File: Archaic Human Ancestry.htm
|
ARCHAIC HUMAN
ANCESTRY The Interinvolment of
Hominins
Increasing revelations of early human ancestry involves studies of
ancient genetics, proteins and radioactive dating in bone fragments from a
variety of geographical sites. The idea of what is a human has become a
challenge (Larmer 2025). All living people on Earth belong to a
single species, Homo sapiens,
which are the last hominins on Earth.
The linear view of human origins is actually more complicated. What is now known is that between 70,000
and 40,000 years ago the world was full of human variety. As Homo
sapiens spread across Europe and Asia, they encountered other
types of humans with whom they occasionally reproduced. Svante Pääbo who first mapped the Neanderthal genome
revealed proof of this. Now more than
40,000 years after the Neanderthals became extinct, most humans possess
remnants of them in their DNA. But
other interacting types of humans were also known to be present with the
discovery of a bone fossil in a Siberian cave named Denisova near Russia's
border with Kazakhatan. The cold
temperatures preserved DNA that dated to more than 60,000 years old, and
belonged to a vanished human species. One fragment from a girl revealed that
she had a Denisovan father and a Neanderthal mother. This was followed by Denisovan DNA in
present day populations all over the world, from Iceland, Peru and New
Guinea. It is recognized that gene
flow is an important part of evolution that helped Homo sapiens adaptation to new environments and left most
of us with a direct biological link to extinct groups of ancient humans. Homo
sapiens are the only humans left on Earth today, but there are
times when the planet had other species of ancestral humans that were known
as "hominins." As climates
and new ecological opportunities arose, hominins migrated out of Africa to
find and interbreed with the descendants of their relatives who had similarly
left Africa much earlier. The
hominins that originated in Africa evolved into several species possessing
different ecological niches. The most
ancient fossils of hominins are known from the Rift Valley of Eastern Africa
and southern Africa.
There is evidence that Homo sapiens
first emigrated out of Africa at least 200,000 years ago. However, it is suspected that most humans
today are related to the last migration of as few as one thousand
emigrants. A Siberian lineage exists
of a Denisovan genome that was decoded from discoveries of a finger bone and
a tooth in a Denisova, Russia cave. A Homo sapiens fossil at Jebel Irhoud,
Morocco dated to about 300,000 years
ago gives evidence of early populations existing throughout the African
continent. A hominin species Homo erectus
that existed for more than a million years, left Africa around 1.8 million
years ago. Its descendants eventually
gave rise to Homo neanderthalensis
that lived and moved in a range of environments from Europe to Siberia. Evidence from the Grotte Mandrin cave of southern France
suggests that they interbred with Homo
sapiens. There is also
some evidence indicating that before Homo
sapiens spread across Europe and Asia, they might have lingered in
the Arabian Peninsula and Iranian plateau for 30,000 years, where they slowly
adapted to the new climates. Hominin
fossils of small stature found in Indonesia and the Philippines were named Homo florensis and H. luzonensis. Homo
sapiens in watercraft reached Australia and New Guinea about
65,000 years ago when lower sea levels connected many islands. The
search for our human past continues worldwide, with scientists making
constant discoveries of fossils and geological changes that occurred on
Earth. Many exciting revelations of
early interactions among different species of hominins are certain to be
realized. Brown, S; Massilani, D; Kozlikin, MB; Shunkov, MV;
Derevianko, AP; Stoessel, A; Jope-Street, B; Meyer, M; Kelso, J; Pääbo, S;
Higham, T; Douka, K (January 2022).
The earliest Denisovans
and their cultural adaptation. Nature Ecology &
Evolution. 6 (1): 28–35 Enard, W.; M. Przeworski, ; S.
E. Fisher; C. S. I. Lai ; V. Wiebe; T. Kitano, T., A. P. Monaco; S. Pääbo,
S. 2002. Molecular evolution of
FOXP2, a gene involved in speech and language.
Nature. 418 (6900): 869–872. Essel, Elena (3 May 2023). Ancient human DNA recovered from a
Palaeolithic pendant. Nature. 618 (7964): 328–332. Forbes, Peter. 2014. Neanderthal
Man: In Search of Lost Genomes. The Guardian. 20 Feb. 2014. Green, RE; Malaspinas, AS; Krause, J; Briggs, Aw;
Johnson, PL; Uhler, C; Meyer, M; Good, JM; Maricic, T; Stenzel, U; Prüfer, K;
Siebauer, M; Burbano, HA; Ronan, M; Rothberg, JM; Egholm, M; Rudan, P;
Brajković, D; Kućan, Z; Gusić, I; Wikström, M; Laakkonen, L;
Kelso, J; Slatkin, M; Pääbo, S (2008). A complete Neanderthal
mitochondrial genome sequence determined by high-throughput sequencing.
Cell. 134 (3): 416–26. Green RE, Briggs AW, Krause J, Prüfer K, Burbano HA, Siebauer M,
Lachmann M, Pääbo S (2009). The Neanderthal genome and ancient DNA
authenticity. EMBO J. 28 (17): 2494–50. Kolbert,
Elizabeth. 2011. Sleeping with the Enemy: What happened between the Neanderthals and
us. The New Yorker 15 & 22. pp 64-75. Krause, J.; Q. Fu, Q.; J. M. Good; B. Viola; M. V. Shunkov; A. P. Derevianko; S.
Pääbo. 2010. The complete mitochondrial DNA genome of
an unknown hominin from southern Siberia.
Nature 464 (7290):
894-897. Krings, M. A. Stone, R. W Schmitz, H.
Krainitzki, M Stoneking, S. Pääbo. 1997.
Neanderthal DNA sequences and the origin of modern humans. Cell 90(1): 19-30. Lalueza-Fox, C. & M.T.P.
Gilbert. 2011 Paleogenomics of Archaic Hominins. Current
Biology. 21 (24): R1002 – R1009. Larmer, Brook.
2025. The hunt for the other
humans. Nat. Geographic Mag.
347(2): pp 14-50. Mithen, Steven.
2014. Most of Us Are Part
Neanderthal. The New York Review of
Books. 6 July 2014. Pääbo, Svante. 1986.
How the E19 protein of adenoviruses modulates the immune system. PhD thesis, Uppsala, Sweden Pääbo, Svante.
2014. Neanderthal Man in
Search of Lost Genomes. Basic
Books. ISBN 978-0-465-02083-6. Pääbo, Svante.
2015. A global reference for
human genetic variation. Nature 526: 68.74. Pääbo, Svante. 2014. A mitochondrial genome sequence of a
hominin from Sima de los Huesos (PDF). Nature. 505 (7483):
403–406. Pääbo,
Svante; Giavalisco, Patrick; Lachmann, Michael; Khaitovich, Philipp 2014. Neanderthal ancestry drives evolution
of lipid catabolism in contemporary Europeans. Nature Communications. 5: 3584. Pääbo,
S. 2015. The diverse origins of the human gene
pool. Nature Reviews Genetics. 16 (6): 313–314. Pääbo, S; Higham, T; Douka, K.
January 2022. The earliest Denisovans and their cultural
adaptation. Nature Ecology & Evolution. 6 (1): 28–35. Powledge, Tabitha M. 2014. Sexy
Science: Neanderthals, Svante Pääbo and the story of how sex shaped modern
humans. Genetic Literacy Project:
Science Not Ideology, March 6, 2014. Prüfer K, Posth C, Yu H, Stoessel A,
Spyrou MA, Deviese T, et al. June
2021. A genome sequence from a modern human skull over 45,000 years old
from Zlatý kůň in Czechia. Nature Ecology & Evolution. 5 (6): 820–825. Sankararaman, S.; Mallick,
S.; Dannemann, M.; Prüfer, K.; Kelso, J.; Pääbo, S.; Patterson, N.;
Reich, D. 2014). The genomic landscape of
Neanderthal ancestry in present-day humans. Nature. 507 (7492). Silver, Tambur. 2022.
Estonian descendant Svante Paaböö awarded Nobel
Prize. Estonian World, 8 October
2022. WielgusDenisova cave in Siberia. Nature. 2010; 468(7327): 1053-1060 . Wong,
Kate. 2022.
Neanderthal Genome Study Reveals That We Have a Little Caveman in
Us. Scientific American, 11 October
2022. |