Showing posts with label Neanderthals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Neanderthals. Show all posts

Friday, 8 January 2021

Ancient news roundup

Africa (Olduvai Gorge):

Research suggests that early man (c. 2 million years ago) was able to manage in a changing environment for 200,000 years. 

'The findings uncovered at Oldupai Gorge and across eastern Africa indicate that early human movements across and out of Africa were possible by 2 million years ago, as hominins possessed the behavioural ability to expand into novel ecosystems.' 

Part of this may be due to the use of stone tools, technology which (it is speculated) may have been employed by other hominin species such as australopithecines:

'... we know that the genus Paranthropus was present in Oldupai Gorge at this time.'

Tibet:

DNA from the hominin species knows as Denisovans has been found in sediment in Baishiya Karst Cave on the Tibetan plateau - the first such find outside Siberia. The specimens date from c. 100,000 years ago, again from 60,000 years ago, and possibly also 50k-30k ya; in the latter case that may have overlapped with the arrival of modern humans and interbreeding there or elsewhere could explain why 'present-day Tibetans carry a gene variant that aids high-altitude survival'.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/35%C2%B026'53.0%22N+102%C2%B034'17.0%22E/@32.0753123,90.6411118,4.75z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d35.448056!4d102.571389?hl=en

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denisovan#/media/File:Early_migrations_mercator.svg

Conflict between Homo Sapiens and the Neanderthals

An academic at Bath University suggests there was a 100,000-year war between the two species that pitched modern humans against the Neanderthals that had preceded them out of Africa and were already thriving in Europe and Asia:
South Africa

Article on early man in southern South Africa 200,000 years ago, when sea levels were lower - the hunting grounds since partially inundated following the end of the Ice Age:
Peru

It seems prehistoric women could be hunters, as well as gatherers:

Dogs and humans

Parallel DNA research into human and canine genomes is sketching an 11,000-year-long (or more) history of their relationship. The five separate dog genomes have expanded to 32:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/how-dogs-tracked-their-humans-across-ancient-world

Dingoes, on the other hand, seem to have arrived in western Australia some 3,500 years ago - far later than humans - and although some were recorded living with aboriginals in 1788 they don't feature much in ancient rock art; perhaps for roving hunter-gatherers dingoes were an unaffordable luxury?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingo

Saturday, 8 August 2020

ORIGINS: Another unknown ancestor in the human bloodline?

New human genetic research has found traces of a mystery hominin that mated with homo sapiens in Africa a million years ago, long before the first wave of our species left for Europe.
https://www.livescience.com/mystery-ancestor-mated-with-humans.html

It's also thought that our ancestors mated with Neanderthals before that first wave of emigrants, which then either died out or returned to Africa; then some of the second wave (c. 50,000 years ago) also mingled with Neanderthals; and later, in Southeast Asia, also mated with 'Denisovans' and another unknown species, possibly more.

'History is made in bed,' as they say.

See also:

https://www.voanews.com/science-health/new-study-shows-human-ancestors-had-complicated-love-life

Saturday, 1 August 2020

NEANDERTHALS: Fact sheet, genetic contribution to melanesians

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1315924/archaeology-history-news-ancient-humans-science-news-paleolithic-france-spt
The graphic above is from a recent article in the Daily Express, reporting on Old Stone Age humanoid remains and cave art found in central France:
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1315924/archaeology-history-news-ancient-humans-science-news-paleolithic-france-spt

The illustrated geographical range obviously leaves gaps to be filled in, and there seems to be evidence of interbreeding during the upper Palaeolithic between Neanderthals, homo sapiens and 'Denisovans' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interbreeding_between_archaic_and_modern_humans:

So to some extent the genes of Homo Neanderthalensis' descendants are also represented in the Pacific region:

'Some recent studies suggest that all humans outside of Africa have inherited some genes from Neanderthals, and that Melanesians are the only known modern humans whose prehistoric ancestors interbred with the Denisova hominin, sharing 4%–6% of their genome with this ancient cousin of the Neanderthal,' says Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanesians.

Friday, 22 May 2020

ORIGINS: Neanderthal builders in France...

... 176,000 years ago: https://bigthink.com/robby-berman/a-cave-in-france-changes-what-we-thought-we-knew-about-neanderthals

Taken from https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/05/the-astonishing-age-of-a-neanderthal-cave-construction-site/484070/

which was based on
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature18291

and also reported by
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/05/neanderthals-caves-rings-building-france-archaeology/

Bruniquel Cave is in south-west France, more here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruniquel_Cave

Related:

The common ancestors of the humanoids known as Neanderthals and Denisovans spread across Europe and Asia over half a million years ago, and split into the two branches, with fossils of Neanderthals found in western countries and of Denisovans in the East. What is thought to have been the first wave of Homo Sapiens came from Africa c. 270,000 years ago and some may have mated with Neanderthals.

Wednesday, 12 February 2020

ORIGINS: DNA evidence points to another unknown hominid population in Africa

https://theconversation.com/early-humans-in-africa-may-have-interbred-with-a-mysterious-extinct-species-new-research-131699

'A 2017 study of ancient DNA from southern Africa investigated 16 ancient genomes from people alive over the last 10,000 years. This showed that the history of African populations was complex. There wasn’t just a single group of humans around in Africa when they expanded out 100,000 years ago.

It’s a result that was supported earlier this year by a paper examining ancient DNA from four individuals from what is now Cameroon. Taken together, this research suggests there were geographically diverse groups in Africa well before the main expansion out of the continent. And many of these groups will have contributed to the ancestry of people alive in Africa today. [...]

The new paper provides evidence that there may also have been gene-flow into the ancestors of West Africans directly from a mysterious archaic hominin. [...]

Interestingly, they suggest that 6%-7% of the genomes of West Africans is archaic in origin. But this archaic ancestry wasn’t Neanderthal or Denisovan. Their model suggested the additional ancestry came from an archaic population for which we don’t currently have a genome.

This ghost population likely split from the ancestors of humans and Neanderthals between 360,000 and 1.02 million years ago. That was well before the gene-flow event that brought Neanderthal DNA back into West Africa around 43,000 years ago – although the value of this could be anywhere between 0 and 124,000 years ago.'

Tuesday, 30 July 2019

Sunday, 8 October 2017

ORIGINS: Homo Sapiens: Was the first wave out of Africa much earlier?

The New York Times has reported (July 4, 2017) research to suggest that homo sapiens evolved 300,000 years ago in Africa and left the continent around 30,000 years later - far earlier than had been thought previously.

400,000 years ago, Neanderthals developed separately in Africa and it had been supposed that there was some interbreeding with homo sapiens there around 100,000 years ago, as well as outside North Africa some 50,000 - 60,000 years ago.(2) But if modern humans had already started migrating long before, perhaps for the northern and eastern emigrants the interbreeding happened after the African exodus.

(1) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/04/science/neanderthals-dna-homo-sapiens-human-evolution.html
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal