We're all part Cave-Man (Neanderthal) except for the Africans

[shiny!]

Re: We're all part Cave-Man (Neanderthal) except for the Africans

My wife would have written these exact words if describing the state of public education today. She has spent a total of 28 years either as a bureaucrat in the state department of education, or in the classroom as a 4th grade teacher - both regular ed and special ed.

But she wouldn't be able to write such wonderful words about her husband.
Yours must have been a truly remarkable man, shiny!, and your loss is very, very great.

Thank you so much, Raz. I'm sure your wife is as proud of you as you are of her. Remember to tell her you love her... often!

[shiny!]

Re: We're all part Cave-Man (Neanderthal) except for the Africans

Your husband sounds like a very talented, committed, and caring man. The story of him being able to walk through the toughest neighborhoods without fear is testimony both to his positive effects on the kids and of the openness of young people even from the roughest backgrounds to people who really care for them.

Thankfully your husband is not entirely alone, though school authorities may try to make him feel that way. There are many other creative and committed teachers (my daughter, a high school history teacher in Boston, is one) out there, and they need our support.

Thank you, Dave. I know there are a lot of good, caring teachers. It sounds like your family is heavily involved in education. Unfortunately for everybody my husband was killed a few months ago. I guess I like to talk about him because humble, everyday heroes like him do a lot of good in the world and I want his contributions to be remembered.

[Dave Stratman]

Re: We're all part Cave-Man (Neanderthal) except for the Africans

Thank you, Dave. I know there are a lot of good, caring teachers. It sounds like your family is heavily involved in education. Unfortunately for everybody my husband was killed a few months ago. I guess I like to talk about him because humble, everyday heroes like him do a lot of good in the world and I want his contributions to be remembered.

My God, Shiny! I had no idea. I am very, very sorry for your loss and for the loss to the world of a great man.

[shiny!]

Re: We're all part Cave-Man (Neanderthal) except for the Africans

My God, Shiny! I had no idea. I am very, very sorry for your loss and for the loss to the world of a great man.

Thank you, Dave. He was a sweet, humble man who spread humor and kindness everywhere he went. United Blood Services called today to ask him for another donation and the lady cried when I told her he was gone. He was a universal donor- O-negative - and donated every eight weeks. His blood was so good that they gave it whole to babies. He was working on his 20th gallon...

Here's a picture of him and our bulldog, Ellie Mae. You can see he was missing fingers. He was also born without toes on one foot and had dyslexia. He never let any of it slow him down. It's one of the reasons why he was so good with special ed kids.

papa-and-elliemae-superbowl-2010-a.jpg

One of his former students, a boy with Asperger's Syndrome and dyslexia, graduated from high school this year. Sat Guru had taught him how to read when he was in middle school. The boy said, "People will remember him as a great man, but I will always remember him as, 'The man who changed my life'." It doesn't get any better than that.

I think I've derailed this thread enough. My apologies to anyone I might have annoyed by going off on a personal tangent.

[c1ue]

Re: We're all part Cave-Man (Neanderthal) except for the Africans

More possible evidence of Neanderthal contributions to modern man:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...QCVQ.DTL&tsp=1

SAN FRANCISCO -- It's a tale of romance from the Ice Age - and its consequences today.

Long ago, in a part of the world now known as Europe, early modern humans lived alongside the Neanderthal people - and they interbred.

A fast-growing population of humans eventually drove the Neanderthals to extinction 30,000 years ago, but the benefits of those early dalliances between the two groups live on.

The Neanderthals, it seems, passed on to humans many of the genes that now mark our greatly improved immune systems, according to an international team of researchers led by a Stanford group.

The researchers, deciphering the genome of fossil Neanderthals and modern humans, report they have found in both a major group of matching immune system genes - genes the scientists say we inherited from our stocky Ice Age predecessors.

The same scientists also studied the genes of a different ancient people, the Denisovans, who were contemporary with the Neanderthals and whose meager fossils were found in a Siberian cave called Denisova. The Denisovans, the Stanford scientists said, were likely a "sister group to the Neanderthals" who apparently bequeathed genes of their immune systems to modern Melanesians - the people of New Guinea, Fiji and scores of other islands in the western South Pacific.

In a report published in the journal ScienceExpress on Thursday, Peter Parham, a Stanford microbiologist and immunologist, describes how he and 22 colleagues from five nations traced the genetic history of the varied people who originated in Africa and later moved into Europe and the Middle East.

Genomes deciphered

The German anthropologist Svänte Paabo and his colleagues first deciphered the Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes and showed where and when they interbred with modern humans.

The fossil record indicates that those ancient pre-human people apparently left Africa some 400,000 years ago and roamed across Europe and Asia until modern humans moved into their Eurasian turf from Africa around 85,000 years ago, and quickly replaced them, Parham said.

Homo sapiens overran the Neanderthals from Northern Europe to Spain, and by 30,000 years ago the Neanderthals were gone. Similarly, humans also overran the Denisovans in Siberia and they disappeared at about the same time.

But some of their genes lived on in humans, Parham's team reported. They were found in modern people in Europe, Asia and Melanesia, but not found in African people, the researchers said.

Bacterial protection

The parts of the modern immune system that come from the Neanderthals and Denisovans are known as the HLA histocompatibility complex, a group of protein-creating genes located on chromosome six that help protect humans against assaults by some bacterial infections and viruses, and the rejection of tissue transplants.

"All this tells us a lot about human history," Parham said. "We didn't just replace the Neanderthals and Denisovans, we have retained some of them in us. There was a lot of diversity in dealing with the pathogens they faced, and we have that diversity too."

The report is likely to generate some controversy among geneticists. Montgomery Slatkin, a UC Berkeley geneticist who was on Paabo's team, commented cautiously.
He called the conclusions "plausible," largely because the HLA genes from Neanderthals were found in Europeans but not in Africans. As to finding Denisovan genes in modern Europeans, Slatkin said: "I am less convinced of this, although their conclusion is not completely implausible."

He was more certain about the finding that the Denisovan immune system genes exist in modern Melanesians.

"This evidence is the most convincing," Slatkin said.

This is doubly interesting due to the historical impact of disease on the development curves of Asia, Africa, and Europe...