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The Evolution of Man
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 (09-28-2020, 11:39 PM)BorneanTiger Wrote: The northwestern Saudi region of Tabuk has come in the news over the discovery of human footprints which were found in the lake-bed of Al-Athar (meaning “The Trace”), and dated to approximately 120,000 years ago! Footprints of elephants and other animals were also identified alongside 233 fossils, and these are considered to be the earliest footprints in the Arabian Peninsula: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/...091120.php, https://news.sky.com/story/120-000-year-...a-12075198, https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/09/...ans-arabia, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-new...180975874/, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/scien...om-africa/ Now for the oldest known human or hominin footprints in the World, which were found in Laetoli in northern Tanzania (south of the famous Olduvai Gorge), and dated to approximately 3.66 million years ago: https://elifesciences.org/articles/19568, https://journals.plos.org/plosone/articl...09769.g001 Laetoli, by Guston Sondin-Klausnerser (late February, 2006): Test-pit L8 at Laetoli Site S. In the northern part of the test-pit (at the top), the Footprint Tuff is particularly altered, damaged by plant roots and dislodged along natural fractures. Image by Fidelis T. Masao et al. (14th of December, 2016): https://elifesciences.org/articles/19568 Cast of the "Laetoli footprints", on display in the Hall of Human Origins in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. The entire footprint trail is 88 feet (26.82 m) long and includes impressions left by two individuals, with the smaller one appearing to be that of a human, and the bigger one (which had a diverging toe, similar to a modern ape) appearing to be that of an australopithecine (like perhaps Australopithecus afarensis). Image by Tim Evanson (17th of May, 2012): https://www.flickr.com/photos/23165290@N00/7282890638/ Three dimensional scans of experimental footprints and a Laetoli footprint, by D. A. Raichlen et al., contours are 1 mm: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/articl...09769.g001 A) Contour map of modern human footprint (Subject 6) walking with a normal, extended limb gait and side view of normal, extended limb footprint. B) Contour map of modern human footprint (Subject 6) walking with a BKBH gait and side view of BKBH print. C) Contour map of Laetoli footprint (G1-37) and side view of Laetoli footprint (G1-37). Note the difference in heel and toe depths between modern humans walking with extended and BKBH gaits. Laetoli has similar toe relative to heel depths as the modern human extended limb print. Shaded 3D photogrammetric elevation model of the L8 trackway. Colour renders heights as in the colour bar. The empty circles indicate the position of the targets of the 3D-imaging control point system (see "Materials and methods" for details). Other images can be seen in this work by Fidelis T. Masao et al.: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.19568.008 Interpretation of a diagramatics of the hominin footprint in Laetoli, which is thought to be from A. afarensis; Ileret (1.5 mya) from Homo erectus, and H. sapiens. The green lines represent the points under the same pressure or weight. As published by Gustavo Carra (13th of October, 2009) in Science, volume 323, page 1197: (10-27-2020, 05:36 PM)BorneanTiger Wrote:(07-07-2020, 11:04 PM)BorneanTiger Wrote: Since this topic is dependant on archaeology and theories, it is worth mentioning that one theory behind the name of the western Saudi coastal city of Jeddah (which is locally pronounced as 'Jidda' or 'Jiddah' (جِدَّة), meaning 'Grandmother') is that the city has the grave of Eve. Thousands of tourists and religious pilgrims still come to see what is left of Maqbarat Ummina Ḥawa’ (مقبرة أمنا حواء, Cemetery of Our Mother Eve): https://samslifeinjeddah.wordpress.com/2...in-jeddah/, http://tripfreakz.com/offthebeatenpath/t...-in-jeddah There is more to it than just graves (which have to be analysed). Mount Tendürek (or Al-Judiy, credit: M. Fikret Yilmaz, 22nd of August 2007) in the Ağrı and Van provinces of eastern Turkey, close to the borders with Iran, has a large aggregate (thus natural) structure in the shape of a ship, known as the "Durupınar site": https://noahsfloodnoahsark.wordpress.com...ount-judi/ Obviously, this is not a ship (hence it is not Noah's ark, contrary to what people have said), and despite the fact that there are no archaeological remains which point to a ship having been there (like wooden bits), an issue which Lorence G. Collins of the Department of Geological Sciences, California State University (Northridge), had mentioned in Page 2 is the fact that it is shaped like like a boat, besides that it measures about 515 feet (156.972 m, a bit like what the Book of Genesis (6: 14–16) in the Old Testament Bible said about Noah's Ark): http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/Sutton%20Hoo%2014.pdf So the question is: Why is this natural rock formation in the shape of a ship, with measurements that more or less correspond to the Biblical description of Noah's Ark, as if a ship of such dimensions had once been there, despite the lack of objects (like wooden parts of a boat) which could have served as archaeological evidence for the ship's presence? (10-31-2020, 11:47 AM)BorneanTiger Wrote:(10-27-2020, 05:36 PM)BorneanTiger Wrote:(07-07-2020, 11:04 PM)BorneanTiger Wrote: Since this topic is dependant on archaeology and theories, it is worth mentioning that one theory behind the name of the western Saudi coastal city of Jeddah (which is locally pronounced as 'Jidda' or 'Jiddah' (جِدَّة), meaning 'Grandmother') is that the city has the grave of Eve. Thousands of tourists and religious pilgrims still come to see what is left of Maqbarat Ummina Ḥawa’ (مقبرة أمنا حواء, Cemetery of Our Mother Eve): https://samslifeinjeddah.wordpress.com/2...in-jeddah/, http://tripfreakz.com/offthebeatenpath/t...-in-jeddah However, as mentioned by this wordpress, the Durupınar site on Mount Tendürek is not the only site that was considered to be the resting-place of Noah's Ark (if not being the ark itself). Another eastern Turkish volcano to the north which was emphasised by Christians, that is Mount Ararat, has a large, ship-like anomaly (when viewed from a certain angle), and with a length-to-width ration of 6:1 (which is like what the Bible depicts about the ratio for the ark), but about twice as long as the Durupınar site, measuring 1,015 feet (309 metres) across, according to Rod Franz of SunTek Media Group / RiteImage, Inc. (located in Henderson, Nevada): https://www.livescience.com/611-satellit...stery.html A panoramic image of Mount Ararat, with the anomaly circled in red by researcher Porcher Taylor, and taken on December 20, 1973, by the CIA's KH-9 Hexagon (a.k.a. Keyhole-9) satellite and since declassified: Close-up: A horizontal view of the anomaly, near the summit of Mount Ararat, dated to 1949: http://www.noahsarksearch.com/anomaly.htm Photograph by Pat Innerst, published in 1997 by News World Communications, Inc.: (11-14-2020, 11:41 PM)BorneanTiger Wrote:(10-31-2020, 11:47 AM)BorneanTiger Wrote:(10-27-2020, 05:36 PM)BorneanTiger Wrote:(07-07-2020, 11:04 PM)BorneanTiger Wrote: Since this topic is dependant on archaeology and theories, it is worth mentioning that one theory behind the name of the western Saudi coastal city of Jeddah (which is locally pronounced as 'Jidda' or 'Jiddah' (جِدَّة), meaning 'Grandmother') is that the city has the grave of Eve. Thousands of tourists and religious pilgrims still come to see what is left of Maqbarat Ummina Ḥawa’ (مقبرة أمنا حواء, Cemetery of Our Mother Eve): https://samslifeinjeddah.wordpress.com/2...in-jeddah/, http://tripfreakz.com/offthebeatenpath/t...-in-jeddah One non-archaeological fact stands out, nevertheless. Belief in the great flood is not confined to the Abrahamic religions (like Islam & Christianity) or near Eastern societies. Accounts of a great deluge are seen in ancient Sumerian tablets (such as the Epic of Gilgamesh) from Mesopotamia (mostly Iraq, with parts of what are now Iran, Turkey, Syria and Kuwait), the Deucalion in Greek mythology, the lore of the K’iche’ and Maya peoples in Mesoamerica, the Gun-Yu myth of China, the stories of the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa tribe of North America, and the stories of the Muisca people, to name but a few. In particular, Noah is referred to as "Manou" (मनु) in Sanskrit scriptures of ancient India, with the earliest Indian account of the flood being found in the Vedic Satapatha Brahmana, and then the Puranas (including the Bhagavata Purana and the Matsya Purana), and the Mahabharata. The fact that this is a worldwide belief suggests that we are all descended from Noah or Manou, hence the Sanskrit term "Maanav" (मानव, meaning "of Manu" or "children of Manu") being applied to humans, and just as the Bible (Book of Genesis, 8:4) refers to the spot where the ark came to land as one of the mountains of 'Ararat', the Matsya Purana of India refers to them as the mountains of 'Malaya': https://www.ancient-origins.net/human-or...lINYwb71lo, https://www.speakingtree.in/allslides/ar...oah-407979, https://books.google.com/books?redir_esc...nu&f=false Image of the the Durupınar site on Mount Tendürek by noahsarksearch.com, posted here: https://noahsfloodnoahsark.wordpress.com...ount-judi/
Stone tools, dated to 1.9–2.6 million years ago, around the time of Homo habilis, have been unearthed at the Olduvai Gorge in northern Tanzania: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20176-2
Indeed, it is making news: https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-his...ge-0014773, http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/ewas...09236.html, https://theconversation.com/finds-in-tan...nge-150755
Origin of numbers: Report suggests Neanderthals might have learnt to count before modern humans: https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/...2021-06-03, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01429-6
Archaeologists are looking for evidence of ancient numerical systems to detail some of the first pre-historic developments. Learning to count and the ability to compute has pushed humans to new heights of technological development. However, a new observation at the Les Pradelles near Angoulême in France show that modern humans might not have been alone in developing a system of numerical notations, Neanderthals might have been the first. Neanderthals are the closest extinct relatives of Homo sapiens, or humans who used a diverse set of tools, controlled fire, lived in shelters, made and wore clothing, were skilled hunters and ate plant foods, animals. According to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, "Both fossil and genetic evidence indicate that Neanderthals and modern humans evolved from a common ancestor between 700,000 and 300,000 years ago. Neanderthals and modern humans belong to the same genus and inhabited the same geographic areas in western Asia for 30,000-50,000 years." https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/...2021-06-02 A report published in Nature states that there is not a lot of agreement over the origin of numbers and cognitive scientists, anthropologists and psychologists are looking at contemporary cultures to understand differences among existing number systems. Archaeologists have also begun looking for evidence of ancient numerical systems to detail some of the first pre-historic development of the numerical system. https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/...2021-05-28 Francesco d’Errico, an archaeologist at the University of Bordeaux, who examines carved artefacts, believes that hyena bones found in the 1970s at the archaeological sites in France could have been more useful than just a tool that might encode numerical information. While India credits itself for the discovery of zero, information around the origin of numbers and the root of the system still requires heavy research. https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/...2021-06-01 The hyena bone found at the site has nine notches that are similar and parallel denoting they meant something and its analysis could provide insight into how the early system was developed. The archaeologist, who has studied the bone under a microscope said that their shapes, depths and other details are "so alike that it seems they have been made using the same tool in a single session." The nature report stated that the archaeologist has also analysed the seven notches on a 40,000-year-old raven bone from a Neanderthal site in Crimea, which too are spaced with "the same sort of regularity." Also Read: Archaeologists discover 2000-year-old cat figure etched on hillside in Peru desert: https://www.indiatoday.in/trending-news/...2020-10-19 Similar notches were also observed on a 42,000-year-old baboon fibula at Border Cave in South Africa, where 29 notches were carved using four distinct tools that represent four counting events. D’Errico suspects that modern humans living there at the time used the bone to record numerical information. While the archaeologist states that there are gaps in the information channels, it is not clear what cultural or social factors might have encouraged Neanderthals to begin marking bones as a tool to count numbers. The Evolution of Cognitive Tools for Quantification (QUANTA), a project to provide insights into whether number systems are unique to modern humans will study the new developments to find the social factors that might have led to the decision. Markings made on a hyena bone by a Neanderthal. Credit: Francesco d'Errico, Nature: Researchers think that people cut notches into this baboon bone some 40,000 years ago. Credit: F. d'Errico & L. Backwell, Nature:
Archaeologists Make Dramatic Discovery: A Prehistoric Human Type Previously Unknown to Science https://scitechdaily.com/archaeologists-...o-science/, https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6549/1424
Static skull, mandible, and parietal orthographic. Credit: Tel Aviv University Dramatic Discovery in Levantine Excavation The discovery of a new Homo group in this region, which resembles Pre-Neanderthal populations in Europe, challenges the prevailing hypothesis that Neanderthals originated from Europe, suggesting that at least some of the Neanderthals’ ancestors actually came from the Levant. The new finding suggests that two types of Homo groups lived side by side in the Levant for more than 100,000 years (200-100,000 years ago), sharing knowledge and tool technologies: the Nesher Ramla people who lived in the region from around 400,000 years ago, and the Homo sapiens who arrived later, some 200,000 years ago. The new discovery also gives clues about a mystery in human evolution: How did genes of Homo sapiens penetrate the Neanderthal population that had presumably lived in Europe long before the arrival of Homo sapiens? The researchers claim that at least some of the later Homo fossils found previously in the Levant, like those unearthed in the Skhul and Qafzeh caves, do not belong to archaic (early) Homo sapiens, but rather to groups of mixed Homo sapiens and Nesher Ramla lineage. Nesher Ramla Homo type — a prehistoric human previously unknown to science. Researchers 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. Two teams of researchers took part in the dramatic discovery, published in the prestigious Science journal: an anthropology team from Tel Aviv University headed by Prof. Israel Hershkovitz, Dr. Hila May and Dr. Rachel Sarig from the Sackler Faculty of Medicine and the Dan David Center for Human Evolution and Biohistory Research and the Shmunis Family Anthropology Institute, situated in the Steinhardt Museum at Tel Aviv University; and an archaeological team headed by Dr. Yossi Zaidner from the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Timeline: The Nesher Ramla Homo type was an ancestor of both the Neanderthals in Europe and the archaic Homo populations of Asia. Prof. Israel Hershkovitz: “The discovery of a new type of Homo” is of great scientific importance. It enables us to make new sense of previously found human fossils, add another piece to the puzzle of human evolution, and understand the migrations of humans in the old world. Even though they lived so long ago, in the late middle Pleistocene (474,000-130,000 years ago), the Nesher Ramla people can tell us a fascinating tale, revealing a great deal about their descendants’ evolution and way of life.” Fossil remains of skull and jaw. Credit: Tel Aviv University The important human fossil was found by Dr. Zaidner of the Hebrew University during salvage excavations at the Nesher Ramla prehistoric site, in the mining area of the Nesher cement plant (owned by Len Blavatnik) near the city of Ramla. Digging down about 8 meters, the excavators found large quantities of animal bones, including horses, fallow deer and aurochs, as well as stone tools and human bones. An international team led by the researchers from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem identified the morphology of the bones as belonging to a new type of Homo, previously unknown to science. This is the first type of Homo to be defined in Palestine, and according to common practice, it was named after the site where it was discovered — the Nesher Ramla Homo type. Dr. Yossi Zaidner: “This is an extraordinary discovery. We had never imagined that alongside Homo sapiens, archaic Homo roamed the area so late in human history. The archaeological finds associated with human fossils show that “Nesher Ramla Homo” possessed advanced stone-tool production technologies and most likely interacted with the local Homo sapiens.” The culture, way of life, and behaviour of the Nesher Ramla Homo are discussed in a companion paper also published in Science journal today (June 24, 2021). Prof. Hershkovitz adds that the discovery of the Nesher Ramla Homo type challenges the prevailing hypothesis that the Neanderthals originated in Europe. “Before these new findings,” he says, “most researchers believed the Neanderthals to be a ‘European story’, in which small groups of Neanderthals were forced to migrate southwards to escape the spreading glaciers, with some arriving in the Land of Israel about 70,000 years ago. The Nesher Ramla fossils make us question this theory, suggesting that the ancestors of European Neanderthals lived in the Levant as early as 400,000 years ago, repeatedly migrating westward to Europe and eastward to Asia. In fact, our findings imply that the famous Neanderthals of Western Europe are only the remnants of a much larger population that lived here in the Levant — and not the other way around.” (Left to Right): Israel Hershkovitz, Marion Prevost, Hila May, Rachel Sarig and Yossi Zaidner. Credit: Tel Aviv University According to Dr. Hila May, despite the absence of DNA in these fossils, the findings from Nesher Ramla offer a solution to a great mystery in the evolution of Homo: How did genes of Homo sapiens penetrate the Neanderthal population that presumably lived in Europe long before the arrival of Homo sapiens? Geneticists who studied the DNA of European Neanderthals have previously suggested the existence of a Neanderthal-like population which they called the ‘missing population’ or the ‘X population’ that had mated with Homo sapiens more than 200,000 years ago. In the anthropological paper now published in Science, the researchers suggest that the Nesher Ramla Homo type might represent this population, heretofore missing from the record of human fossils. Moreover, the researchers propose that the humans from Nesher Ramla are not the only ones of their kind discovered in the region, and that some human fossils found previously in the Levant, which have baffled anthropologists for years — like the fossils from the Tabun cave (160,000 years ago), Zuttiyeh cave (250,000), and Qesem cave (400,000) — belong to the same new human group now called the Nesher Ramla Homo type. “People think in paradigms,” says Dr. Rachel Sarig. “That’s why efforts have been made to ascribe these fossils to known human groups like Homo sapiens, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, or the Neanderthals. But now we say: No. This is a group in itself, with distinct features and characteristics. At a later stage small groups of the Nesher Ramla Homo type migrated to Europe — where they evolved into the ‘classic’ Neanderthals that we are familiar with, and also to Asia, where they became archaic populations with Neanderthal-like features. As a crossroads between Africa, Europe, and Asia, the Land of Israel served as a melting pot where different human populations mixed with one another, to later spread throughout the Old World. The discovery from the Nesher Ramla site writes a new and fascinating chapter in the story of humankind.” Prof. Gerhard Weber, an associate from Vienna University, argues that the story of Neanderthal evolution will be told differently after this discovery: “Europe was not the exclusive refugium of Neanderthals from where they occasionally diffused into West Asia. We think that there was much more lateral exchange in Eurasia, and that the Levant is geographically a crucial starting point, or at a least bridgehead, for this process.” Reference: “A Middle Pleistocene Homo from Nesher Ramla, Israel” by Israel Hershkovitz, Hila May, Rachel Sarig, Ariel Pokhojaev, Dominique Grimaud-Hervé, Emiliano Bruner, Cinzia Fornai, Rolf Quam, Juan Luis Arsuaga, Viktoria A. Krenn, Maria Martinón-Torres, José María Bermúdez de Castro, Laura Martín-Francés, Viviane Slon, Lou Albessard-Ball, Amélie Vialet, Tim Schüler, Giorgio Manzi, Antonio Profico, Fabio Di Vincenzo, Gerhard W. Weber and Yossi Zaidner, 25 June 2021, Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.abh3169
Modern humans and Neanderthals 'co-existed in Europe for far longer than thought': https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020...an-thought
Cave objects suggest modern humans and Neanderthals shared continent for several thousand years Stone artefacts found at Bacho Kiro Cave. Photograph: Tsenka Tsanova / SWNS Modern humans were present in Europe at least 46,000 years ago, according to new research on objects found in Bulgaria, meaning they overlapped with Neanderthals for far longer than previously thought: https://www.theguardian.com/science/neanderthals Researchers say remains and tools found at a cave called Bacho Kiro reveal that modern humans and Neanderthals were present at the same time in Europe for several thousand years, giving them ample time for biological and cultural interaction. “Our work in Bacho Kiro shows there is a time overlap of maybe 8,000 years between the arrival of the first wave of modern humans in eastern Europe and the final extinction of Neanderthals in the far west of Europe,” said Prof Jean-Jacques Hublin, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, a co-author of the research, adding that that was far longer than previously thought. Some scholars have suggested a period of not more than 3,000 years: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019...tion-study Neanderthals were roaming Europe until about 40,000 years ago. “It gives a lot of time for these groups to interact biologically and also culturally and behaviourally,” Hublin added. Writing in studies published in the journals Nature and Nature Ecology & Evolution, Hublin and colleagues report how they excavated Bacho Kiro, a site that has been studied several times over the past decades. Previous excavations revealed human remains and tools of a very specific type known as “initial upper palaeolithic”. Hublin said such stone and bone tools showed features both of tools known to have been used by Neanderthals and toolkits used by later modern humans, with much debate over which hominin was making them: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2259-z, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-020-1136-3 However, previous dating of the site ran into a number of difficulties, including from contamination. Now Hublin and colleagues have carried out new excavations and unearthed more tools and remains, including bone fragments and a tooth revealed by methods including ancient DNA analysis to be from early modern humans. The team report that radiocarbon dating of modern human remains found in the same layer as the tools suggested the remains dated to between 46,790 and 42,810 years ago, while a dating technique based on the rate of changes in DNA from mitochondria, the “powerhouses” of cells, suggested a date of between 44,830 and 42,616 years ago. The team say the same sort of tools were found in the layer beneath, alongside animal remains dating to almost 47,000 years ago. “We are talking about the oldest modern humans in Europe,” said Hublin, adding that their archaeological context was “crystal clear”. In other words, this group was making initial upper palaeolithic tools . Among further discoveries, the researchers found jewellery fashioned from cave bear teeth that they say is strikingly similar to that produced by the very last Neanderthals. They say this adds weight to the idea the latter may have adopted innovations as a result of contact with early modern humans. “Some people would say that is a coincidence; I don’t believe it,” said Hublin, noting there was already genetic evidence that the groups interbred. “I don’t see how you can have biological interaction between groups without any sign of behavioural influence of one on the other.” Prof Chris Stringer, an expert in human origins from London’s Natural History Museum, said while his team had previously discovered what was possibly an incomplete modern human skull in Greece from more than 200,000 years ago, the new research was important: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48913307 “In my view this is the oldest and strongest published evidence for a very early upper palaeolithic presence of Homo sapiens in Europe, several millennia before the Neanderthals disappeared,” he said. He added that doubt remained about whether Neanderthals were influenced in their jewellery making by early modern humans. Stringer said the new study highlighted several mysteries, including why the appearance of such early modern humans in Europe 46,000 years ago did not lead to their earlier establishment and an earlier disappearance of Neanderthals. “One possibility is that the dispersals into Europe [of modern humans of the initial upper palaeolithic] were by pioneering, small bands, who could not sustain their occupations in the face of a larger Neanderthal presence, or the unstable climates of the time,” he said.
Just 7% of our DNA is unique to modern humans, study shows: https://phys.org/news/2021-07-dna-unique...umans.html, https://www.inverse.com/science/ancestra...ome-reveal
By Christina Larson, July 16, 2021 This file photo from Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2003, shows a reconstructed Neanderthal skeleton, right, and a modern human skeleton on display at the Museum of Natural History in New York. According to a study published Friday, July 16, 2021 in the journal Science Advances, just 7% of our genome is uniquely shared with other humans, and not shared by other early ancestors. Credit: AP Photo / Frank Franklin II: https://phys.org/news/2021-07-dna-unique...zDQuElE5M8 What makes humans unique? Scientists have taken another step toward solving an enduring mystery with a new tool that may allow for more precise comparisons between the DNA of modern humans and that of our extinct ancestors. Just 7% of our genome is uniquely shared with other humans, and not shared by other early ancestors, according to a study published Friday in the journal Science Advances: https://phys.org/tags/genome/ "That's a pretty small percentage," said Nathan Schaefer, a University of California computational biologist and co-author of the new paper. "This kind of finding is why scientists are turning away from thinking that we humans are so vastly different from Neanderthals." The research draws upon DNA extracted from fossil remains of now-extinct Neanderthals and Denisovans dating back to around 40,000 or 50,000 years ago, as well as from 279 modern people from around the world: https://phys.org/tags/fossil+remains/ Scientists already know that modern people share some DNA with Neanderthals, but different people share different parts of the genome. One goal of the new research was to identify the genes that are exclusive to modern humans: https://phys.org/tags/modern+humans/ It's a difficult statistical problem, and the researchers "developed a valuable tool that takes account of missing data in the ancient genomes," said John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was not involved in the research: https://phys.org/tags/valuable+tool/ The researchers also found that an even smaller fraction of our genome—just 1.5%—is both unique to our species and shared among all people alive today. Those slivers of DNA may hold the most significant clues as to what truly distinguishes modern human beings. "We can tell those regions of the genome are highly enriched for genes that have to do with neural development and brain function," said University of California, Santa Cruz computational biologist Richard Green, a co-author of the paper: https://phys.org/tags/brain+function/ In 2010, Green helped produce the first draft sequence of a Neanderthal genome. Four years later, geneticist Joshua Akey co-authored a paper showing that modern humans carry some remnants of Neanderthal DNA. Since then, scientists have continued to refine techniques to extract and analyse genetic material from fossils: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/3...0.abstract, https://science.sciencemag.org/content/3...7.abstract, https://phys.org/tags/genetic+material/ "Better tools allow us to ask increasingly more detailed questions about human history and evolution," said Akey, who is now at Princeton and was not involved in the new research. He praised the methodology of the new study. However, Alan Templeton, a population geneticist at Washington University in St Louis, questioned the authors' assumption that changes in the human genome are randomly distributed, rather than clustered around certain hotspots within the genome. The findings underscore "that we're actually a very young species," said Akey. "Not that long ago, we shared the planet with other human lineages." https://phys.org/tags/human/ Ancient Homo sapiens likely lived alongside Neanderthals and Denisovans. Image: Shutterstock Modern humans share much of their genome with Neanderthals. Credit: Joe McNally / Hulton Archive / Getty Images Explore further: Scientists discover a new feature that distinguishes modern humans from Neanderthals: https://phys.org/news/2021-05-scientists...umans.html More information: Nathan K. Schaefer et al., An ancestral recombination graph of human, Neanderthal, and Denisovan genomes, Science Advances (2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abc0776 Journal information: Science Advances: https://phys.org/journals/science-advances/
Fire record shows that cultural diffusion took off 400,000 years ago: https://www.heritagedaily.com/2021/08/fi...139881?amp, https://popular-archaeology.com/article/...years-ago/, https://scitechdaily.com/human-evolution...years-ago/
August 11, 2021 Image credit: Museum de Toulouse - CC BY-SA 4.0 Researchers from the University of Leiden and Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands propose that the first clear example of widespread cultural diffusion in the timeline of humans occurred around 400,000 years ago: https://www.pnas.org/content/118/31/e2101108118 They propose this on the basis of changes in the archaeological record of fire use. The earliest evidence for possible fire use is sparse and can be difficult to distinguish from natural fire residues. By contrast, after 400,000 years ago, multiple different types of fire evidence are found in many sites with good preservation conditions. Interestingly, this occurs at a geologically similar time over major parts of the Old World, in Africa as well as in western Eurasia, and in different populations of hominins. Wide distribution of a cultural behaviour could be explained in a number of ways: by independent invention in multiple places, movement of populations, or transmission of genes associated with the behaviour. Particularly given the absence of widespread environmental change, rapidity of spread, and lack of genetic or fossil evidence for movements of hominin populations in this period, the authors argue that cultural diffusion is most plausible. This interpretation is supported by the slightly later spread, over the same region and in an even more constrained time period, of a relatively complicated method for making stone tools, called the "Levallois technique." This adds to current research suggesting that hominin populations were exchanging genes and that there were cultural interactions too. Interaction with fire was key in human cultural evolution, and is a focus for research and teaching in the Human Origins Group in the Faculty of Archaeology. When Eva van Veen started her RMA with the group, it struck her that the social structures and social behaviours surrounding early fire use had not been discussed in detail. According to Eva, ‘Given how important sociality is to hominin lives, questions about the social structures surrounding early fire use are essential to understanding the full implications of widespread fire use.’ In her thesis she looked at what it takes to organise a group of people to gather the raw materials for a fire and keep it going. The discussions of her thesis stimulated Eva and a number of colleagues to think about the larger scale social tolerance and social networks involved in the spread of fire skills. Copying of stone tool technology occurred early in human evolution, and there are indications of the smaller-scale spread of technology likely involving both diffusion and population movement, for example in the record of Acheulean hand-axe technology. But around 400,000 years ago, cultural diffusion really took off. This precedes by a long time the cultural florescence associated with late Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens. Our research should stimulate debate and new studies, particularly addressing the changes in cultural mechanisms for transmission that allowed this remarkably fast diffusion of fire and stone tool technology. Eindhoven University Of Technology: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en This flake was struck from the core in a much earlier stage of the “biography” of the core, when it was significantly larger. Other flakes produced between the large flake and the final core were also recovered at the site, one of the minimally 250,000 years old flint and bone scatters excavated in the 1980s by Leiden archaeologists at Maastricht-Belvédère (The Netherlands). Credit: Leiden University
Scientists Sequence Genome of Red Deer Cave Human
http://www.sci-news.com/genetics/red-dee...11002.html (12-08-2019, 08:36 PM)BorneanTiger Wrote:(05-26-2019, 09:39 PM)BorneanTiger Wrote: It's not just apes that have similar DNA to humans, but also pigs (https://www.science.org.au/curious/peopl...s-and-pigs, https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/huma...atch-39590, https://www.globalfounders.london/blog/p...human-link, https://www.treehugger.com/pigs-and-huma...is-4863855, https://ansc.illinois.edu/news/human-pig...complete-0, https://phys.org/news/2015-09-hidden-evo...mates.html), and to think about it, even though humans are more physically similar to primates than other animals in general, humans and pigs have physical similarities, such as in having eyelashes: yeah i saw this article too (11-20-2018, 04:02 AM)brotherbear Wrote: From Smilodon-Rex: Neanderthals were a muscular, early human species with large brains and were well adapted to the cold. Their bulk helped them survive and thrive through numerous ice ages until they suddenly died out about 40,000 years ago.Thank you, Smilodon-Rex  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author Quote:Uncontacted tribes  *This image is copyright of its original author Quote:Map of Records of Uncontacted Tribes in the Amazon |
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