=23/12/16/2121235&from=rss
taylorvich[1] writes:
https://phys.org/news/2023-12-neanderthals-morning-people.html[2]
A new research paper finds that genetic material from Neanderthal ancestors
may have contributed to the propensity of some people today to be "early
risers," the sort of people who are more comfortable getting up and going to
bed earlier.
The findings are published[3] in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution.
All anatomically modern humans trace their origin to Africa around 300,000
years ago, where environmental factors shaped many of their biological
features. Approximately 70,000 years ago, the ancestors of modern Eurasian
humans began to migrate out to Eurasia, where they encountered diverse new
environments, including higher latitudes with greater seasonal variation in
daylight and temperature.
But other hominins, such as the Neanderthals and Denisovans, had lived in
Eurasia for more than 400,000 years. These archaic hominins diverged from
modern humans around 700,000 years ago, and as a result, our ancestors and
archaic hominins evolved under different environmental conditions. This
resulted in the accumulation of lineage-specific genetic variation and
phenotypes. When humans came to Eurasia, they interbred with the archaic
hominins on the continent, and this created the potential for humans to gain
genetic variants already adapted to these new environments.
[...] The Eurasian environments where Neanderthals and Denisovans lived for
several hundred thousand years are located at higher latitudes with more
variable daylight times than the landscape where modern humans evolved before
leaving Africa. Thus, the researchers explored whether there was genetic
evidence for differences in the circadian clocks of Neanderthals and modern
humans.
[...] This indicated that there were likely functional differences between in
the circadian clocks in archaic hominins and modern humans. Since the
ancestors of Eurasian modern humans and Neanderthals interbred, it was thus
possible that some humans could have obtained circadian variants from
Neanderthals.
Read more of this story[4] at SoylentNews.
Links:
[1]: https://soylentnews.org/~taylorvich/ (link)
[2]: https://phys.org/news/2023-12-neanderthals-morning-people.html (link)
[3]: https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evad203 (link)
[4]: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=23/12/16/2121235&from=rss (link)