Modern human/Neanderthal hybrid 37.000 years ago may be connected to human/chimp hybrid and the hobbit!

Update Nov 15, 2006: It's perhaps worth considering that newly published details from the Neanderthal genome show a genetic split at some 700 kya and a factual split some <350 kya followed by extinction 24 (?) kya, as well as a closer relation to chimps than to modern humans (compare postings below and the chimp/human hybrid)!

Background: Klevius hypothesis Out of Africa as "Pygmies" and back as global "Mongoloids".

Some new possible pieces in the puzzle

According to researchers at Howard Hughes Medical Institute and University of Chicago at least one occasion of succesful human/Neanderthal interbreeding occured some 37,000 years ago.
This seems to have led to adventages via the microcephalin "brain size" ASPM gene (the gene being some 1,1 million year old) hence altering the brain structure of some 70 percent of today's humans. Linked to the production of new neurons the known MCPH gene products show accelerated change along the lineage from apes to humans. ASPM gene underwent rapid change in the primate common ancestor of gorillas, chimps and humans as much as 8 million years ago.
As some forms of the microcephalin gene lead to small (characterized by a 70% reduction in brain size albeit otherwise normal) brains Islamist "scientist" Teuku Jacob and his strange (or just naive when not considering Islam's impact on science - see postings below) friends took the opportunity to claim Homo floresiensis a sick human. However, the really big leap, when human brain size tripled, began more than 2 million years ago, and continued to some 200 000–400 000 years ago suggesting an episode of accelerated sequence evolution in human ASPM (abnormal spindle-like microcephaly) after the split of humans and chimpanzees but before the separation of modern non-Africans from Africans.

Jianzhi Zhang (2003): Because positive selection acts on a gene only when the gene function is altered and the organismal fitness is increased, my results suggest that adaptive functional modifications occurred in human ASPM and that it may be a major genetic component underlying the evolution of the human brain.


Klevius comment: If we exclude Amazonas the Congo region is the only main continental jungle area on the equator. This area has harboured both human as well as chimp pygmies. Because, as noted on postings below, we have already some reason to consider a possible, reproductive chimp/human hybrid in the past, a hybridization with the Neanderthal (or other late forms of "Homo erectus"-like moderns) seems not far fetched at all. On the contrary, if there are any genes of special interest here it would certainly be something like ASPM associated with MCPH! This seems really intriguing against the background of How a wrinkled/complex African "Pygmy" brain became "human"! Also compare postings below!