The Nazis had it all wrong.

[SoCalCoug]

I was looking over an archaeology site I look at periodically for archaeology news (not looking for BOM stuff - I just enjoy archaeology and anthropology in general, though not on an academic level, like woot).

They were recapping the years top archaological discoveries, and one was the decoding of Neanderthal DNA. Researchers compared the DNA to three modern people (one French, one Han Chinese, and one Polynesian) and determined that all three had inherited from 1 to 4 percent of their DNA from Neanderthals.

They then compared the Neanderthal DNA to two modern native African individuals and found no indication that either of them inherited DNA from Neanderthals.

If these conclusions are correct, it seems Hitler had it completely backwards. If there is a "pure" race of Homo Sapiens, it is native Africans, and not Aryans.

[Jacob]

I was looking over an archaeology site I look at periodically for archaeology news (not looking for BOM stuff - I just enjoy archaeology and anthropology in general, though not on an academic level, like woot).

They were recapping the years top archaological discoveries, and one was the decoding of Neanderthal DNA. Researchers compared the DNA to three modern people (one French, one Han Chinese, and one Polynesian) and determined that all three had inherited from 1 to 4 percent of their DNA from Neanderthals.

They then compared the Neanderthal DNA to two modern native African individuals and found no indication that either of them inherited DNA from Neanderthals.

If these conclusions are correct, it seems Hitler had it completely backwards. If there is a "pure" race of Homo Sapiens, it is native Africans, and not Aryans.

I'm not following your logic. Just a joke, I guess?

[SoCalCoug]

I wouldn't call it a joke (as in "ha ha funny"). I think our ethnocentric notion of "race" in humans is nothing but a shorthand way to discriminate among different populations of humans.

I like it when things are discovered that turn commonly believed notions on their heads (like the "purity" of white people as opposed to others).

Given how poorly many self-described civilized white people look on their darker relatives in Africa, viewing them as "savages" (and there are many around us who still do today - even many who will claim they don't), I think there's a bit of irony in the discovery that it's all the other "races", and not native Africans, who may have descended in part from that poster boy of the Caveman, the Neanderthal.

[All-American]

Well, that does it. Any respect I had for the Nazis just went out the door.