Homo sapiens and Their Cousins

[Recusant]

Though maybe the very first were just hungry, and canny enough to imagine crossing the sea. 

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.

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. 

[Icarus]

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..........

[Recusant]

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

A 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 . . .]

"Late Neandertals and Early Modern Humans in Western Europe" | Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

The papers are open access.

"Homo sapiens reached the higher latitudes of Europe by 45,000 years ago" | Nature

Abstract:

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

Abstract:

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

Abstract:

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.

[zorkan]

Is this accurate?

https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/mystery-of-why-europeans-have-less-neanderthal-dna-than-east-asians-finally-solved#:~:text=All%20humans%20with%20ancestry%20from,than%20people%20of%20European%20ancestry.

[Recusant]

Is this accurate?

https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/mystery-of-why-europeans-have-less-neanderthal-dna-than-east-asians-finally-solved#:~:text=All%20humans%20with%20ancestry%20from,than%20people%20of%20European%20ancestry.

As far as I know, nobody with European or Asian ancestry (including American Indians in the latter) lacks a Neanderthal component of their genome. In Asia there is also a contribution from Denisovans as well.

[Dark Lightning]

We're all just a buncha mutts! 

[zorkan]

As far as I know, nobody with European or Asian ancestry (including American Indians in the latter) lacks a Neanderthal component of their genome. In Asia there is also a contribution from Denisovans as well.

I'm thinking about the implication that people of African origin who lack Neanderthal genes are in some way disadvantaged.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_tA8Skfh3w

[Recusant]

I'm thinking about the implication that people of African origin who lack Neanderthal genes are in some way disadvantaged.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_tA8Skfh3w

If you've actually watched that film you already know that "implication" is shown to be false (to the extent evidence can give us an answer).  On the other hand, there's JAQing like this.

[zorkan]

I watched the film when it was first screened. It is not racist.
Omaar is Somali and Oxford educated.
It would not have been allowed to be presented by a "Caucasian".
I've not seen the book, and it appears to be on a different subject.
If you want racism then look no further than India and Japan with their caste systems.
They were designed to place immigrants into lower classes.
My last girlfriend was Malay. Her country discriminates against Indians and Chinese.
Malays definitely have Neanderthal / Denisovan genes and probably more than Europeans.
Highest IQ's may well be found in SE Asia.

This does not surprise me. I also had HK girlfriend.
https://www.worlddata.info/iq-by-country.php#:~:text=IQ%20compared%20by%20countries&text=With%20an%20average%20IQ%20of,points%2C%20is%20occupied%20by%20Nepal. 

https://ceoworld.biz/2024/03/19/revealed-these-are-the-smartest-countries-with-the-highest-average-iq-2024/

[Dark Lightning]

That's a pretty sorry list. How does Nepal exist as a country when the average IQ in in the 40s? Or any of the other countries near there? What nonsense.

[zorkan]

I've never been there, but I expect it must have something to do with their religion.
Don't think for yourself, just obey.

https://businessday.ng/news/article/10-countries-with-lowest-iq-in-2024-report/#:~:text=Nepal%20%E2%80%94%20Average%20IQ%3A%2042.99&text=Limited%20access%20to%20quality%20education,IQ%20scores%20observed%20in%20Nepal.

"Nepal ranks at the bottom of the list with an average IQ score of 42.99. Despite its rich cultural heritage and stunning landscapes, Nepal faces significant challenges in providing adequate education and healthcare to its population, particularly in remote rural areas. Limited access to quality education, poverty, and nutritional deficiencies contributing factors to the lower IQ scores observed in Nepal."

Great soldiers the Gurkhas from Nepal.

[Dark Lightning]

I'd guess one would do poorly on an IQ test if one is ignorant enough. Take a Nepalese out of that environment and raise them in a country where the average IQ is 100 and see the result. I also contend that the higher IQs in the SE Asian countries is a measure of education, not native intelligence.

[Recusant]

As the video states, IQ tests are not so much measuring intelligence as they are "adaptation to modernity." As populations become more integrated into modern society, their average IQ score rises fairly rapidly. Which is why (for instance) the average IQ score for black people in the US has increased more rapidly in the past few decades than the increase in scores of white people. The "blacks aren't as intelligent" canard is indeed racist (or ignorant) bullshit.

[Recusant]

Ah, the knees. They can be genuinely difficult, part of the price we pay for bipedalism.

"Why we haven't evolved better knees – new research" | The Conversation

The groans of pain as we get up from the sofa or the sound of crunching cartilage when taking the stairs are all too familiar. Many of us look down at our aching knees and curse them – wondering why they seemingly evolved to hurt so much. But the human knee has a complex evolutionary history. And new research is showing how misunderstood it is.

The knee has undergone major changes to its size and shape, not only to allow early humans to walk upright, but also to differentiate us (Homo sapiens) from our extinct genetic relatives, such as Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis (neanderthals).

Natural selection, acting with other evolutionary forces, like random mutation or genetic heritage, probably shaped the knee to help us walk on two legs more efficiently and for longer than our relatives.

Many of the knee problems we face today are new problems our ancestors did not experience. For example, in 2017, research suggested that the sedentary lifestyle of the post-industrial world may have led to a 2.1-fold increase in the rate of knee osteoarthritis, the most common form of arthritis of the knee.

When the researchers studied the remains of hunter gatherers who lived up to 6,000 years ago, they discovered that knee osteoarthritis was probably not a problem at all back then. In the UK today over a third of people over 45 in the UK, have sought treatment for osteoarthritis – primarily for the knee.

Weaker muscles for stabilising and protecting joints and relatively weaker cartilage to cushion the scraping of bones are probably the result of humans moving a lot less than they used to – sitting in an office or running on a treadmill builds less muscle than hunting deer for most of the day in challenging terrain. For us to evolve osteoarthritis-free knees, sedentary people with "good" knees would need to have more children than sedentary people with "bad" knees for many generations.

[. . .]

New work from my colleagues and I has shown that two of these often misunderstood bones [sesamoid bones – small bones that are embedded in tendons or ligaments like the kneecap], the medial and lateral fabellae, which are behind the knee, could have evolved in multiple ways in primates and helped early humans learn to walk upright.

The research was a systematic review of three sesamoid bones in 93 different species of primate, including other hominids and common ancestors to humans.

Our work showed that humans have a distinct form of evolution for these bones that may have begun at the origin of hominoids, a group of primates that include apes and humans.

Scientists think that using the existing fabella bone for a new purpose, something called an exaptation, may have helped early humans go from walking on four limbs to two. Interestingly, this bone is also linked to higher rates of osteoarthritis. People who have it are twice as likely to develop the condition. Evolution is not a simple road to biomechanical efficiency.

This picture gets even more complicated when we realise that, unlike teeth, knees are "plastic", meaning they shift and change depending on factors like nutrition and usage. Teeth on the other hand (once grown) don't adapt and simply become damaged. This is why it is so important to exercise as we age – to keep our bones strong.

Knees change and adapt in response to their use, or lack thereof. A global increase in nutrition causing humans to be taller and weigh more is the leading hypothesis as to why fabellae are becoming more common, for example. The presence of the fabella has trebled in the past 100 years or so, with some variation worldwide.

[Continues . . .]

I wonder whether the fact that  a lot fewer of us used to manage to make it to 45 years has some relevance to the incidence of osteoarthritis of the knee in the past compared to the present.

The paper is behind a paywall.

Abstract:

Sesamoids are variably present skeletal elements found in tendons and ligaments near joints. Variability in sesamoid size, location and presence/absence is hypothesized to enable skeletal innovation, yet sesamoids are often ignored. Three knee sesamoids—the cyamella, medial fabella and lateral fabella—are present in primates, but we know little about how they evolved, if they are skeletal innovations, or why they are largely missing from Hominoidea.

Our phylogenetic comparative analyses suggest that sesamoid presence/absence is highly phylogenetically structured and contains phylogenetic signal. Models suggest that it is easy to gain but difficult/impossible to lose knee sesamoids and that the fabellae may have similar developmental/evolutionary pathways that are distinct from the cyamella.

Sesamoid presence/absence is uncorrelated to the mode of locomotion, suggesting that sesamoid biomechanical function may require information beyond sesamoid presence, such as size and location. Ancestral state reconstructions were largely uninformative but highlighted how reconstructions using parsimony can differ from those that are phylogenetically informed.

Interestingly, there may be two ways to evolve fabellae, with humans evolving fabellae differently from most other primates. We hypothesize that the 're-emergence' of the lateral fabella in humans may be correlated with the evolution of a unique developmental pathway, potentially correlated with the evolution of straight-legged, bipedal locomotion.

[Recusant]

The beginnings of language may have been possessed by our last common ancestor with chimpanzees and bonobos.

"The origins of language" | ScienceDaily

Chimpanzees are capable of complex communication: The human capacity for language may not be as unique as previously thought. Chimpanzees have a complex communication system that allows them to combine calls to create new meanings, similar to human language. Combining calls creatively: Chimpanzees use four ways to change meaning when combining single calls into two-call combinations, including compositional and non-compositional combinations, and they use a large variety of call combinations in a wide range of contexts.

[. . .]

Researchers from the Max Planck Institutes for Evolutionary Anthropology and for Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, and from the Cognitive Neuroscience Center Marc Jeannerod (CNRS/Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1) and Neuroscience Research Center (CNRS/Inserm/Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1) in Lyon, France recorded thousands of vocalisations from three groups of wild chimpanzees in the Taï National Park in Ivory Coast. They examined how the meanings of 12 different chimpanzee calls changed when they were combined into two-call combinations. "Generating new or combined meanings by combining words is a hallmark of human language, and it is crucial to investigate whether a similar capacity exists in our closest living relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, in order to decipher the origins of human language," says Catherine Crockford, senior author of the study. "Recording chimpanzee vocalisations over several years in their natural environment is essential in order to document their full communicative capabilities, a task that is becoming increasingly challenging due to growing human threats to wild chimpanzee populations," says Roman Wittig, co-author of the study and director of the Taï Chimpanzee Project.

The study reveals four ways in which chimpanzees alter meanings when combining single calls into 16 different two-call combinations, analogous to the key linguistic principles in human language. Chimpanzees used compositional combinations that added meaning (e.g., A = feeding, B = resting, AB = feeding + resting) and clarified meaning (e.g., A = feeding or travelling, B = aggression, AB = travelling). They also used non-compositional idiomatic combinations that created entirely new meanings (e.g., A = resting, B = affiliation, AB = nesting). Crucially, unlike previous studies which have mostly reported call combinations in limited situations such as predator encounters, the chimpanzees in this study expanded their meanings through the versatile combination of most of their single calls into a large diversity of call combinations used in a wide range of contexts.

"Our findings suggest a highly generative vocal communication system, unprecedented in the animal kingdom, which echoes recent findings in bonobos suggesting that complex combinatorial capacities were already present in the common ancestor of humans and these two great ape species," says Cédric Girard-Buttoz, first author on the study. He adds: "This changes the views of the last century which considered communication in the great apes to be fixed and linked to emotional states, and therefore unable to tell us anything about the evolution of language. Instead, we see clear indications here that most call types in the repertoire can shift or combine their meaning when combined with other call types. The complexity of this system suggests either that there is indeed something special about hominid communication -- that complex communication was already emerging in our last common ancestor, shared with our closest living relatives -- or that we have underestimated the complexity of communication in other animals as well, which requires further study."

[Link to full article.]

The paper is open access:

"Versatile use of chimpanzee call combinations promotes meaning expansion" | Science Advances

Abstract:

Language is a combinatorial communication system able to generate an infinite number of meanings. Nonhuman animals use several combinatorial mechanisms to expand meanings, but maximum one mechanism is reported per species, suggesting an evolutionary leap to human language.

We tested whether chimpanzees use several meaning-expanding mechanisms. We recorded 4323 utterances in 53 wild chimpanzees and compared the events in which chimpanzees emitted two-call vocal combinations (bigrams) with those eliciting the component calls. Examining 16 bigrams, we found four combinatorial mechanisms whereby bigram meanings were or were not derived from the meaning of their parts—compositional or noncompositional combinations, respectively.

Chimpanzees used each mechanism in several bigrams across a wide range of daily events. This combinatorial system allows encoding many more meanings than there are call types. Such a system in nonhuman animals has never been documented and may be transitional between rudimentary systems and open-ended systems like human language.