Science
Related: About this forumDNA Turning Human Story Into a Tell-All
The tip of a girls 40,000-year-old pinky finger found in a cold Siberian cave, paired with faster and cheaper genetic sequencing technology, is helping scientists draw a surprisingly complex new picture of human origins.
The new view is fast supplanting the traditional idea that modern humans triumphantly marched out of Africa about 50,000 years ago, replacing all other types that had gone before.
Instead, the genetic analysis shows, modern humans encountered and bred with at least two groups of ancient humans in relatively recent times: the Neanderthals, who lived in Europe and Asia, dying out roughly 30,000 years ago, and a mysterious group known as the Denisovans, who lived in Asia and most likely vanished around the same time.
Their DNA lives on in us even though they are extinct. In a sense, we are a hybrid species, Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist who is the research leader in human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, said in an interview.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/science/gains-in-dna-are-speeding-research-into-human-origins.html?hpw
davidthegnome
(2,983 posts)Interesting reading. I had heard, of course, of Neanderthals, but until today I'd never heard of the Denisovans. I wonder what mysteries will be revealed as Scientists continue to study the findings in this cave. It's strange to think of humanity as a hybrid species, but we really are, aren't we?
I wonder what caused the Denisovans to become extinct.
tabatha
(18,795 posts)Chris Stringer has a new book out in March - "Lone Survivors: How We Came to Be the Only Humans on Earth"
nebenaube
(3,496 posts)e.g. foreign pathogens.
tabatha
(18,795 posts)I have Stringer's "African Exodus: The Origins of Modern Humanity", several by James Shreeve (one of my favorite authors for his style of writing), one by Lee Berger (Wits but originally from the US). (I attended a talk by him in 1997 in SA.)
There are a couple I have on Neanderthals as well.
Chris Stringer has a new book out in March - "Lone Survivors: How We Came to Be the Only Humans on Earth"