https://www.sciencenews.org/article/neandertal-quina-tools-china-travel

"Stone tools traditionally attributed to European and western Asian Neandertals have turned up nearly a continent away in southern China.

"Artifacts unearthed at a river valley site called Longtan include distinctive stone cutting and scraping implements and the rocks from which these items were struck. Until now, such items have been linked only to geographically distant Neandertals, says a team led by archaeologists Qi-Jun Ruan and Hao Li of the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research in Beijing.

"The discovery of these roughly 60,000- to 50,000-year-old items challenges a popular idea that Stone Age folks only made relatively simple tools in East Asia, the scientists report March 31 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The Longtan finds represent the first definitive East Asian examples of what researchers call Quina scrapers and cores, they say. Researchers named these stone implements after La Quina, a French Neandertal site where they were found and first described in 1953.

"Excavations at the Chinese site in 2019 and 2020 produced 3,487 stone artifacts. From that total, the investigators identified 53 Quina scrapers — long, thick stone flakes bearing clusters of scalloped edge marks where users had resharpened the tools several times. The researchers classified another 14 finds as cores — rocks that had been chiseled into forms from which toolmakers pounded off Quina scrapers.

***

"Versatile, reusable Quina tools greatly assisted mobile groups, such as the Longtan crowd, that faced increasingly cold and harsh environments, says archaeologist Davide Delpiano of the University of Ferrara in Italy. Under that pressure, Denisovans or possibly still-undiscovered Asian hominid populations independently devised Quina tools, he suspects.

"Clues to this mystery, which Delpiano assisted in unveiling, may soon emerge. “Now we have found more than 30 sites containing Quina [artifacts] surrounding Longtan in the same river valley,” Li says."

Comment: perhaps some fossils will appear to identify the toolmakers.

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzQXKhDwtWPktwHdVfsJNwGDHLkC

“'What I want to single out as the biggest advance in the last five years is the shift to understanding that the origin of our genus, Homo, was not uniquely connected with stone tools and meat eating,” says John Hawks at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

"According to Hawks, the “textbook picture” was that “stone tools, meat eating, taller stature, smaller molars and jawbones, and larger brains were all connected with each other, and all coincident with the origin of Homo”. On this view, the evolution of Homo “looked like a single quantum shift – a very tidy package”.

"However, multiple lines of evidence suggested otherwise, and Hawks says, “The work of the last five years has really triggered the advance in understanding.” For example, in 2023 researchers described the oldest known Oldowan stone tools from Nyayanga in Kenya. They are 2.6 million to 3 million years old and were found, not with Homo, but with teeth from Paranthropus: hominins with big teeth and small brains. Likewise, a study published in October found that early hominins called Australopithecus used their hands in similar ways to later Homo, perhaps making and using stone tools. Hawks also highlights a 2022 study that found no evidence of a sustained increase in meat eating after the evolution of Homo erectus.

"I will add one other data point. In late November, a study concluded that hominin brains became bigger gradually, with early members of a given species having smaller brains than later members of the same species. This was not a given: there had been claims that brain size jumped dramatically in the first Homo, as per the textbook “package” idea.

"This all makes for a more complicated story. But, says Hawks: “To me this is all exciting because it puts us in a position to test for cause and effect.” By following how different hominins behaved and evolved, it should be possible to see what caused what. For instance, did meat eating enable the growth of bigger brains, or did bigger brains enable more advanced hunting and thus more meat eating?

***

"The old idea that our species originated from a single place in Africa now looks unlikely, says Eleanor Scerri at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany. She highlights a 2023 study of modern genetics, which suggests there were multiple H. sapiens populations in Africa for hundreds of thousands of years, linked by occasional interbreeding. That same year, evidence emerged of humans living in Senegal, in West Africa, far from our supposed origins in eastern or southern Africa, 150,000 years ago. “This was thrilling because it provides support for the view that humans evolved in multiple different ecoregions and parts of Africa,” says Scerri.

“'For me, it's the rewriting of the human origins story for Homo sapiens, specifically on ‘out of Africa’,” says Michael Petraglia at Griffith University in Australia. It used to be thought that H. sapiens came out of Africa in a “single, rapid coastal migration” about 60,000 years ago, but researchers now recognise multiple migrations beginning at least 200,000 years ago. “We also have on-the-ground evidence to indicate that migrations were terrestrial, not coastal,” says Petraglia. That migration at 60,000 years ago is still crucial, because most people living outside Africa are descended from those who came out at that time: the earlier migrations seem to have left few genetic traces in modern populations. But these migrations also matter.

***

“'For me perhaps the biggest advance of recent years has been a conceptual shift in our perspective away from the idea that early Homo sapiens were somehow on a trajectory of predestined success, leaving behind all the ‘evolutionary losers’,” says Rebecca Wragg Sykes at the University of Cambridge. “Instead, what we're seeing more and more is nuance in the story of early H. sapiens populations: from our complex African emergence, our numerous dispersals into Eurasia and interactions there, and the fact that it seems at least some of the pioneer sapiens populations themselves vanished.”

'"Finally, researchers have begun paying more attention to a group of humans they previously all but ignored: children. As with so much of human evolution, “it is all about relationships”, says Nowell. “Not studying children to any serious degree meant that we were ignoring the contributions and experiences of two-thirds of the human population for more than 99 per cent of our time on Earth.” Furthermore, “by ignoring their experiences, we were also not accounting for the experiences of others in their communities in relation to them'”.

Comment: our superiority as sapiens resulted in our success in becoming dominant. The dispersed Erectus became sapiens in several places in Africa seems obvious. We did not start like Adam and Eve.

https://phys.org/news/2024-12-neanderthals-modern-humans-classed-species.html

"A new study published by researchers at London's Natural History Museum and Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven has reinforced the claim that Neanderthals and modern-day humans (Homo sapiens) must be classed as separate species in order to best track our evolutionary history.

"Different researchers have different definitions as to what classifies as a species. It is undisputed that H. sapiens and Neanderthals originate from the same parental species, however studies into Neanderthal genetics and evolution have reignited the debate over whether they should be classed as separate from H. sapiens or rather a subspecies (H. sapiens neanderthalensis).

"Advocating the former, Chris Stringer (Natural History Museum, London) and Andra Meneganzin (Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven, Belgium) state that despite the inherent limitations of the fossil record, there is enough morphological, ecological, genetic and temporal evidence to justify this categorization, and claim that this evidence reflects the complexity of the speciation process, in which populations from one parent species progressively diverge to become different descendant species.

"Taxonomic disagreement, they claim, is best explained by how the speciation process is modeled in the record, rather than conflicts between evidence types.

***

"Professor Stringer, Research Leader at the Natural History Museum and joint author of the paper, says, "In the context of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, we need to regard speciation as a gradual process that occurred over more than 400,000 years. It is correct that the two interbred where they were not geographically separate, but over time differentiation continued to a point where the two were distinctly different species.

"'When the Neanderthals died out around 40,000 years ago, the two species were in the final stage of the speciation process and were developing reproductive isolation from each other."

***

"Fossil records show that H. sapiens developed in Africa, while Neanderthals evolved in Eurasia for at least 400,000 years, with interbreeding occurring as H. sapiens expanded out of the former region. However, the study argues that by the time of H. sapiens expansion and subsequent interbreeding, differentiation between the two species had occurred to the point where they were distinguishable species. One striking example of differentiation is that their ecological profiles were distinguishable and associated with "minimally different" habitats.

"Neanderthals were better equipped to cope with colder climates—an adaptation that even today we have not yet fully developed without the use of technology. They had to be more physically active and for longer periods, to gather the resources they needed for survival, which helps to explain morphological differences including ribcage and pelvis shapes, inferring bigger internal organs such as the lungs, heart and liver—among a wide range of anatomical distinctions.

"This may have been a factor in their extinction, as the more gracile skeleton of H. sapiens suggests a more economical physiology, less demanding of energy and resources, and aided by complex technology. This could have made the difference between survival and extinction when there was rapid climate change, or a strong competition for resources where the two coexisted."

Comment: That we were close species is obvious in that we could interbreed and produce normal hybrids. Neanderthals were extremely bright but not to our level of conceptual thought. I think they were a separate species. dhw will raise the issue of why Neanderthals existed at all if God only wanted sapiens. It goes back to the issue of why God evolved us over time instead of direct creation. God had His own unknown reasons.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02962-w?utm_source=Live+Audience&utm_cam...

"The theory that the early Indigenous inhabitants of Rapa Nui — also known as Easter Island — ravaged its ecosystem and caused the population to crash before the arrival of Europeans in the early eighteenth century was popularized in the 2006 book Collapse, by geographer Jared Diamond, but some other scholars have since criticized that theory.

"The latest analysis, published on 11 September in Nature1, “serves as the final nail in the coffin of this collapse narrative”, says Kathrin Nägele, an archaeogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. “It’s correcting the image of Indigenous people.”

"The study was done with the endorsement of and input from officials and Indigenous community members in Rapa Nui. The authors say that their data could contribute to the repatriation of the remains sampled in the study, which were collected in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and sit in a Paris museum.

***

"When Europeans first reached the island in 1722, they estimated that it had a population of between 1,500 and 3,000 people and found a landscape denuded of the palm-tree forests that would have once covered the island. By the late nineteenth century, the Indigenous population, called the Rapanui, had dwindled to 110 people, owing to a smallpox outbreak and the kidnap of one-third of the inhabitants by Peruvian slave traders.

"The ‘ecocide’ theory, that a pre-contact population of 15,000 or more plundered the once-pristine island’s resources, has been challenged by researchers who have questioned humans’ role in deforestation and its effects on food production, as well as the large estimates for the population.

***

"In the genomes of the ancient Rapanui, there were signs of a population bottleneck around the time the island was settled, as would be expected when a founder group arrives. But after that, the island’s population seemed to grow steadily until the nineteenth century.

"Translating these trajectories into actual population numbers is not straightforward, but further modelling suggested that the genetic data are not consistent with, for example, a drop from 15,000 to 3,000 people before the eighteenth century. “There’s no strong collapse,” says Malaspinas. “We’re quite confident that it did not happen.”

***

"Keolu Fox, a genome scientist at the University of California, San Diego, says the finding that Rapanui reached the Americas will come as no surprise to Polynesian people. “We’re confirming something we already knew,” he says. “Do you think that a community that found things like Hawaii or Tahiti would miss a whole continent?”

"The researchers received a similar reaction when presenting their initial findings in Rapa Nui. Malaspinas recalls being told that ‘of course we went to the Americas’. She, Moreno-Mayar and other colleagues made multiple trips to the island to consult with officials and residents throughout the study."

Comment: Polynesians sailed across the entire pacific finding islands with amazing accuracy. There is strong evidence of them reaching the Americas, thus completing a west to east migration out of Africa.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ancient-dna-unveils-unknown-neandertals

"Whether classified as a separate species or a variant of Homo sapiens, Neandertals have typically been viewed as a genetically consistent population. But an adult male’s partial skeleton discovered in France contains genetic clues to a Neandertal line that evolved apart from other European Neandertals for around 50,000 years, nearly up to the time these close relatives of H. sapiens died out, researchers say.

"The possibility of a long-lasting, isolated Neandertal population in southwestern Europe supports the idea that these hominids “very likely had their own, complex evolutionary history, with local extinctions and migrations, just like us,” says paleogeneticist Carles Lalueza-Fox of the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona, who did not participate in the new study.

***

"Arrays of gene variants in Thorin’s DNA more closely align with the previously reported DNA structure of Neandertals that lived around 105,000 years ago, versus Neandertals dating to around 50,000 to 40,000 years ago. Yet analyses of carbon and other diet-related chemical elements in Thorin’s bones and teeth suggest that he lived during an ice age, which did not develop in Europe until about 50,000 years ago.

***

"Thorin’s DNA shows no signs of having acquired genes via mating either with Neandertals outside his lineage or with H. sapiens.

"Thorin also inherited from his parents an unusually high percentage of DNA segments containing consecutive pairs of identical gene variants. Reduced genetic variation of that kind, previously found in Siberian Neandertals, reflects mating among close relatives in a small population (SN: 10/19/22).

"Taken together, the genetic evidence fits a scenario in which Thorin belonged to a Neandertal lineage that split from other European Neandertals around 105,000 years ago, the researchers say. For roughly the next 50,000 years, they suspect, Thorin’s lineage consisted of small networks of closely related communities that exchanged mates.

"Reasons why those ancient groups avoided mating with other Neandertals in the region, possibly related to language or cultural differences, are unclear, Sikora says.

***

“'If Thorin is really 50,000 years old, this would be an amazing finding showing a strong genetic structure in late Neandertals,” says paleogeneticist Cosimo Posth of the University of Tübingen in Germany. But, he says, further excavation and research at Grotte Mandrin will need to confirm when Thorin lived.

"Researchers found Thorin’s remains in a small, natural depression on the rock shelter floor. Slimak’s and Sikora’s group cannot yet say how the body got there or whether it originated in older sediment. An older date for the partial skeleton would indicate, less surprisingly, that Thorin belonged to an isolated population that petered out quickly.

"Long-term isolation would have resulted in Thorin inheriting a greater number of short DNA segments containing identical gene pairs than reported in the new study, Lalueza-Fox says. Isolating more of Thorin’s DNA or collecting genetic remnants from other fossil members of his lineage will clarify the evolutionary story of these close-knit Neandertals, he says."

Comment: Neanderthals are becoming more and more like sapiens with differing groups as research intensifies on them.

https://www.sciencealert.com/this-epic-monument-from-6000-years-ago-is-a-feat-of-stone-...

"To step foot inside the Dolmen of Menga is to enter, awed, almost into another world. The ancient building was constructed nearly 6,000 years ago, and stands to this day, perfectly intact, built of stones weighing up to 150 metric tons each.

***

"A new study has found that the Neolithic humans who built Menga were highly skilled, highly knowledgeable, and adept at solving complex engineering problems.

***

"'They were people with very important knowledge of early science, which indicates how evolved the intellectual, practical and technical capacities of these societies in the south of the Iberian Peninsula were almost 6,000 years ago."

"The Dolmen of Menga is, truly, a marvel of the ancient world. Built into the side of an earth mound between around 3800 and 3600 BCE, the large chamber extends 27.5 meters (90 feet), lined – walls and roof – with huge stones.

"It's one of the largest megaliths in ancient Europe, and the capstone, weighing an estimated 150 metric tons, one of the largest stones ever moved in Neolithic Europe.

"The site's use appears to have been funerary, with grave goods reportedly discovered inside. And it must have been deeply important. Previous analyses have revealed that a great deal of labor was expended to construct it.

"Lozano Rodriguez has led previous efforts that determined that not only was the asymmetry of the dolmen's walls intentional, and designed around the solstices, but that the soft rock that went into its construction was sourced from a distance of around 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) from the building site, revealing that the builders knew how to quarry and transport huge chunks of rock.

"The Dolmen of Menga's construction consists of a chamber lined and roofed with large stones, with three stone pillars placed along the length of the chamber to support the weight of the roof. The 32 giant stones have a collective weight of around 1,140 metric tons.

***

"The easiest transport method would have been sledges that ran along a pre-built wooden trackway; since the quarry was uphill from the construction site, this would also have required knowledge of acceleration and braking.

"The rocks, they observe, are all classified as "soft" sedimentary, mostly limestone, which would have required careful handling to avoid damage. Nevertheless they have been placed with millimeter precision. They also interlock and lean slightly against each other, which is a clue to the manner and order in which they were placed.

"And they are wedged tightly into the bedrock. This is the first time this feature has been observed at Menga in 200 years of study: the foundations of the stones are deep sockets, which would have required careful emplacement that implies the use of counterweights and descending ramps, to carefully slide the stones into position and lever them upright. This deep foundation would also alleviate the need to elevate the roof stones.

"The pillar stones were placed in a similar fashion, with deep foundations, but were likely installed after the wall stones. And the wall stones are placed in such a way that their tops lean slightly inwards, resulting in a trapezoidal shape to the chamber, narrower at the top than the bottom. This, the researchers believe, is a stroke of genius, allowing for smaller capstones than would be needed for a wider roof.

"'Almost 6,000 years ago they used a relieving arch to solve complex problems of stress distribution, thus solving problems related to weight, which would be one of the biggest structural problems they would encounter in the design of this great monument. This is also solved by using pillars inside," Lozano Rodríguez marvels.

"'I was also surprised to see that the monument was designed to be partially buried so that the capstones could be placed without the aid of ascending ramps."

***

"'The incorporation of advanced knowledge in the fields of geology, physics, geometry, and astronomy shows that Menga represents not only a feat of early engineering but also a substantial step in the advancement of human science, reflecting the accumulation of advanced knowledge," the researchers write in their paper.

"'Menga demonstrates the successful attempt to make a colossal monument lasting over thousands of years.'"

Comment: a major advance over Stonehenge. See the amazing illustrations. These folks were well beyond caveman status.

https://www.sciencealert.com/ancient-viruses-may-have-given-our-ancestors-the-edge-to-e...

"Scientists have found the remnants of genomes left by ancient, giant viruses within the DNA of a single-celled organism with which complex organisms like ourselves share a common ancestor.

"The discovery suggests viruses may have played a greater role in our evolution than we realized, contributing genes that may have given cells like the ancestor of the symbiotic eukaryote Amoebidium an edge in survival.

***

"'It's like finding Trojan horses hiding inside the Amoebidium's DNA," he says. "These viral insertions are potentially harmful, but Amoebidium seems to be keeping them in check by chemically silencing them."

***

"Such rampant attacks on the very blueprint of the self should have a lethal outcome for the Amoebidium, but the microbes seem to have found a way to cope by silencing these foreign genes by modifying one of the four letters in the DNA alphabet using a mechanism called 5-methylcytosine (5mC).

"The base cytosine, or 'C', is modified by an enzyme called DNMT1, which is found in all multi-celled organisms. The researchers wanted to find the enzyme's pre-animal roots, leading them to a protist called Amoebidium appalachense, which was first discovered hiding in the exoskeletons of freshwater insects.

"They found that not only do these single-celled organisms produce DNMT1, they've used it to maintain a surprising amount of genetic material from giant viruses that have since been lost to history.

***

"While viruses are traditionally seen as invaders, he says his team's study suggests a more complex story.

"The researchers propose that this coping mechanism allows the microbes to not only survive the influx of giant virus DNA, but to incorporate it into their lineage.

"To see if this phenomenon might be more widespread, they compared the genomes of a variety of isolated Amoebidia. They found a high level of diversity across the viral material, suggesting the process is ongoing and dynamic.

"Viral insertions may have played a role in the evolution of complex organisms by providing them with new genes. And this is allowed by the chemical taming of these intruders' DNA," de Mendoza Soler says.

"And because A. appalachense is an animal relative, these findings may help us better understand a similar phenomenon going on inside our own bodies.

"Humans and other mammals also have the remnants of ancient viruses entwined in their DNA. Referred to as endogenous retroviruses, they're believed to be the leftover bits and pieces of viruses that didn't manage to kill us.

"Once assumed to be nothing more than inactive trophies of a failed invasion, it's increasingly thought many may have provided some benefit to still be preserved in our DNA."

Comment: discussed in the past as "good viruses": Saturday, October 23, 2021, 15:42. The role of driving evolution is discussed as part of how evolution works. Theses virus genes are identified, but their role is really unclear.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/07/240719123837.htm

"New evidence of human occupation in southeast Indonesia dating back 42,000 years offers fresh clues on the route taken by some of the first humans to arrive in the region, according to a study from The Australian National University.

"Lead author and ANU PhD candidate Hendri Kaharudin said the location of the discovery -- at Elivavan on Indonesia's Tanimbar islands -- makes it especially significant.

"Tanimbar is located just off the 'Sahul shelf', which encompasses modern-day Australia, as well as New Guinea," he said.

"'The question of how our early ancestors arrived there from Southeast Asia is one of the most captivating in prehistoric migration, mainly because of the vast distances covered and advanced seafaring skills that would have been required.

"'There are two main routes that have been explored as possibilities since the mid-20th century -- a northern path via islands like Sulawesi, and a southern track passing near Timor and the Tanimbar islands.

"'This discovery marks one of the southern route's earliest known sites, making it a crucial piece of the puzzle."

"According to the researchers, while there are still unanswered questions about Elivavan's first inhabitants, the risky nature of the sea crossings suggests the colonists had developed advanced maritime technology by around 42,000 years ago.

"'They would have had to traverse bodies of water exceeding 100 kilometres in distance, regardless of their direction of travel," Mr Kaharudin said.

"'Along with tiny fragments of pottery we also found evidence of things like bones, shells and sea urchins that point to the island's role as a hub for early maritime activities.

"'As more work is done in lesser-explored regions like the Tanimbar islands, I expect we'll uncover more about early human life and migration patterns."

"Mr Kaharudin said it's also clear the colonisation of Sahul was not a single event but "a gradual process involving successive waves of seafaring populations."

"'Coastal communities likely navigated shorelines, exploiting marine resources and establishing resilient settlements along their journey," he said."

Comment: skipping from island makes sense, but raises the question, why leave an island unless its resources dwindled? Or just wanderlust?

https://www.sciencemagazinedigital.org/sciencemagazine/library/item/19_july_2024/420769...

“'I’m pleased to tell you about a new Denisovan genome from a 200,000-year-old male,” said Peyrégne, a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

"The genetic sequence he unveiled is the oldest high-quality human genome yet—80,000 years older than the previous record holder, a Neanderthal who lived about 120,000 years ago. The results come after more than a decade of effort to find fossilized bones and a second genome of a Denisovan, the mysterious archaic human discovered through its DNA 14 years ago.

***

"The genomes of both Denisovans and the ancient Neanderthal all came from the same cold, fossil-rich site: Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia.

According to the analysis by Peyrégne and colleagues, the newly sequenced male represents a distinct population of early Denisovans that interbred multiple times with a group of Neanderthals whose population had not been detected in DNA before.

***

"Denisovans are primarily known from their DNA. Researchers have the genome of the girl, as well as bits of nuclear and mitochondrial DNA from fragmentary fossils of seven additional individuals, all also from Denisova Cave. Scientists have also identified some Denisovan DNA in living humans, including in Papuans and Han Chinese people, acquired from past interbreeding. DNA in sediments showed that Denisovans were first in the cave 300,000 years ago, and later lived in a cave on the Tibetan Plateau. The scanty fossils—teeth, a toe bone, a rib—reveal this archaic human had larger molars than did the Neanderthals and a robust lower face, known from a jawbone in China. But no one really knows what Denisovans looked like.

***

"The DNA analysis revealed the male Denisovan had inherited 5% of his genome from an ancient, previously unknown population of Neanderthals. The male, labeled Denisova 25, came from a separate population of Denisovans from the girl, known as Denisova 3, and from the other Denisovans in the cave. The girl’s DNA is more closely related to the Denisovan sequences in living modern humans, who got them from at least two Denisovan populations.

"All this suggests the older male’s population was replaced in the cave by later Denisovans, Peyrégne said in his talk. The data also suggest the male Denisovan’s ancestors interbred multiple times with Neanderthals. Denisovans were apparently replaced in the cave by Neanderthals for a period, based on the Neanderthal fossil dated to about 120,000 years ago. By about 60,000 years ago, though, the Denisovans had moved back in. The two groups may even have met in the cave—DNA from a bone fragment from a female dated to more than 50,000 years ago shows her mother was a Neanderthal and her father a Denisovan. Later, both DNA and fossils indicate modern humans occupied the cave and Denisovans and Neanderthals disappear. The region was clearly a crossroads for various types of humans, Peyrégne said in the talk.

***

"Although Denisovans and Neanderthals apparently interbred repeatedly, their lineages are distinct: They diverged from a common ancestor at least 400,000 years ago. The ancestors of Neanderthals settled in Europe and the Middle East, whereas Denisovans headed farther east into Asia where they evolved separately, acquiring roughly 300,000 genetic changes that differentiate them from Neanderthals, according to the new genome. “Neanderthals and Denisovans remain in separate groups,” and mixed at the edges of their geographic ranges, Peyrégne said in his talk.

"In the question and answer period, an audience member asked whether the male’s genome also had DNA from an even older, unidentified type of human—perhaps Homo erectus—whose DNA has been spotted in the Denisovan girl’s genome. “If there is any Denisova superarchaic ancestry, it’s also present in this genome,” Peyrégne responded. “[That DNA] is shared between Denisova 3 and Denisova 25.'” (my bold)

Comment: Note the bold. It is the first evidence of Erectus to Homo as a direct connection, which would indicate Bechly's point that all the other Homo sapiens fossils found are just variations of early sapiens. That the Denisovans and Neanderthals co-habituated means to me they were so similar, they easily lived together.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2440063-butchered-bones-hint-humans-were-in-south-...

"Marks found on the 21,000-year-old bones of a giant, armadillo-like animal in Argentina may be the oldest evidence of humans in the southern South America.

"If confirmed through additional excavation and research, the findings could push back the date humans were known to be living in the area by about five millennia, to the end of the last glacial period. That would predate the currently accepted arrival of humans on either American continent by at least 1000 years, says Nicolas Rascovan at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France.

“'Humans could have been present in South America much earlier than we thought and even earlier than what is assumed of the entry of people in North America,” he says.

"Scientists generally believe that people migrated across the Bering Strait from Asia into North America between 15,000 and 20,000 years ago and then spread down into Central and South America, says Rascovan. However, the proposed dates have stirred significant controversy among experts since the mid-19th century.

"Recently, the apparent discoveries of butchered bones in Mexico from up to 26,000 years ago and jewellery made of giant sloth bones in Brazil from up to 27,000 years ago have made researchers question whether humans reached the Americas much earlier, he says.

***

"Its bones and shells were marked by 32 straight cuts that looked like they had been made by stone tools, given the inner stripes within the grooves and their V-shaped form. Radiocarbon dating placed the specimen in the last glacial maximum, as late as 21,000 years ago.

"Delgado, Rascovan and their colleagues scanned a selection of cut marks and created 3D models for closer analysis. The angles of the entry point of the grooves and the depth of the cuts reflect a pattern that is consistent with butchering of fresh bone, they say.

The bones showed no signs of scrapes from the teeth of carnivores or scavengers. The team’s investigation of the sediment around the bones and shell suggests that the animal parts were buried quickly in partially wet climate conditions like those of the region 21,000 years ago.

***

“'A red flag is the total absence of any associated human-made artefacts with these [bones],” says Potter, adding that the marks might be due to carnivore activity or trampling. “Stone tools and debris are ubiquitous in actual human processing sites.”

"Such evidence may appear as the excavation continues, says Rascovan.

"In the meantime, though, Delgado says his team feels confident about the findings since the marks strongly fit with scientific models of cuts made by human tools and patterns that would be followed during butchering."

Comment: Humans liked to migrate Eastward from Africa, a curiosity about what lay over the ridge.

https://phys.org/news/2024-07-geological-dating-techniques-european-hominids.html

"One of the most important controversies about human evolution and expansion is when and by what route the first hominids arrived in Europe from the African continent. Now, geological dating techniques at the Orce sites (Baza basin, Granada) place the human remains found in this area as the oldest in Europe, at approximately 1.3 million years old. These results reinforce the hypothesis that humans arrived in Europe through the south of the Iberian Peninsula, through the Strait of Gibraltar, instead of returning to the Mediterranean via the Asian route.

***

"These new data are very precise thanks to the long sedimentary sequence that outcrops in Orce. "The uniqueness of these sites is that they are stratified and within a very long sedimentary sequence, more than eighty meters long. Normally, the sites are found in caves or within very short stratigraphic sequences, which do not allow you to develop long paleomagnetic sequences in which you can find different magnetic reversals," says Luís Gibert.

"The researchers have been able to identify a magnetic polarity sequence "with five magnetic events that allow them to place the three Orce sites with human presence between the Olduvai and Jaramillo subchron, that is, between 1.77 and 1.07 million years ago (Ma)," says the researcher. Subsequently, they have applied a statistical age model to accurately refine the chronology of the different stratigraphic levels with a margin of error of only 70,000 years.

"The result of this innovative methodology is that the oldest site with human presence in Europe would be Venta Micena with an age of 1.32 Ma, followed by Barranco León, with an age of 1.28 and finally Fuente Nueva 3, with an age of 1.23 Ma. "With these data, the other major site on the peninsula, the Sima del Elefante in Atapuerca, would be relegated to second place, far behind Orce, between 0.2 and 0.4 Ma more modern," adds the researcher.

***

"In this sense, the paper presents a detailed analysis of the micromammals and large mammals from all the Orce sites, carried out by the expert Robert Martin, based on the paleontological collections stored at the Museum of the Catalan Institute of Palaeontology Miguel Crusafont (IPS) in Sabadell.

"'The results indicate that the small and large fauna of Orce is more primitive than, for example, that of the Sima del Elefante, where the evidence shows that the rodent Allophaiomys lavocati is more evolved than the Allophaiomys recovered from the Orce sites," Gibert explains.

"Another relevant indicator of the age of the Orce sites is the absence of the ancestors of the pigs. "These animals are considered to be Asian immigrants and have not been found in any European site between 1 and 1.5 Ma, while they have been found in the Sima del Elefante, supporting that the Orce fauna is older," explains the researcher.

"This new dating would be added, according to the researcher, to other evidence that would tip the balance in favor of the colonization of Europe through the Strait of Gibraltar, rather than the alternative route: the return to the Mediterranean via Asia, such as "the existence of a lithic industry with similarities to that found in the north of the African continent and also the presence of remains of African fauna in the south of the peninsula, such as those of Hippopotamus, found in the sites of Orce, and those of Theropithecus oswaldi, an African primate similar to a baboon, found in the Victoria cave, a site near Cartagena (Murcia), non-existent anywhere else in Europe."

"'We also defend the hypothesis—adds the researcher—that they arrived from Gibraltar because no older evidence has been found at any other site along the alternative route," says Gibert.

"With these results, the researchers point to a "diachronism" between the oldest occupation of Asia, measuring 1.8 Ma, and the oldest occupation of Europe, which would be 1.3 Ma ago, so that African hominids would have arrived in southwestern Europe more than 0.5 Ma after leaving Africa for the first time about 2 Ma ago.

"'These differences in human expansion can be explained by the fact that Europe is isolated from Asia and Africa by biogeographical barriers that are difficult to overcome, both to the east (Bosphorus Strait, Dardanelles, Sea of Marmara) and to the west (Strait of Gibraltar). Humanity arrived in Europe when it had the necessary technology to cross maritime barriers, as happened before a million years ago on the island of Flores (Indonesia)," says Gibert.

***

"'As cited in the paper, we have identified other migrations of African fauna through Gibraltar at earlier times, 6.2 and 5.5 Ma ago when the Strait of Gibraltar was very narrow."

"A total of five human remains were found at the Orce sites since excavations began in 1982 by the paleoanthropologist Josep Gibert. Firstly, two fragments of humerus bitten by hyenas were found at Venta Micena, as well as parts of a cranial fragment consisting of two parietals and an occipital, associated with an abundant Early Pleistocene fauna."

Comment: this paper turns around the theory that humans went East out of Africa and then West. Now it is North, then East.

https://www.sciencemagazinedigital.org/sciencemagazine/library/item/12_july_2024/420649...

"A paper this week in Science concludes Neanderthals inherited as much as 10% of their genome from modern humans, including several genes involved in brain development. The Neanderthal-eye view allowed the researchers to date when the two groups mingled, finding they made babies together remarkably early: more than 200,000 years ago, not long after Homo sapiens coalesced as a species. The dalliances were repeated 105,000 to 120,000 years ago, and 45,000 to 60,000 years ago, the ancient Neanderthal DNA suggests. “It argues mating was more common than previously thought,” says Princeton University geneticist Joshua Akey, who led the study.

"This new picture further blurs the boundaries between Neanderthals and modern humans. And it identifies features of the Neanderthal genome suggesting our big-brained, heavy-browed relatives were pitifully rare, which could help explain why they went extinct. “It’s alarming to see how small the Neanderthal populations were—this is a very powerful result,” says paleogeneticist Maanasa Raghavan of the University of Chicago.

"Once seen as a separate species, Neanderthals have enjoyed a complete makeover in the 14 years since researchers first sequenced DNA in their fossils and found they interbred with modern humans. Most living people outside of Africa have inherited about 1% to 2% of their DNA from Neanderthals, perhaps from a prolonged period of mixing 45,000 to 60,000 years ago in Europe or the Middle East.

***

"By analyzing the length and other features of the diverse segments of modern human DNA, Akey and Li could calculate when and how often these ancient hookups happened. The smaller the stretches of DNA, the earlier Neanderthals got them, because inherited segments get shorter over generations.

"The first mating episode the team spotted was very ancient—200,000 to 250,000 years ago, around the time anatomically modern humans first show up in the fossil record in Africa. The team speculates that perhaps some early modern humans crossed the Sahara Desert when the climate was humid, on the trail of antelope, ostrich, and other game, and eventually wandered to the Middle East, where they met the Neanderthals.

"A few tantalizing fossils—a purported modern human skull from Greece and a jaw from Israel—support the idea that modern humans did leave Africa that early. Their lineages died out—but not before they left their mark on the Neanderthals’ genome.

"Akey’s team dated another round of Neanderthal-modern mating to about 105,000 to 120,000 years ago. Researchers speculate those encounters, too, could have happened in the Middle East, because modern humans and Neanderthals are known to have lived in nearby caves at that time. One team even thinks they have found hybrid offspring: The remains of a strange-looking Neanderthal with modern tools dating to 120,00 to 130,000 years ago from the Nesher Ramla quarry in central Israel.

"The third bout of mixing is the familiar one, about 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, likely in the Middle East or Europe, where Neanderthals and modern humans overlapped for thousands of years."

***

"If some of the diverse DNA in Neanderthals came from modern humans, then our cousins had even less genetic diversity than previously thought—and therefore even smaller populations. The study implies Neanderthal numbers dwindled between 250,000 years and 40,000 years ago, and that by the end of their time on the planet, their breeding population was less than 3000, compared with at least 10,000 breeding modern humans, Akey says. Stringer says Neanderthal numbers may have been so small because they mostly lived in northern regions where they were vulnerable to climate change and glaciation.

"People with Neanderthal genes didn’t abruptly vanish, Akey says—their offspring just acquired more and more modern human DNA. “They were overwhelmed by waves of modern humans extending out of Africa,” he says. “The modern human population eventually absorbed the Neanderthals.”

"Even before then, the findings suggest, our ancestors and Neanderthals had more in common than we ever knew. “I think this paper closes the loop in terms of us thinking about ‘us’ versus ‘them,’” Raghavan says."

Comment: By studying Neanderthal DNA for the presence of human DNA the picture of interbreeding becomes clearer and more time expansive.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2438905-when-did-human-ancestors-start-walking-on-...

"The period between 7 million and 4 million years ago is a bit of a nebulous phase in the story of human evolution. There are basically four data points: Sahelanthropus tchadensis from 7 million years ago, Orrorin tugenensis from 6 million years ago and the two species of Ardipithecus from 5.6 million and 4.4 million years ago. Each is known from a handful of incomplete fossils. For a period of 3 million years, that’s not much. For comparison, there are dozens of Neanderthal sites from the past 500,000 years.

***

"Despite being the oldest known hominin, Sahelanthropus is a relatively recent discovery, first described in 2002 by a group of researchers. The remains were found in the deserts of Chad, which is in north-central Africa, a long way from eastern countries of the continent like Ethiopia and Tanzania that had yielded many famous fossils.

"The main find was a skull, which was named Toumaï... writer Jeff Hecht said it didn’t resemble any modern great ape: “Although its body and brain were the size of a modern chimp’s, its face was quite different, with large brow ridges and much smaller canine teeth.” The researchers also found some teeth and bits of jawbone.

"The French researchers who described Sahelanthropus argued it was bipedal. This was based mainly on the base of the skull and how it apparently fitted onto the spine: it looked like the skull sat directly atop the spinal column, as opposed to being at an angle like in an ape skeleton. It was an intriguing argument – but far from conclusive.

***

"In 2018, the pair tried to present their own analyses of the femur at a conference at the University of Poitiers, but they were blocked by the organisers....

"The following year, Macchiarelli and Bergeret-Medina submitted a paper about the femur... which was finally published in November 2020. The key point was that the Sahelanthropus femur was curved. This is typical of a great ape like a chimpanzee, and not what you’d expect of an upright-walking hominin. Our leg bones are straight because they need to act like pillars supporting the entire weight of our bodies. I consulted two palaeoanthropologists,.. and they both agreed: Sahelanthropus didn’t look like a biped.

"However, the original Poitiers research team, after years of silence, decided to start talking....

"Guy and his colleagues highlighted a number of features of the femur that they say indicate bipedality. For instance, thicker regions along the shaft of the bone correspond to those seen in modern humans and are different from those in great apes. There was also “a rough surface at the top of the femur where the buttock muscles attach”.

***

"The overall message is that the few pieces we have of Sahelanthropus’s limbs don’t show strong evidence of habitual bipedal walking. “It’s generally indistinguishable from the African apes,” says Zanolli.

***

"For now, we can’t even be sure that bipedality evolved in Africa. It’s tempting to think so, because the oldest bipedal hominins we know of are African, even if you discount Sahelanthropus. A study published in May combined the locations of known hominin and ape fossils and their suspected relationships, and concluded that the group that includes both chimpanzees and hominins probably originated in north-central Africa.

"A paper from March suggested that the last common ancestor of hominins and other African apes lived in Eurasia, but that a dramatic event separated the population into two, which then evolved independently.

"What dramatic event? Why, the Zanclean Megaflood of course. If you don’t know, there was a period between about 6 million and 5.3 million years ago when the Mediterranean almost entirely dried out. The Strait of Gibraltar, which connects the Mediterranean to the wider Atlantic, closed – and the sea gradually evaporated, leaving hypersaline lakes. This was the Messinian Salinity Crisis.

"Then, around 5.3 million years ago, the Strait of Gibraltar reopened – and the waters of the Atlantic came rushing in. One reconstruction estimated that it took “from a few months to two years” to refill the Mediterranean basin, which, if not an apocalyptic mega-tsunami, is still pretty fast.

"Supposedly, this Zanclean Megaflood cut off one population of apes/hominins on the Arabian peninsula, while others were able to reach Africa – creating an evolutionary split. In May, a separate group went further and linked the closure and reopening of the Mediterranean to changes in the behaviour of the Pacific tectonic plate.

"You may be able to tell that I’m unconvinced by all of this. It seems to me there are far too many intermediate steps from the Pacific tectonic plate and the Zanclean Megaflood to hominins habitually walking upright, and we can’t be sure about any of them. We don’t even know the timing of the origin of bipedality. If either Sahelanthropus or Orrorin was bipedal, the behaviour evolved well before the megaflood.

"So, much as I want to link the origin of hominins to the biggest flood of the past 10 million years, I think we probably ought to find some more fossils first."

Comment: a low fossil count in this period may mean very small populations of these forms. We obviously evolved from some ape form. The Mediterranean flood is a fascinating event to add to the confusion.

https://www.sciencealert.com/neanderthal-dna-exists-in-humans-but-one-piece-is-mysterio...

"The Homo sapiens genome today contains a little bit of Neanderthal DNA. These genetic traces come from almost every part of the Neanderthal genome – except the Y sex chromosome, which is responsible for making males.

"So what happened to the Neanderthal Y chromosome? It could have been lost by accident, or because of mating patterns or inferior function. However, the answer may lie in a century-old theory about the health of interspecies hybrids.

***

"Scientists have recovered copies of the full male and female Neanderthal genomes, thanks to DNA from well-preserved bones and teeth of Neanderthal individuals in Europe and Asia.

"Unsurprisingly, the Neanderthal genome was very similar to ours, containing about 20,000 genes bundled into 23 chromosomes.

"Like us, they had two copies of 22 of those chromosomes (one from each parent), and also a pair of sex chromosomes. Females had two X chromosomes, while males had one X and one Y.

"Y chromosomes are hard to sequence because they contain a lot of repetitive "junk" DNA, so the Neanderthal Y genome has only been partially sequenced. However, the large chunk that has been sequenced contains versions of several of the same genes that are in the modern human Y chromosome.

"In modern humans, a Y chromosome gene called SRY kickstarts the process of an XY embryo developing into a male. The SRY gene plays this role in all apes, so we assume it did for Neanderthals as well – even though we haven't found the Neanderthal SRY gene itself.

***

"At least half of the whole Neanderthal genome can be pieced together from fragments found in the genomes of different contemporary humans. We have our Neanderthal ancestors to thank for traits including red hair, arthritis and resistance to some diseases.

"There is one glaring exception. No contemporary humans have been found to harbour any part of the Neanderthal Y chromosome.

***

"...maybe the Neanderthal Y was never present in interspecies matings. Perhaps it was always modern human men who fell in love with (or traded, seized or raped) Neanderthal women? Sons born to these women would all have the H. sapiens form of the Y chromosome.

"However, it's hard to reconcile this idea with the finding that there is no trace of Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA (which is limited to the female line) in modern humans.

"Or perhaps the Neanderthal Y chromosome was just not as good at is job as its H. sapiens rival. Neanderthal populations were always small, so harmful mutations would have been more likely to accumulate.

***

"The missing Neanderthal Y may then be explained by "Haldane's rule". In the 1920s, British biologist J.B.S. Haldane noted that, in hybrids between species, if one sex is infertile, rare or unhealthy, it is always the sex with unlike sex chromosomes.

"In mammals and other animals where females have XX chromosomes and males have XY, it is disproportionately male hybrids that are unfit or infertile. In birds, butterflies and other animals where males have ZZ chromosomes and females have ZW, it is the females.

"Many crosses between different species of mice show this pattern, as do feline crosses. For example, in lion–tiger crosses (ligers and tigons), females are fertile but males are sterile.

"We still lack a good explanation of Haldane's rule. It is one of the enduring mysteries of classic genetics.

"But it seems reasonable that the Y chromosome from one species has evolved to work with genes from the other chromosomes of its own species, and might not work with genes from a related species that contain even small changes.

"We know that genes on the Y evolve much faster than genes on other chromosomes, and several have functions in making sperm, which may explain the infertility of male hybrids.

"So this might explain why the Neanderthal Y got lost. It also raises the possibility that it was the fault of the Y chromosome, in imposing a reproductive barrier, that Neanderthals and humans became separate species in the first place."

Comment: it is a mystery looking for an explanation. Presented here as interesting.

https://phys.org/news/2024-05-environmental-conditions-early-humans-migrated.html

"The Out of Africa theory suggests that more than 70,000 years ago, some groups left Africa to spread across Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Americas. However, it remains unclear how much the environment they encountered beyond Africa facilitated or hindered their journey.

"Researchers combined climate models, genetic data, and archaeological evidence to examine how regional environmental conditions influenced migration and to re-establish our long-lasting connection to nature.

***

"'The first human migrants favored routes that provided essential resources and facilitated travel, as well as regions with a mix of forests and open areas for shelter and food, while allowing them to expand into new territories," Dr. Saltré said.

"In Europe, humans likely first spread from the Fertile Crescent through the Caucasus Mountains into Scandinavia approximately 48,300 years ago and Western Europe around 44,100 years ago, following warmer and wetter conditions.

"In northern Asia, migration routes followed major rivers to cope with harsher climates before reaching Beringia, a currently submerged land bridge between Siberia and Alaska, approximately 34,700 years ago.

"In North America, humans initially migrated along the Pacific coast around 16,000 years ago, and then approximately 3,000 years later, moved inland through the ice-free corridor by the Mackenzie River.

In South America, migration followed wetter grasslands bordering the Amazon, leveraging connectivity provided by major rivers by 14,800 years ago.

***

"He said, "Knowing where people first trekked beyond the cradle of human evolution gives us a flavor of how adaptable our early ancestors were, what environmental challenges they faced, and how they overcame them and survived. We can also infer the technological innovations that were at play during those times—such as watercraft, clothing, and other tools—that allowed people to exploit the most hostile environments.'"

Comment: Why did we migrate? Did we use up the resources to force a move or were we just curious about what was over the next set of hills? This doesn't tell us, but the direction is North and then East, which strongly suggests curiosity.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01452-3?utm_source=Live+Audience&utm_cam...

"...a study of hundreds of ancient and modern genomes has pinpointed when the two species began pairing off — and has found that the genetic intermingling lasted for only a short time, at least on an evolutionary scale.

***

"Earlier studies tried to understand this history by comparing contemporary human genomes with a small number of Neanderthal ones. But this approach makes it challenging for researchers to define where Neanderthal sequences in the modern genome start and end.

"To address this challenge, Leonardo Iasi, an evolutionary geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and his colleagues analysed 58 individuals who lived between 2,200 and 45,000 years ago and compared their DNA with that of 231 modern individuals of diverse ancestries other than African ones. People of full African ancestry don’t carry substantial amounts of Neanderthal DNA because their forebears were not part of the exodus from the continent while Neanderthals were alive.

"This large-scale, multi-millennia-spanning comparison made it more straightforward to monitor ‘introgression’ of Neanderthal-derived sequences into the modern human genome. The results indicated that Neanderthal-derived genetic contributions in the modern samples could be traced to a single ‘pulse’ of gene flow starting roughly 47,000 years ago — more recently than originally projected —and spanning some 6,800 years, ending around the same time that Neanderthals were nearing extinction. Nearly 7,000 years might seem like a long time, but it is remarkably short on evolutionary timescales considering the sizable changes that the human genome underwent.

"Notably, many of the Neanderthals’ genomic contributions were subsequently removed with remarkable speed from the H. sapiens genome. Modern human genomes contain vast ‘deserts’ that have been fully cleared of Neanderthal remnants — but the authors detected these deserts even in ancient genomes from the latest stages of human–Neanderthal interaction. According to Emilia Huerta-Sanchez, an evolutionary biologist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, this suggests that many Neanderthal sequences could have been detrimental to humans, and were therefore actively and rapidly selected against by evolution.

"Huerta-Sanchez says this work fills important gaps in ancient human history. “One of the strengths of the study is that by incorporating ancient human genomes, they learnt more about how evolutionary forces have shaped Neanderthal variation in human populations,” she says.

"But other gaps remain. For example, ancestral human genomic data from some geographical regions, including Oceania and East Asia, are much scarcer than from western Eurasia. East Asia is particularly intriguing, because modern humans in the region retain especially high levels of Neanderthal DNA — roughly 20% more than do European people."

Comment: the interbreeding had to be fast and furious but seeing different females is always tempting to the male. A designer would not have to help.

https://www.sciencealert.com/ancient-humans-crafted-deadly-wooden-weapons-300000-years-...

"Powerful new imaging techniques reveal humans were already crafting complex hunting weapons from wood 300,000 years ago, upending the stereotype of the Stone Age.

"Archeologists have previously suspected humans have been using wooden tools for at least as long as stone ones, but due to wood's more fragile nature, most evidence has rotted away.

"Now, using 3D microscopy and micro-CT scanners to examine 187 wooden artifacts from Schöningen in Germany, archeologist Dirk Leder from the Lower Saxony State Office for Cultural Heritage and colleagues have confirmed the suspicions.

"'Wood was a crucial raw material for human evolution, but it is only in Schöningen that it has survived from the Paleolithic period in such great quality," explains University of Göttingen archeologist Thomas Terberger.

"Amidst this stash of wooden artifacts, the largest known from the Pleistocene (2.58 to 11,700 years ago) were at least 10 spears, seven throwing sticks, and 35 domestic tools. They were all carved from woods known to be both flexible and hard, including spruce, pine, and larch.

"The tools showed clear evidence of a splitting technique previously only known to be used by modern humans, as well as signs of carving, scraping, and abrasion.

"'The way the wooden tools were so expertly manufactured was a revelation to us," exclaims University of Reading paleolithic archaeologist Annemieke Milks.

"Working wood to the discovered level of sophistication is a slow and many-step process, requiring much patience and forethought. What's more, the age of the tools coincides with when Neanderthals were rising to dominance in Europe, outcompeting other early human species.

***

"It turned out that these pre-Homo sapiens had fashioned tools and weapons to hunt big game," Terberger told Franz Lidz at the New York Times. "Not only did they communicate together to topple prey, but they were sophisticated enough to organize the butchering and roasting."

"These powerful hunting abilities are likely much older than the wood artifacts found in Schöningen, the researchers argue. These skills would have ensured early humans had access to high-quality food sources for generations, providing the capacity for this increase in brain growth and associated cognitive skills.

"'Likewise, [hunting] would have ensured sustainable populations even in less favorable parts of Europe during the Pleistocene and contributed to human range expansion across the globe," Leder and team write in their paper.

"Incredibly, the researchers also found evidence of recycling. Tools that had been broken or blunted were reworked for new purposes.

"The study provides unique insights into Pleistocene woodworking techniques," the researchers conclude.

"'Schöningen's wooden hunting weapons exemplify the interplay of technological complexity, human behavior, and human evolution.'"

Comment: This ancient big game hunting requires coordination of actions of a team of folks. They could not have done this without some understandable vocal communications. Not true organized language as we know it, but meaningful grunts and gestures. We think in our language, but I wonder how did they think to invent these weapons, so long ago.

https://www.livescience.com/health/genetics/papua-new-guineans-genetically-isolated-for...

"Papua New Guineans, who have been genetically isolated for millennia, carry unique genes that helped them fight off infection — and some of those genes come from our extinct human cousins, the Denisovans.

"The research also found that highlanders and lowlanders evolved different mutations to help them adapt to their wildly different environments.

"New Guineans are unique as they have been isolated since they settled in New Guinea more than 50,000 years ago," co-senior study author François-Xavier Ricaut, a biological anthropologist.

"Not only is the predominantly mountainous terrain of the island country particularly challenging, but infectious diseases are also responsible for more than 40% of deaths.

"Locals therefore had to find a biological and cultural strategy to adapt, which means that the population of Papua New Guinea is a "fantastic cocktail" to study genetic adaptation, Ricaut said.

"Modern humans first arrived in Papua New Guinea from Africa around 50,000 years ago. There, they interbred with Denisovans who'd been living in Asia for tens of thousands of years. As a result of this ancient interbreeding, Papua New Guineans carry up to 5% Denisovan DNA in their genomes.

***

"They found that mutations lowlanders probably inherited from Denisovans boosted the number of immune cells in their blood. The highlanders, meanwhile, evolved mutations that raised their red blood cell count, which helps reduce hypoxia at altitude. That's not unusual, as people from several other high-altitude environments have evolved different mutations to combat hypoxia.

"The Denisovan gene variants may affect the function of a protein called GBP2 that helps the body fight pathogens that are only found at lower altitudes, such as the parasites that cause malaria. These genes may therefore have been selected during evolution to help people fight off infection at lower altitudes where pathogens are rife, the team said.

Comment: from Siberia to New Guinea, the Denisovans covered Asia. No full-sized fossil so far, only DNA traces.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/stone-age-humans-gatherer-hunter

"Unlike many of their mostly meat-eating peers, a group of late Stone Age hunter-gatherers living in what is now northeastern Morocco had a largely plant-based diet. But despite dining for millennia on local, wild plants — such as acorns, pistachios and wild oats, the Iberomaurusians never started cultivating those plants. The finding aligns with recent challenges to scientists’ theory that heavy reliance on plants ultimately leads to their domestication (SN: 11/9/21).

"Before humans figured out farming, they relied on hunting and gathering to sustain themselves, with most protein coming from animals. Over time, they shifted from foraging to cultivating certain plants, eventually leading to the plants’ domestication — so goes the typical story of agriculture’s emergence. Archaeologists once assumed that the Iberomaurusians also relied mostly on animals. But data from human remains at a site in Morocco points to a predominantly plant-based diet, researchers report April 29 in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

"The site — called Taforalt, which is located in a cave — is a “very important site to study human evolution and understand human behavior during this time,” says Zineb Moubtahij, an archaeologist at Géosciences Environment Toulouse, a research laboratory in France. The Iberomaurusians lived around this area for a long time, starting around 23,000 years ago. They used part of the cave to bury the deceased.

***

"The analysis showed that the Iberomaurusians’ diets were closer to that of herbivores, suggesting a heavy reliance on plants not animals. The group wasn’t completely vegetarian; meat was still on the menu, Moubtahij says. But compared with other hunter-gatherers from this time, the Iberomaurusians’ diet leaned more on the gatherer side and less on the hunter side.

"Previous work has suggested that the Iberomaurusians loved their plant foods, says Teresa Steele, a paleoanthropologist at the University of California, Davis not involved in this study. In 2014, researchers analyzed the decayed teeth of some Iberomaurusians. Their frequent cavities indicated a diet rich in starchy, fermentable foods. But it’s “always nice to see further verification of things we have less direct evidence about,” she says.

"Curiously, the group relied on wild plants for many millennia without ever domesticating them. The archaeological record suggests the plants’ features didn’t change over time.

"That’s in contrast with humans in southwestern Asia, who began farming around 12,000 to 11,000 years ago (SN: 7/4/13). It wasn’t until around 7,600 years ago that agriculture arrived in what is now Morocco, and the farmed plants had been brought from other lands. Why the Iberomaurusians’ reliance on plants didn’t lead to domestication is a mystery, Moubtahij says.

"Because there are relatively few well-preserved human remains from around this time in history — the late Pleistocene — scientists have limited evidence to piece together how agriculture arose in different places. “It’s really important that we have these sort of studies that show us that there were alternative pathways and food production systems,” says Michael Westaway, an archaeologist at the University of Queensland in Australia who was not involved in the work. One thing is clear: “Not all roads lead to agriculture.'”

Comment: necessity drives use. If one had an easy plant diet, why bother to make the effort to hunt? There are, obviously, a variety of human activities that described our evolution.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-024-02390-z

"Abstract:
The search for drivers of hominin speciation and extinction has tended to focus on the impact of climate change. Far less attention has been paid to the role of interspecific competition. However, research across vertebrates more broadly has shown that both processes are often correlated with species diversity, suggesting an important role for interspecific competition. Here we ask whether hominin speciation and extinction conform to the expected patterns of negative and positive diversity dependence, respectively. We estimate speciation and extinction rates from fossil occurrence data with preservation variability priors in a validated Bayesian framework and test whether these rates are correlated with species diversity. We supplement these analyses with calculations of speciation rate across a phylogeny, again testing whether these are correlated with diversity. Our results are consistent with clade-wide diversity limits that governed speciation in hominins overall but that were not quite reached by the Australopithecus and Paranthropus subclade before its extinction. Extinction was not correlated with species diversity within the Australopithecus and Paranthropus subclade or within hominins overall; this is concordant with climate playing a greater part in hominin extinction than speciation. By contrast, Homo is characterized by positively diversity-dependent speciation and negatively diversity-dependent extinction—both exceedingly rare patterns across all forms of life. The genus Homo expands the set of reported associations between diversity and macroevolution in vertebrates, underscoring that the relationship between diversity and macroevolution is complex. These results indicate an important, previously underappreciated and comparatively unusual role of biotic interactions in Homo macroevolution, and speciation in particular. The unusual and unexpected patterns of diversity dependence in Homo speciation and extinction may be a consequence of repeated Homo range expansions driven by interspecific competition and made possible by recurrent innovations in ecological strategies. Exploring how hominin macroevolution fits into the general vertebrate macroevolutionary landscape has the potential to offer new perspectives on longstanding questions in vertebrate evolution and shed new light on evolutionary processes within our own lineage."

Another commentary:

https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/human-ancestors-may-have-bucked-an-evolut...

"In evolution, competition is thought to be a zero-sum game. One species adapts and survives. Another doesn’t and dies off. A new study in Nature Ecology & Evolution posits that human ancestors might be an exception.

"Conventional wisdom in evolutionary theory has held that climate has driven the rise and fall of various hominin species. In most vertebrates, interspecies competition also plays an important role. That role has been discounted in human ancestors, according to the study.

“We have been ignoring the way competition between species has shaped our own evolutionary tree,” said Laura van Holstein, a University of Cambridge archeologist and author of the paper, in a press release. “The effect of climate on hominin species is only part of the story.”

***

"Van Holstein found that in many early hominins — as in other mammals — separation into other species increases, then flatlines, at which point extinction rates start to ramp up.

"But when she looked at the later “Homo” groups of hominins, van Holstein noticed a finding she called bizarre. Her analysis showed that competition between Homo species appeared to result in even more species.

"'This is almost unparalleled in evolutionary science," van Holstein said.

"Her analysis explains why the hominin fossil record can sometimes appear uneven. Several more hominin species than previously assumed were likely co-existing, and potentially competing. She added that the fossil record, by itself, can’t fully explain separation into species, because it relies somewhat upon chance — the finding of a particular fossil that pinpoints a particular species to a certain time and place.

“'The earliest fossil we find will not be the earliest members of a species,” said van Holstein.

"So why the divergence? Later Homo sapiens became ecosystem engineers, according to the paper. Learning how to make and use tools and to build fires gave later species adaptive benefits that could improve quicker than any evolutionary change.

“'Adoption of stone tools or fire, or intensive hunting techniques, are extremely flexible behaviors,” van Holstein said. “A species that can harness them can quickly carve out new niches, and doesn’t have to survive vast tracts of time while evolving new body plans.'”

Comment: simple reasons we dominated. We outsmarted all of them!! Human exceptionalism, of course!