Author Topic: Human Origins. Are we hybrids?  (Read 1792 times)

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Human Origins. Are we hybrids?
« on: July 06, 2013, 01:27:18 am »
Human Origins


Are we hybrids?

BY EUGENE M. MCCARTHY, PHD GENETICS — This article is a bit different from others that have appeared on this site, in that it's about some of the findings of my own research. I'm a geneticist whose work focuses on hybrids and, particularly, the role of hybridization in the evolutionary process. Here, I report certain facts, which seem to me to indicate that human origins can be traced to hybridization, specifically to hybridization involving the chimpanzee (but not the kind of hybridization you might suppose!). You can access detailed and documented discussions supporting this claim from links on this page. But the basic reasoning is summarized here, without a lot of citations and footnotes.



Rationale

So why do I think humans are hybrids? Well, first of all, I've had a different experience from most other people. I've spent most of my life (the last thirty years) studying hybrids, particularly avian and mammalian hybrids. I've read thousands, really tens of thousands, of reports describing them. And this experience has dispelled some mistaken ideas I once had about hybrids, notions that I notice many other people continue to take for granted.

 For example, one widespread, but erroneous belief that keeps a lot of people from even considering the possibility that humans might be of hybrid origin is the notion that all hybrids are sterile. This assertion, though I've heard lots of people say it, is absolutely false. For instance, in reviewing the reports I collected for my book on hybridization in birds (Handbook of Avian Hybrids of the World, Oxford University Press, 2006), which documents some 5,000 different kinds of hybrid crosses among birds, I found that those producing partially fertile hybrids are about eight times as common as crosses known to produce sterile ones. So the usual result is a reduction in fertility, not absolute sterility. My current work documenting hybridization among mammals shows that partially fertile natural hybrids are common, too, in Class Mammalia. And yet, it seems most people base their ideas of hybrids on the common mule (horse x ass), which is an exceptionally sterile hybrid, and not at all representative of hybrids as a whole.

A second "fact" that might make it seem impossible for humans to have had a hybrid origin is the equally erroneous notion that hybrids, especially successful hybrids, do not occur in a state of nature. A third is the mistaken idea that only plants hybridize and never animals. In fact, however, natural, viable, fertile animal hybrids are abundant. A wide variety of such hybrids occur on an ongoing basis (read a detailed discussion documenting these facts). For example, of the 5,000 different types of hybrid crosses listed in my book on hybridization in birds, approximately half are known to occur in a natural setting (download a PowerPoint presentation summarizing data on hybridization in birds). My current research indicates a comparable rate for mammals.

more at: http://www.macroevolution.net/human-origins.html#.Uddxem1p73t

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Re: Human Origins. Are we hybrids?
« Reply #1 on: July 06, 2013, 04:11:02 am »
But, can a collection of hybrid offspring maintain a stable interbreeding state - something akin to a stable "breed" in dogs - or not?  If a collection of hybrids cannot maintain some stable "breed" state even as they interbreed, then that collection, as such, is unlikely to be identifiable as a distinct "species" across even two or three generations of interbreeding.

Offline jmyrlefuller

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Re: Human Origins. Are we hybrids?
« Reply #2 on: July 07, 2013, 09:31:25 pm »
But, can a collection of hybrid offspring maintain a stable interbreeding state - something akin to a stable "breed" in dogs - or not?  If a collection of hybrids cannot maintain some stable "breed" state even as they interbreed, then that collection, as such, is unlikely to be identifiable as a distinct "species" across even two or three generations of interbreeding.
IF it could... and that is a big IF... the idea of hybridization is far more plausible of a theory than the current Darwinian concept of random diverging mutations.
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Re: Human Origins. Are we hybrids?
« Reply #3 on: July 09, 2013, 03:15:24 am »
IF it could... and that is a big IF... the idea of hybridization is far more plausible of a theory than the current Darwinian concept of random diverging mutations.

Hybridization would work with Darwinian "selection" and may very well be the grease that makes the whole system run; it wouldn't be a replacement for natural selection.  It may be the capacity to hybridize that would allow individuals with a significant mutation to continue to interbreed with their non-mutated brethren (and sistren) for enough time to build up a stable body of enough similar individuals that the group could begin to successfully diverge from the common root stock.

For example, it seems - to this semi-educated layperson - that the first Cro-Magnon forebears would have had a hard time diverging from the root stock if they were forced to interbreed only with other Cro-Magnon forebears as soon as their accumulating genetic differences (including mutations) became significant enough to mark them out as a new variant/species and not as just some colorful variation on the original root stock.  Without the ability to hybridize with individuals from the existing populations they were diverging from and still maintain their new genetic differences, they would, it seems to me, have either quickly died out - the odds of a few individuals here and there being able to "party" often enough to build up a breeding population would be too small - or else their genetic material would have been folded back into the root-stock genetic pool and remain nothing more than a statistical outlier within that root-stock population.

As an aside, I'm beginning to think that the term "Darwinian" should be retired because the whole corpus and concept of evolution has moved so far beyond where it started with Darwin.  I'm personally in favor of the term "Gouldian" because Stephen J. Gould did quite a lot to both root out the concept that natural selection/evolution is a zero-sum, the fittest wins, sort of game, and to develop much more sophistication and nuance to the theory (e.g., punctuated equilibrium).

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Re: Human Origins. Are we hybrids?
« Reply #4 on: July 12, 2013, 01:38:14 am »
I wonder if we humans have origins from outer space (I call it the BSG Theory)..
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Re: Human Origins. Are we hybrids?
« Reply #5 on: July 12, 2013, 02:06:12 am »
I wonder if we humans have origins from outer space (I call it the BSG Theory)..

Well, that makes me think about the Bible telling us that - the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.  My understanding is that this union produced "giants", and it was after this that God brought about The Great Flood. 

I suppose these giants, such as Goliath would be hybrids.
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Re: Human Origins. Are we hybrids?
« Reply #6 on: July 12, 2013, 03:39:45 am »
Women are from Venus, Men are from ... well, I don't think we really want to know that, do we?

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Re: Human Origins. Are we hybrids?
« Reply #7 on: July 14, 2013, 07:22:36 pm »
But, can a collection of hybrid offspring maintain a stable interbreeding state - something akin to a stable "breed" in dogs - or not?  If a collection of hybrids cannot maintain some stable "breed" state even as they interbreed, then that collection, as such, is unlikely to be identifiable as a distinct "species" across even two or three generations of interbreeding.

Look at the coywolf. Hybrid of wolf and coyote, big, fast and with no fear of humans. They breed true. While it is true that exogenesis is a biological imperative, isolation, bad weather or a localized food supply can prevent that from occurring.
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Re: Human Origins. Are we hybrids?
« Reply #8 on: July 21, 2013, 05:50:38 pm »
Well, that makes me think about the Bible telling us that - the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.  My understanding is that this union produced "giants", and it was after this that God brought about The Great Flood. 

I suppose these giants, such as Goliath would be hybrids.

Could be..
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