«What has emerged from our study as well as from other work on introgression is that interbreeding
with archaic humans does indeed have functional implications for modern humans, and that the most obvious consequences have been in shaping our adaptation to our environment — improving how we resist pathogens and metabolize novel foods,» Kelso says.
By interbreeding
with these archaic humans, we modern humans gained these advantageous adaptations.»
«We found that interbreeding
with archaic humans — the Neanderthals and Denisovans — has influenced the genetic diversity in present - day genomes at three innate immunity genes belonging to the human Toll - like - receptor family,» says Janet Kelso of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
«There are signs that intermixing
with archaic humans was occurring in Africa, but given the warmer climate no one has yet found African archaic human fossils with sufficient DNA for sequencing.»
Not exact matches
«
Archaic human admixture
with modern Ho.mo sapiens occurred at least twice in history:
with Neanderthals, and
with the population to which the Denisova ho.minin belonged.
Intermixing does not surprise paleoanthropologists who have long argued on the basis of fossils that
archaic humans, such as the Neandertals in Eurasia and Homo erectus in East Asia, mated
with early moderns and can be counted among our ancestors — the so - called multiregional evolution theory of modern
human origins.
Pääbo, for his part, says that now that his team has shown that early modern
humans interbred
with one
archaic group, he thinks other
archaic humans might have passed along genes to us through interbreeding.
Still, additional genetic analyses have typically led researchers to conclude that Homo sapiens arose in Africa and replaced the
archaic humans it encountered as it spread out from its birthplace without mingling
with them.
That in turn could help determine when
humans interbred
with archaic hominids on other continents — such as Neandertals in Europe and Denisovans in Asia — whose genes linger in the DNA of some modern people (SN: 6/13/15, p. 11).
«There are certain classes of genes that modern
humans inherited from the
archaic humans with whom they interbred, which may have helped the modern
humans to adapt to the new environments in which they arrived,» says senior author David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute.
«It opens up our ability to ask questions about how Middle Pleistocene hominins lived in this region and it might be a key to understanding the nature of interbreeding and population dispersals across Eurasia
with modern
humans and
archaic populations such as Neanderthals.»
To answer that question, Collins and his team compared the chemical composition of the collagen in the fragments
with the collagen produced by modern and
archaic humans.
It also means that modern
humans were potentially meeting and interacting during a longer period of time
with other
archaic human groups, providing more opportunity for cultural and biological exchanges.»
Importantly, this study indicated that LB1 not only differed from individuals
with Down syndrome, but was more clearly aligned
with more
archaic human species.
When they did finally begin to disperse across the globe, according to this model, they replaced the
archaic human species they encountered along the way, including the Neandertals, without interbreeding
with them.
«We want to look throughout the world to see if we can find evidence of interbreeding
with other
archaic humans,» says Browning.
Published this week in Nature, the findings also hint at when modern
humans interacted
with other
archaic humans.
After comparing the angle in a wide range of fossil hominids and representative modern peoples — urban, foraging and agricultural — Trinkaus concludes that the femoral neck - shaft angles of the Levantine Neanderthals (augmented
with material from sites in Iran) are similar to those of other «
archaic»
humans.
Here we report newly discovered
human fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and interpret the affinities of the hominins from this site
with other
archaic and recent
human groups.
No one knows when or how these
humans disappeared but, according to Professor Paabo, it is very likely something to do
with modern people because all the «
archaic»
humans, like Denisovans and Neanderthals disappeared sometime after Homo sapiens sapiens appeared on the scene.
Analysis of an
archaic genome sequence indicated that the risk haplotype introgressed into modern
humans via admixture
with Neanderthals.
But ancient - DNA sequencing is beginning to shed some light on the issue.11 For example, by comparing a
human HAR sequence
with the HAR sequence of an
archaic hominin, researchers can estimate if the HAR mutated before, after, or during the time period of our common ancestor.12 This approach has revealed that the rate at which HAR mutations emerged was slightly higher before we split from Neanderthals and Denisovans.3, 13 As a result, most HAR mutations are millions of years old and shared
with these extinct hominins (but not
with chimpanzees).
Homo naledi was likely there too, along
with possibly still other
archaic human species.
Feb. 11, 2016 — The first study that directly compares Neanderthal DNA in the genomes of a significant population of adults of European ancestry
with their clinical records confirms that this
archaic genetic legacy has a subtle but significant impact on modern
human biology.
More specifically the scientists provide the first genetic evidence of a scenario in which early modern
humans left the African continent and mixed
with archaic (now - extinct) members of the
human family prior to the migration «out of Africa» of the ancestors of present - day non-Africans, less than 65,000 years ago.
Modern medicine seems to be pretty
archaic by working against the immune system as opposed to working in collaboration
with animal or
human immune systems.
At a first gaze, the idea of reinterpretation of earlier movements within the genre of figurative sculpture seems to be the main thread of the exhibition; the «
Human Statues» by Frank Benson re-visit the classic models of sculpture
with a post-modern attitude, suggestions of an
archaic past revive in Schütte's warriors, while a Minimalistic taste gives shape to Georg Herold's haggard creatures.