We already have established linkages that are ten thousand years old
in Europe, so now been able to trace human biological continuity back
a full 40,000 years is great news. Because it is all local, a lot of
distractions disappear. Even better they are clearly family.
What this also continues to confirm is that when agricultural man
arose ten thousand years ago, their expanding population simply
absorbed the local non agricultural peoples. We see exactly this
happening today with our first nation peoples. The majority are
already hybrids and it is inevitable that this will continue apace
as they are now successfully fitting into the greater whole just
about everywhere.
Preservation of an inbred tribe depends on population success and
that has become totally irrelevant in the modern world. It is now
wiser to optimize genetic diversity instead to attract maximum hybrid
vigor.
It is remarkable how the march of time dissolves away all local
conceits in progress of our genetic inheritance.
Fossil human traces
line to modern Asians
The person shared a
common origin with the ancestors of modern Asians
22 January 2013
Researchers have been able to trace a line between some of the
earliest modern humans to settle in China and people living in the
region today.
The evidence comes
from DNA extracted from a 40,000-year-old leg bone found in a cave
near Beijing.
Results show that the
person it belonged to was related to the ancestors of present-day
Asians and Native Americans.
The results are
published in the journal PNAS.
Humans who looked
broadly like present-day people started to appear in the fossil
record of Eurasia between 40,000 and 50,000 years ago.
But many questions
remain about the genetic relationships between these early modern
humans and present-day Homo sapiens populations.
For example, some
evidence hints at extensive migration into Europeafter the last
Ice Age.
And fossil finds
from Red Deer Cave, also in China, and Iwo Eleru in
Nigeria point to a hitherto unappreciated diversity among Late
Pleistocene humans.
New technique
The team managed to
extract genetic material from an ancient leg bone found in 2003 at
the site of Tianyuan Cave outside Beijing.
They managed to
extract the type of DNA found in the nuclei of cells (nuclear DNA)
and genetic material from the cell's "powerhouses" - known
as mitochondria.
They used new
techniques that can identify ancient genetic information from an
archaeological find, even when large amounts of DNA from soil
bacteria are also present.
Analysis of the
person's DNA showed that they were related to the ancestors of
present-day Asians and Native Americans. But the analysis showed that
this individual had already diverged from the ancestors of
present-day Europeans.
The fossils were
discovered in 2003 at Tianyuan near Beijing
"More analyses of
additional early modern humans across Eurasia will further refine our
understanding of when and how modern humans spread across Europe and
Asia", said co-author Svante Pääbo, from the Max Planck
Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
Research in the last
few years has shown that early modern humans interbred with ancient
human species such as the Neanderthals and Denisovans as they
migrated from Africa and settled across the world.
Around 40,000 years
ago, the Neanderthals and Denisovans were being replaced by Homo
sapiens. Genetic studies of people living at this important crossover
period could help scientists understand when and how this
interbreeding took place.
The researchers found
that the person from Tianyuan cave carried about the same proportion
of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA as people in the region today.
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