Brunaburh
Gone Fishin'
Similar does not mean the same. Nor does it refute my point.
Also, I don't think we have recovered a FOX2P gene from the Neanderthals. You are making an assumption about what the Neanderthal gene looks like. You might be correct, you might not.
From the paper:
Of the two FOXP2 substitutions in exon 7, position 911 was retrieved four times from the first individual and twice from the second. In all cases, the recovered allele was the derived allele seen in modern humans. Position 977 was retrieved once from the first individual and twice from the second individual. Again, in all cases the alleles were the derived variant that is fixed in modern humans....
Thus, not only was the derived form of the FOXP2 protein present in Neandertals, but it is also linked to the haplotype that is common among modern humansn and appears to have been subject to a selective sweep.
(edit) And then the absolute killer conclusion:
the current results show that the Neandertals carried a FOXP2 protein that was identical to that of present-day humans in the only two positions that differ between human and chimpanzee. Leaving out the unlikely scenario of gene flow, this establishes that these changes were present in the common ancestor of modern humans and Neandertals. The date of the emergence of these genetic changes therefore must be older than that estimated with only extant human diversity data, thus demonstrating the utility of direct evidence from Neandertal DNA sequences for understanding recent modern human evolution. Whatever function the two amino acid substitutions might have for human language ability, it was present not only in modern humans but also in late Neandertals
I'm resting my case on that.
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