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I don't buy the smoke poisoning angle. They compared with Neandertal AHRs and found that human AHRs may have undergone selective pressures since they're quite
by a_bonobo 10y ago
I don't buy the smoke poisoning angle.
They compared with Neandertal AHRs and found that human AHRs may have undergone selective pressures since they're quite different, so the authors tried to connect these changes with the invention of fire. However AHRs bind to many things.
Also, Neandertals also used fire extensively (see for example http://www.pnas.org/content/108/13/5209 http://www.pnas.org/content/108/13/5209 ) so they should have undergone the same selective pressures, so they should have the same or similar changes as humans?
- AimHere 10y agoMight the selection pressure have been fire related, without necessarily being just the use of fire? If, for one speculative example, Neanderthals mostly used fire outdoors, while modern humans used it indoors with correspondingly thicker smoke concentrations, wouldn't that account for the difference? Or perhaps only a few Neanderthals out of any given population used it regularly (for crafting tools, say), while almost all modern humans could have used it for cooking food.
- a_bonobo 10y agoI see! But that's a bit hard to prove, isn't it? I don't think we have enough archaeological sites with proven fire places to prove that assumption