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Mystery Humans Spiced Up Ancients' Sex Lives
ananyo writes "New genome sequences from two extinct human relatives suggest that these 'archaic' groups bred with humans and with each other more extensively than was previously known. The ancient genomes, one from a Neanderthal and one from a different archaic human group, the Denisovans, were presented at a meeting at the Royal Society in London. They suggest that interbreeding went on between the members of several ancient human-like groups living in Europe and Asia more than 30,000 years ago, including an as-yet unknown human ancestor from Asia. 'What it begins to suggest is that we're looking at a 'Lord of the Rings'-type world — that there were many hominid populations,' says Mark Thomas, an evolutionary geneticist at University College London who was at the meeting but was not involved in the work."
Are they first or second cousins and are we playing by North or South rules?
Suborbital [spaceflight] is the special olympics of spaceflight. - Rei
the result! Humans are chimp-pig hybrids
Goddam perverts! Get offa my lawn!
They suggest that interbreeding went on between the members of several ancient human-like groups living in Europe and Asia more than 30,000 years ago
So were the offspring of these 'human-like' beings capable of reproduction? If they were, wouldn't they be just "human"?
Groups probably were naturally isolated for long periods of time by geography and as intelligence increased so did the
ability to travel more and go into other enviroments. Once we became a "global" population all similiar species were
eventually assimilated.
Lord of the Rings? Didn't we already hear about these?
Nice to see that we came by our propensity to fornicate with anything in a natural manner.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
the appearance of the obelisk?
We seem to have evolved in a world with many hominid species.
We have evolved mechanisms to reason about them. which nowadays are of little use.
So we read Lord of the RIngs instead, to use these parts of out genetic heritage.
-- hendrik
...if any sheep genomes were found?
yet unknown human ancestor
It was Gaius Baltar.
Is it similar to different races? In light of the recently (too lazy to look it up) revised unification of what were once thought to be different human ancestor species, could the whole interbreeding thing simply be the first signs of larger scale population migrations?
In my book, if you can breed with it, it's human. Maybe anthropologists are special.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
thanks to craigslist, mystery humans still spice up my sex life.
(just kidding, I'm too fat to get laid)
Be seeing you...
...that warrants the what-is-this-doing-on-Slashdot response. As if any of us are qualified to comment on the topic...
So basically, ancient humans and hominids would shag anything that moved eh?
Why does that sound familiar?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Please do not misunderstand. I have done much soul searching on the subject and I'm quite settled into the fact that I'm not racist. I recognize we have all manner of mixing among humanity that that a "pure human" is extremely rare. So let's dispose of that nonsense.
What I'm getting at is that the only "pure human" seems to be the black African human. Everyone else is kind of based on that but also mixed with something else, or as suggested, mixed with several possible somethings else. So while I agree we're all "human" can we yet admit that we're not all fully the same species? I know it's forbidden, often career ending to bring up such notions, but without recognition of reality as it is presented to us, we can make no serious scientific progress in our understanding of things.
I admit and recognize that if we admit to differences among us, we then get into uglier topics such as "who is better" and things like that. True. But don't we already dance around that reality as well? We readily support positive reputations among groups. "Better at sports" or "better at math" and so on right? And where money is applied, those details never escape reality which can otherwise never be openly admitted. Betting of all types whether it is sports gambling, insurance and commodities markets all take certain factors into account that, in other areas of life would result in a political sh!tstorm.
Forced inconsistencies of understanding, of teaching, of speaking and of thinking make this mildly autistic boy uncomfortable because his take on reality doesn't fit with politics. It helps me to understand what it must feel like to be in an unpopular group in certain political historic times and places. I can't yet play a "minority card" to defend myself and must instead feel shame for my 'affliction' which doesn't help. But wouldn't it be nice if we could grow up about certain things? Then perhaps we can ALL make some serious progress.
For a simple example of the kind of progress I mean, let's look at food. If we're not all exactly the same species, the surely we must all recognize that not all foods are good for all of us. We have some acknowledgement that some people handle alcohol better than others, some tend to have more obesity than others or that one type of food or another tend to result in a higher incident of problems here or there or even certain types of 'intolerance' here and there. And once we accept we're not quite homogenized, we can make serious progress on human health.
Damnit, we're all human. But we have differences. Failure to recognize them fully leads to more harm than good, I feel, in all sorts of ways for every one of us. And if it turns out there is a more perfect human-blend out there, I'm prepared to accept that as a reality even if I'm not a member of that group. I don't expect to be. I know I'm not the strongest anyone, not the smartest anyone, not quite the best at anything. But without a greater understanding of what factors into potential as a human, how can any of us best make use of what we have if we constantly deny that we're different? We're literally holding everyone back in this "common core" view of humanity that just doesn't really work or help anyone.
Hmm, I wonder what kind of memes this might spawn.
"Hot prehistoric Asiain Girls"
or some highly inapropriate LotR-fanfic..
bickerdyke
If they have living descendants, then surely they didn't go extinct.
Don't get me wrong, especially don't consider me a racist :D
I think the names for e.g. Neanderthals and Denisovans and the distinction between them is pretty arbitrary.
Lets look from an hobbyist or layman point of view on the phisiognomy and body on an australian aboriginee, a south american indian a chinese an african Ashanti or Bushman.
Now as we know they live all pretty isolated in a certain region of the world. E.g south america and australia.
Now lets assume one of them was completely extingued 10.000 years ago. And in that area only west european whites would live now.
If we would look at the bones of such extingued "species" we easy would assume they are a different species.
Sure, *I know* that classifying stuff by bones and teeth and age / aera they lived would in this case show many "similarities" while in the actual classification the "distinction" is in the foreground.
However I allready saw "living Neanderthals" ... people with a strange skull and thick ridges over the eyes, flat nose and with a strong build.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Man's insatiable appetite for midget porn. Or is that just me?
The ancient genomes
At first, I read that as "the ancient gnomes..."
Of course there was interbreeding between members of different archaic human groups. There are even examples of members of the modern human group trying to interbreed with members of non-human groups (e.g. other mammals, poultry). Any reason to think it was different back then?
And now it turns out that pretty people are of Elven descent, and ugly people are of Trollish descent? Who knew!
How does this fit in with "we're all Africans?"
Or did the "we're all Africans" diverge after leaving Africa and become these distinct species of hominids?
Just not sure of the timeline.
we have more neanderthal DNA, deal with it darkies.
Where do you think the Kiwis got the idea from?
The human race, after a couple million years of evolution and increasingly sophisticated psychological, social and technological progress at long last produced Steve Jobs.
After this begins now, our long and slow descent - back to our origins.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Ever'body likes a little strange now an' agin'.
so surely there were no differences between any of these 'species'?
'Hate' crime alert!!!
Bith repulsive and titillating to his Victorian readers. That sexual selection is major sub-theme of natural selection. Darwin illustrated in bird colors and the such, but it operates in most higher species including humans. We have far more sex than necessary for propagating the species.
this as yet unknown ancestor from asia,
they wouldn't be telephone sanitisers would they?
There is no universal truth, morals are entirely arbitrary.
Got one!!
With respect to i., I'm hoping there's a biologist out there that is able to shed some light on a general question in this area of study:
Does the conclusion of this work amount to more than "one branch of a classification tree derived from observed data is more intermixed with another branch of the tree than previous data showed"?
I'm not trying to say anything about differences in people, or comment on methods in this area of study - but rather to understand the broader context of the reported results. Is the critical consideration that evolution tends to follow a continuum, but there are critical junctures where a mutation or two significantly changed the population dynamics subject to time, competition and environmental conditions? Is it a matter of coarse-grained as opposed to fine-grained changes over time, and where does one draw the line for coarse?
Identifying animals by species is usually convenient, but it's really an shorthand for clades of individuals. Are two individuals close enough to reproduce and have offspring that are capable of reproduction? That's a different question from whether Species X and Species Y are close enough, and the boundaries are a lot fuzzier than they taught us in high school. Lions and tigers aren't the same species, but they're close enough that ligers or tigons can be fertile, and there's at least one liliger out there. (It doesn't happen in nature, because lions and tigers don't live in the same areas, at least in modern times, but they're still close enough relatives.) And even mules are occasionally fertile.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Look, you're only calling her the "mystery woman" because you can't remember her name, and it was 50,000 years too early to get her phone number.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks