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General => Science => Topic started by: Recusant on October 31, 2015, 01:52:11 AM

Title: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on October 31, 2015, 01:52:11 AM
These two stories don't actually belong in the "Neanderthals in the News" thread, so it doesn't matter too much that it's missing at the moment. The first is about Denisova Cave, in which fossils of the interesting species now known as Denisovans were found.

(https://i.imgur.com/KCtz7J2.jpg)
Denisovans occupied Denisova Cave more than once, at least 65,000 years apart. Neandertals slipped in as well, and modern humans were the last to live there.
Image Credit: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/09/siberian-cave-was-home-generations-mysterious-ancient-humans]"Siberian cave was home to generations of mysterious ancient humans" | Science[/color] (http://[color=blue)

QuoteIn 2010, scientists discovered a new kind of human by sequencing DNA from a girl's pinky finger found in Denisova Cave in Siberia. Ever since, researchers have wondered when the girl lived, and if her people, called Denisovans, lingered in the cave or just passed through. But the elusive Denisovans left almost no fossil record—only that bit of bone and a handful of teeth—and they came from a site that was notoriously difficult to date (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6046/1084.summary).

Now, state-of-the-art DNA analysis on the Denisovan molars and new dates on cave material show that Denisovans occupied the cave surprisingly early and came back repeatedly. The data suggest that the girl lived at least 50,000 years ago and that two other Denisovan individuals died in the cave at least 110,000 years ago and perhaps as early as 170,000 years ago, according to two talks here last week at the meeting of the European Society for the study of Human Evolution. Although the new age estimates have wide margins of error, they help solidify our murky view of Denisovans and provide "really convincing evidence of multiple occupations of the cave," says paleoanthropologist Fred Spoor of University College London. "You can seriously see it's a valid species."

[Continues . . . (http://news.sciencemag.org/archaeology/2015/09/siberian-cave-was-home-generations-mysterious-ancient-humans)]

The next story is about a very intriguing find in China of Homo sapiens teeth. What's interesting is that these teeth appear to be from an era before there is any evidence of anatomically modern humans in Europe.

"The earliest unequivocally modern humans in southern China" | Nature (PDF) (http://www.nature.com/articles/nature15696.epdf?referrer_access_token=TtKdwggrYhmBpzp59vO9-9RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PJinTKMODkaVHkLLe4mPfaBIPHT_3NXoQP56i15-Cv9Q5btDa-VmiKcY87g0R1N0PU3Jn_FeGMZ1NuK2OurU_mBpD4pZwMcKrvB5kdfCvL6IGBqJCaLmKeCIHM3lA3CF0Bf4HHFy1Bbs_MrgRUr9t1ZGZI9J-xEZvZAxkOrO8gNZ2X1dnksmCytt4K5C3V5hU%3D&tracking_referrer=www.nature.com) < I hope that link works. It's to an article that was put online as part of a "sharing initiative."

QuoteOur study shows that fully modern morphologies were present in southern China 30,000-70,000 years earlier than in the Levant and Europe. Our data fill a chronological and geographical gap that is relevant for understanding when H. sapiens first appeared in southern Asia. The Daoxian teeth also support the hypothesis that during the same period, southern China was inhabited by more derived populations than central and northern China. This evidence is important for the study of dispersal routes of modern humans. Finally, our results are relevant to exploring the reasons for the relatively late entry of H. sapiens into Europe.

[Continues . . . (http://www.nature.com/articles/nature15696.epdf?referrer_access_token=TtKdwggrYhmBpzp59vO9-9RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PJinTKMODkaVHkLLe4mPfaBIPHT_3NXoQP56i15-Cv9Q5btDa-VmiKcY87g0R1N0PU3Jn_FeGMZ1NuK2OurU_mBpD4pZwMcKrvB5kdfCvL6IGBqJCaLmKeCIHM3lA3CF0Bf4HHFy1Bbs_MrgRUr9t1ZGZI9J-xEZvZAxkOrO8gNZ2X1dnksmCytt4K5C3V5hU%3D&tracking_referrer=www.nature.com)]
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Icarus on October 31, 2015, 05:01:17 AM
Remarkable stuff.  Thanks for the reference.

Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on November 18, 2015, 09:13:33 PM
More Denisovan DNA has been sequenced, so now there are three known examples.

"Nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequences from two Denisovan individuals" | PNAS (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/11/11/1519905112.abstract)

QuoteSignificance

Denisovans are a sister group of Neandertals that were identified on the basis of a nuclear genome sequence from a bone from Denisova Cave (Siberia). The only other Denisovan specimen described to date is a molar from the same site. We present here nuclear DNA sequences from this molar and a morphological description, as well as mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequences from another molar from Denisova Cave, thus extending the number of Denisovan individuals known to three. The nuclear DNA sequence diversity among the Denisovans is higher than among Neandertals, but lower than among present-day humans. The mtDNA of one molar has accumulated fewer substitutions than the mtDNAs of the other two specimens, suggesting Denisovans were present in the region over several millennia.

The full paper is available as a PDF at the link.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on December 22, 2015, 04:52:28 PM
Some very interesting finds have been made in China which could indicate that an archaic hominin species survived there until relatively recently; even later than the last Neanderthals and Denisovans. There are some possibly rather kinky sides to this story as well.

"New species of human may have shared our caves – and beds" | New Scientist (https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28687-new-species-of-human-may-have-shared-our-caves-and-beds/)

QuoteOne of the most exciting pieces of evidence in the story is a hominin femur found in Muladong cave in south-west China, alongside other human and animal bones. It shows evidence of having been burned in a fire that was used for cooking other meat, and has marks consistent with it being butchered for consumption.

It has also been broken in a way that is often used to access the bone marrow.

Unusually, it had been painted with a red clay called ochre, something often associated with burial rituals. While many other bones were eaten in the cave, only the ones from human species were painted.

It's hard to know if the bone was actually cannibalised by the H. sapiens whose remains have also been found in the area, Curnoe says, but all the evidence points towards that conclusion.

"We don't know it was cannibalism," he says. "We've got cut marks that would be consistent with butchering."

But things got interesting when the team tried to identify the bone. "Our work shows clearly that the femur resembles archaic humans," Curnoe says. Yet the sediment the bone was found in dated to just 14,000 years ago.

The shaft of the bone is very narrow and it has a thin outer layer, yet the walls are reinforced in areas of high strain. There is also a notch where muscle would have joined the bone, which is much larger than in anatomically modern humans, and it faces more towards the back of the bone (see photo, above).

"These features suggest it walked differently," says Curnoe. And judging by the size of the bone, Curnoe estimates the adult human would have weighed about 50 kilograms – much smaller than other known Ice Age humans.

"When you put all the evidence together the femur comes out quite clearly resembling the early members of Homo," says Curnoe.

If confirmed, says Petraglia, this would change our understanding of human evolution.

[Continues . . . (https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28687-new-species-of-human-may-have-shared-our-caves-and-beds/)]
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on February 17, 2016, 12:30:48 AM
After analysing the skulls of Homo floriensis, the diminutive former inhabitants of the island of Flores popularly known as "hobbits" (I think the scare quotes are part of the name, now  ;)), a pair of French scientists have concluded that they are indeed a distinct species, rather than an offshoot of Homo sapiens.

"Mystery 'hobbits' not humans like us: study" | PHYS.ORG (http://phys.org/news/2016-02-mystery-hobbits-humans.html)

Quote
(https://www.happyatheistforum.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.phys.org%2Fnewman%2Fcsz%2Fnews%2F800%2F2016%2Ftheremainsof.jpg&hash=36b3898e2cbc618e1a11b689a6979fd1a7fa05bb)

The remains of Indonesia's hobbit-sized humans (L) and modern human (R) are
displayed at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, Indonesia on November 5, 2004

QuoteDiminutive humans that died out on an Indonesian island some 15,000 years ago were not Homo sapiens but a different species, according to a study published Monday that dives into a fierce anthropological debate.

Fossils of Homo floresiensis—dubbed "the hobbits" due to their tiny stature—were discovered on the island of Flores in 2003.

Controversy has raged ever since as to whether they are an unknown branch of early humans or specimens of modern man deformed by disease.

The new study, based on an analysis of the skull bones, shows once and for all that the pint-sized people were not Homo sapiens, according to the researchers.

Until now, academic studies have pointing in one direction or another—and scientific discourse has sometimes tipped over into acrimony.

One school of thought holds that so-called Flores Man descended from the larger Homo erectus and became smaller over hundreds of generations.

[. . .]

But other researchers argue that H. floresiensis was in fact a modern human whose tiny size and small brain—no bigger than a grapefruit—was caused by a genetic disorder.

[Continues . . . (http://phys.org/news/2016-02-mystery-hobbits-humans.html)]
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Tank on February 17, 2016, 08:14:52 AM
I tend towards the conclusion that they are missing, or avoiding for some weird reason, the bleeding obvious; natural selection. It's always there and always shaping organisms.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on June 09, 2016, 03:07:35 AM
Speaking of Homo floresiensis, it may be that they weren't around as recently as indicated by the previous estimate.

"Age of 'Hobbit' species revised" | BBC (http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35930979)

QuoteThe discovery of Homo floresiensis in 2003 caused a sensation because it seemed the creature could have been alive in the quite recent past.

But a new analysis indicates the little hominin probably went extinct at least 50,000 years ago - not the 12,000 years ago (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3948165.stm) initially thought to be the case.

Researchers report their revised assessment in the journal Nature [go to the BBC page (http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35930979) for a link that will take you to the full paper].

Prof Bert Roberts, from the University of Wollongong, Australia, says the new dating actually resolves what had always been a head-scratcher: how it was possible for floresiensis to survive for 30,000 to 40,000 years after modern humans are believed to have passed through Indonesia.

"Well, it now seems we weren't living alongside this little species for very long, if at all. And once again it smells of modern humans having a role in the downfall of yet another species," he told BBC News.

"Every time modern humans arrived somewhere new, it tended to be bad news for the endemic fauna. Things would go pear-shaped pretty quickly."

[Continues . . . (http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35930979)]
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on July 19, 2016, 05:11:19 PM
Intriguing story about the identity of the first human farmers.

"The world's first farmers were surprisingly diverse" | Science (http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/07/worlds-first-farmers-were-surprisingly-diverse)

QuoteAncient DNA has a way of uncovering complexity in seemingly simple stories of our past. Most famously, it has shown that modern humans didn't simply replace our archaic cousins as we spread across the world; we interbred with them along the way. Now, this method is adding nuance to the story of farming, long known to have originated in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East.

According to three teams who used new techniques to gain glimpses of the nuclear DNA of the world's very first farmers, farming was adopted not by one group of people, but by genetically distinct groups scattered across the region. "It was not one early population that sowed the seeds of farming in western Asia, but several adjacent populations that all had the good fortune to live in the zone where potential plant and animal domesticates were to be found and exploited," says archaeologist Colin Renfrew of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, who was not involved in the work.

The research—a paper published online in Science this week (http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2016/07/13/science.aaf7943) and two studies posted last month on the bioRxiv server—can't pin down whether agriculture spread quickly among diverse peoples or was independently invented more than once. But the diversity of the first farmers is "very surprising," says statistical geneticist Garrett Hellenthal of University College London, a co-author of the Science paper. "These early farmers who lived pretty close to each other were 
completely different."

[Continues . . . (http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/07/worlds-first-farmers-were-surprisingly-diverse)]
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Dave on July 19, 2016, 05:22:47 PM
One wonders how much travelling and trading went on between adjacent and nearby genetic groups? This could be responsible for culture spread between the groups over time periods too quick, in archaeological terns, to differentiate.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on July 19, 2016, 05:39:57 PM
Quote from: Gloucester on July 19, 2016, 05:22:47 PM
One wonders how much travelling and trading went on between adjacent and nearby genetic groups? This could be responsible for culture spread between the groups over time periods too quick, in archaeological terns, to differentiate.

Yes, that seems to be the most reasonable hypothesis.

Speaking of early farming, the gene sequence of some truly ancient barley has been produced and analysed. Apparently, 6,000 years ago, barley was already pretty much fully domesticated, and hasn't changed much since then.

"Ancient barley DNA gives insight into crop development" | BBC (http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36805233)

QuoteAn international group of scientists have analysed the DNA of 6,000 year old barley finding that it is remarkably similar to modern day varieties.

They say it could also hold the key to introducing successful genetic variation.

Due to the speed at which plants decompose, finding intact ancient plant DNA is extremely rare.

The preserved ancient barley was excavated near the Dead Sea, the journal Nature Genetics (http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ng.3611.html) reports.
The arid environment conserved the biological integrity of the grains, the paper says.

[Continues . . . (http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36805233)]

If you go to the BBC, you can click through on the link in the story to a page that will redirect to the full paper.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Icarus on July 20, 2016, 12:04:38 AM
Though surely not the first agriculturists, the Sumerians are perhaps the early developers of commercial and governmental functions.  Sumeria was a collection of homesteads and villages in the south of what is now Iraq, between the Tigres and Euphrates rivers, the spectacularly fertile area of the middle east.  Agriculture was the reason for settlement there. Each farmer could and did produce more than he needed for his own subsistence. Others who produced wheels or the necessary basketry or metal work could trade with the agriculturists. Sometimes there was a different value of goods or hardware involved in the trade. The Sumerians conceived of the idea of coinage to offset the difference of trade values.

Pretty soon there were disputes about the value of coinage. The elders decided to install a set of judges who could settle disputes. Someone had to have authority over the judges, and leaders were appointed. Governors or even kings. Well sometimes there were short or long term disputes or even confrontations that needed quick response to preserve a semblance of peace, the police force or its predecessor was invented and implemented.

Villages to the north coveted the villages of the south and visa versa. Oh shit! War. Armies were made by conscripting the young males.  They fought as commanded or when necessary.

All this took place wa...a....ay before Moses. The Sumerians were perhaps among the first people who sought to establish a civilized, cooperative, social system. That was well before Mohammed and his Flying horse. All that was because the fertile crescent was capable of producing more crops than a single family needed. 

That is a most simplistic tale of the development of a workable society that had its roots in agriculture. It does not take into account the development of the far eastern cultures in places like what is now China.

Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: OldGit on July 20, 2016, 08:53:14 AM
When did the lawyers sneak in?
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Dave on July 20, 2016, 08:55:22 AM
Quote from: Icarus on July 20, 2016, 12:04:38 AM
Though surely not the first agriculturists, the Sumerians are perhaps the early developers of commercial and governmental functions. 

Right, so we can blame the Sumerians for all the crappy bureaucracy, greed and politics in the world then, they invented it!?

;)
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on July 30, 2016, 05:32:17 PM
Evidence of cancer in our hominin relatives/ancestors:

"Cancer on a Paleo-diet? Ask someone who lived 1.7 million years ago" | ScienceDaily (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160728100946.htm)

QuoteAn international team of researchers led by scientists from the University of the Witwatersrand's Evolutionary Studies Institute and the South African Centre for Excellence in PalaeoSciences today announced in two papers, published in the South African Journal of Science, the discovery of the most ancient evidence for cancer and bony tumors yet described in the human fossil record.

The discovery of a foot bone dated to approximately 1.7 million years ago from the site of Swartkrans with definitive evidence of malignant cancer, pushes the oldest date for this disease back from recent times into deep prehistory. Although the exact species to which the foot bone belongs is unknown, it is clearly that of a hominin, or bipedal human relative.

[. . .]

Prof. Lee Berger, an author on both papers and leader of the Malapa project where the fossil vertebra was found adds "not only has there been an assumption that these sorts of cancers and tumors are diseases of modernity, which these fossils clearly demonstrate they are not, but that we as modern humans exhibit them as a consequence of living longer, yet this rare tumor is found in a young child. The history of these types of tumors and cancers is clearly more complex than previously thought."

[Continues . . . (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160728100946.htm)]

Both papers are free access:

"Earliest hominin cancer: 1.7-million-year-old osteosarcoma from Swartkrans Cave, South Africa" (http://sajs.co.za/earliest-hominin-cancer-1-7-million-year-old-osteosarcoma-swartkrans-cave-south-africa/edward-j-odes-patrick-s-randolph-quinney-maryna-steyn-zach-throckmorton-jacqueline-s-smilg-bernhard)

"Osteogenic tumour in Australopithecus sediba: Earliest hominin evidence for neoplastic disease" (http://sajs.co.za/osteogenic-tumour-australopithecus-sediba-earliest-hominin-evidence-neoplastic-disease/patrick-s-randolph-quinney-scott-williams-maryna-steyn-marc-r-meyer-jacqueline-s-smilg-steven-e)
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Icarus on July 31, 2016, 03:01:25 AM
Mr Deity has some shrewd comedy. The link had him use the term; flustercluck which is a yukker for me (the dirty old man)

Not to diminish the relevance of the more serious science links. Cancer is not so funny.

Rec, I appreciate that you tend to think on a somewhat elevated level and that you share your discoveries with us.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on July 31, 2016, 08:20:48 AM
I'm just a science pack rat, gathering up shiny objects for no particular reason and scurrying back here with them.  ;)

I can't say that I agree with the 'elevated' thing, but thank you for your kind words, anyway, Icarus. :computerwave:
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on October 31, 2016, 01:52:07 AM
This one seems rather tentative to me, but may be borne out by further research.

"DNA data offer evidence of unknown extinct human relative" | ScienceNews (https://www.sciencenews.org/article/dna-data-offer-evidence-unknown-extinct-human-relative?)

QuoteTraces of long-lost human cousins may be hiding in modern people's DNA, a new computer analysis suggests.

People from Melanesia, a region in the South Pacific encompassing Papua New Guinea and surrounding islands, may carry genetic evidence of a previously unknown extinct hominid species (https://ep70.eventpilot.us/web/page.php?page=IntHtml&project=ASHG16&id=160122719), Ryan Bohlender reported October 20 at the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics. That species is probably not Neandertal or Denisovan, but a different, related hominid group, said Bohlender, a statistical geneticist at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. "We're missing a population or we're misunderstanding something about the relationships," he said.

This mysterious relative was probably from a third branch of the hominid family tree that produced Neandertals and Denisovans, an extinct distant cousin of Neandertals. While many Neandertal fossils have been found in Europe and Asia, Denisovans are known only from DNA from a finger bone and a couple of teeth found in a Siberian cave (https://www.sciencenews.org/article/dna-puts-neandertal-relatives-siberia-60000-years).

[Continues . . . (https://www.sciencenews.org/article/dna-data-offer-evidence-unknown-extinct-human-relative?)]

Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on February 13, 2017, 02:49:44 AM
A dear friend showed me this story about a study that investigated communication among orangutans and a possible relation to how language developed among our ancestors. The study specifically looks at consonant-like communications as opposed to vocalizations.

"Orangutan squeaks reveal language evolution, says study" | BBC (http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38907681)

QuoteScientists who spent years listening to the communication calls of one of our closest ape relatives say their eavesdropping has shed light on the origin of human language.

Dr Adriano Reis e Lameira from Durham University recorded and analysed almost 5,000 orangutan "kiss squeaks".

He found that the animals combined these purse-lipped, "consonant-like" calls to convey different messages.

This could be a glimpse of how our ancestors formed the earliest words.

The findings are published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.

"Human language is extraordinarily advanced and complex - we can pretty much transmit any information we want into sound," said Dr Reis e Lameira.

"So we tend to think that maybe words evolved from some rudimentary precursor to transmit more complex messages.

"We were basically using the orangutan vocal behaviour as a time machine - back to a time when our ancestors were using what would become [those precursors] of consonants and vowels."

[Continues . . . (http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38907681)]

The full paper is available free: "Proto-consonants were information-dense via identical bioacoustic tags to proto-vowels" | Nature Human Behavior (http://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0044)
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on March 06, 2017, 07:32:59 PM
Denisovans, or . . . ?

"Ancient skulls may belong to elusive humans called Denisovans" | Science (http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/03/ancient-skulls-may-belong-elusive-humans-called-denisovans)

Quote
(https://www.happyatheistforum.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencemag.org%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fstyles%2Finline__699w__no_aspect%2Fpublic%2Fonline.jpg%3Fitok%3Dq2Pdzzr8&hash=a92e6f8578d4ebedc4fe3cca7298e304fbd8a746)
Fossil fragments (yellow) were put together with their mirror-image pieces (purple)
to visualize the skull of an archaic human who lived in eastern China
.
Image Credit: Z. Li et al., Science

Since their discovery in 2010, the ex­tinct ice age humans called Deniso­vans have been known only from bits of DNA, taken from a sliver of bone in the Denisova Cave in Siberia, Russia. Now, two partial skulls from eastern China are emerging as prime candidates for showing what these shadowy people may have looked like.

In a paper published this week in Science, a Chinese-U.S. team presents 105,000- to 125,000-year-old fossils (http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6328/969) they call "archaic Homo." They note that the bones could be a new type of human or an eastern variant of Neandertals. But although the team avoids the word, "everyone else would wonder whether these might be Denisovans," which are close cousins to Neandertals, says paleo­anthropologist Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London.

The new skulls "definitely" fit what you'd expect from a Denisovan, adds paleoanthropologist María Martinón-Torres of the University College London—"something with an Asian flavor but closely related to Neandertals." But because the investigators have not extracted DNA from the skulls, "the possibility remains a speculation."

[Continues . . . (http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/03/ancient-skulls-may-belong-elusive-humans-called-denisovans)]

Another pop-science article about the discovery: "Ancient skulls unearthed in China could belong to little-known extinct human species" | Christian Science Monitor (http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2017/0305/Ancient-skulls-unearthed-in-China-could-belong-to-little-known-extinct-human-species)

QuoteIn 2007, researchers from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing were finishing up an archaeological dig in Lingjing, China, when a team member spotted some quartz tools poking out of the mud. After extending the dig, the tools were extracted, revealing an even more significant discovery: a small, ancient skull fragment approximately 100,000 to 130,000 years old.

Over the next few years, the researchers returned to the site multiple times, finding more cranium pieces until they were able to reconstruct two partial skulls from more than 40 separate fragments.

But when the team analyzed the skull fragments, they realized that the skulls neither fit the bill for Homo sapiens nor Neanderthals but that they shared characteristics of both human species. Ultimately, the researchers were unable to positively determine exactly what kind of human the skulls belong to, opening the door to a wide range of intriguing possibilities.

In an article published Friday in the journal Science, the researchers note that the skull fragments date to the Late Pleistocene epoch, a time marked by the expansion of H. sapiens and the extinction of other species in the genus Homo. During the early part of that epoch, Neanderthals roamed Europe and western Asia while humans began to journey out of Africa. But fossil records of human species in Eastern Asia from that time period are thin, muddying the picture of that era for a substantial region of the planet.

The skulls found in China were found to bear very close resemblances to those of Neanderthals, including a very similar inner ear bone and a prominent brow ridge. But the brow ridge was much less pronounced than one would expect from Neanderthals, with a considerably less dense cranium, as one might expect in an early H. sapiens. Researchers also found that the skulls were large by both modern and Neanderthal standards, with a whopping 1800 cubic centimeters of brain capacity.

[Continues . . . (http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2017/0305/Ancient-skulls-unearthed-in-China-could-belong-to-little-known-extinct-human-species)]

Even if these are specimens of a previously unknown variant of Neanderthal this is an interesting discovery, since to date no Neanderthals have been found this far east.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Dave on March 06, 2017, 07:56:56 PM
Very interesting!
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on April 21, 2017, 10:53:53 PM
An analysis of the skeletal morphology of known specimens of Homo florsiensis aka the "hobbits" found on the island Flores in Indonesia has produced evidence that they are a separate lineage rather than descended from Homo erectus. I think that the title of the article below overstates the case, but that's a common failing among pop-sci headline writers.

"Origins of Indonesian Hobbits finally revealed" | PhysOrg (https://phys.org/news/2017-04-indonesian-hobbits-revealed.html)

QuoteThe most comprehensive study on the bones of Homo floresiensis, a species of tiny human discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003, has found that they most likely evolved from an ancestor in Africa and not from Homo erectus as has been widely believed.

The study by The Australian National University (ANU) found Homo floresiensis, dubbed "the hobbits" due to their small stature, were most likely a sister species of Homo habilis—one of the earliest known species of human found in Africa 1.75 million years ago.

Data from the study concluded there was no evidence for the popular theory that Homo floresiensis evolved from the much larger Homo erectus, the only other early hominid known to have lived in the region with fossils discovered on the Indonesian mainland of Java.

Study leader Dr Debbie Argue of the ANU School of Archaeology & Anthropology, said the results should help put to rest a debate that has been hotly contested ever since Homo floresiensis was discovered.

"The analyses show that on the family tree, Homo floresiensis was likely a sister species of Homo habilis. It means these two shared a common ancestor," Dr Argue said.

"It's possible that Homo floresiensis evolved in Africa and migrated, or the common ancestor moved from Africa then evolved into Homo floresiensis somewhere."

[Continues . . . (https://phys.org/news/2017-04-indonesian-hobbits-revealed.html)]
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Davin on April 25, 2017, 05:36:03 PM
Aha, that's a very good article.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: xSilverPhinx on April 26, 2017, 12:03:31 AM
Homo naledi is only 250,000 years old – here's why that matters (New Scientist) (https://www.newscientist.com/article/2128834-homo-naledi-is-only-250000-years-old-heres-why-that-matters/?cmpid=SOC%7CNSNS%7C2017-Echobox&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#link_time=1493131680)



Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on April 26, 2017, 01:41:56 AM
Very interesting article, xSilverPhinx, thank you! Cool the way it ties in with the story above, too. I'm curious about how they managed to produce a date. I'm pretty sure there was at least one article about Homo naledi in amongst the missing threads; it's great that you've brought them back to HAF.  :)
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on May 21, 2017, 11:22:35 PM
This one's a bit on the speculative side.

"Were humans in the Americas 100,000 years earlier than scientists thought?" | Science (http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/04/were-humans-americas-100000-years-earlier-scientists-thought)

QuoteWhat broke the 130,000-year-old mastodon bones in California? Most archaeologists would tell you it couldn't have been humans, who didn't leave conclusive evidence of their presence in the Americas until about 14,000 years ago. But a small group of experts now says that the fracture patterns on the bones, found during highway construction near San Diego, California, must have been left by humans pounding them with stones found nearby. If correct, the paper, published this week in Nature, would push back the presence of people in the Americas by more than 100,000 years—to a time when modern humans supposedly had not even expanded out of Africa to Europe or Asia.

"The claims made are extraordinary and the potential implications staggering," says Jon Erlandson, an archaeologist at the University of Oregon in Eugene who studies the peopling of the Americas. "But broken bones and stones alone do not make a credible archaeological site in my view." He and many other archaeologists say it will take much stronger evidence to convince them that the bones were fractured by ancient people.

[Continues . . . (http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/04/were-humans-americas-100000-years-earlier-scientists-thought)]

I read in another article (http://www.wired.co.uk/article/changing-view-of-neanderthals) that tool marks were found on the bones, but that may be down to faulty reporting.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on June 08, 2017, 11:12:19 AM
This is a pretty big discovery, even if they're wrong about the finds being Homo sapiens.

"Oldest Homo sapiens fossil claim rewrites our species' history" | Nature (http://www.nature.com/news/oldest-homo-sapiens-fossil-claim-rewrites-our-species-history-1.22114)

Quote
(https://www.happyatheistforum.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Fpolopoly_fs%2F7.44647.1496854309%21%2Fimage%2F1skulls_web.jpg_gen%2Fderivatives%2Flandscape_630%2F1skulls_web.jpg&hash=c0aba78610bf043837a58ed814f2a2554ffd9bde)
Fossils of early members of Homo sapiens found in Morocco (left) display a
more elongated skull shape than do modern humans (right).
Image credit: NHM London




Researchers say that they have found the oldest Homo sapiens remains on record in an improbable place: Morocco.

At an archaeological site near the Atlantic coast, finds of skull, face and jaw bones identified as being from early members of our species have been dated to about 315,000 years ago. That indicates H. sapiens appeared more than 100,000 years earlier than thought: most researchers have placed the origins of our species in East Africa about 200,000 years ago.

The finds, which are published on 7 June in Nature, do not mean that H. sapiens originated in North Africa. Instead, they suggest that the species' earliest members evolved all across the continent, scientists say.

"Until now, the common wisdom was that our species emerged probably rather quickly somewhere in a 'Garden of Eden' that was located most likely in sub-Saharan Africa," says Jean-Jacques Hublin, an author of the study and a director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Now, "I would say the Garden of Eden in Africa is probably Africa — and it's a big, big garden." Hublin was one of the leaders of the decade-long excavation at the Moroccan site, called Jebel Irhoud.

[Continues . . . (http://www.nature.com/news/oldest-homo-sapiens-fossil-claim-rewrites-our-species-history-1.22114)]

NPR has a good story on this (http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/06/07/531804528/315-0000-year-old-fossils-from-morocco-could-be-earliest-recorded-homo-sapiens), and mentions dissenting opinions.

QuoteThe researchers' claim is controversial, however, because anthropologists are still debating exactly what physical features distinguish modern humans from our more primitive ancestors.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Dave on June 08, 2017, 01:22:42 PM
Interesting, very interesting.

The maxilla and mandible look a bit prognathous and narrow, like to see a scale comparison with the others in the homo line.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Claireliontamer on June 08, 2017, 02:06:16 PM
Quote from: Recusant on June 08, 2017, 11:12:19 AM
This is a pretty big discovery, even if they're wrong about the finds being Homo sapiens.


What makes you say they aren't H. sapiens?
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Dave on June 08, 2017, 02:45:48 PM
Quote from: Claireliontamer on June 08, 2017, 02:06:16 PM
Quote from: Recusant on June 08, 2017, 11:12:19 AM
This is a pretty big discovery, even if they're wrong about the finds being Homo sapiens.


What makes you say they aren't H. sapiens?

I think Rec meant "...even they turn out to be wrong about the finds bring Homo sapiens."..."
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on June 08, 2017, 11:15:29 PM
Quote from: Claireliontamer on June 08, 2017, 02:06:16 PM
Quote from: Recusant on June 08, 2017, 11:12:19 AM
This is a pretty big discovery, even if they're wrong about the finds being Homo sapiens.


What makes you say they aren't H. sapiens?

I didn't say they aren't. However, despite the certainty promoted by most of the pop-science articles about this, it's not conclusive that these people were Homo sapiens, per the NPR article's mention of controversy.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Claireliontamer on June 10, 2017, 11:20:50 AM
Quote from: Recusant on June 08, 2017, 11:15:29 PM
Quote from: Claireliontamer on June 08, 2017, 02:06:16 PM
Quote from: Recusant on June 08, 2017, 11:12:19 AM
This is a pretty big discovery, even if they're wrong about the finds being Homo sapiens.


What makes you say they aren't H. sapiens?

I didn't say they aren't. However, despite the certainty promoted by most of the pop-science articles about this, it's not conclusive that these people were Homo sapiens, per the NPR article's mention of controversy.

Sorry, I read what you wrote as you were saying they were wrong about labelling the finds Homo sapiens.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on June 10, 2017, 04:08:47 PM
Yep, I see now how it could be read that way. Thanks for calling me on my ambiguous diction!  :)
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on September 22, 2017, 04:56:56 PM
On the island of Flores, remains of what appear to be the precursors of Homo floresiensis (so-called "hobbits") have been found that are approximately 600,000 years older than the fossils previously found in the Liang Bua cave on the island.

"Hobbit discovery: Hopes 700,000-year-old find could shed new light on evolution" | ABC (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-09/hopes-hobbit-find-could-shed-light-on-human-evolution/7493236?WT.)

QuoteA 700,000-year-old hobbit has been discovered by a team of Australian-led researchers on the Indonesian island of Flores, shedding new light on human evolution.

The dwarf-like ancient relative of modern man stood just one metre tall and has been dated at half a million years older than a hobbit found on the island a decade ago.

Published in the journal Nature, the researchers argue their fossil find descended from Homo erectus, which would suggest an incredible case of evolutionary reversal where human bodies — including brains — actually shrunk.

[. . .]

[University of Wollongong's] Dr van den Bergh [who led the team that found the fragments] said the discovery was significant because the fossils were much older than the previous hobbit find at Liang Boa, known as Homo floresiensis.

"The remains from Mata Menge, they are more than half a million years older than Homo floresiensis — almost 600,000 years older than the hobbit remains from Liang Boa [sic]," he said.

"We know that humans were present on the island 1 million years ago and that's based on dated stone artefacts."

[. . .]

Dr van den Bergh said there were several hypotheses about the find, including that it was a dwarfed version of Homo erectus or that it came from a tinier, earlier ancestor like Homo habilis.

"The problem with that hypothesis was that those creatures have never been found outside Africa," he said.

"Now these new finds show that 700,000 years ago the ancestors of Homo floresiensis were already as small as the hobbit itself and secondly it provides a link between Homo erectus and Homo floresiensis."

An independent reviewer for the Nature journal, Aida Gomez-Robles from George Washington University's Department of Anthropology, backs the link between Homo erectus and Homo floresiensis.

"[However,] there is still a lot of debate about this," Dr Gomez-Robles said.

"Even if I think these fossils descended from Homo erectus, there are other people who think they are descended from Homo habilis."

One of the dissenting voices is ANU biological anthropologist Colin Groves, who believes there are not enough fossils to confirm a link to Homo erectus.

[Continues . . . (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-09/hopes-hobbit-find-could-shed-light-on-human-evolution/7493236?WT.)]
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Dave on December 06, 2017, 06:30:10 PM
"Like trying to extract a flaky pastry pie out of concrete..."

Paraphrase of the words of the man trying to excavate the oldest human skeleton found so far in south Africa.

QuoteAncient human ancestor 'Little Foot' makes public debut.
...
"Little Foot" is the oldest fossil hominid skeleton ever found in Southern Africa, the lead scientist examining the discovery said on Wednesday.
The fossil skeleton takes its name from the small foot bones discovered by scientist Ron Clarke in 1994 when he was sorting through bones in boxes from the Sterkfontein cave system. Even then, Clarke surmised that the fossilized bones came from an Australopithecus species -- the smallish, ape-like human ancestors that roamed this part of Africa millions of years ago.
...
By placing the fossils at well over 3 million years old, Clarke is bound to reignite a debate about the age of the find, which has been disputed over the years. Some scientists have given it a far more recent place on the human evolutionary tree.

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/12/06/africa/human-ancestor-little-foot-unveiled-intl/index.html
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Dave on December 28, 2017, 09:24:12 PM
QuoteAncient DNA and Human Evolution
BBC Inside Science

Twenty years ago, a revolution in the study of human evolution began. A team in Leipzig in Germany successfully extracted DNA from the bones of a Neanderthal man who died about 40,000 years ago. Thirteen years later, the same group unveiled the first complete genome sequence of another Neanderthal individual. Last year, they announced they'd retrieved DNA from much oldest archaic human bones, more than 400,000 years old.

Adam Rutherford talks to Svante Paabo, the scientist has led these remarkable achievements. Professor Paabo and his colleague Janet Kelso at the Max Planck Institute of Biological Anthropology in Leipzig discuss the genes in many European people alive today that originated in Neanderthals and were passed to modern humans when the two species interbred.

Adam also speaks to Johannes Krause who worked on the Neanderthal genome project in Leipzig but is now director of the Max Planck Institute of the Science of Human History. His latest research adds a new layer of intrigue and complexity to the relationship between our species and Neanderthals in deep time.

David Reich at Harvard University focuses on using ancient DNA to uncover the ancestry and movements of modern human hunter-gatherers in Eurasia from about 50,000 years to the Bronze Age, a few thousand years ago. Population movements occur on a cinematic scale, he says. (Podcast only).

The revelations of ancient genetics would not be possible and meaningful without the traditional disciplines of palaeoanthropology and archaeology. Adam goes to Gibraltar to seek the perspective of Clive Finlayson who leads excavations there as director of the Gibraltar Museum. Gibraltar is the most concentrated site of Neanderthal occupation in the world. As well as remains of a young Neanderthal child last year, the Rock's caves have also recently yielded the first example of Neanderthal cave art.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09jqtg5
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Dave on February 07, 2018, 08:35:29 PM
Well, another little surprise, we may not have been "white men" for as long as we thought.

Careful DNA analysis of "Cheddar Man" shows that rather than the fair skinned, dark eyed person he was always expected to be he had dark skin and blue eyes!

QuoteA recent facial reconstruction of a 10,000-year-old skeleton called the "Cheddar Man" has revealed a man with bright blue eyes, slightly curly hair, and dark skin.

"It might surprise the public, but not ancient DNA geneticists," says Mark Thomas, a scientist at the University College London.

That's because a new analysis of the ancient man's DNA proves he's genetically similar to other dark-skinned individuals from the Mesolithic era found in Spain, Hungary, and Luxemborg whose DNA has already been sequenced. The new revelation places the Cheddar Man among a group of hunter-gatherers that are thought to have migrated to Europe at the end of the last Ice Age some 11,000 years ago.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/02/ancient-face-cheddar-man-reconstructed-dna-spd/

I like the comment about cheese being only about 7000 years old - not so sure about the bit I found buried in the back of the fridge. It was rather brownish with blue bits.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: hermes2015 on February 08, 2018, 03:38:06 AM
Quote from: Dave on February 07, 2018, 08:35:29 PM
I like the comment about cheese being only about 7000 years old - not so sure about the bit I found buried in the back of the fridge. It was rather brownish with blue bits.

James Joyce called cheese the corpse of milk.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Dave on February 08, 2018, 04:48:35 AM
Quote from: hermes2015 on February 08, 2018, 03:38:06 AM
Quote from: Dave on February 07, 2018, 08:35:29 PM
I like the comment about cheese being only about 7000 years old - not so sure about the bit I found buried in the back of the fridge. It was rather brownish with blue bits.

Jame Joyce called cheese the corpse of milk.

Then that is a type of necrophagia I will happily indulge in!    :grin:
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Magdalena on February 08, 2018, 06:18:18 AM
Quote from: Dave on February 07, 2018, 08:35:29 PM
Well, another little surprise, we may not have been "white men" for as long as we thought.

Careful DNA analysis of "Cheddar Man" shows that rather than the fair skinned, dark eyed person he was always expected to be he had dark skin and blue eyes!

QuoteA recent facial reconstruction of a 10,000-year-old skeleton called the "Cheddar Man" has revealed a man with bright blue eyes, slightly curly hair, and dark skin.

"It might surprise the public, but not ancient DNA geneticists," says Mark Thomas, a scientist at the University College London.

That's because a new analysis of the ancient man's DNA proves he's genetically similar to other dark-skinned individuals from the Mesolithic era found in Spain, Hungary, and Luxemborg whose DNA has already been sequenced. The new revelation places the Cheddar Man among a group of hunter-gatherers that are thought to have migrated to Europe at the end of the last Ice Age some 11,000 years ago.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/02/ancient-face-cheddar-man-reconstructed-dna-spd/

I like the comment about cheese being only about 7000 years old - not so sure about the bit I found buried in the back of the fridge. It was rather brownish with blue bits.

Quote"If you can measure changes in genetic variances over time," he adds, "You can catch evolution as it happens."
(https://thumbs.gfycat.com/RevolvingDisastrousGallowaycow-max-1mb.gif)

Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Magdalena on February 08, 2018, 06:37:31 AM
QuoteCareful DNA analysis of "Cheddar Man" shows that rather than the fair skinned, dark eyed person he was always expected to be he had dark skin and blue eyes!
(https://naij-ask.gencdn.com/questions/25670-ba7ae8-6.jpg)
Not bad.  :tellmemore:
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Dave on February 08, 2018, 08:29:13 AM
Yes, seems it is rare in Africa, but I think it is a beautiful combination.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on February 23, 2018, 04:06:22 AM
A summary of a pair of papers on recent advances in DNA tracking of human pre-history:

"Ancient DNA tells tales of humans' migrant history" | ScienceDaily (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180221131851.htm)

QuoteFueled by advances in analyzing DNA from the bones of ancient humans, scientists have dramatically expanded the number of samples studied -- revealing vast and surprising migrations and genetic mixing of populations in our prehistoric past.

Scientists once could reconstruct humanity's distant past only from the mute testimony of ancient settlements, bones, and artifacts.

No longer. Now there's a powerful new approach for illuminating the world before the dawn of written history -- reading the actual genetic code of our ancient ancestors. Two papers published in the journal Nature on February 21, 2018, more than double the number of ancient humans whose DNA has been analyzed and published to 1,336 individuals -- up from just 10 in 2014.

The new flood of genetic information represents a "coming of age" for the nascent field of ancient DNA, says lead author David Reich, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Harvard Medical School -- and it upends cherished archeological orthodoxy. "When we look at the data, we see surprises again and again and again," says Reich.

Together with his lab's previous work and that of other pioneers of ancient DNA, the Big Picture message is that our prehistoric ancestors were not nearly as homebound as once thought. "There was a view that migration is a very rare process in human evolution," Reich explains. Not so, says the ancient DNA. Actually, Reich says, "the orthodoxy -- the assumption that present-day people are directly descended from the people who always lived in that same area -- is wrong almost everywhere."

Instead, "the view that's emerging -- for which David is an eloquent advocate -- is that human populations are moving and mixing all the time," says John Novembre, a computational biologist at the University of Chicago.

[Continues . . . (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180221131851.htm)]
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Dave on February 23, 2018, 06:11:47 AM
And this is amply demonstrated by the recent work done on the Beaker People of 4500 years ago.

QuoteAncient-genome study finds Bronze Age 'Beaker culture' invaded Britain
Famous bell-shaped pots associated with group of immigrants who may have displaced Neolithic farmers.

Around 4,500 years ago, a mysterious craze for bell-shaped pottery swept across prehistoric Europe. Archaeologists have debated the significance of the pots — artefacts that define the 'Bell Beaker' culture — for more than a century. Some argue that they were the Bronze Age's hottest fashion, shared across different groups of people. But others see them as evidence for an immense migration of 'Beaker folk' across the continent.

Now, one of the biggest ever ancient-genome studies suggests both ideas are true. The study, posted on bioRxiv on 9 May1, analysed the genomes of 170 ancient Europeans and compared them to hundreds of other ancient and modern genomes. In Iberia and central Europe, skeletons found near Bell Beaker artefacts share few genetic ties — suggesting that they were not one migrating population. But in Britain, individuals connected to Beaker pots seem to be a distinct, genetically related group that almost wholly replaced the island's earlier inhabitants (see 'Bell Beaker fashion').

https://www.nature.com/news/ancient-genome-study-finds-bronze-age-beaker-culture-invaded-britain-1.21996

Or, as The Sun has it:
QuoteHow the first Britons were wiped out by boozy Beaker people who invaded the UK and their blood STILL runs through us today

And the Torygraph:
QuoteNo one living in Britain 'truly British', scientists find as Stonehenge builders were replaced by European immigrants
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Dave on February 23, 2018, 07:51:52 AM
And, linking this to one of my favourite subjects, origins of language, I offer

QuoteSteppe migration rekindles debate on language origin
Eurasian region gains ground as birthplace of Indo-European tongues.

https://www.nature.com/news/steppe-migration-rekindles-debate-on-language-origin-1.16935

Based on DNA analysis again but involving a different pottery style - just to add another piece to the jigsaw puzzle!
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on March 01, 2018, 06:01:59 AM
Good free association chain. Who am I to break it?  ;)

"Language started 1.5m years earlier than previously thought as scientists say Homo Erectus were first to talk" | The Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/20/language-started-15m-years-earlier-previously-thought-scientists/)

QuoteIn the beginning was the word. And it was first spoken by Homo Erectus, according to a controversial new theory.

Most paleontologists believe language emerged with the evolution of Homo Sapiens around 350,000 years ago.

But Daniel Everett, Professor of Global Studies, at Bentley University, Massachusetts, author of How Language Began, claims our earlier ancestors must have been able to talk to each other.

Prof Everett, claims that Homo Erectus, who lived from 1.8 million years ago, invented language and used it to hunt and build boats to colonise remote islands such as Flores in Indonesia and Crete, where fossils have been found even though there was never a land link with Africa.

Speaking at the AAAS annual meeting in Austin, Texas, he said: "Everybody talks about Homo Erectus as a stupid ape-like creature, which of course describes us just as well, and yet what I want to emphasize is that Erectus was the smartest creature that had ever walked the Earth.

"They had planning abilities. They made tools. But the most incredible tools that Erectus made were vessels for sailing the open ocean.

"Oceans were never a barrier to the travels of Erectus. They travelled all over the world. It was intentional they needed craft and they needed to take groups of twenty or so at least to get to those places.

"Erectus needed language when they were sailing to the island of Flores. They couldn't have simply caught a ride on a floating log because then they would have been washed out to see when they hit the current. They needed to be able to paddle.

"And if they paddled they needed to be able to say 'paddle there' or 'don't paddle.' You need communication with symbols not just grunts. They accomplished too much for this to simply be the sort of communication that we see in other species without symbols."

[Continues . . . (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/20/language-started-15m-years-earlier-previously-thought-scientists/)]
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Dave on March 01, 2018, 07:02:44 AM
Good link, Recusant. A means to convey ideas, about the concrete things at least, would seem essential in most forms of cooperative endeavour. I often wonder where the distinction between, "Hoo-oot!", or, "Gru-unt!",  and "Snake!" stops just being a warning noise and becomes a word. As I understand it some social monkeys have sounds that have specific meaning. Or "words". How many words do you need to qualify a means of communication as, "language"?

But, we went beyond that to expand our vocabulary, and that has so many implications in terms of social activity beyond the immediate needs of simply staying alive in the present moment - the future beckoned.

Emboldened sentence added in edit.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on March 17, 2018, 07:30:54 PM
I expect linguists and others have spent plenty of ink and paper, and used a fair amount of air arguing over the "how many words/how complex" question regarding what constitutes the minimum requirement for qualifying as "a language."  :)





Back to news: "Modern humans interbred with Denisovans twice in history" | ScienceDaily (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180315140718.htm)

QuoteModern humans co-existed and interbred not only with Neanderthals, but also with another species of archaic humans, the mysterious Denisovans. While developing a new genome-analysis method for comparing whole genomes between modern human and Denisovan populations, researchers unexpectedly discovered two distinct episodes of Denisovan genetic intermixing, or admixing, between the two. This suggests a more diverse genetic history than previously thought between the Denisovans and modern humans.

In a paper published in Cell on March 15, scientists at the University of Washington in Seattle determined that the genomes of two groups of modern humans with Denisovan ancestry -- individuals from Oceania and individuals from East Asia -- are uniquely different, indicating that there were two separate episodes of Denisovan admixture.

"What was known already was that Oceanian individuals, notably Papuan individuals, have significant amounts of Denisovan ancestry," says senior author Sharon Browning, a research professor of biostatistics, University of Washington School of Public Health. The genomes of modern Papuan individuals contain approximately 5% Denisovan ancestry."

Researchers also knew Denisovan ancestry is present to a lesser degree throughout Asia. The assumption was that the ancestry in Asia was achieved through migration, coming from Oceanian populations. "But in this new work with East Asians, we find a second set of Denisovan ancestry that we do not find in the South Asians and Papuans," she says. "This Denisovan ancestry in East Asians seems to be something they acquired themselves."

[Continues . . . (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180315140718.htm)]
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: xSilverPhinx on March 25, 2018, 02:57:31 PM
I thought this was interesting:

Ancient climate shifts may have sparked human ingenuity and networking (https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ancient-climate-shifts-may-have-sparked-human-ingenuity-and-networking)

QuoteDramatic shifts in the East African climate may have driven toolmaking advances and the development of trading networks among Homo sapiens or their close relatives by the Middle Stone Age, roughly 320,000 years ago.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on May 02, 2018, 10:19:22 PM
A parallel story to the navigating Neanderthals (http://www.happyatheistforum.com/forum/index.php?topic=14125.msg374252#msg374252) in the thread dedicated to them: It appears hominins were crossing sea barriers much earlier then Neanderthal. Whether intentionally or not in this case isn't clear, but I wouldn't discount that it was intentional.

"Humans were present in the Philippine islands as early as 700,000 years ago" | Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (http://www.shh.mpg.de/909923/humans-philippines)

QuoteSince the Quaternary era (2.6 Million years ago), the string of islands that make up the modern nation of the Phillipines have been isolated from mainland Southeast Asia by deep sea straits. Previously, the oldest confirmed human presence in the Philippines was of Homo aff. sapiens and dated to 67,000 years ago. The Kalinga site, excavated since 2014 and dated to 709,000 years by several physico-chemical methods (electro-spin resonance, disequilibrium in the argon family and in the uranium family, palaeomagnetism), proves that the first colonization was actually ten times older, dating back to the early Middle Pleistocene.

The archaeological excavations have uncovered various animal remains, among which are the monitor lizard, the box turtle, the Philippine brown deer, the stegodon (a cousin of the elephant) and the rhinoceros, which has been extinct in the Philippines since at least 100,000 years ago. For this latter species, Rhinoceros philippinensis, an almost complete individual was recovered in association with dozens of prehistoric stone tools that researchers have determined were made on anvils. The rhinoceros skeleton further shows several butchery marks, such as cut marks on the ribs and on the foot bones and percussion marks to break the arm bones, allowing extraction of the marrow. These archaeological findings are indirect proof of a very ancient presence of early hominins on the island of Luzon.

How these animals and hominins would have reached the islands at this time is still unclear. While some herbivores are known to be excellent long distance swimmers and could have swum to the Philippines during one of the low sea level periods, this would not have been possible for humans. The researchers hypothesize that an ancestor of Homo sapiens could have mastered sailing skills, or that this colonization was accidental, perhaps thanks to natural rafts such as floating mangrove trees that are occasionally broken off by typhoons, a rare but well-documented phenomenon.

Abstract (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0072-8) from the paper:

QuoteOver 60 years ago, stone tools and remains of megafauna were discovered on the Southeast Asian islands of Flores, Sulawesi and Luzon, and a Middle Pleistocene colonization by Homo erectus was initially proposed to have occurred on these islands. However, until the discovery of Homo floresiensis in 2003, claims of the presence of archaic hominins on Wallacean islands were hypothetical owing to the absence of in situ fossils and/or stone artefacts that were excavated from well-documented stratigraphic contexts, or because secure numerical dating methods of these sites were lacking. As a consequence, these claims were generally treated with scepticism.

Here we describe the results of recent excavations at Kalinga in the Cagayan Valley of northern Luzon in the Philippines that have yielded 57 stone tools associated with an almost-complete disarticulated skeleton of Rhinoceros philippinensis, which shows clear signs of butchery, together with other fossil fauna remains attributed to stegodon, Philippine brown deer, freshwater turtle and monitor lizard. All finds originate from a clay-rich bone bed that was dated to between 777 and 631 thousand years ago using electron-spin resonance methods that were applied to tooth enamel and fluvial quartz. This evidence pushes back the proven period of colonization of the Philippines by hundreds of thousands of years, and furthermore suggests that early overseas dispersal in Island South East Asia by premodern hominins took place several times during the Early and Middle Pleistocene stages. The Philippines therefore may have had a central role in southward movements into Wallacea, not only of Pleistocene megafauna, but also of archaic hominins.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Dave on May 03, 2018, 04:34:50 AM
Have not read srticle yet but . . .Thinking about intentionality it would seem strange to me that enough hominins could accidentally sail the high sesse, in a short enough period, to estsblish a biable gene pool population.

And thinking about "high seas" would the geology of the area provide "stepping stone" islands during ice ages? We have lost a lot of ancient archaeology due to rising sea level.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Bluenose on May 03, 2018, 04:56:30 AM
Yes Dave.  Observing that humans do not abide by the Wallace Line demarcation like other larger mammals, It would seem that intentionality is the big difference.  Other large mammals might accidentally cross the watery boundary on occasion but not in sufficient numbers to establish a breeding population.  Humans, and no doubt at least some of our earlier cousins, had the ability to deliberately cross such oceanic barriers and discovering unexploited resources on the other side they established successful "colonies" in the new lands.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Dave on May 03, 2018, 05:12:07 AM
Annoyingly these sequences gives no indication of era, but looks like there msy have been shorter sea paths than at present.

https://youtu.be/H_wLmpkJ6Fw


Thanks, Bluenose, now I gave to see what the "Wallace Line" is - though it does ring a bell in a dim memory corner.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Bluenose on May 03, 2018, 05:17:43 AM
Hi Dave, I think this explains it fairly well.  The Wkikpedia page is also informative.

(https://orig00.deviantart.net/b96d/f/2017/104/6/3/science_fact_friday__wallace_s_line_by_alithographica-db5tyo5.png)
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Dave on May 03, 2018, 08:56:32 AM
Yeah, I had already looked it up thanks.

(Always feel a bit sad for Wallace, derserves more fame than he gets.)
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Tank on May 07, 2018, 06:29:13 AM
Quote from: Dave on May 03, 2018, 08:56:32 AM
Yeah, I had already looked it up thanks.

(Always feel a bit sad for Wallace, derserves more fame than he gets.)
It's getting better. When I was a kid he was never mentioned.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on August 13, 2018, 05:48:55 PM
Perhaps this hypothesis is correct, but I'm inclined to think that the lacking component was imagination. Homo erectus travelled at least as far as Asia, and existed for considerably longer than Homo sapiens has been around.

"Laziness helped lead to extinction of Homo erectus" | ScienceDaily (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180810091542.htm)

QuoteNew archaeological research from The Australian National University (ANU) has found that Homo erectus, an extinct species of primitive humans, went extinct in part because they were 'lazy'.

An archaeological excavation of ancient human populations in the Arabian Peninsula during the Early Stone Age, found that Homo erectus used 'least-effort strategies' for tool making and collecting resources.

This 'laziness' paired with an inability to adapt to a changing climate likely played a role in the species going extinct, according to lead researcher Dr Ceri Shipton of the ANU School of Culture, History and Language.

"They really don't seem to have been pushing themselves," Dr Shipton said.

"I don't get the sense they were explorers looking over the horizon. They didn't have that same sense of wonder that we have."

Dr Shipton said this was evident in the way the species made their stone tools and collected resources.

"To make their stone tools they would use whatever rocks they could find lying around their camp, which were mostly of comparatively low quality to what later stone tool makers used," he said.

"At the site we looked at there was a big rocky outcrop of quality stone just a short distance away up a small hill.

"But rather than walk up the hill they would just use whatever bits had rolled down and were lying at the bottom.

"When we looked at the rocky outcrop there were no signs of any activity, no artefacts and no quarrying of the stone.

"They knew it was there, but because they had enough adequate resources they seem to have thought, 'why bother?'."

[Continues . . . (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180810091542.htm)]
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Dave on August 13, 2018, 06:44:02 PM
Imaginstion or innovation, did H.E. have the "smarts" to develop beyond those limits? Even a middling IQ is not needed to spread far and wide, many other mammals have done it - and insects, birds . . . It seems that intelligence vomes in varieties, chimps have enough to use a hsmmer and snvil to crack nuts or a stuck to extract termites, finding a sharp rock, recognising its usefulness (maybe finder #1 cut him/herself?) is only avtad sbovevtge chimps. Fashioning one for oneself is a bit of a leap but chimps "fashion" their termite extractor.

(I have an idea for a cartoon about how the wheel developed, now got the seed for one abiut how our early cousins discovered knapping - not being able to find a naturally sharp enough rock our hero threw one, hard, at the other rocks in frustration . . .)
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: xSilverPhinx on August 15, 2018, 12:41:53 PM
Quote from: Recusant on August 13, 2018, 05:48:55 PM
Perhaps this hypothesis is correct, but I'm inclined to think that the lacking component was imagination. Homo erectus travelled at least as far as Asia, and existed for considerably longer than Homo sapiens has been around.

"Laziness helped lead to extinction of Homo erectus" | ScienceDaily (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180810091542.htm)

QuoteNew archaeological research from The Australian National University (ANU) has found that Homo erectus, an extinct species of primitive humans, went extinct in part because they were 'lazy'.

An archaeological excavation of ancient human populations in the Arabian Peninsula during the Early Stone Age, found that Homo erectus used 'least-effort strategies' for tool making and collecting resources.

This 'laziness' paired with an inability to adapt to a changing climate likely played a role in the species going extinct, according to lead researcher Dr Ceri Shipton of the ANU School of Culture, History and Language.

"They really don't seem to have been pushing themselves," Dr Shipton said.

"I don't get the sense they were explorers looking over the horizon. They didn't have that same sense of wonder that we have."

Dr Shipton said this was evident in the way the species made their stone tools and collected resources.

"To make their stone tools they would use whatever rocks they could find lying around their camp, which were mostly of comparatively low quality to what later stone tool makers used," he said.

"At the site we looked at there was a big rocky outcrop of quality stone just a short distance away up a small hill.

"But rather than walk up the hill they would just use whatever bits had rolled down and were lying at the bottom.

"When we looked at the rocky outcrop there were no signs of any activity, no artefacts and no quarrying of the stone.

"They knew it was there, but because they had enough adequate resources they seem to have thought, 'why bother?'."

[Continues . . . (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180810091542.htm)]

:notsure: But...laziness is the law of the universe! :P

Seriously though, most systems exist in a state of lowest energy, biological organisms are no different. Maybe they didn't think there was a good tradeoff...why bother spending hard-earned energy walking a mile to quarry stones when you have stones that could more or less do the job lying around camp? That energy could be better spent looking for more food or mating and generating more descendants.

The archaeologists' conclusions are rather lazy, I think.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: xSilverPhinx on August 15, 2018, 01:02:51 PM
Just to add, but taking this in a slightly different direction, I find it fascinating that evolution favoured a brain like ours in spite of it consuming a disproportionate amount of oxygen and energy. Of course to many of us with ready access to food these days we don't necessarily think of energy in those terms, but to a hunter-gatherer society, and to most other animals, energy is valuable. To have a brain like ours means having less energy to hunt or gather food, make babies and carry them to term and other necessary actions to keep the species going...it's analogous to having to sustain and nourish a huge parasite. There must have been a huge tradeoff. It doesn't take much imagination to figure out in what ways, too: more resourcefulness when it comes to seeking food and defending territory, more adaptability to change, better able to keep track of social interactions, etc.,   

The fact that we would be a rather pathetic species without our brains -- we have no speed, little physical strength, no fangs, no claws etc., -- also must have favoured that extra something in order for our species to survive.

But, as a species, we are relatively new. Definitely successful (perhaps overly so) but we're still the new kids on the block. Other hominids have lived and survived for way longer before being wiped out. Not that older hominids will necessarily outthink us but they must have had something special under the hood as well. It's a real pity we can't put a Neanderthal in an fMRI and investigate its thought processes.  :(
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on August 22, 2018, 07:49:58 PM
A significant element in the process of evolution is happenstance. Or to use plain language, just dumb luck. The brains of our species have been our key to success, but I think that the extent to which evolution could be said to favor those brains may come down to luck as much as anything. At one point, our species nearly disappeared (https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/22/163397584/how-human-beings-almost-vanished-from-earth-in-70-000-b-c). It's certainly possible that it was our brains that made the difference and ensured our survival, but it's equally possible that it was something like an improvement in the weather.

What we're doing to our planet gives reason to doubt that our brains are useful for really long-term survival, as opposed to our close relatives who existed for relatively longer chunks of time than we've been around, and left the planet more or less as healthy as they found it. I think that there is potential in us to overcome the problems we've made for ourselves, though.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on November 27, 2018, 07:39:12 PM
I've personally never thought that the 'just the once' hypothesis (in which anatomically modern humans only interbred with Neanderthal on a single occasion) made any sense.

"Study suggests multiple instances of inter-breeding between Neanderthal and early humans" | PhysOrg (https://phys.org/news/2018-11-multiple-instances-inter-breeding-neanderthal-early.html)

QuoteA pair of researchers at Temple University has found evidence that suggests Neanderthals mated and produced offspring with anatomically modern humans multiple times—not just once, as has been suggested by prior research. In their paper published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, Fernando Villanea and Joshua Schraiber describe their genetic analysis of East Asian and European people and how they compared to people from other places. Fabrizio Mafessoni with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology offers a News and Views piece on the work done by the pair in the same journal issue.

In recent years, scientists have discovered that early humans moving out of Africa encountered Neanderthals living in parts of what is now Europe and Eastern Asia. In comparing Neanderthal DNA with modern humans, researchers have found that there was a least one pairing that led to offspring, which is reflected in the DNA of humans—approximately 2 percent of the DNA in non-African humans today is Neanderthal. In this new effort, the researchers have found evidence that suggests there was more than one such encounter.

[Continues . . . (https://phys.org/news/2018-11-multiple-instances-inter-breeding-neanderthal-early.html)]

A full pre-print version of the paper is available: "Spectrum of Neandertal introgression across modern-day humans indicates multiple episodes of human-Neandertal interbreeding" | BioRxiv (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/08/30/343087.full.pdf+html)

QuoteAbstract:

Neandertals and anatomically modern humans overlapped geographically for a period of over 30,000 years following human migration out of Africa. During this period, Neandertals and humans interbred, as evidenced by Neandertal portions of the genome carried by non-African individuals today. A key observation is that the proportion of Neandertal ancestry is ∼12-20% higher in East Asian individuals relative to European individuals.

Here, we explore various demographic models that could explain this observation. These include distinguishing between a single admixture event and multiple Neandertal contributions to either population, and the hypothesis that reduced Neandertal ancestry in modern Europeans resulted from more recent admixture with a ghost population that lacked a Neandertal ancestry component (the "dilution" hypothesis). In order to summarize the asymmetric pattern of Neandertal allele frequencies, we compile the joint fragment frequency spectrum (FFS) of European and East Asian Neandertal fragments and compare it to both analytical theory and data simulated under various models of admixture.

Using maximum likelihood and machine learning, we found that a simple model of a single admixture does not fit the empirical data, and instead favor a model of multiple episodes of gene flow into both European and East Asian populations. These findings indicate more long-term, complex interaction between humans and Neandertals than previously appreciated.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Icarus on November 27, 2018, 11:10:26 PM
That interbreeding may have occurred is not the least surprising. Not improbable either.  Sex drives are powerful enough to cause males to attempt interbreeding with sheep and whatever else is at hand. (Hand: no pun intended)
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Ecurb Noselrub on November 29, 2018, 12:58:04 AM
Quote from: Icarus on November 27, 2018, 11:10:26 PM
That interbreeding may have occurred is not the least surprising. Not improbable either.  Sex drives are powerful enough to cause males to attempt interbreeding with sheep and whatever else is at hand. (Hand: no pun intended)

I did NOT have sex with that sheep!

It seems more and more that they were not really all that different from us.  Maybe no more different than modern races, which aren't that different at all.  I suspect there was a whole lot of shakin' going on.   
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Tank on November 29, 2018, 12:03:57 PM
Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on November 29, 2018, 12:58:04 AM

I did NOT have sex with that sheep!

Really? I was sure it was ewe!
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Ecurb Noselrub on November 30, 2018, 01:08:14 AM
Quote from: Tank on November 29, 2018, 12:03:57 PM
Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on November 29, 2018, 12:58:04 AM

I did NOT have sex with that sheep!

Really? I was sure it was ewe!

Ewe just had to ram that one through, didn't you?
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Tank on November 30, 2018, 06:34:15 AM
Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on November 30, 2018, 01:08:14 AM
Quote from: Tank on November 29, 2018, 12:03:57 PM
Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on November 29, 2018, 12:58:04 AM

I did NOT have sex with that sheep!

Really? I was sure it was ewe!

Ewe just had to ram that one through, didn't you?

I felt I should Shepard that train of thought.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on January 17, 2019, 04:52:18 PM
Interesting story about a study which appears to show that there was a fairly widespread hybrid of Neandethals and Denisovans that contributed to the modern human genome.

"Artificial intelligence applied to the genome identifies an unknown human ancestor" | ScienceDaily (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190116122650.htm)

QuoteBy combining deep learning algorithms and statistical methods, investigators from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE), the Centro Nacional de Análisis Genómico (CNAG-CRG) of the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) and the Institute of Genomics at the University of Tartu have identified, in the genome of Asian individuals, the footprint of a new hominid who cross bred with its ancestors tens of thousands of years ago.

Modern human DNA computational analysis suggests that the extinct species was a hybrid of Neanderthals and Denisovans and cross bred with Out of Africa modern humans in Asia. This finding would explain that the hybrid found this summer in the caves of Denisova -- the offspring of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father -- was not an isolated case, but rather was part of a more general introgression process.

The study, published in Nature Communications, uses deep learning for the first time ever to account for human evolution, paving the way for the application of this technology in other questions in biology, genomics and evolution.

[Continues . . . (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190116122650.htm)]

Full paper available: "Approximate Bayesian computation with deep learning supports a third archaic introgression in Asia and Oceania" | Nature Communications (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-08089-7)

QuoteAbstract:

Since anatomically modern humans dispersed Out of Africa, the evolutionary history of Eurasian populations has been marked by introgressions from presently extinct hominins. Some of these introgressions have been identified using sequenced ancient genomes (Neanderthal and Denisova).

Other introgressions have been proposed for still unidentified groups using the genetic diversity present in current human populations. We built a demographic model based on deep learning in an Approximate Bayesian Computation framework to infer the evolutionary history of Eurasian populations including past introgression events in Out of Africa populations fitting the current genetic evidence.

In addition to the reported Neanderthal and Denisovan introgressions, our results support a third introgression in all Asian and Oceanian populations from an archaic population. This population is either related to the Neanderthal-Denisova clade or diverged early from the Denisova lineage. We propose the use of deep learning methods for clarifying situations with high complexity in evolutionary genomics.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on April 11, 2019, 04:04:39 PM
An ancient hominin found in a cave in the Philippines is potentially a new species, being called Homo luzonensis. Some of its traits appear related to the australopithecines, just as some traits of Homo florensis do. This may point to an earlier spread of hominins from Africa, before the known migrations of Homo erectus.

"New species of ancient human discovered in the Philippines" | National Geographic (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/04/new-species-ancient-human-discovered-luzon-philippines-homo-luzonensis/)

QuoteHumankind's tangled shrub of ancestry now has a new branch: Researchers in the Philippines announced today that they have discovered a species of ancient human previously unknown to science.

The small-bodied hominin, named Homo luzonensis, lived on the island of Luzon at least 50,000 to 67,000 years ago. The hominin—identified from a total of seven teeth and six small bones—hosts a patchwork of ancient and more advanced features. The landmark discovery, announced in Nature on Wednesday (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1067-9), makes Luzon the third Southeast Asian island in the last 15 years to bear signs of unexpectedly ancient human activity.

[. . .]

While evolution sculpted H. luzonensis into a small form similar to that of H. floresiensis, we don't know which island conditions drove the differences between the two species. Also, while a barrage of studies makes clear that interspecies unions happened regularly, we don't know whether H. luzonensis ancestors interacted or bred with other hominin species that lived in Asia at the time, such as the enigmatic Denisovans.

"You could see this as kind of a natural experiment in human evolution," says Gerrit van den Bergh of the University of Wollongong, an expert on H. floresiensis.

Another major unknown is how the ancestors of H. luzonensis even reached the Philippines. In 2016, researchers unveiled stone tools on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi that date to between 118,000 and 194,000 years old (https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/01/160113-stone-tool-sulawesi-hobbit-flores-archaeology/)—or at least 60,000 years older than the island's oldest known modern humans. Taken alongside the remains from Flores and Luzon, the sites suggest that ancient hominin dispersal throughout the region wasn't necessarily as rare—or as accidental—as researchers once thought.

[Continues . . . (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/04/new-species-ancient-human-discovered-luzon-philippines-homo-luzonensis/)]

"Homo luzonensis: New human species found in Philippines" | BBC (https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47873072)

QuoteThe Indonesian island of Flores was home to a species called Homo floresiensis, nicknamed The Hobbits because of their small stature. They are thought to have survived there from at least 100,000 years ago until 50,000 years ago - potentially overlapping with the arrival of modern humans.

Interestingly, scientists have also argued that Homo floresiensis shows physical features that are reminiscent of those found in australopithecines. But other researchers have argued that the Hobbits were descended from Homo erectus but that some of their anatomy reverted to a more primitive state.

In an article published in Nature, Matthew Tocheri from Lakehead University in Canada, who was not involved with the research, commented: "Explaining the many similarities that H. floresiensis and H. luzonensis share with early Homo species and australopiths as independently acquired reversals to a more ancestral-like hominin anatomy, owing to evolution in isolated island settings, seems like a stretch of coincidence too far."

[Full article (https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47873072)]
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on May 02, 2019, 05:14:43 AM
Denisovan remains apparently found in Tibet at a high altitude. The first example found other than those from the Denisova cave.

"Major discovery suggests Denisovans lived in Tibet 160,000 years ago" | NewScientist (https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24232283-700-major-discovery-suggests-denisovans-lived-in-tibet-160000-years-ago/)

QuoteThe first fossil of our cousins the Denisovans ever to be discovered outside Siberia has been identified in Tibet. It hints that fossils from these extinct humans are more widespread than we thought, and may help settle a long-running debate about our origins.

Denisovans were discovered in 2010, when the DNA from an ancient bone fragment found in Denisova cave in Siberia was sequenced. Since then, a few other fossil fragments have been uncovered in the cave, and genetic analysis has discovered that many people in China and South-East Asia carry a little Denisovan DNA. This reveals that our ancestors must once have lived alongside and interbred with our cousins.

Studies like these also found that people in Tibet carry a specific Denisovan gene that allows red blood cells to cope with low oxygen levels, helping people to live at high altitude.

Jean-Jacques Hublin of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, wondered if any human remains previously found in Tibet might really be Denisovan.

He and his colleagues examined a jawbone discovered in 1980 in Baishiya Karst cave, in Tibet's Jiangla river valley. They found that the shape of the jaw and large size of the teeth are different to those of modern humans.

Radioisotope dating suggested that the fossil is 160,000 years old at least, which is tens of thousands of years before our own species is thought to have reached the Tibetan Plateau.

No DNA could be extracted from the fossil, but analysing collagen protein in its teeth confirmed the jawbone came from a Denisovan, because modern humans and our other extinct cousins the Neanderthals have different genes for collagen.

[Continues . . . (https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24232283-700-major-discovery-suggests-denisovans-lived-in-tibet-160000-years-ago/)]

The BBC has a story on this paper as well. "Denisovans: Primitive humans lived at high altitudes" (https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48107498).
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on July 10, 2019, 06:58:44 PM
A very early anatomically modern human (AMH) skull has been identified. It was found decades ago in Greece, but was previously believed to be a Neanderthal. It provides evidence that AMH were coming out of Africa much earlier than previously believed (though they--we may not have gained a successful foothold at that time). The press release below is good, but I'm hoping for more in-depth articles about this soon.

"'Oldest remains' outside Africa reset human migration clock" | Agence France Presse (https://www.afp.com/en/news/15/oldest-remains-outside-africa-reset-human-migration-clock-doc-1ik2xo1)

QuoteA 210,000-year-old skull has been identified as the earliest modern human remains found outside Africa, putting the clock back on mankind's arrival in Europe by more than 150,000 years, researchers said Wednesday.

In a startling discovery that changes our understanding of how modern man populated Eurasia, the findings support the idea that Homo sapiens made several, sometimes unsuccessful migrations from Africa over tens of thousands of years.

Southeast Europe has long been considered a major transport corridor for modern humans from Africa. But until now the earliest evidence of Homo sapiens on the continent dated back only around 50,000 years.

There has however been a number of discoveries indicating the ancient presence of Neanderthals -- an early human cousin -- across the continent.

Two fossilised but badly damaged skulls unearthed in a Greek cave in the 1970s were identified as Neanderthal at the time.

In findings presented in the journal Nature, an international team of researchers used state-of-the art computer modelling and uranium dating to re-examine the two skulls.

One of them, named Apidima 2 after the cave in which the pair were found, proved to be 170,000 years old and did indeed belong to a Neanderthal.

But, to the shock of scientists, the skull named Apidima 1 pre-dated Apidima 2 by as much as 40,000 years, and was determined to be that of a Homo sapiens.

That makes the skull by far the oldest modern human remains ever discovered on the continent, and older than any known Homo sapiens specimen outside of Africa.

[Continues (https://www.afp.com/en/news/15/oldest-remains-outside-africa-reset-human-migration-clock-doc-1ik2xo1)]

Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: xSilverPhinx on July 13, 2019, 01:08:53 AM
^ That's very interesting! 8)
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Dark Lightning on July 13, 2019, 03:06:09 AM
False. I have this one book reprinted in the millions of copies that completely does not cover any of this "evolution" stuff. It MUST be correct! What!?  :P

[drops god hat] I truly love seeing this sort of information! It's so neat to see all the little pieces of the puzzle getting put together.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Icarus on July 13, 2019, 03:14:25 AM
I have one of those books too DL.   I also have a few other books that do not entirely agree with the first one or the third one....or any of the several others.   
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: xSilverPhinx on July 13, 2019, 03:29:11 PM
Quote from: Dark Lightning on July 13, 2019, 03:06:09 AM
False. I have this one book reprinted in the millions of copies that completely does not cover any of this "evolution" stuff. It MUST be correct! What!?  :P

[drops god hat] I truly love seeing this sort of information! It's so neat to see all the little pieces of the puzzle getting put together.

Peer-reviewed by other sheepherders. Must be right.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Dark Lightning on July 13, 2019, 09:12:52 PM
Quote from: xSilverPhinx on July 13, 2019, 03:29:11 PM
Quote from: Dark Lightning on July 13, 2019, 03:06:09 AM
False. I have this one book reprinted in the millions of copies that completely does not cover any of this "evolution" stuff. It MUST be correct! What!?  :P

[drops god hat] I truly love seeing this sort of information! It's so neat to see all the little pieces of the puzzle getting put together.

Peer-reviewed by other sheepherders. Must be right.

:lol: Got me there! Must be.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: xSilverPhinx on July 14, 2019, 02:57:26 PM
Quote from: Dark Lightning on July 13, 2019, 09:12:52 PM
Quote from: xSilverPhinx on July 13, 2019, 03:29:11 PM
Quote from: Dark Lightning on July 13, 2019, 03:06:09 AM
False. I have this one book reprinted in the millions of copies that completely does not cover any of this "evolution" stuff. It MUST be correct! What!?  :P

[drops god hat] I truly love seeing this sort of information! It's so neat to see all the little pieces of the puzzle getting put together.

Peer-reviewed by other sheepherders. Must be right.

:lol: Got me there! Must be.

:grin:
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on July 30, 2019, 04:52:41 PM
An intriguing finding indicates that other subspecies than Neanderthal and the Denisovans contributed to the modern human genome.

"Out of Africa and into an archaic human melting pot" | ScienceDaily (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190715094918.htm)

QuoteGenetic analysis has revealed that the ancestors of modern humans interbred with at least five different archaic human groups as they moved out of Africa and across Eurasia.

While two of the archaic groups are currently known -- the Neandertals and their sister group the Denisovans from Asia -- the others remain unnamed and have only been detected as traces of DNA surviving in different modern populations. Island Southeast Asia appears to have been a particular hotbed of diversity.

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers from the University of Adelaide's Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD) have mapped the location of past "mixing events" (analysed from existing scientific literature) by contrasting the levels of archaic ancestry in the genomes of present-day populations around the world.

"Each of us carry within ourselves the genetic traces of these past mixing events," says first author Dr João Teixeira, Australian Research Council Research Associate, ACAD, at the University of Adelaide. "These archaic groups were widespread and genetically diverse, and they survive in each of us. Their story is an integral part of how we came to be.

But as the ancestors of modern humans travelled further east they met and mixed with at least four other groups of archaic humans.

"Island Southeast Asia was already a crowded place when what we call modern humans first reached the region just before 50,000 years ago," says Dr Teixeira. "At least three other archaic human groups appear to have occupied the area, and the ancestors of modern humans mixed with them before the archaic humans became extinct."

[Continues . . . (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190715094918.htm)]





While I'm here, a couple more articles about Apidima 1, the recently identified early anatomically modern human skull.

"The Story of Humans and Neanderthals in Europe Is Being Rewritten" | The Atlantic (https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/apidima-greek-skull-oldest-human-fossil-outside-africa/593563/)

"Apidima Skull Is Earliest Homo Sapiens Outside Africa, Say Researchers" | Discover (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/deadthings/2019/07/10/apidima-skull/#.XUBlRfJKhdg)
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on September 13, 2019, 03:09:39 PM
Something about ancestors rather than cousins:

"Ancient fossil skull discovered in Ethiopia fills critical gap in human evolution" | ABC (https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-08-29/ancient-fossil-skull-found-in-ethiopia-fills-human-evolution-gap/11444130)

Quote
(https://www.abc.net.au/cm/rimage/11444028-3x2-large.jpg?v=2)
The fossil skull is the most complete specimen ever found in sediments older than 3 million years.
Image Credit: Dale Omari/Cleveland Museum of Natural History





The oldest most complete skull of a human ancestor ever discovered was found by chance by a local herder tending to his flock of goats in Ethiopia.

The rare fossil is all that remains of a hominin with a brain the size of chimpanzee's, that roamed shrublands surrounding a lake 3.8 million years ago.

"This specimen is the most complete cranium ever found from sediments older than 3 million years," said Ethiopian palaeoanthropologist Yohannes Haile-Selassie, who co-led the scientific team.

The discovery of the near complete skull puts a face on a critical gap in human evolution.

With its wide cheekbones, long protruding jaw and large canine tooth, the fossil dubbed MRD, is the first to reveal the face of Australopithecus anamensis — the oldest-known species definitively part of the human evolutionary tree.

The skull, detailed in the first of two papers in Nature, is set to rewrite our understanding of where A. anamensis fits between primitive hominins that lived more than 4 million years ago, and Australopithecus afarensis, the species made famous by the Lucy skeleton.

"It fills a gap in the fossil record from 3.6 to 3.9 million years and highlights some of the changes that took place from one species to another," Dr Haile-Selassie said.

[Continues . . . (https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-08-29/ancient-fossil-skull-found-in-ethiopia-fills-human-evolution-gap/11444130)]





"A face for Lucy's ancestor" | ScienceDaily (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190828140118.htm)

QuoteResearchers have discovered a remarkably complete 3.8-million-year-old cranium of Australopithecus anamensis at Woranso-Mille in Ethiopia. The 3.8 million-year-old fossil cranium represents a time interval between 4.1 and 3.6 million years ago.

Australopithecus anamensis is the earliest-known species of Australopithecus and widely accepted as the progenitor of 'Lucy's' species, Australopithecus afarensis. Until now, A. anamensis was known mainly from jaws and teeth. Yohannes Haile-Selassie of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Stephanie Melillo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and their colleagues have discovered the first cranium of A. anamensis at the paleontological site of Woranso-Mille, in the Afar Region of Ethiopia.

The 3.8 million-year-old fossil cranium represents a time interval between 4.1 and 3.6 million years ago, when A. anamensis gave rise to A. afarensis. Researchers used morphological features of the cranium to identify which species the fossil represents. "Features of the upper jaw and canine tooth were fundamental in determining that MRD was attributable to A. anamensis," said Melillo. "It is good to finally be able to put a face to the name." The MRD cranium, together with other fossils previously known from the Afar, show that A. anamensis and A. afarensis co-existed for approximately 100,000 years. This temporal overlap challenges the widely-accepted idea of a linear transition between these two early human ancestors. Haile-Selassie said: "This is a game changer in our understanding of human evolution during the Pliocene."

[Continues . . . (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190828140118.htm)]

Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Bluenose on October 21, 2019, 09:28:28 AM
A video that members might find interesting

Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on November 19, 2019, 02:50:32 PM
Fine video, thank you for posting it, Bluenose. Creationists, in their desperate, flailing attempts to discredit evolutionary science, love to trot out their misconceptions about Piltdown Man. All they actually manage to do is display their own ignorance.





Here is a press release about a study which is of interest for what it shows about the relationship between Gigantopithecus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigantopithecus) and orangutans. Perhaps more important is the technique used in carrying out the research. This involved using extremely sensitive mass spectrometers to analyse proteins in the fossil tooth enamel of Gigantopithecus, which allowed the researchers to reconstruct its evolutionary relationship to other primates. Given that Gigantopithecus went extinct approximately 100,000 years ago ago, none of its DNA remains present. I think this alternate method of investigation is extremely interesting because it shows promise in our endeavours to discover evolutionary relationships between our own species and its relatives and ancestors.

"Extinct giant ape directly linked to the living orangutan" | University of Copenhagen (https://news.ku.dk/all_news/2019/11/extinct-giant-ape-directly-linked-to-the-living-orangutan/?)

QuoteResearchers from the University of Copenhagen have succeeded in reconstructing the evolutionary relationship between a two million year old giant primate and the living orangutan. It is the first time genetic material this old has been retrieved from a fossil in a subtropical area. This allows the researchers to accurately reconstruct animal, including human, evolutionary processes way beyond the limits known today.

By using ancient protein sequencing, researchers have retrieved genetic information from a 1.9 million year old extinct, giant primate that used to live in a subtropical area in southern China. The genetic information allows the researchers to uncover the evolutionary position of Gigantopithecus blacki, a three-meter tall and may be up to 600 kg heavy primate, revealing the orangutan as its closest, living relative.

It is the first time that genetic material this old has been retrieved from a warm, humid environment. The study is published in the scientific journal Nature and is conducted in collaboration with the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona. The results are groundbreaking within the field of evolutionary biology, according to Frido Welker, Postdoc at the Globe Institute at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences and first author of the study.

[Continues . . . (https://news.ku.dk/all_news/2019/11/extinct-giant-ape-directly-linked-to-the-living-orangutan/?)]
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: billy rubin on November 19, 2019, 04:22:09 PM
recent developments on palaeontolgy are fascinting.

the consternation that ensued when we discovered that soft parts could have been preserved, only to be discarded during cleaning of bones was immense.

this is similar. there's lots of information in stuff we didn't know about just a short while ago
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on November 24, 2019, 06:54:29 PM
Fossil remains of a great ape that lived over eleven million years ago in southern Germany have provided new thoughts on the way that bipedalism evolved in our ancestors.

"New Ancient Ape Species Rewrites the Story of Bipedalism" | Smithsonian (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/new-ancient-ape-species-rewrites-story-bipedalism-180973479/)

Quote
(https://i.imgur.com/u4BIAnh.jpg)
An illustration of Danuvius guggenmosi, supporting itself with both
its forelimbs and hindlimbs. Image Credit: Velizar Simeonovski

The picture is on T-shirts, coffee mugs and bumper stickers: the ubiquitous but misinformed image of the evolution of humankind. A knuckle-walking ape rouses himself to stand on two feet, and over a 25-million-year "March of Progress (https://www.wired.com/2009/11/the-march-of-progress-has-deep-roots/)," he becomes a modern man.

Most paleoanthropologists will tell you that this version of evolution is oversimplified, misleading or just plain wrong. The theory that the last common ancestor of humans and apes walked on its knuckles like a chimpanzee is not supported by the fossil record, although it has seen popularity in scientific discourse. David Begun, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Toronto, used to be an outspoken proponent of the knuckle-walking hypothesis (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4419-8965-9_2), until he was asked to consult on a newly discovered fossil that would challenge his assumptions about early hominid locomotion.

When Madelaine Böhme, a researcher at the University of Tübingen in Germany, unearthed the partial skeleton of an ancient ape at the Hammerschmiede clay pit in Bavaria, she knew she was looking at something special. Compared to fragments, an intact partial skeleton can tell paleoanthropologists about a creature's body proportions and how its anatomy might have functioned. A relative newcomer to the field and a paleoclimatologist by trade, Böhme enlisted Begun's expertise in analyzing the fossil ape.

Böhme and colleagues determined that the bones they found came from a dryopithecine ape, an extinct ancestor of humans and great apes that once lived in the Miocene epoch. The fossils are approximately 11.6 million years old and came from at least four individual apes, including one partial skeleton. The team described the newfound ancestor, named Danuvius guggenmosi, in a study published today in Nature.

D. guggenmosi was likely a small primate about the size of baboon, with long arms like a bonobo. The creature had flexible elbows and strong hands capable of grasping, which suggests that it could have swung from tree to tree like a modern great ape. But the similarities with known apes stop there. The animal's lower limbs have much more in common with human anatomy. With extended hips and knees, D. guggenmosi was capable of standing with a straighter posture than that of living African apes, and its knees and ankles were adapted to bear weight. The animal's locomotion would have therefore shared similarities with both human and ape movement, and D. guggenmosi may have been able to navigate the forest by swinging from tree limbs and walking on two legs.

"There is no reason to think it would not have used all four limbs when that made sense, for example, on smaller branches where balance was an issue," Begun says. "But it was also capable of both chimp-like suspension and unassisted bipedalism."

[Continues . . . (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/new-ancient-ape-species-rewrites-story-bipedalism-180973479/)]

In the fourth paragraph above, I've highlighted "Nature" in bold. If you go to the story at the Smithsonian site, there is a link there to the full paper, via a special Smithsonian access token.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on December 17, 2019, 11:03:22 PM
The complete genome from an ancient inhabitant of northern Europe (and some bonus finds in the form of oral microbiota) have been recovered from a piece of chewed birch pitch.

Quote
(https://healthsciences.ku.dk/newsfaculty-news/2019/12/Lola600.jpeg)
Artistic reconstruction of the woman who chewed the birch pitch. She has been named Lola. Illustration by Tom Björklund.
[From University of Copenhagen (https://healthsciences.ku.dk/newsfaculty-news/2019/12/ancient-chewing-gum-yields-insights-into-people-and-bacteria-of-the-past/)--a portrait of the birch pitch is available at this link.  :sidesmile:]

"Ancient 'chewing gum' yields insights into people and bacteria of the past" | ScienceDaily (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191217141549.htm)

QuoteResearchers from the University of Copenhagen have succeeded in extracting a complete human genome from a thousands-of-years old "chewing gum." According to the researchers, it is a new untapped source of ancient DNA.

During excavations on Lolland, archaeologists have found a 5,700-year-old type of "chewing gum" made from birch pitch. In a new study, researchers from the University of Copenhagen succeeded in extracting a complete ancient human genome from the pitch.

It is the first time that an entire ancient human genome has been extracted from anything other than human bones. The new research results have been published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

'It is amazing to have gotten a complete ancient human genome from anything other than bone,'' says Associate Professor Hannes Schroeder from the Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen, who led the research.

'What is more, we also retrieved DNA from oral microbes and several important human pathogens, which makes this a very valuable source of ancient DNA, especially for time periods where we have no human remains,' Hannes Schroeder adds.

Based on the ancient human genome, the researchers could tell that the birch pitch was chewed by a female. She was genetically more closely related to hunter-gatherers from the mainland Europe than to those who lived in central Scandinavia at the time. They also found that she probably had dark skin, dark hair and blue eyes.

[Continues . . . (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191217141549.htm)]

The full paper is available free, and has some interesting details:

"A 5700 year-old human genome and oral microbiome from chewed birch pitch" | Nature Communications (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13549-9)
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on December 21, 2019, 09:35:03 PM
Homo erectus were still around somewhat more than 100,000 years ago, though they seem to have mostly disappeared around 400,000 years ago. A story about the last known site occupied by them.

"Researchers determine age for last known settlement by a direct ancestor to modern humans" | ScienceDaily (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191218153527.htm)

QuoteAn international team of researchers has determined the age of the last known settlement of the species Homo erectus, one of modern humans' direct ancestors. The site is called Ngandong, on the Indonesian island Java. The team dated animal fragments where Homo erectus remains were found and the surrounding landscape. The team determined the last existence of Homo erectus at Ngandong between 108,000 and 117,000 years ago.

Homo erectus, one of modern humans' direct ancestors, was a wandering bunch. After the species dispersed from Africa about two million years ago, it colonized the ancient world, which included Asia and possibly Europe.

But about 400,000 years ago, Homo erectus essentially vanished. The lone exception was a spot called Ngandong, on the Indonesian island of Java. But scientists were unable to agree on a precise time period for the site -- until now.

In a new study published in the journal Nature, an international team of researchers led by the University of Iowa; Macquarie University; and the Institute of Technology Bandung, Indonesia, dates the last existence of Homo erectus at Ngandong between 108,000 and 117,000 years ago.

The researchers time-stamped the site by dating animal fossils from the same bonebed where 12 Homo erectus skull caps and two tibia had been found, and then dated the surrounding land forms -- mostly terraces below and above Ngandong -- to establish an accurate record for the primeval humans' possible last stand on Earth.

[Continues . . . (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191218153527.htm)]
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on December 30, 2019, 05:13:17 PM
A decent overview of some recent developments in archaeology and anthropology, with many links to more detailed examinations of the things mentioned.

"Archaeological discoveries are happening faster than ever before, helping refine the human story" | The Conversation (https://theconversation.com/archaeological-discoveries-are-happening-faster-than-ever-before-helping-refine-the-human-story-128743)

QuoteIn 1924, a 3-year-old child's skull found in South Africa forever changed how people think about human origins.

The Taung Child (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-africa-became-the-cradle-of-humankind-108875040/), our first encounter with an ancient group of proto-humans or hominins (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/whats-in-a-name-hominid-versus-hominin-216054/) called australopithecines (https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/australopithecus-and-kin-145077614/), was a turning point in the study of human evolution. This discovery shifted the focus of human origins research from Europe and Asia onto Africa, setting the stage for the last century of research on the continent and into its "Cradles (https://www.maropeng.co.za/) of Humankind (https://www.ngorongorocrater.org/oldupai.html)."

Few people back then would've been able to predict what scientists know about evolution today, and now the pace of discovery is faster than ever (https://nprtheeconomistworld.hatenablog.com/entry/2019/12/21/082136). Even since the turn of the 21st century, human origins textbooks have been rewritten over and over again. Just 20 years ago, no one could have imagined what scientists know two decades later about humanity's deep past, let alone how much knowledge could be extracted from a thimble of dirt, a scrape of dental plaque or satellites in space.

[Continues . . . (https://theconversation.com/archaeological-discoveries-are-happening-faster-than-ever-before-helping-refine-the-human-story-128743)]
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on February 22, 2020, 07:03:18 PM
This paper discusses an early population of Homo in Eurasia it calls "superarchaics." They don't attempt to identify the population beyond that, though they do mention the Dmanisi (https://www.britannica.com/place/Dmanisi) finds in relation to it. They propose a new estimate for the time of separation between Neanderthal and Denisovan, as well as presenting evidence of early interbreeding between the superarchaics and the precursor to Neanderthal and Denisovan, which they call "neandersovans."

"Earliest Interbreeding Event Between Ancient Human Populations Discovered" | University of Utah (https://unews.utah.edu/earliest-interbreeding-event/)

Quote
(https://i.imgur.com/vBviv1c.jpg)
An evolutionary tree including four proposed episodes of gene flow. The previously unknown event 744,372 years ago (orange) suggests interbreeding occurred between super-archaics and Neanderthal-Denisovan ancestors in Eurasia. Image: University of Utah--Alan Rogers




For three years, anthropologist Alan Rogers has attempted to solve an evolutionary puzzle. His research untangles millions of years of human evolution by analyzing DNA strands from ancient human species known as hominins. Like many evolutionary geneticists, Rogers compares hominin genomes looking for genetic patterns such as mutations and shared genes. He develops statistical methods that infer the history of ancient human populations.

In 2017, Rogers led a study (https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/114/37/9859.full.pdf) which found that two lineages of ancient humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans, separated much earlier than previously thought and proposed a bottleneck population size. It caused some controversy—anthropologists Mafessoni and Prüfer argued (https://www.pnas.org/content/114/48/E10256) that their method for analyzing the DNA produced different results. Rogers agreed (https://www.pnas.org/content/114/48/E10258), but realized that neither method explained the genetic data very well.

"Both of our methods under discussion were missing something, but what?" asked Rogers, professor of anthropology at the University of Utah.

The new study has solved that puzzle and in doing so, it has documented the earliest known interbreeding event between ancient human populations—a group known as the "super-archaics" in Eurasia interbred with a Neanderthal-Denisovan ancestor about 700,000 years ago. The event was between two populations that were more distantly related than any other recorded. The authors also proposed a revised timeline for human migration out of Africa and into Eurasia. The method for analyzing ancient DNA provides a new way to look farther back into the human lineage than ever before.

"We've never known about this episode of interbreeding and we've never been able to estimate the size of the super-archaic population," said Rogers, lead author of the study. "We're just shedding light on an interval on human evolutionary history that was previously completely dark."

The paper was published (http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aay5483) on Feb. 20, 2020, in the journal Science Advances.

[Continues . . . (https://unews.utah.edu/earliest-interbreeding-event/)]

The full paper is available at the link above.

QuoteAbstract:

Previous research has shown that modern Eurasians interbred with their Neanderthal and Denisovan predecessors. We show here that hundreds of thousands of years earlier, the ancestors of Neanderthals and Denisovans interbred with their own Eurasian predecessors—members of a "superarchaic" population that separated from other humans about 2 million years ago. The superarchaic population was large, with an effective size between 20 and 50 thousand individuals. We confirm previous findings that (i) Denisovans also interbred with superarchaics, (ii) Neanderthals and Denisovans separated early in the middle Pleistocene, (iii) their ancestors endured a bottleneck of population size, and (iv) the Neanderthal population was large at first but then declined in size. We provide qualified support for the view that (v) Neanderthals interbred with the ancestors of modern humans.


Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on March 01, 2020, 07:04:06 PM
This paper is on a similar discovery, albeit mostly about Africa, and using a different approach. Both used statistical analysis, but there are different techniques within statistical analysis. I've never properly studied statistics, so would be of little help in explaining exactly what each group of authors did. :sadshake:

Though "ghost population" is an evocative term and might seem to be headline hype, it's a recognized scientific concept (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_population).

"Some West Africans may have genes from an ancient 'ghost' hominid" | ScienceNews (https://www.sciencenews.org/article/some-west-africans-may-have-dna-genes-ancient-ghost-hominid)

QuoteAn ancient, humanlike population still undiscovered in fossils left a genetic legacy in present-day West Africans, a new study suggests.

These extinct relatives of Homo sapiens passed genes to African ancestors of modern Yoruba and Mende people starting around 124,000 years ago or later, say UCLA geneticists Arun Durvasula and Sriram Sankararaman. Surviving DNA of those ancient hominids is different enough from that of Neandertals and Denisovans to suggest an entirely different hominid was the source.

Yoruba and Mende groups' genomes contain from 2 to 19 percent of genetic material from this mysterious "ghost population," the scientists report February 12 in Science Advances. Some DNA segments passed down from the mysterious Homo species influence survival-enhancing functions, including tumor suppression and hormone regulation. Those genes likely spread rapidly among modern West Africans, the investigators suspect.

DNA from Han Chinese in Beijing as well as Utah residents with northern and western European ancestry also showed signs of ancestry from the ancient ghost population, Durvasula and Sankararaman found. But DNA from those two groups was not studied as closely as that from the Yoruba and Mende people.

[Continues . . . (https://www.sciencenews.org/article/some-west-africans-may-have-dna-genes-ancient-ghost-hominid)]

The full paper is available at the AAAS site: "Recovering signals of ghost archaic introgression in African populations" | Science Advances (https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/7/eaax5097)

QuoteAbstract:

While introgression from Neanderthals and Denisovans has been documented in modern humans outside Africa, the contribution of archaic hominins to the genetic variation of present-day Africans remains poorly understood. We provide complementary lines of evidence for archaic introgression into four West African populations. Our analyses of site frequency spectra indicate that these populations derive 2 to 19% of their genetic ancestry from an archaic population that diverged before the split of Neanderthals and modern humans. Using a method that can identify segments of archaic ancestry without the need for reference archaic genomes, we built genome-wide maps of archaic ancestry in the Yoruba and the Mende populations. Analyses of these maps reveal segments of archaic ancestry at high frequency in these populations that represent potential targets of adaptive introgression. Our results reveal the substantial contribution of archaic ancestry in shaping the gene pool of present-day West African populations.

The sidebar of the ScienceNews article cited above has some other recent stories that I think belong in this thread, so I'll link to them here.

"Ancient kids' DNA reveals new insights into how Africa was populated" | ScienceNews (https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ancient-kids-dna-reveals-new-insights-how-africa-was-populated)

"A new genetic analysis reveals that modern Africans have some Neandertal DNA too" | ScienceNews (https://www.sciencenews.org/article/new-genetic-analysis-reveals-modern-africans-have-some-neandertal-dna)

Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on April 02, 2020, 08:05:39 PM
An article about recent developments regarding the question of ancestry of our species. It mentions two studies that looked at possible candidates for the most recent common ancestor of anatomically modern humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans.

I found it annoying that the headline editor put in a reference to what something "looked like" despite no image (other than an arrangement of fossils) being included. So here's a detail from an image found on Wikipedia:

(https://i.imgur.com/jQ3xA82.png)
Forensic reconstruction of Homo antecessor by Élisabeth Daynès (Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_antecessor))





"We may now know what our common ancestor with Neanderthals looked like" | New Scientist (https://www.newscientist.com/article/2239329-we-may-now-know-what-our-common-ancestor-with-neanderthals-looked-like/)

QuoteTwo studies of ancient humans have shed new light on the last common ancestor we share with Neanderthals. An extinct species that was once in the frame now looks unlikely to be the one. Another now seems more plausible, but it may only be related to the ancestor.

"My guess is we haven't found the common ancestor yet," says Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London. However, the new findings clarify what the common ancestor may have looked like.

Stringer's team studied a skull called Kabwe 1, which was discovered in 1921 by miners at Broken Hill in what is now Zambia. "It was the first important [hominin] fossil found in Africa," says Stringer. It probably belonged to a young male and had a primitive-looking face with "huge brow ridges over the eyes".

Many anthropologists place Kabwe 1 in Homo heidelbergensis, which ranged across Africa and Europe between about 700,000 and 300,000 years ago. It has long been a candidate for the common ancestor of three later groups: modern humans (Homo sapiens), the Neanderthals of Europe and west Asia, and the Denisovans of east Asia (https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22229630-500-denisovans-the-lost-humans-who-shared-our-world/).

However, until now the Kabwe skull's age has been a mystery. The normal approach is to date the surrounding sediments, says Rainer Grün of Griffith University in Australia. But the skull was found by accident and the site quarried, so researchers have no sediments to test. The general assumption has been that the skull is about 500,000 years old, but it has not been possible to assess that idea properly.

"The only thing we could do is to analyse the skull itself," says Grün. This is only now possible. Older methods would have required drilling into the skull, causing "unacceptable" damage. Instead, the team used lasers to remove fragments a quarter of a millimetre thick.

Analyses of these fragments indicate Kabwe 1 is about 299,000 years old.

[. . .]

The age of Kabwe 1 means the skull probably didn't belong to an ancestor of humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans, says Stringer. Genetic evidence suggests the last common ancestor lived about 600,000 years ago (https://www.newscientist.com/article/2080549-oldest-ever-human-genome-sequence-may-rewrite-human-history/), so Kabwe 1 is too recent. There is also evidence that modern humans were present in northern Africa 300,000 years ago (https://www.newscientist.com/article/2133807-our-species-may-be-150000-years-older-than-we-thought/), about the same time Kabwe 1 was alive.

"We reassess it as a separate line of evolution, but one which probably coexisted with the evolution of Homo sapiens," says Stringer.

[. . .]

A better candidate for the common ancestor is Homo antecessor, says José María Bermúdez de Castro of the National Centre for Research on Human Evolution in Spain. These hominins lived in northern Spain between 1.2 million and 800,000 years ago.

"H. antecessor shows a unique combination of dental and skeletal features," says Bermúdez de Castro. Its face was quite modern: more like ours than like that of H. heidelbergensis.

His colleagues have now extracted seven proteins from an H. antecessor tooth from about 860,000 years ago. This represents a major breakthrough. "We are able to reliably retrieve ancient human protein sequences over the past 2 million years," says Frido Welker at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

By comparing the H. antecessor proteins with those of other hominins, the team has found that the species was closely related to the last common ancestors of humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans. However, the researchers cannot tell if it actually was the ancestor. "It is too early to conclude this confidently," says Enrico Cappellini at the University of Copenhagen.

[Continues . . . (https://www.newscientist.com/article/2239329-we-may-now-know-what-our-common-ancestor-with-neanderthals-looked-like/)]
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on April 04, 2020, 07:54:35 PM
More about the second study mentioned directly above. I happened to cut the New Scientist article (as I generally do to avoid possible copyright complaints) just before it mentioned "palaeoproteomics." The article doesn't go into any depth on what that term refers to, but it's been described previously in this thread (http://www.happyatheistforum.com/forum/index.php?topic=14107.msg393873#msg393873), without being named. It's a technique using mass spectrometers to analyse fossils which gives clues about the genetic lineage of the animal they came from. If anybody is interested in learning more about it, here is a link (https://www.the-scientist.com/features/paleoproteomics-opens-a-window-into-the-past-30026) to a long article in The Scientist.

Back to Home antecessor (includes a shorter description of palaeoproteomics):

"Oldest ever human genetic evidence clarifies dispute over our ancestors" | ScienceDaily (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200401111657.htm)

QuoteGenetic information from an 800,000-year-old human fossil has been retrieved for the first time. The results from the University of Copenhagen shed light on one of the branching points in the human family tree, reaching much further back in time than previously possible.

An important advancement in human evolution studies has been achieved after scientists retrieved the oldest human genetic data set from an 800,000-year-old tooth belonging to the hominin species Homo antecessor.

The findings by scientists from the University of Copenhagen (Denmark), in collaboration with colleagues from the CENIEH (National Research Center on Human Evolution) in Burgos, Spain, and other institutions, are published April 1st in Nature.

"Ancient protein analysis provides evidence for a close relationship between Homo antecessor, us (Homo sapiens), Neanderthals, and Denisovans. Our results support the idea that Homo antecessor was a sister group to the group containing Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, and Denisovans," says Frido Welker, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen, and first author on the paper.

[. . .]

The fossils analyzed by the researchers were found by palaeoanthropologist José María Bermúdez de Castro and his team in 1994 in stratigraphic level TD6 from the Gran Dolina cave site, one of the archaeological and paleontological sites of the Sierra de Atapuerca, Spain.

Initial observations led to conclude that Homo antecessor was the last common ancestor to modern humans and Neanderthals, a conclusion based on the physical shape and appearance of the fossils. In the following years, the exact relation between Homo antecessor and other human groups, like ourselves and Neanderthals, has been discussed intensely among anthropologists.

Although the hypothesis that Homo antecessor could be the common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans is very difficult to fit into the evolutionary scenario of the genus Homo, new findings in TD6 and subsequent studies revealed several characters shared among the human species found in Atapuerca and the Neanderthals. In addition, new studies confirmed that the facial features of Homo antecessor are very similar to those of Homo sapiens and very different from those of the Neanderthals and their more recent ancestors.

"I am happy that the protein study provides evidence that the Homo antecessor species may be closely related to the last common ancestor of Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, and Denisovans. The features shared by Homo antecessor with these hominins clearly appeared much earlier than previously thought. Homo antecessor would therefore be a basal species of the emerging humanity formed by Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern humans," adds José María Bermúdez de Castro, Scientific Co-director of the excavations in Atapuerca and co-corresponding author on the paper.

[Continues . . . (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200401111657.htm)]
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on May 12, 2020, 03:29:48 AM
The the remains of the earliest Homo sapiens yet found in Europe have been confirmed. They were associated with a number of other bones from various species, as well as flint, bone, and tooth artifacts.

"The oldest Upper Paleolithic Homo sapiens in Europe" | EurekAlert (https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-05/mpif-tou050820.php)

QuoteTwo studies report new Homo sapiens fossils from the site of Bacho Kiro Cave in Bulgaria. "The Bacho Kiro Cave site provides evidence for the first dispersal of H. sapiens across the mid-latitudes of Eurasia. Pioneer groups brought new behaviours into Europe and interacted with local Neanderthals. This early wave largely predates that which led to their final extinction in western Europe 8,000 years later", says Jean-Jacques Hublin, director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

An international research team, led by Jean-Jacques Hublin, Tsenka Tsanova and Shannon McPherron of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, and Nikolay Sirakov and Svoboda Sirakova of the National Institute of Archaeology with Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in Sofia, Bulgaria, renewed excavations at Bacho Kiro Cave in 2015. The most spectacular finds come from a rich, dark layer near the base of the deposits. Here the team uncovered thousands of animal bones, stone and bone tools, beads and pendants and the remains of five human fossils.

Except for one human tooth, the human fossils were too fragmented to be recognized by their appearance. Instead, they were identified by analysing their protein sequences. "Most Pleistocene bones are so fragmented that by eye, one cannot tell which species of animal they represent. However, the proteins differ slightly in their amino acid sequence from species to species. By using protein mass spectrometry, we can therefore quickly identify those bone specimens that represent otherwise unrecognizable human bones", says Frido Welker, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Copenhagen and research associate at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

To know the age of these fossils and the deposits at Bacho Kiro Cave, the team worked closely with Lukas Wacker at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, using an accelerator mass spectrometer to produce ages with higher precision than normal and to directly date the human bones.

"The majority of animal bones we dated from this distinctive, dark layer have signs of human impacts on the bone surfaces, such as butchery marks, which, along with the direct dates of human bones, provides us with a really clear chronological picture of when Homo sapiens first occupied this cave, in the interval from 45,820 to 43,650 years ago, and potentially as early as 46,940 years ago", says Helen Fewlass of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. "The radiocarbon dates at Bacho Kiro Cave are not only the largest dataset of a single Palaeolithic site ever made by a research team, but also are the most precise in terms of error ranges", say researchers Sahra Talamo from the University of Bologna and Bernd Kromer from the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig.

[Continues . . . (https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-05/mpif-tou050820.php)]
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on August 26, 2020, 05:09:04 AM
This could go into the Neanderthal thread, since it has to do with their genetic makeup as much as that of anatomically modern humans, but I think it works better here.

If borne out, this finding means the diagram posted above (https://www.happyatheistforum.com/forum/index.php?topic=14107.msg397565#msg397565) regarding ancestry and interbreeding events in our family tree will have to be revised. How much modification will be required is the question. It's unclear to me whether the "unknown ancestor" mentioned here is the same group as the "superarchaics" in that story or not.

"Mystery ancestor mated with ancient humans. And its 'nested' DNA was just found." | LiveScience (https://www.livescience.com/mystery-ancestor-mated-with-humans.html)

QuoteToday's humans carry the genes of an ancient, unknown ancestor, left there by hominin species intermingling perhaps a million years ago.

The ancestor may have been Homo erectus, but no one knows for sure — the genome of that extinct species of human has never been sequenced, said Adam Siepel, a computational biologist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and one of the authors of a new paper examining the relationships of ancient human ancestors.

The new research, published today (Aug. 6) in the journal PLOS Genetics (https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1008895), also finds that ancient humans mated with Neanderthals between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago, well before the more recent, and better-known mixing of the two species occurred, after Homo sapiens migrated in large numbers out of Africa and into Europe 50,000 years ago. Thanks to this ancient mixing event, Neanderthals actually owe between 3% and 7% of their genomes to ancient Homo sapiens, the researchers reported.

[Continues . . . (https://www.livescience.com/mystery-ancestor-mated-with-humans.html)]

The paper is open access and linked in the article as well as in the third paragraph quoted above.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: No one on August 26, 2020, 06:40:10 AM
So, at this family reunion, would modern humans be the strange uncle that isn't welcome, and nobody wants to talk about?
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Randy on August 26, 2020, 03:10:59 PM
Quote from: No one on August 26, 2020, 06:40:10 AM
So, at this family reunion, would modern humans be the strange uncle that isn't welcome, and nobody wants to talk about?
I think we'd be the strange uncle that isn't welcome but everyone gossips about.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on August 27, 2020, 06:29:34 AM
My impression is that contemporary anatomically modern humans (AMH) are the least robust among the recent hominin species. The ancient African AMH were undoubtedly formidable specimens, but modern Africans are well within contemporary standards, which seem to me somewhat more slight/gracile than our direct ancestors and relatives.

For non-African populations the early model AMH (European early modern humans/Cro-Magnons) had larger brains and sturdier bones on average than we do, while Neanderthals were more so. Not sure about Denisovans, admittedly, so they're a sort of wild card. At the family picnic we'd likely be the wimpy nephew with asthma, but maybe we could lord it over the hobbit (floresiensis).
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on September 21, 2020, 05:31:35 AM
Fossil human footprints in Arabia.  :)

Quote
(https://i.imgur.com/wddULFd.jpg)
First human footprint found at Alathar and corresponding digital elevation model.(Stewart et al, Science Advances, 2020)
[From ScienceAlert (https://www.sciencealert.com/120-000-year-old-human-footprints-have-been-found-in-saudi-arabia)]

"Ancient human footprints in Saudi Arabia give glimpse of Arabian ecology 120000 years ago" | EurekAlert (https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-09/mpif-ahf091120.php)

QuoteSituated between Africa and Eurasia, the Arabian Peninsula is an important yet understudied region for understanding human evolution across the continents. Recent research highlighting the role of the Arabian Peninsula in human prehistory shows that humans repeatedly dispersed into the peninsula's interior at times when its harsh deserts were transformed into lush grasslands. However, the nature and timing of these dispersals have remained elusive, due to a scarcity of datable material and poor-resolution paleoecological data associated with evidence for humans.

In a new study published in Science Advances, researchers from the Max Planck Institutes for Chemical Ecology (MPI-CE) and the Science of Human History (MPI-SHH) in Jena, Germany and Royal Holloway University of London, UK, together with a team of international partners, describe a large assemblage of fossilized footprints discovered in an ancient lake deposit in Saudi Arabia's Nefud Desert. The footprints, dated to roughly 120 thousand-years-ago, include those of humans, elephants and horses, among other animals. These findings represent the earliest dated evidence for human movements into this part of the world, contemporary with well-known human dispersals from Africa to the Levant. In addition, it appears that the movements and landscape use patterns of humans and large mammals were tightly linked, perhaps in response to dry conditions and diminishing water supplies.

[Continues . . . (https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-09/mpif-ahf091120.php)]

The paper is open access:

"Human footprints provide snapshot of last interglacial ecology in the Arabian interior" | ScienceAdvances (https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/38/eaba8940)

QuoteAbstract:

The nature of human dispersals out of Africa has remained elusive because of the poor resolution of paleoecological data in direct association with remains of the earliest non-African people. Here, we report hominin and non-hominin mammalian tracks from an ancient lake deposit in the Arabian Peninsula, dated within the last interglacial. The findings, it is argued, likely represent the oldest securely dated evidence for Homo sapiens in Arabia. The paleoecological evidence indicates a well-watered semi-arid grassland setting during human movements into the Nefud Desert of Saudi Arabia. We conclude that visitation to the lake was transient, likely serving as a place to drink and to forage, and that late Pleistocene human and mammalian migrations and landscape use patterns in Arabia were inexorably linked.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Tank on September 21, 2020, 07:45:08 AM
Always fascinating.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Randy on September 21, 2020, 10:16:30 AM
Wow, 120,000 years ago. I imagine they couldn't imagine that they were making archeological history.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: xSilverPhinx on September 22, 2020, 12:54:28 AM
Wow

Quote from: Randy on September 21, 2020, 10:16:30 AM
Wow, 120,000 years ago. I imagine they couldn't imagine that they were making archeological history.

Yeah. :tellmemore:
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on May 01, 2021, 09:19:14 AM
Hanging out in the old cave, over hundreds of thousands of years. There were worse places to be.  :)

"Cave of Wonders: HU [Hebrew University] Researchers Unveil Oldest Evidence of Human Activity in African Desert Cave" | AFHU (https://www.afhu.org/2021/04/27/cave-of-wonders-hu-researchers-unveil-oldest-evidence-of-human-activity-in-african-desert-cave/)

QuoteFew sites in the world preserve a continuous archaeological record spanning millions of years. Wonderwerk Cave, located in South Africa's Kalahari Desert, is one of those rare sites. Meaning "miracle" in Afrikaans, Wonderwerk Cave has been identified as potentially the earliest cave occupation in the world and the site of some of the earliest indications of fire use and tool making among prehistoric humans.

New research, published in Quaternary Science Reviews, led by a team of geologists and archaeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) and the University of Toronto, confirms the record-breaking date of this spectacular site. "We can now say with confidence that our human ancestors were making simple Oldowan stone tools inside the Wonderwerk Cave 1.8 million years ago. Wonderwerk is unique among ancient Oldowan sites, a tool-type first found 2.6 million years ago in East Africa, precisely because it is a cave and not an open-air occurrence," explained lead author Professor Ron Shaar at HU's Institute of Earth Sciences.

[Continues . . . (https://www.afhu.org/2021/04/27/cave-of-wonders-hu-researchers-unveil-oldest-evidence-of-human-activity-in-african-desert-cave/)]

The paper (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277379121001141) is behind a paywall, but there is a wide choice of articles on this. A couple of examples:

"Research into early use of fire could help solve human evolution mystery" | The Independent (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/fire-human-evolution-archaeology-b1839000.html)

"Scientists Find Oldest Evidence of Ancient Human Activity Deep Inside a Desert Cave" | Science Alert (https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-find-the-oldest-evidence-of-indoor-human-activity-deep-inside-a-desert-cave)
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Icarus on May 02, 2021, 02:44:35 AM
^ Fascinating stuff, Rec.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on June 25, 2021, 10:00:13 AM
This is pretty big, if confirmed. A previously unknown/unrecognised member of the hominin family.

"A new type of Homo unknown to science" | Tel Aviv University/EurekAlert (https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-06/tu-ant062321.php)

QuoteResearchers from Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have identified a new type of early human at the Nesher Ramla site, dated to 140,000 to 120,000 years ago. According to the researchers, the morphology of the Nesher Ramla humans shares features with both Neanderthals (especially the teeth and jaws) and archaic Homo (specifically the skull). At the same time, this type of Homo is very unlike modern humans - displaying a completely different skull structure, no chin, and very large teeth. Following the study's findings, researchers believe that the Nesher Ramla Homo type is the 'source' population from which most humans of the Middle Pleistocene developed. In addition, they suggest that this group is the so-called 'missing' population that mated with Homo sapiens who arrived in the region around 200,000 years ago - about whom we know from a recent study on fossils found in the Misliya cave.

[Continues . . . (https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-06/tu-ant062321.php)]

The paper (https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6549/1424) is behind a paywall.

QuoteAbstract:

It has long been believed that Neanderthals originated and flourished on the European continent. However, recent morphological and genetic studies have suggested that they may have received a genetic contribution from a yet unknown non-European group.

Here we report on the recent discovery of archaic Homo fossils from the site of Nesher Ramla, Israel, which we dated to 140,000 to 120,000 years ago. Comprehensive qualitative and quantitative analyses of the parietal bones, mandible, and lower second molar revealed that this Homo group presents a distinctive combination of Neanderthal and archaic features.

We suggest that these specimens represent the late survivors of a Levantine Middle Pleistocene paleodeme [distinct ancient population] that was most likely involved in the evolution of the Middle Pleistocene Homo in Europe and East Asia.

[ ¶ added. - R]

Could do without the soundtrack music:


Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on August 27, 2021, 06:34:27 AM
A woman from over 7,000 years ago in what is now Indonesia has some intriguing ancestry, giving a glimpse of ancient migrations in that part of the world.

"7,200-Year-Old Human DNA With Unique Denisovan Ancestry Has Been Found in Indonesia" | Science Alert (https://www.sciencealert.com/ancient-woman-s-remains-reveal-genetics-never-seen-in-any-human-population)

QuoteThe skeleton of an ancient woman, discovered in an Indonesian cave in 2015, appears to have ancestry unlike any other human found to date. Her remains have now provided archaeologists with a rare glimpse of the earliest settlers to leave mainland Asia and begin the journey to New Guinea and Australia.

The roughly 7,200-year-old human, nicknamed Bessé', belonged to a culture of hunter-gatherers known as Toaleans, thought to have been related to the earliest settlers of Indonesia. Up to 65,000 years ago, during the last ice age, the ancestors of Toaleans probably arrived via sea from mainland Asia.

While the Toalean culture never seemed to make it past the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, it seems their relatives continued to push onward.

At least, that's what the inner ear bone of this Toalean woman suggests. Her ancient skull has now provided the first human DNA ever discovered in Wallacea (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallacea) - the ancient island region that once provided a gateway to New Guinea and Australia.

[Continues . . . (https://www.sciencealert.com/ancient-woman-s-remains-reveal-genetics-never-seen-in-any-human-population)]

The paper is open access:

"Genome of a middle Holocene hunter-gatherer from Wallacea" | Nature (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03823-6)

QuoteAbstract:

Much remains unknown about the population history of early modern humans in southeast Asia, where the archaeological record is sparse and the tropical climate is inimical to the preservation of ancient human DNA1. So far, only two low-coverage pre-Neolithic human genomes have been sequenced from this region. Both are from mainland Hòabìnhian hunter-gatherer sites: Pha Faen in Laos, dated to 7939–7751 calibrated years before present (yr cal BP; present taken as AD 1950), and Gua Cha in Malaysia (4.4–4.2 kyr cal BP).

Here we report, to our knowledge, the first ancient human genome from Wallacea, the oceanic island zone between the Sunda Shelf (comprising mainland southeast Asia and the continental islands of western Indonesia) and Pleistocene Sahul (Australia–New Guinea). We extracted DNA from the petrous bone of a young female hunter-gatherer buried 7.3–7.2 kyr cal BP at the limestone cave of Leang Panninge in South Sulawesi, Indonesia.

Genetic analyses show that this pre-Neolithic forager, who is associated with the 'Toalean' technocomplex, shares most genetic drift and morphological similarities with present-day Papuan and Indigenous Australian groups, yet represents a previously unknown divergent human lineage that branched off around the time of the split between these populations approximately 37,000 years ago. We also describe Denisovan and deep Asian-related ancestries in the Leang Panninge genome, and infer their large-scale displacement from the region today.

[¶ added. - R]
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on September 02, 2021, 07:43:51 AM
Making bone tools in an archaic human equivalent of a workshop, at an early date.

"Huge Find of 400,000-Year-Old Bone Tools Challenges Our Understanding of Early Humans" | Science Alert (https://www.sciencealert.com/record-number-of-elephant-bone-tools-found-at-a-400-000-year-old-site-near-rome)

QuoteAs far as Lower Paleolithic archaeology goes, this is quite the haul: Experts have uncovered a record 98 elephant-bone tools at a site dating back some 400,000 years. This discovery could change our thinking on how some of the early humans – such as Neanderthals – fashioned implements like these.

The bones were collected from a place called Castel di Guido, close to modern-day Rome. In the dim and distant past, it was a popular watering hole for the now-extinct straight-tusked elephant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight-tusked_elephant) (Palaeoloxodon antiquus), and it looks as though a substantial number of the animals died there too.

This newly identified collection of tools shows the ancient hominids of Castel di Guido didn't waste the bones that were left, but instead set up a primitive production line with methods that we haven't previously seen this far back in time, at least not to this extent.

"We see other sites with bone tools at this time," says archaeologist Paola Villa, from the University of Colorado Boulder. "But there isn't this variety of well-defined shapes."

"At Castel di Guido, humans were breaking the long bones of the elephants in a standardized manner and producing standardized blanks to make bone tools. This kind of aptitude didn't become common until much later."

[Continues . . . (https://www.sciencealert.com/record-number-of-elephant-bone-tools-found-at-a-400-000-year-old-site-near-rome)]

The paper is open access:

"Elephant bones for the Middle Pleistocene toolmaker" | PLOS One (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0256090)

QuoteAbstract:

The use of bone as raw material for implements is documented since the Early Pleistocene. Throughout the Early and Middle Pleistocene bone tool shaping was done by percussion flaking, the same technique used for knapping stone artifacts, although bone shaping was rare compared to stone tool flaking.

Until recently the generally accepted idea was that early bone technology was essentially immediate and expedient, based on single-stage operations, using available bone fragments of large to medium size animals. Only Upper Paleolithic bone tools would involve several stages of manufacture with clear evidence of primary flaking or breaking of bone to produce the kind of fragments required for different kinds of tools.

Our technological and taphonomic analysis of the bone assemblage of Castel di Guido, a Middle Pleistocene site in Italy, now dated by 40Ar/39Ar to about 400 ka, shows that this general idea is inexact. In spite of the fact that the number of bone bifaces at the site had been largely overestimated in previous publications, the number of verified, human-made bone tools is 98. This is the highest number of flaked bone tools made by pre-modern hominids published so far. Moreover the Castel di Guido bone assemblage is characterized by systematic production of standardized blanks (elephant diaphysis fragments) and clear diversity of tool types.

Bone smoothers and intermediate pieces prove that some features of Aurignacian technology have roots that go beyond the late Mousterian, back to the Middle Pleistocene. Clearly the Castel di Guido hominids had done the first step in the process of increasing complexity of bone technology. We discuss the reasons why this innovation was not developed. The analysis of the lithic industry is done for comparison with the bone industry.

[¶ added. - R]
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Ecurb Noselrub on September 02, 2021, 05:52:38 PM
So, Henry Ford developed the assembly line, but the Neanderthals created it.  Nice.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on November 22, 2021, 07:20:37 PM
 :thumbsup:






Another addition to the family tree. These papers were published this past summer--I must have been asleep.

"Homo longi: extinct human species that may replace Neanderthals as our closest relatives found in China" | The Conversation (https://theconversation.com/homo-longi-extinct-human-species-that-may-replace-neanderthals-as-our-closest-relatives-found-in-china-163328)

QuoteIn 1933 a mysterious fossil skull was discovered near Harbin City in the Heilongjiang province of north-eastern China. Despite being nearly perfectly preserved – with square eye sockets, thick brow ridges and large teeth – nobody could work out exactly what it was. The skull is much bigger than that of Homo sapiens and other human species – and its brain size is similar to that of our own species. Historical events left it without a secure place of origin or date, until today.

Now a team of Chinese, Australian and British researchers has finally solved the puzzle – the skull represents a previously unknown extinct human species. The research, published as three studies in the journal Innovation, suggests this is our closest relative in the human family tree.

Dubbed Homo longi, which can be translated as "dragon river", it is named after the province in which it was found. The identification of the skull, thought to have come from a 50-year-old male, was partly based on chemical analysis of sediments trapped inside it.

[Continues . . . (https://theconversation.com/homo-longi-extinct-human-species-that-may-replace-neanderthals-as-our-closest-relatives-found-in-china-163328)]

There are three papers, all open access.


"Late Middle Pleistocene Harbin Cranium Represents a New Homo Species" | The Innovation (http://www.the-innovation.org/issue/20210828/S2666-6758(21)00057-6/)

QuoteIn eastern Asia, several Middle-Late Pleistocene human fossils, such as the Dali, Jinniushan, Hualongdong, and Harbin crania, evidently resemble each other and are phylogenetically closer to H. sapiens than to H. neanderthalensis or other archaic humans. The Harbin cranium is the best preserved of this group. It shows a mosaic combination of plesiomorphic (https://www.thefreedictionary.com/plesiomorphy) and apomorphic (https://www.thefreedictionary.com/apomorphy) features. Here, we suggest that the Harbin skull should be recognized as a new species of Homo.


"Massive Cranium from Harbin in Northeastern China Establishes a New Middle Pleistocene Human Lineage" | The Innovation (http://www.the-innovation.org/issue/20210828/S2666-6758(21)00055-2/)

QuoteIt has recently become clear that several human lineages coexisted with Homo sapiens during the late Middle and Late Pleistocene. Here, we report an archaic human fossil that throws new light on debates concerning the diversification of the Homo genus and the origin of H. sapiens. The fossil was recovered in Harbin city in northeastern China, with a minimum uranium-series age of 146 ka [146,000 years]. This cranium is one of the best preserved Middle Pleistocene human fossils. Its massive size, with a large cranial capacity (~1,420 mL) falling in the range of modern humans, is combined with a mosaic of primitive and derived characters.


"Geochemical Provenancing and Direct Dating of the Harbin Archaic Human Cranium" | The Innovation (http://www.the-innovation.org/issue/20210828/S2666-6758(21)00056-4/)

QuoteAs one of the most complete archaic human fossils, the Harbin cranium provides critical evidence for studying the diversification of the Homo genus and the origin of Homo sapiens. However, the unsystematic recovery of this cranium and a long and confused history since the discovery impede its accurate dating. Here, we carried out a series of geochemical analyses, including non-destructive X-ray fluorescence (XRF), rare earth elements (REE), and the Sr [strontium] isotopes, to test the reported provenance of the Harbin cranium and get better stratigraphic constraints.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on November 29, 2021, 06:13:15 AM
Fragments of a Homo naledi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_naledi) child's skull found deep in the Rising Star Cave may indicate some sort of burial practice.

"A child's partial skull adds to the mystery of how Homo naledi treated the dead" | Science News (https://www.sciencenews.org/article/homo-naledi-child-skull-hominid-cave-discovery)

QuoteA child's partial skull found in a remote section of a South African cave system has fueled suspicion that an ancient hominid known as Homo naledi deliberately disposed of its dead in caves.

An international team led by paleoanthropologist Lee Berger of University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg pieced together 28 skull fragments and six teeth from a child's skull discovered in a narrow opening located about 12 meters from an underground chamber where cave explorers first found H. naledi fossils. Features of the child's skull qualify it as H. naledi, a species with an orange-sized brain and skeletal characteristics of both present-day people and Homo species from around 2 million years ago.

"The case is building for deliberate, ritualized body disposal in caves by Homo naledi," Berger said at a November 4 news conference held in Johannesburg. While that argument is controversial, there is no evidence that the child's skull was washed into the tiny space or dragged there by predators or scavengers.

[Continues . . . (https://www.sciencenews.org/article/homo-naledi-child-skull-hominid-cave-discovery)]

The paper is open access (click on the red PDF button at the link).

"Immature Hominin Craniodental Remains From a New Locality in the Rising Star Cave System, South Africa" | PaleoAnthropology (https://paleoanthropology.org/ojs/index.php/paleo/article/view/64)

QuoteAbstract:

Homo naledi is known from the Rising Star cave system, South Africa, where its remains have previously been reported from two localities: the Dinaledi Chamber (U.W. 101) and Lesedi Chamber (U.W. 102). Continued exploration of the cave system has expanded our knowledge of the Dinaledi Chamber and its surrounding passageways (the Dinaledi Subsystem), leading to the discovery of new fossil localities.

This paper discusses the fossil assemblage from the locality designated U.W. 110. This locality is within a narrow fissure of the Dinaledi Subsystem approximately 12 meters southwest of the 2013–2014 excavation. Fossil remains recovered from this locality include six hominin teeth and 28 cranial fragments, all consistent with a single immature hominin individual. The dental morphology of the new specimens supports attribution to H. naledi.

This is the first immature individual of H. naledi to preserve morphological details of the calvaria (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvaria_%28skull%29) in association with dental evidence. This partial skull provides information about the maturation of H. naledi and will be important in reconstructing the developmental sequence of immature remains from other H. naledi occurrences. This is the third locality described with H. naledi material in the Rising Star cave system and represents a depositional situation that resembles the Lesedi Chamber in some respects.

[¶ added. - R]
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on June 10, 2022, 01:42:36 AM
A likely Denisovan fossil tooth has been found in Laos--it confirms they had a wider range than previously known. This is not all that surprising; it's been known for several years that there is a significant level of Denisovan DNA contribution (https://newsroom.uw.edu/news/two-pulses-denisovans-contributed-east-asian-ancestry) in modern East Asian populations. 

"A fossil tooth places enigmatic ancient humans in Southeast Asia" | The Conversation (https://theconversation.com/a-fossil-tooth-places-enigmatic-ancient-humans-in-southeast-asia-179290)

QuoteWhat do a finger bone and some teeth found in the frigid Denisova Cave in Siberia's Altai mountains have in common with fossils from the balmy hills of tropical northern Laos?

Not much, until now: in a Laotian cave, an international team of researchers including ourselves has discovered a tooth belonging to an ancient human previously only known from icy northern latitudes – a Denisovan.

The find shows these long-lost relatives of Homo sapiens inhabited a wider area and range of environments than we previously knew, confirming hints found in the DNA of modern human populations from Southeast Asia and Australasia.

[Continues . . . (https://theconversation.com/a-fossil-tooth-places-enigmatic-ancient-humans-in-southeast-asia-179290)]

The paper is open access:

"A Middle Pleistocene Denisovan molar from the Annamite Chain of northern Laos" | Nature Communications (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-29923-z)

QuoteAbstract:

The Pleistocene presence of the genus Homo in continental Southeast Asia is primarily evidenced by a sparse stone tool record and rare human remains. Here we report a Middle Pleistocene hominin specimen from Laos, with the discovery of a molar from the Tam Ngu Hao 2 (Cobra Cave) limestone cave in the Annamite Mountains.

The age of the fossil-bearing breccia ranges between 164–131 kyr [thousand years], based on the Bayesian modelling of luminescence dating of the sedimentary matrix from which it was recovered, U-series dating of an overlying flowstone, and U-series–ESR dating of associated faunal teeth.

Analyses of the internal structure of the molar in tandem with palaeoproteomic analyses of the enamel indicate that the tooth derives from a young, likely female, Homo individual. The close morphological affinities with the Xiahe specimen from China indicate that they belong to the same taxon and that Tam Ngu Hao 2 most likely represents a Denisovan.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on July 03, 2022, 05:02:43 AM
A paper on climate and hominin evolution.  8)

"Early human habitats linked to past climate shifts" | EurekAlert (https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/949548)


QuoteA study published in Nature by an international team of scientists provides clear evidence for a link between astronomically-driven climate change and human evolution.

By combining the most extensive database of well-dated fossil remains and archeological artefacts with an unprecedented new supercomputer model simulating earth's climate history of the past 2 million years, the team of experts in climate modeling, anthropology and ecology was able to determine under which environmental conditions archaic humans likely lived.

The impact of climate change on human evolution has long been suspected, but has been difficult to demonstrate due to the paucity of climate records near human fossil-bearing sites. To bypass this problem, the team instead investigated what the climate in their computer simulation was like at the times and places humans lived, according to the archeological record. This revealed the preferred environmental conditions of different groups of hominins. From there, the team looked for all the places and times those conditions occurred in the model, creating time-evolving maps of potential hominin habitats.

"Even though different groups of archaic humans preferred different climatic environments, their habitats all responded to climate shifts caused by astronomical changes in earth's axis wobble, tilt, and orbital eccentricity with timescales ranging from 21 to 400 thousand years," said Axel Timmermann, lead author of the study and Director of the IBS Center for Climate Physics (ICCP) at Pusan National University in South Korea.

To test the robustness of the link between climate and human habitats, the scientists repeated their analysis, but with ages of the fossils shuffled like a deck of cards. If the past evolution of climatic variables did not impact where and when humans lived, then both methods would result in the same habitats. However, the researchers found significant differences in the habitat patterns for the three most recent hominin groups (Homo sapiens, Homo neanderthalensis and Homo heidelbergensis) when using the shuffled and the realistic fossil ages. "This result implies that at least during the past 500 thousand years the real sequence of past climate change, including glacial cycles, played a central role in determining where different hominin groups lived and where their remains have been found", said Prof. Timmermann.

"The next question we set out to address was whether the habitats of the different human species overlapped in space and time. Past contact zones provide crucial information on potential species successions and admixture," said Prof. Pasquale Raia from the Università di Napoli Federico II, Naples, Italy, who together with his research team compiled the dataset of human fossils and archeological artefacts used in this study. From the contact zone analysis, the researchers then derived a hominin family tree, according to which Neanderthals and likely Denisovans derived from the Eurasian clade of Homo heidelbergensis around 500-400 thousand years ago, whereas Homo sapiens' roots can be traced back to Southern African populations of late Homo heidelbergensis around 300 thousand years ago.

[Continues . . . (https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/949548)]

The paper is open access:

"Climate effects on archaic human habitats and species successions" | Nature (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04600-9)

QuoteAbstract:

It has long been believed that climate shifts during the last 2 million years had a pivotal role in the evolution of our genus Homo. However, given the limited number of representative palaeo-climate datasets from regions of anthropological interest, it has remained challenging to quantify this linkage.

Here, we use an unprecedented transient Pleistocene coupled general circulation model simulation in combination with an extensive compilation of fossil and archaeological records to study the spatiotemporal habitat suitability for five hominin species over the past 2 million years. We show that astronomically forced changes in temperature, rainfall and terrestrial net primary production had a major impact on the observed distributions of these species.

During the Early Pleistocene, hominins settled primarily in environments with weak orbital-scale climate variability. This behaviour changed substantially after the mid-Pleistocene transition, when archaic humans became global wanderers who adapted to a wide range of spatial climatic gradients.

Analysis of the simulated hominin habitat overlap from approximately 300–400 thousand years ago further suggests that antiphased climate disruptions in southern Africa and Eurasia contributed to the evolutionary transformation of Homo heidelbergensis populations into Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, respectively. Our robust numerical simulations of climate-induced habitat changes provide a framework to test hypotheses on our human origin.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Tank on September 07, 2022, 08:45:04 AM
Ancient DNA brings us closer to unlocking secrets of how modern humans evolved (https://phys.org/news/2022-09-ancient-dna-closer-secrets-modern.html)


Advances in studying ancient DNA from prehistoric remains provides us with new insight into the life of our African ancestors and the emergence of the modern human.


"Humans all share a common African ancestry, making African history everyone's history. Yet little is known about the genetic evolution of people living on the continent in the distant past.

Thanks to advances in genome sequencing technology, scientists are now able to compare the DNA of people alive today with DNA extracted from very old skeletons, giving us a unique snapshot of life in Africa from many thousands of years ago."

The more evidence we gather the more complex the picture becomes.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on September 12, 2022, 10:37:52 PM
:this:

A recent specific example:

"A Strange Fossil in South China Reveals an Intriguing Link With The First Americans" | Science Alert (https://www.sciencealert.com/dna-from-a-strange-fossil-in-south-china-reveals-ancient-link-with-the-first-americans)

QuoteRemains recovered from a cave in the Chinese province of Yunnan more than 10 years ago have finally given up their secrets, with a DNA analysis revealing not just who left them, but ultimately where their ancestors would go.

Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences evaluated nuclear and mitochondrial sequences extracted from a 14,000-year-old skull, discovering the woman it once belonged to – dubbed Mengzi Ren – was closely related to populations who would eventually be the first to set foot in the Americas.

Since their discovery in 2008, the dozens of late Paleolithic human bones left behind in Malu Dong (Red Deer Cave) in China's south-west have left anthropologists scratching their heads over just who they might have belonged to.

Without sufficient collagen to base a carbon dating analysis on, their age can only be estimated from surrounding features of their grave site. It's not even clear if the mix of bones that includes a skull fragment and the top end of a femur all come from the same individual.

What is clear is whoever left them behind represented a unique mix of archaic and modern characteristics.

[. . .]

A close look at her nuclear DNA verified Megzi Ren's close ties with anatomically modern humans, all but ruling out her heritage among a more ancient stock.

"Ancient DNA technique is a really powerful tool," says Bing Su (https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/958575), an archaeologist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

"It tells us quite definitively that the Red Deer Cave people were modern humans instead of an archaic species, such as Neanderthals or Denisovans, despite their unusual morphological features."

Although Mengzi Ren is more closely related to today's southern Chinese populations than those in the north, she has less in common with people who now live across Asia's southeast, suggesting there were already well structured, diversified populations in the region thousands of years ago.

That's not to say Asia was populated from the bottom up. There's strong evidence that a relatively small population of humans also ventured down from the north to settle the east, a group that would split to venture across the ice-covered stretch of the Bering Strait to settle the vast wilderness of the Americas.

[Continues . . . (https://www.sciencealert.com/dna-from-a-strange-fossil-in-south-china-reveals-ancient-link-with-the-first-americans)]

The paper (https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)00928-9) is behind a paywall.

QuoteSummary:

Southern East Asia is the dispersal center regarding the prehistoric settlement and migrations of modern humans in Asia-Pacific regions. However, the settlement pattern and population structure of paleolithic humans in this region remain elusive, and ancient DNA can provide direct information. Here, we sequenced the genome of a Late Pleistocene hominin (MZR), dated ∼14.0 thousand years ago from Red Deer Cave located in Southwest China, which was previously reported possessing mosaic features of modern and archaic hominins. MZR is the first Late Pleistocene genome from southern East Asia. Our results indicate that MZR is a modern human who represents an early diversified lineage in East Asia. The mtDNA of MZR belongs to an extinct basal lineage of the M9 haplogroup, reflecting a rich matrilineal diversity in southern East Asia during the Late Pleistocene. Combined with the published data, we detected clear genetic stratification in ancient southern populations of East/Southeast Asia and some degree of south-versus-north divergency during the Late Pleistocene, and MZR was identified as a southern East Asian who exhibits genetic continuity to present day populations. Markedly, MZR is linked deeply to the East Asian ancestry that contributed to First Americans.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on December 07, 2022, 06:31:27 AM
Taking another look at an ancient jawbone found in Spain, interesting findings were the result.

"This May Be The Oldest Fragment of Modern Humans in Europe, Or Something Even Rarer" | Science Alert (https://www.sciencealert.com/this-may-be-the-oldest-fragment-of-modern-humans-in-europe-or-something-even-rarer)

QuoteAn ancient jawbone previously thought to have belonged to a Neanderthal may force a rethink on the history of modern humans in Europe.

A new analysis of the broken mandible reveals that it has nothing in common with other Neanderthal remains. Rather, it could belong to a Homo sapiens – and, since it's dated to between 45,000 to 66,000 years ago, might be the oldest known piece of our species' anatomy on the European continent.

The bone itself was found in 1887 in the town of Banyoles in Spain, for which it is nicknamed. Since then, scientists have studied it pretty extensively, dating it to a timeframe in the Late Pleistocene when the region that is now Europe was predominantly populated by Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis).

This, and the archaic shape of the bone, led scientists to the conclusion that Banyoles in fact belonged to a Neanderthal.

"The mandible has been studied throughout the past century and was long considered to be a Neandertal based on its age and location, and the fact that it lacks one of the diagnostic features of Homo sapiens: a chin," says palaeoanthropologist Brian Keeling of Binghamton University in the US.

Keeling and his colleagues undertook a thorough investigation of the bone using a process called three-dimensional geometric morphometric analysis. This is a non-invasive protocol that involves going over the shape of a bone in exhaustive detail, mapping its features and comparing them to other remains.

They took high-resolution 3D scans, and used these not just to study the bone, but to reconstruct the missing pieces. Then they compared Banyoles to the mandibles of Neanderthals and modern humans.

"Our results found something quite surprising," Keeling says. "Banyoles shared no distinct Neanderthal traits and did not overlap with Neanderthals in its overall shape."

It seemed more consistent with the jawbones of our own branch of the family tree, except for one detail: the absent chin.

Continues . . . (https://www.sciencealert.com/this-may-be-the-oldest-fragment-of-modern-humans-in-europe-or-something-even-rarer)

The paper is partly available:

"Reassessment of the human mandible from Banyoles (Girona, Spain)" | Journal of Human Evolution (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047248422001518)

QuoteAbstract:

Since the discovery of a human mandible in 1887 near the present-day city of Banyoles, northeastern Spain, researchers have generally emphasized its archaic features, including the lack of chin structures, and suggested affinities with the Neandertals or European Middle Pleistocene (Chibanian) specimens. Uranium-series and electron spin resonance dating suggest the mandible dates to the Late Pleistocene (Tarantian), approximately ca. 45–66 ka.

In this study, we reassessed the taxonomic affinities of the Banyoles mandible by comparing it to samples of Middle Pleistocene fossils from Africa and Europe, Neandertals, Early and Upper Paleolithic modern humans, and recent modern humans. We evaluated the frequencies and expressions of morphological features and performed a three-dimensional geometric morphometric analysis on a virtual reconstruction of Banyoles to capture overall mandibular shape.

Our results revealed no derived Neandertal morphological features in Banyoles. While a principal component analysis based on Euclidean distances from the first two principal components clearly grouped Banyoles with both fossil and recent Homo sapiens individuals, an analysis of the Procrustes residuals demonstrated that Banyoles did not fit into any of the comparative groups.

The lack of Neandertal features in Banyoles is surprising considering its Late Pleistocene age. A consideration of the Middle Pleistocene fossil record in Europe and southwest Asia suggests that Banyoles is unlikely to represent a late-surviving Middle Pleistocene population. The lack of chin structures also complicates an assignment to H. sapiens, although early fossil H. sapiens do show somewhat variable development of the chin structures.

Thus, Banyoles represents a non-Neandertal Late Pleistocene European individual and highlights the continuing signal of diversity in the hominin fossil record. The present situation makes Banyoles a prime candidate for ancient DNA or proteomic analyses, which may shed additional light on its taxonomic affinities.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on December 30, 2022, 02:11:43 AM
There were seagoing hominins before H. sapiens, it seems. 

"Ancient Humans May Have Sailed The Mediterranean 450,000 Years Ago" | Science Alert (https://www.sciencealert.com/ancient-humans-may-have-sailed-the-mediterranean-450000-years-ago)

QuoteArchaic humans may have worked out how to sail across the sea to new lands as far back as nearly half a million years ago.

According to a new analysis of shorelines during the mid-Chibanian age, there's no other way these ancient hominins could have reached what we now call the Aegean Islands. Yet archaeologists have found ancient artifacts on the islands that pre-date the earliest known appearance of Homo sapiens.

This suggests that these ancient humans must have found a way to traverse large bodies of water. And if reliance on land bridges was not necessary for human migration, it may have implications for the way our ancestors and modern humans spread throughout the world.

[. . .]

The islands of the Aegean are, today, considered among the world's most beautiful places. They consist of hundreds of islands making up an archipelago scattered across the Aegean Sea between Turkey, Greece, and Crete. And they've been inhabited for a long time; artifacts have been dated to potentially as early as 476,000 years ago.

These ancient tools on Lesbos, Milos, and Naxos, moreover, have been linked to the Acheulean style developed some 1.76 million years ago, associated with Homo erectus across Africa and Asia. Several such tools have been found in Turkey, Greece, and Crete dating back to 1.2 million years ago, so their appearance in the nearby archipelago does make some sense.

Previous studies suggested that ancient humans crossed to the islands on foot during ice ages. When the world freezes, the sea level drops, and humans can make crossings that would be covered by water in more temperate times.

To determine whether this is a possibility, Ferentinos and his colleagues reconstructed the geography of the region, including a reconstruction of the shoreline around the Aegean Islands dating back to 450,000 years ago. For this, they used ancient river deltas, which can be used to infer sea level, and rates of subsidence driven by tectonic activity.

And they found that previous reconstructions were incorrect. At its lowest point over the last 450,000 years, the sea level was approximately 225 meters (738 feet) lower than it is today.

This means that, while some of the Aegean Islands were connected to each other when sea levels were lower, over the last 450,000 years, the islands have remained consistently insular from the surrounding land masses. At the sea level's lowest point, there still would have been several kilometers of open water to traverse to reach the nearest of the Aegean Islands.

Other evidence, the researchers point out, suggests that this was not the earliest sea crossing. Sometime between 700,000 and a million years ago, archaic humans were thought to have been traveling the sea around Indonesia and the Philippines.

These combined crossings suggest that sea travel was a skill developed not by Homo sapiens, but the human ancestors and relatives that came before.

[Continues . . . (https://www.sciencealert.com/ancient-humans-may-have-sailed-the-mediterranean-450000-years-ago)]

The paper (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1040618222002774) is behind a paywall, with some snippet material avaiable.

QuoteAbstract:

When archaic hominins started sea-crossings and whether or not seas were barriers to their dispersal, is highly debated. This paper attempts to provide insights into these issues, focusing on the Aegean Sea.

The study shows that the Central Aegean Island Chain was insular from the surrounding landmasses over the last 450 ka and contests previously available Aegean Sea palaeo-geography. This, in association with the spatiotemporal patterning of Lower and Middle Paleolithic assemblages in the margin of the Mediterranean Sea, implies that pre-sapiens, as early as 450 ka BP: (a) were sea-crossing the Aegean Sea; (b) were encouraged by the favorable land/seascape configuration to attempt sea-crossings and (c) spread to the Circum-Mediterranean basin sourcing from the Levant, following two converging routes, the one via the Aegean Sea and/or the Bosporus land-bridge and the other via the Gibraltar straits. Furthermore, the above presented findings provide substantial evidence that the archaic hominins had developed sea-crossing behaviours as early as 450 ka BP.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Tank on January 05, 2023, 08:45:01 AM
That was a fascinating article.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on January 06, 2023, 12:14:52 AM
Yeah, our ancestors got up to more than we suspect. It's entertaining to think of them paddling out onto the water. What an exhilarating adventure to be one of the earliest navigators on the planet.  Though maybe the very first were just hungry, and canny enough to imagine crossing the sea.   8)
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on September 14, 2023, 06:11:43 AM
Apologies for neglecting my science hound-dogging...

An article about a paper that focuses on the genetic bottleneck our ancestors passed through. There was previous evidence for this bottleneck, but the authors of the paper appear to have got a better handle on it now:

"Population collapse almost wiped out human ancestors, say scientists" | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/aug/31/population-collapse-almost-wiped-out-human-ancestors-say-scientists)

QuoteEarly human ancestors came close to eradication in a severe evolutionary bottleneck between 800,000 and 900,000 years ago, according to scientists.

A genomics analysis of more than 3,000 living people suggested that our ancestors' total population plummeted to about 1,280 breeding individuals for about 117,000 years. Scientists believe that an extreme climate event could have led to the bottleneck that came close to wiping out our ancestral line.

"The numbers that emerge from our study correspond to those of species that are currently at risk of extinction," said Prof Giorgio Manzi, an anthropologist at Sapienza University of Rome and a senior author of the research.

However, Manzi and his colleagues believe that the existential pressures of the bottleneck could have triggered the emergence of a new species, Homo heidelbergensis, which some believe is the shared ancestor of modern humans and our cousins, the Neanderthals and Denisovans. Homo sapiens are thought to have emerged about 300,000 years ago.

[Continues . . . (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/aug/31/population-collapse-almost-wiped-out-human-ancestors-say-scientists)]

The paper is behind a paywall, but I found a PDF version:

"Genomic inference of a severe human bottleneck during the Early to Middle Pleistocene transition" (http://websites.umich.edu/~zhanglab/clubPaper/09_05_2023.pdf)

QuoteAbstract:

Population size history is essential for studying human evolution. However, ancient population size history during the Pleistocene is notoriously difficult to unravel. In this study, we developed a fast infinitesimal time coalescent process (FitCoal) to circumvent this difficulty and calculated the composite likelihood for present-day human genomic sequences of 3154 individuals.

Results showed that human ancestors went through a severe population bottleneck with about 1280 breeding individuals between around 930,000 and 813,000 years ago. The bottleneck lasted for about 117,000 years and brought human ancestors close to extinction. This bottleneck is congruent with a substantial chronological gap in the available African and Eurasian fossil record. Our results provide new insights into our ancestry and suggest a coincident speciation event.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on September 16, 2023, 01:38:36 AM
Promptly critiqued. The title of the article below is of course inaccurate. It seems to be a contractual obligation of headline editors.

There is little question that hominins (including our species) probably have gone through more than one genetic bottleneck (https://news.berkeley.edu/2022/06/23/bottlenecks-that-reduced-genetic-diversity-were-common-throughout-human-history/). The scientists who are questioning the paper described in the post above have more specific (and more interesting) issues with the ideas it presents.

"Skepticism about claim human ancestors nearly went extinct" |  Agence France-Press (https://archive.ph/Afei2)

Quote[S]cientists not involved in the research have criticized the claim, one telling AFP there was "pretty much unanimous" agreement among population geneticists that it was not convincing.

None denied that the ancestors of humans could have neared extinction at some point, in what is known as a population bottleneck.

But experts expressed doubts that the study could be so precise, given the extraordinarily complicated task of estimating population changes so long ago, and emphasized that similar methods had not spotted this massive population crash.

[. . .]

The researchers [whose study is described in the paper] suggested that inbreeding during the bottleneck could explain why humans have a significantly lower level of genetic diversity compared to many other species.
 
The population squeeze could have even contributed to the separate evolution of Neanderthals, Denisovans and modern humans, all of which are thought to have potentially split from a common ancestor roughly around that time, the study suggested.

It could also explain why so few fossils of human ancestors have been found from the period.
However, archaeologists have pointed out that some fossils dating from the time have been discovered in Kenya, Ethiopia, Europe and China, which may suggest that our ancestors were more widespread than such a bottleneck would allow.

"The hypothesis of a global crash does not fit in with the archaeological and human fossil evidence," the British Museum's Nicholas Ashton told Science.

In response, the study's authors said that hominins then living in Eurasia and East Asia may not have contributed to the ancestry of modern humans.

"The ancient small population is the ancestor of all modern humans. Otherwise we would not carry the traces in our DNA," Li [one of the authors of the paper] said.

Stephan Schiffels, group leader for population genetics at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, told AFP he was "extremely skeptical" that the researchers had accounted for the statistical uncertainty involved in this kind of analysis.

[Continues . . . (https://archive.ph/Afei2)]
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on October 08, 2023, 02:34:36 AM
So an ax is no question a formidable item. Even a handheld stone ax head will get you something, if used with some skill and interest. Depending on the society it likely was a thing of distinction to possess and use one. So if you have some spare time on your hands (and apparently our ancestors actually had a respectable amount of leisure time (https://www.lovemoney.com/galleries/97013/the-surprising-hours-people-really-worked-in-the-past?page=2)) I suppose making a big ax just for the thing of it makes sense.

"Giant stone artefacts found on rare Ice Age site in Kent" | UCL (University College London) News (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2023/jul/giant-stone-artefacts-found-rare-ice-age-site-kent)

Quote
(https://i.imgur.com/vfCGioL.jpg)
Image Credit: Archaeology South-East/ UCL


Researchers at the UCL Institute of Archaeology have discovered some of the largest early prehistoric stone tools in Britain.

The excavations, which took place in Kent and were commissioned in advance of development of the Maritime Academy School in Frindsbury, revealed prehistoric artefacts in deep Ice Age sediments preserved on a hillside above the Medway Valley.

The researchers, from UCL Archaeology South-East, discovered 800 stone artefacts thought to be over 300,000 years old, buried in sediments which filled a sinkhole and ancient river channel, outlined in their research, published in Internet Archaeology.

Amongst the unearthed artefacts were two extremely large flint knives described as "giant handaxes". Handaxes are stone artefacts which have been chipped, or "knapped," on both sides to produce a symmetrical shape with a long cutting edge. Researchers believe this type of tool was usually held in the hand and may have been used for butchering animals and cutting meat. The two largest handaxes found at the Maritime site have a distinctive shape with a long and finely worked pointed tip, and a much thicker base.

Senior Archaeologist Letty Ingrey (UCL Institute of Archaeology), said: "We describe these tools as 'giants' when they are over 22cm long and we have two in this size range. The biggest, a colossal 29.5cm in length, is one of the longest ever found in Britain. 'Giant handaxes' like this are usually found in the Thames and Medway regions and date from over 300,000 years ago.

"These handaxes are so big it's difficult to imagine how they could have been easily held and used. Perhaps they fulfilled a less practical or more symbolic function than other tools, a clear demonstration of strength and skill. While right now, we aren't sure why such large tools were being made, or which species of early human were making them, this site offers a chance to answer these exciting questions."

[Continues . . . (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2023/jul/giant-stone-artefacts-found-rare-ice-age-site-kent)]

The paper appears to be open access. Let me know if the link doesn't work.

"On the Discovery of a Late Acheulean 'Giant' Handaxe from the Maritime Academy, Frindsbury, Kent" | Internet Archaeology (https://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue61/6/full-text.html)


Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Tank on October 08, 2023, 10:46:40 AM
The Original Affluent Society (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society) apparently 'Hunter Gatherer' societies had a lot of 'downtime' from hunting and gathering.
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on November 09, 2023, 08:29:04 PM
Indeed (a month late).  ;)

Could be that our predecessor species also enjoyed plentiful leisure time. Perhaps enough to develop a willingness to do something special for the recently deceased. Related to the story about Homo naledi above: This appears to be a belated reference to an item (https://archive.ph/THq5M) that was circulating several months ago. The hypothesis of intentional burial practices is disputed, of course. Since I didn't include it here then...

"The Oldest Known Burial Site in The World Wasn't Made by Our Species" | Science Alert (https://www.sciencealert.com/the-oldest-known-burial-site-in-the-world-wasnt-made-by-our-species)

Quote
(https://i.imgur.com/pMWgUau.jpg)
Skull of Homo naledi.
Image credit: Luca Sola/AFP



Paleontologists in South Africa said they have found the oldest known burial site in the world, containing remains of a small-brained distant relative of humans previously thought incapable of complex behavior.

Led by renowned paleoanthropologist Lee Berger, researchers said in June they had discovered several specimens of Homo naledi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_naledi) – a tree-climbing, Stone Age hominid – buried about 30 meters (100 feet) underground in a cave system within the Cradle of Humankind, a UNESCO world heritage site near Johannesburg.

"These are the most ancient interments yet recorded in the hominin record, earlier than evidence of Homo sapiens interments by at least 100,000 years," the scientists wrote (https://elifesciences.org/reviewed-preprints/89106) in a series of preprint papers published in eLife.

The findings challenge the current understanding of human evolution, as it is normally held that the development of bigger brains allowed for the performing of complex, "meaning-making" activities such as burying the dead.

The oldest burials previously unearthed, found in the Middle East and Africa, contained the remains of Homo sapiens – and were around 100,000 years old.

Those found in South Africa by Berger, whose previous announcements have been controversial, and his fellow researchers, date back to at least 200,000 BC.

Critically, they also belong to Homo naledi, a primitive species at the crossroads between apes and modern humans, which had brains about the size of oranges and stood about 1.5 meters (five feet) tall.

[. . .]

While requiring further analysis, the discoveries "alter our understandings of human evolution", the researchers wrote.

"Burial, meaning-making, even 'art' could have a much more complicated, dynamic, non-human history than we previously thought," said Agustín Fuentes, a professor of anthropology at Princeton University, who co-authored the studies.

Carol Ward, an anthropologist at the University of Missouri not involved in the research, said that "these findings, if confirmed, would be of considerable potential importance".

"I look forward to learning how the disposition of remains precludes other possible explanations than intentional burial, and to seeing the results once they have been vetted by peer review," she told AFP.

Ward also pointed out that the paper acknowledged that it could not rule out that markings on the walls could have been made by later hominins.

[Link to full article. (https://www.sciencealert.com/the-oldest-known-burial-site-in-the-world-wasnt-made-by-our-species)]

There is a preprint of one of the papers linked in the third paragraph above. Below, a PDF of that and two other papers on this topic.

"Evidence for deliberate burial of the dead by Homo naledi" | bioRxiv (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.01.543127v1.full.pdf)

QuoteAbstract:

Recent excavations in the Rising Star Cave System of South Africa have revealed burials of the extinct hominin species Homo naledi. A combination of geological and anatomical evidence shows that hominins dug holes that disrupted the subsurface stratigraphy and interred the remains of H. naledi individuals, resulting in at least two discrete features within the Dinaledi Chamber and the Hill Antechamber.

These are the most ancient interments yet recorded in the hominin record, earlier than evidence of Homo sapiens interments by at least 100,000 years. These interments along with other evidence suggest that diverse mortuary practices may have been conducted by H. naledi within the cave system. These discoveries show that mortuary practices were not limited to H. sapiens or other hominins with large brain sizes.


"241,000 to 335,000 Years Old Rock Engravings Made by Homo naledi in the Rising Star Cave system, South Africa" | bioRxiv (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.01.543133v1.full.pdf)

QuoteAbstract:

The production of painted, etched or engraved designs on cave walls or other surfaces is recognized as a major cognitive step in human evolution. Such intentional designs, which are widely interpreted as signifying, recording, and transmitting information in a durable manner were once considered exclusive to Late Pleistocene Homo sapiens. Recent work has demonstrated that other hominin groups also made such marks, including Neanderthals (Rodríguez-Vidal et al., 2014; Hoffmann et al., 2018), and possibly Middle-Pleistocene Homo erectus (Joordens et al., 2015).

Such durable signs indicate an intentionality characteristic of meaning-making (Kissel and Fuentes 2018) which has been argued to require significant levels of cognitive abilities not found in species with smaller brain sizes (Parkington, 2010). In fact, the evolution of such meaning-making symbols is thought to be a core aspect of what it means to be "human" (Henshilwood, 2009).

Here we present the first known example of abstract patterns and shapes engraved within the Dinaledi subsystem of the Rising Star Cave in South Africa. We identified markings incised into the dolomitic limestone walls of the cave. The engravings described here are deeply impressed cross-hatchings and other geometric shapes. The surfaces bearing these engravings appear to have been prepared and smoothed. In some areas there is residue that creates a sheen on the surface possibly indicating repeated handling or rubbing of the rock, and there is evidence of the application of dirt or sand to the surface by non-natural processes.

Homo naledi entered this part of the cave system and buried bodies within the both the Dinaledi Chamber and adjacent Hill Antechamber between 241 and 335 ka (Dirks et al., 2017; Robbins et al., 2021, Berger et al, 2023a). The engravings described here are found on a pillar in the Hill Antechamber that extends into the natural fissure corridor that links the two chambers and we associate them with H. naledi.


"Burials and engravings in a small-brained hominin, Homo naledi, from the late Pleistocene: contexts and evolutionary implications" | bioRxiv (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.01.543127v1.full.pdf)

QuoteAbstract:

Data from recent explorations in the Dinaledi subsystem illustrates one of the earliest examples of a mortuary practice in hominins and offers the earliest evidence of multiple interments and funerary actions, as well as evidence of the early creation of meaning making by a hominin.

The hominin undertaking these behaviors was the small-brained Homo naledi. These data call into question several key assumptions about behavioral and cognitive evolution in Pleistocene hominins. The evidence from Dinaledi push back the temporal origins of mortuary and funerary behaviors and associate the creation of meaning making with a small-brained species and thus challenge key assumptions about the role and importance of encephalization in human evolution.

This suggests that the hominin socio-cognitive niche and its relation to meaning-making activities is more diverse than previously thought. The association of these activities in subterranean spaces accessed and modified by the small brained species Homo naledi impacts assertations that technological and cognitive advances in human evolution are associated solely with the evolution of larger brains.



Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Asmodean on November 10, 2023, 09:50:48 AM
Quote from: Recusant on January 06, 2023, 12:14:52 AMThough maybe the very first were just hungry, and canny enough to imagine crossing the sea.   8)
Yes, I suspect something like this.

It's easy to romanticize the first sailors singing the first shanties while paddling the first log across some body of water, but I suspect that unless they were children playing (who more than likely subsequently drowned), there probably was a good reason for them to do so.

Personally, I suspect that many such voyages, whatever form they may have taken, were set out on while in "full tunnel vision" with some sort of a single-minded goal in mind... Survival, likely as not.

Still, the thought of an early man setting sail to his float, with naught but a fishing spear and a dream... It has its appeal. :smilenod:
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on November 10, 2023, 05:25:29 PM
Quote from: Asmodean on November 10, 2023, 09:50:48 AM
Quote from: Recusant on January 06, 2023, 12:14:52 AMThough maybe the very first were just hungry, and canny enough to imagine crossing the sea.  8)
Yes, I suspect something like this.

It's easy to romanticize the first sailors singing the first shanties while paddling the first log across some body of water, but I suspect that unless they were children playing (who more than likely subsequently drowned), there probably was a good reason for them to do so.

Personally, I suspect that many such voyages, whatever form they may have taken, were set out on while in "full tunnel vision" with some sort of a single-minded goal in mind... Survival, likely as not.

Still, the thought of an early man setting sail to his float, with naught but a fishing spear and a dream... It has its appeal. :smilenod:

For some, the goad of curiosity and the lure of adventure may have been enough. The (usually) male youth of our kind are subject to such things.  :thumb:
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Icarus on November 11, 2023, 01:57:04 AM
Possibilities other than maritime high adventure could be considered.

1: There was a land bridge across the Med at that time in history.

2: God parted the sea for them, like he later did for Moses.

3: Aliens transported a few of them with their space ships.

4: They went around, like through the Straights of Bosporus. That crossing could have        been less threatening.

Just spitballing here..........
Title: Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cousins
Post by: Recusant on March 07, 2024, 12:15:39 AM
From January, but still deserves a mention in this thread. . .

"Neanderthals and humans lived side by side in Northern Europe 45,000 years ago" | Berkeley News (https://news.berkeley.edu/2024/01/31/neanderthals-and-humans-lived-side-by-side-in-northern-europe-45-000-years-ago)

QuoteA genetic analysis of bone fragments unearthed at an archaeological site in central Germany shows conclusively that modern humans — Homo sapiens — had already reached Northern Europe 45,000 years ago, overlapping with Neanderthals for several thousand years before the latter went extinct.

The findings establish that the site near Ranis, Germany, which is known for its finely flaked, leaf-shaped stone tool blades, is among the oldest confirmed sites of modern human Stone Age culture in north central and northwestern Europe.

The evidence that Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis lived side by side is consistent with genomic evidence that the two species occasionally interbred. It also feeds the suspicion that the invasion of Europe and Asia by modern humans some 50,000 years ago helped drive Neanderthals, which had occupied the area for more than 500,000 years, to extinction.

The genetic analysis, along with an archaeological and isotopic analysis and radiocarbon dating of the Ranis site, are detailed in a trio of papers appearing today in the journals Nature and Nature Ecology and Evolution.

The stone blades at Ranis, referred to as leaf points, are similar to stone tools found at several sites in Moravia, Poland, Germany and the United Kingdom. These tools that are thought to have been produced by the same culture, referred to as the Lincombian–Ranisian–Jerzmanowician (LRJ) culture or technocomplex. Because of previous dating, the Ranis site was known to be 40,000 years old or older, but without recognizable bones to indicate who made the tools, it was unclear whether they were the product of Neanderthals or Homo sapiens.

The new findings demonstrate that "Homo sapiens made this technology, and that Homo sapiens were this far north at this time period, which is 45,000 years ago," said Elena Zavala, one of four first authors of the Nature paper and a Miller Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. "So these are among the earliest Homo sapiens in Europe."

Zavala conducted the genetic analysis of hominid bone fragments from the new and deeper excavations at Ranis between 2016 and 2022 and from earlier excavations in the 1930s. Because the DNA in ancient bones is highly fragmented, she employed special techniques to isolate and sequence the DNA, all of it mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) that is inherited solely from the mother.

"We confirmed that the skeletal fragments belonged to Homo sapiens. Interestingly, several fragments shared the same mitochondrial DNA sequences — even fragments from different excavations," she said. "This indicates that the fragments belonged to the same individual or their maternal relatives, linking these new finds with the ones from decades ago."

The bone fragments were initially identified as human through analysis of bone proteins — a field called paleoproteomics — by another first author, Dorothea Mylopotamitaki, a doctoral student at the Collège de France and fomerly of MPI-EVA.

By comparing the Ranis mitochondrial DNA sequences with mtDNA sequences obtained from human remains at other paleolithic sites in Europe, Zavala was able to construct a family tree of early Homo sapiens across Europe. All but one of the 13 Ranis fragments were quite similar to one another and, surprisingly, resembled mtDNA from the 43,000-year-old skull of a woman discovered in a cave at Zlatý kůň in the Czech Republic. The lone standout grouped with an individual from Italy.

[Continues . . . (https://news.berkeley.edu/2024/01/31/neanderthals-and-humans-lived-side-by-side-in-northern-europe-45-000-years-ago)]

"Late Neandertals and Early Modern Humans in Western Europe" | Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (https://www.eva.mpg.de/evolution/field-projects/late-neandertals-and-early-modern-humans-in-western-europe/)

The papers are open access.

"Homo sapiens reached the higher latitudes of Europe by 45,000 years ago" | Nature (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06923-7)

QuoteAbstract:

The Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition in Europe is associated with the regional disappearance of Neanderthals and the spread of Homo sapiens. Late Neanderthals persisted in western Europe several millennia after the occurrence of H. sapiens in eastern Europe1. Local hybridization between the two groups occurred, but not on all occasions.

Archaeological evidence also indicates the presence of several technocomplexes during this transition, complicating our understanding and the association of behavioural adaptations with specific hominin groups. One such technocomplex for which the makers are unknown is the Lincombian–Ranisian–Jerzmanowician (LRJ), which has been described in northwestern and central Europe.

Here we present the morphological and proteomic taxonomic identification, mitochondrial DNA analysis and direct radiocarbon dating of human remains directly associated with an LRJ assemblage at the site Ilsenhöhle in Ranis (Germany). These human remains are among the earliest directly dated Upper Palaeolithic H. sapiens remains in Eurasia.

We show that early H. sapiens associated with the LRJ were present in central and northwestern Europe long before the extinction of late Neanderthals in southwestern Europe. Our results strengthen the notion of a patchwork of distinct human populations and technocomplexes present in Europe during this transitional period.

"The ecology, subsistence and diet of ~45,000-year-old Homo sapiens at Ilsenhöhle in Ranis, Germany" | Nature Ecology & Evolution (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-023-02303-6)

QuoteAbstract:

Recent excavations at Ranis (Germany) identified an early dispersal of Homo sapiens into the higher latitudes of Europe by 45,000 years ago. Here we integrate results from zooarchaeology, palaeoproteomics, sediment DNA and stable isotopes to characterize the ecology, subsistence and diet of these early H. sapiens.

We assessed all bone remains (n = 1,754) from the 2016–2022 excavations through morphology (n = 1,218) or palaeoproteomics (zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry (n = 536) and species by proteome investigation (n = 212)). Dominant taxa include reindeer, cave bear, woolly rhinoceros and horse, indicating cold climatic conditions. Numerous carnivore modifications, alongside sparse cut-marked and burnt bones, illustrate a predominant use of the site by hibernating cave bears and denning hyaenas, coupled with a fluctuating human presence.

Faunal diversity and high carnivore input were further supported by ancient mammalian DNA recovered from 26 sediment samples. Bulk collagen carbon and nitrogen stable isotope data from 52 animal and 10 human remains confirm a cold steppe/tundra setting and indicate a homogenous human diet based on large terrestrial mammals. This lower-density archaeological signature matches other Lincombian–Ranisian–Jerzmanowician sites and is best explained by expedient visits of short duration by small, mobile groups of pioneer H. sapiens.

"Stable isotopes show Homo sapiens dispersed into cold steppes ~45,000 years ago at Ilsenhöhle in Ranis, Germany" | Nature Ecology & Evolution (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-023-02318-z)

QuoteAbstract:

The spread of Homo sapiens into new habitats across Eurasia ~45,000 years ago and the concurrent disappearance of Neanderthals represents a critical evolutionary turnover in our species' history. 'Transitional' technocomplexes, such as the Lincombian–Ranisian–Jerzmanowician (LRJ), characterize the European record during this period but their makers and evolutionary significance have long remained unclear.

New evidence from Ilsenhöhle in Ranis, Germany, now provides a secure connection of the LRJ to H. sapiens remains dated to ~45,000 years ago, making it one of the earliest forays of our species to central Europe. Using many stable isotope records of climate produced from 16 serially sampled equid teeth spanning ~12,500 years of LRJ and Upper Palaeolithic human occupation at Ranis, we review the ability of early humans to adapt to different climate and habitat conditions.

Results show that cold climates prevailed across LRJ occupations, with a temperature decrease culminating in a pronounced cold excursion at ~45,000–43,000 cal BP. Directly dated H. sapiens remains confirm that humans used the site even during this very cold phase. Together with recent evidence from the Initial Upper Palaeolithic, this demonstrates that humans operated in severe cold conditions during many distinct early dispersals into Europe and suggests pronounced adaptability.