Mystery Humans Spiced Up Ancients' Sex Lives 238
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."
Re:"human-like" (Score:2, Informative)
Not exactly
The basic definition of a species is a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring (this does get a bit more complex but we'll go with it for now)
The way things work is like this.
Say you have a bird population, the population gets split in to 3 semi-isolated groups, one in Africa, one in Europe one in Asia.
So over thousands of years Africa and Europe can interbreed, so you can call them the same species, or maybe a sub-species.
Lets say Africa and Asia can still interbreed, so they too could be called the same species or at least sub-species.
But the differences between Europe and Asia have become too great to produce viable offspring. So now Europe and Asia aren't the same species anymore they've grown too far apart, however both are close enough related to Africa to breed with them. This is very similar to what they are describing with the human ancestry tree.
Of course they are using genetic and skeletal differences to describe different branches.
Re:"human-like" (Score:5, Informative)
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 [kingjamesbibleonline.org].
Re:We keep dancing around it (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Human Relatives (Score:5, Informative)
sounds like the same tired saw about "only humans wage war", "only humans murder" ....
snails rape each other to impregnate each other
several beetle and other insect varieties do the same thing
chimpanzees wage war on other chimp tribes
baboons will given the chance kill entire other tribes (genocide)
orcas and even dolphins kill for fun
lions kill each other regularly, particularly a new alpha male in a pride with cubs, will kill all the cubs
lions also have an instinctive hatred for hyenas (and vice versa) and will kill them just to kill them
cats (of many species) "play" (torture) their food
"defective human mutation" ??
Hardly. It's across the entire animal and even plant kingdom, to the extent that it's cant even be considered a mutation. IE, its the norm, not the exception. the exception is the opposite trait.