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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."
In the beginning, we were all fish. Okay? Swimming around in the water. And then one day a couple of fish had a retard baby, and the retard baby was different, so it got to live. So Retard Fish goes on to make more retard babies, and then one day, a retard baby fish crawled out of the ocean with its...mutant fish hands... and it had butt sex with a squirrel or something and made this. Retard frog-sqirrel, and then *that* had a retard baby which was a... monkey-fish-frog... And then this monkey-fish-frog had butt sex with that monkey, and that monkey had a mutant retard baby that screwed another monkey... and that made you!
So there you go! You're the retarded offspring of five monkeys having butt sex with a fish-squirrel! Congratulations!
I am offended that you would declare so many Slashdotters to be something other than human.
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Guess I don't need that subscription to ancestry.com anymore. Thanks AC!
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Far more likely the now dominant species were playing by pillage, plunder, rape and enslave rules. Which is why to this day, we still have problems with psychopaths and narcissists, our major contribution to the human genome pool and the main reason for the extinction of others human species, countless human societies and likely at the end of it all, our own. A defective human mutation whose greatest contribution to human society is war, rape and genocide (basically taking the humane out of human, -e self destructive ego).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
So you say we all evolved out of a bunch of managers?
Sorry, but there I draw the line. When Darwin said we evolved outta monkeys, ok. I could dig that. But managers... YOU TAKE THAT BACK RIGHT NOW!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Did you read the same article I did?
This article described interbreeding between several (at least 3) different sub-specie. They were obviously close enough to interbreed and produce viable offspring.
That's not that uncommon with closely related species. And these were closely related back at that time. Evidence of the survives in the Gene pool today.
Look, this was only 30,000 years ago. Some fragments of oral history extend back that far (although time gets pretty muddled in oral history).
This isn't the first scientific study that showed homo sapiens and neanderthal may have interbred. One wonders about whether this knowledge was passed down in legend and incorporated in ancient texts.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
We also have compassion, cooperation and communication. Those are the "killer features" of human behavior, the things that make us the most adaptable animal species ever. These are such fundamental features of what it means to be human that it's easy to take them for granted.
You mention enslavement, pillage and plunder, and those make my point. Until you have built a society beyond small nomadic hunter-gatherer bands, slavery makes no sense. Pillage and plunder as well are meaningless until your species has at least developed agriculture, and the social ability to band together to attack people who have converted agricultural surplus into property.
But in the end it isn't about being nice, it's about being adaptable. Being nice -- the things that make others want to spend time with us and cooperate with us -- just happens to be the best basic pattern for building a species with maximum behavioral adaptability. But it makes sense that we ALSO retain the ability to be not-nice. From time to time it's useful for survival -- just less than the 100% of the time that social Darwinists would have us believe. There are times when turning on your neighbor at least ensures someone from the neighborhood survives.
It's a tautology: a behaviorally adaptable species manifests many different kinds of behaviors. So it seems plausible that our distant ancestors made both love AND war with the other human species on the planet.
Remember, though: it was a much less populated planet in the Early Paleolithic. Even in the more populated Late Paleolithic period there were fewer people in the whole world than there are in the Portland OR metropolitan area today. There were maybe 3000 in all of Europe. If in all that underpopulated land you happened to meet another band of humans, which would be better for your genetic legacy? Exchanging genes or exchanging attacks? Screwing or stoning?
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What I'm getting at is that the only "pure human" seems to be the black African human. Everyone else is
There are larger genetic differences between different groups of the same "race", than between individuals of "different race".
Is that clearer for you? No? Black vs. white could be more similar than two similarly looking east asian people, or two similarly looking white people.
And ffs, there is NO SUCH THING AS "PURE HUMAN". Never was. Never will be. Just as there is no "pure monkey" or "pure snail". The entire theory of evolution completely contradicts such ridicules notions.
From the "Anthropology in a Nutshell" lectures:
Something that is often overlooked is that before the adoption of sewage systems, most groups of people had a strong incentive to move around a lot. And since it was not very pleasant to move into an area the neighbors had just vacated, groups tended to move into those areas where no other group had gone before. At least, not for a long time.
That meant they would cross paths with distant groups fairly frequently. When that happens, there are two things that can occur: either the groups fight, or they party. Fighting is hard work and often painful. Partying can be a lot of fun, and moves the genes around.
Probably everyone on slashdot knows somebody who has moved to get away from the sh*tty mess they made of the old place. It is an old gene thing that still expresses among the less evolved.
Will
Butt sex doesn't you pregnant. What are they teaching in school these days?
Not enough English?