jjares reviewed The Denisovans: The History of the Extinct Archaic Humans Who Spread Across Asia during the Paleolithic Era on + 3263 more book reviews
This book talks about something new to me: Paleoanthropology - the study of hominins. They are interested in the first proto-humans that walked the Earth. When archaeologists started finding bones in European caves that had humans very different from modern man, the study of paleoanthropology was born. At first, they thought the Neanderthals were the first humans, now they aren't so sure. DNA testing has been instrumental in helping this study grow rapidly.
Since the Denisovans (a group of human bones found in Siberia) and DNA-sequenced in 2010, there's only a bit of information available at present. However, I am excited to be in the know about an emerging field of study. I haven't been in a biology class in 50 years, so all of this seemed new to me. There are complaints from reviewers about the scarcity of facts. I see it differently. This is the latest-and-greatest info from a new field of study about humans. I found it to be absorbing.
The Neanderthals and the Denisovans are probably two distinct species of hominins. Scientists used to think that Neanderthals and Denisonavs were the direct ancestors of modern humans. Now, they know that both of these two groups evolutionarily went to a dead-end (they did not adapt and did not continue as a species). However, they did contribute DNA to modern humans; to the tune of about 4% of modern man's DNA.
The thought is that Neanderthals and Denisovans existed concurrently with modern humans for as much as 200,000 years. Modern humans emerged from Africa around 100,000 years ago, but they'd already split from Neanderthals and Denisovans long before that. Based on DNA, we know that Neanderthals and modern humans interbred, Denisovans and modern humans interbred, and Neanderthals and Denisovans interbred.
Since the Denisovans (a group of human bones found in Siberia) and DNA-sequenced in 2010, there's only a bit of information available at present. However, I am excited to be in the know about an emerging field of study. I haven't been in a biology class in 50 years, so all of this seemed new to me. There are complaints from reviewers about the scarcity of facts. I see it differently. This is the latest-and-greatest info from a new field of study about humans. I found it to be absorbing.
The Neanderthals and the Denisovans are probably two distinct species of hominins. Scientists used to think that Neanderthals and Denisonavs were the direct ancestors of modern humans. Now, they know that both of these two groups evolutionarily went to a dead-end (they did not adapt and did not continue as a species). However, they did contribute DNA to modern humans; to the tune of about 4% of modern man's DNA.
The thought is that Neanderthals and Denisovans existed concurrently with modern humans for as much as 200,000 years. Modern humans emerged from Africa around 100,000 years ago, but they'd already split from Neanderthals and Denisovans long before that. Based on DNA, we know that Neanderthals and modern humans interbred, Denisovans and modern humans interbred, and Neanderthals and Denisovans interbred.
