According to Genomic studies, all modern-day humans have Neanderthal DNA. Because of this fact, many researchers have concluded that interbreeding is chiefly responsible for the disappearance of the Neanderthals and the emergence of modern humans in Europe and Asia.
Nevertheless, interbreeding is blatantly insufficient to account for both the sudden disappearance of the Neanderthals and the emergence of anatomically defined “modern humans” in Europe and Asia because if it were so, then such interbreeding “event” must be a continuously sustained activity that goes back and forth between Homo sapiens in Africa and Neanderthals in Eurasia over sufficient time for what we have termed “ genomic homogeneity” to happen. In other words, interbreeding would have occurred continuously over one or more evolutionary epochs until a genomic homogeneity is attained.
Genomic homogeneity is the condition that arises when two species that are very closely related—of the same genus (such as Homo sapiens and Neanderthals)— interbreed with one another over time until the two species blended into one— a new species. That way, the new species completely replaces the two earlier species. And if this is what happened with respect to Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens, then the statement below would have been true:
Modern humans of African descent would bear a remarkable genomic difference from their ancestors who lived in Africa at least before 120,000 years ago—before the age of migration and genomic admixture—due to a continuously sustained genetic exposure to Neanderthals, followed by interbreeding with mixed-breeds that emerged as a result of earlier interbreeding activities with Neanderthals.
In other words, all modern humans would be a kind of mixed breeds, remarkably different from anatomically modern humans who lived in Africa before 120,000 years ago.
Researchers compared the genomic sequences of modern Africans with their ancestors who lived before 120,000 years ago. The difference is insignificant —when you consider the vast amount of time that has passed since interbreeding began between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens (anatomically modern humans)—there is only 0.3 percent difference. This is the Neanderthal DNA that it had acquired as a result of interbreeding. Apart from this, the genomes are exactly the same. This is because early modern humans who lived in Africa had no Neanderthal DNA.
Why did modern humans of African descent keep almost the same genomefor about 300,000 years, if there was a continuously sustained genomic admixture between anatomically modern humans of Africa and Neanderthals of Eurasia at any time in the past?
This clearly indicates that although interbreeding occurred between early modern humans and Neanderthals, it was not at any time a continuously sustained activity. Even Genetic history of human migration gives credence to the idea that interbreeding occurred in tandem with intermittent waves of migration between Africa and Eurasia.
Yet anatomically modern humans emerged in Europe and Asia, and Neanderthals disappeared within the same time range.
The big question is how?
The most reasonable conclusion is that Neanderthals evolved into anatomically defined “modern humans” in Eurasia, not as a result of interbreeding and genomic homogeneity, but by what we call “Evolutionary Reproductive Replacement”, even though there were intermittent waves of interbreeding between early modern humans of Africa and Neanderthals of Eurasia.
This is the only way we can account both for the disappearance of the Neanderthals and the emergence of latter modern humans across Europe and Asia.
Recent findings in France and South Africa support our conclusions. [1] [2]
In summary, it implies that anatomically defined “modern humans” evolved separately in Eurasia and Africa— the early modern humans and the latter modern humans—an occurrence that further implies that there must exist certain basic principles that determine the outcome of biological evolution; and the outcome of evolution, therefore, is invariably predictable.
But why is such an evolutionary event possible?
There are two types of DNA bundles —the nuclear DNA bundle, which is found in the nucleus of the cell; and the mitochondrial DNA bundle, which is found in the mitochondria. Also, the nuclear DNA bundle has both coding and non-coding parts. The coding part determines the nature of the species, and it changes to give rise to new species.
The question here is how?
From our research, we have discovered that there are two types of nuclear DNA metamorphosis:
a.) the Exclusive Nuclear Metamorphosis, which governs epigenetic evolution; and
b.) the Mitochondrial-Dependent Nuclear Metamorphosis, which governs genetic evolution.
First of all, we must remember that the DNA is the skeletal structure or backbone of the DNA bundle. Usually, when people talk of the DNA, they are referring to the skeletal structure and the proteins that attach themselves to it. For us, that is not the DNA but the DNA bundle. There occurs other attachments to the DNA apart from the proteins, vis-a-vis biochemical structures like methyl that attach themselves to the proteins. These biochemical materials that attach themselves to the proteins alter the ways the genes express themselves, resulting in the emergence of a new class of traits—epigenetic traits.
We observe that just as there are two types of traits, genetic and epigenetic, there are two types of biological evolution: genetic and epigenetic. However, the two types of evolution do not occur the same way. For example, we have learnt from experiments that epigenetic evolution occurs when new biochemical structures attach themselves to the proteins, which themselves are attached to the nuclear DNA—which is the backbone structure. This process can take place in a lifetime such that the result is not only expressed in the organism, but also inheritable and expressed in the next offspring generation. This is because epigenetic evolution takes place exclusively within the coding part of the Nuclear DNA bundle in the nucleus. That is why we call it Exclusive Nuclear Metamorphosis—these changes occur exclusively inside the nucleus.
Genetic evolution is another story. Genetic evolution takes place when new genetic chains are generated within the nuclear DNA bundle. And when it happens, a slight change in the genetic chain can result in a significant observable characteristic.
But unlike epigenetic evolution, genetic evolution does not occur within a generation.We found out that genetic evolution begins in the mitochondria and continues there for hundreds or even thousands of generations, with no result to show as an observable character or trait. Afterwards, it emerges as an expressed trait within one generation down the line, after the mitochondria had communicated changes in the protein sequences to the nucleus.Therefore, we call it Mitochondria-Dependent Nuclear Metamorphosis.
Unlike epigenetic evolution, genetic evolution occurs in two phases:
(a) the hidden phase (which lasts for hundreds or thousands of generations), and
(b) the emergent phase, in which the genetic trait becomes expressed. The emergent phase takes place within one generation down the line. In other words, the hidden phase occurs over hundreds or thousands of generations in the mitochondria. But the emergent phase occurs within one generation in the nucleus, with materials generated from the mitochondria.
A Caveat: Genetic And Epigenetic Evolution Versus Macro- and Micro-evolution
We can not invoke the fact that there exist both genetic and epigenetic evolution to justify Yuri Filipchenko’s concept of micro-evolution and macro-evolution because the results of both types of evolution add up together with time (in accordance with Darwin’s two principles, the Principle of Natural Selection and the Principle of Divergence) to distinguish an organism or a group of organisms from their ancestors. Therefore, the terms “micro-evolution” and “macro-evolution” cannot be suitably attributed to one or the other of genetic or epigenetic evolution.
This leads us to the second basic principle of evolution: Genetic evolution (changes within the protein chain itself ) chiefly takes place in the mitochondrial DNA for hundreds or thousands of generations after which these changes are communicated to the coding part of the Nuclear DNA (the nuclear DNA bundle have both a coding part and a non-coding part); it does not take place exclusively in the coding part of the Nuclear DNA. In fact, only the emergent phase of genetic evolution takes place in the nucleus.
Genetic evolution, which leads to upgraded or novel protein chains, called genes, takes place over hundreds or thousands of generations hidden or unexpressed in organisms because they occur within the mitochondria.
During the emergent phase, materials transported from the mitochondria are used to generate new exon (coding) layers that displace the old ones into intron (non-coding) layers within the protein chain in the nucleus. These materials have been in the making over hundreds or thousands of generations—a timeline we call “the hidden phase”. This is why we refer to genetic evolution as Mitochondrial-Dependent Nuclear Metamorphosis.
This explains an hitherto unknown process of evolution; we call it “Evolutionary Reproductive Replacement”—the process by which a new species “suddenly” emerged from an earlier one by sexual reproduction, after hundreds and thousands of generations of evolutionary development within the mitochondria—what we call the “hidden phase”. For instance, it explains how modern humans appeared suddenly from hitherto Neanderthal lineages across Europe and Asia between 45,000 and 33,000 years ago.
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