--- matrixmonitor" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >From "The Week", June 9, 2006, p. 22:
"Modern humans are actually hybrids created by millenia of interbreeding between early hominids and chimpanzees, a new study has concluded. After the two species diverged about 6.3 million years ago, primitive hominids and chimps were enough alike that they sometimes mated. That interbreeding, say scientists at MIT and Harvard, went on for a million years. "We probably had a bit of a messy origin," geneticist James Mallet tells The Washington Post. Scientists came to this conclusion by studying the genomes of humans, chimps, and gorillas, all of which bear markers of how long ago they broke away from other species. the genomes show that after humans initially broke away from chimps, they continued to acquire chromosomes from chimps until a second and final break about 5.3 million years ago. The finding is not only an affront to fundamentalists belief that we're entriely separate from the animals, but also points to a surprising change in the way scientists may come to view evolution. Traditionally, scientists have assumed that hybrid species die out, while "pure" species live on. If this new theory is correct, it means that the "pure" humans died out, leaving us hybrids behind. "This is contributing to the idea that species are kind of fuzzy," Mallet says. " They become real over time, but it takes millions of years." [end of article] So where does this leave humans living today? The Week, June 16, p. 14, provides an article that may partially answer this question: "A Romanian village is enjoying a tourist boom, thanks to a "humping hill" that is believed to help couples conceive. The mayor of Horea, Corneliu Olar, is determined to promote the hill as a tourist attraction, and has planted extra bushes to provide privacy for couples. "It has been a traition for more than three centuries," Olar says. "Romanian kings have come and gone, but the humping hill has always been there". [end of story]. Now I'm wondering if humans are mating with vampires. --- End forwarded message --- ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> You can search right from your browser? It's easy and it's free. See how. http://us.click.yahoo.com/_7bhrC/NGxNAA/yQLSAA/UlWolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
