Study sheds more light on the “hobbit” people

Study sheds more light on the hobbit peopleStudy sheds more light on the hobbit people — Popular Archeology

A study completed by scientists in France has concluded that, based on an examination of a key skull specimen attributed to Homo floresiensis, the cranial features do not support its attribution to the modern human species, Homo sapiens.

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With the recent finds regarding Neanderthal, early Out of Africa, Denisova, and now H. floresiensis things are getting a lot more complex, and a lot more interesting.Maybe there's something to the multiregional model after all: But wait! There's more!Ancient gene flow from early modern humans into Eastern Neanderthals Browse Articles | Nature

Abstract: It has been shown that Neanderthals contributed genetically to modern humans outside Africa 47,000—65,000 years ago. Here we analyse the genomes of a Neanderthal and a Denisovan from the Altai Mountains in Siberia together with the sequences of chromosome 21 of two Neanderthals from Spain and Croatia. We find that a population that diverged early from other modern humans in Africa contributed genetically to the ancestors of Neanderthals from the Altai Mountains roughly 100,000 years ago. By contrast, we do not detect such a genetic contribution in the Denisovan or the two European Neanderthals. We conclude that in addition to later interbreeding events, the ancestors of Neanderthals from the Altai Mountains and early modern humans met and interbred, possibly in the Near East, many thousands of years earlier than previously thought.

Edited by Coyote, : But wait! There's more!

Thread copied here from the Study sheds more light on the hobbit people thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

The timeline concerning human events seems to get pushed further back upon each discovery. The rediscovery of Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, for instance, dates even further back than Sumerians along the Fertile Crescent which means that agriculture vs hunter/gatherer may have began sooner than previously believed.

Concerning this recent article in Nature,

If the new discovery checks out, it will no longer be possible to assert that the deepest split in our species, H. sapiens, involves African populations. A modest interpretation of these results would assert an earlier (pre-100kya) exodus of our species from Africa, and a more bold one would seek to re-examine the geographical origin of H. sapiens itself.

Dienekes’ Anthropology Blog
February 17, 2016

What about the current Out of Africa theory is incorrect? Just the timeline?

From the evidence that we're seeing, certainly the timeline seems to be incorrect.Looking at the figure in the first post, it is possible that there were other scenarios than the two shown there--most likely some combination of the two? For example, we have a lot of fossils of Homo erectus in southeast Asia. The standard out-of-Africa model is shown above and in the chart below.It is starting to look like there was more leakage between the groups than had been realized, with more influence from earlier groups persisting to and merging with the out-of-Africa migration. The amount of that influence is still being argued about. [blockcolor=white][/blockcolor=white]Edited by Coyote, : Add blockcolor to figure.

So the time-line is all effed up? (sorry could help it)We saw similar mixing of traits in the Homo naledi (New Species of Homo Discovered: Homo nalediHomo[/i] Discovered: Homo nalediHomo[/i] Discovered: Homo naledi and Interweaving Evolution & Hybrid Vigor) which is not shown on your last graphic.Note: if you use [blockcolor=white][img](image location url)[/img][/blockcolor] you get a more viewer friendly image: And we also saw in historical times that European explorers came into contact with native humans in north and south America after >10,000 years of isolation or so and lost little time in interbreeding ...Interesting.Edited by RAZD, : .

Here is another chart which represents some recent evidence: There is a discussion of this at Dienekes’ Anthropology Blog under the date February 20, 2016.The text reads, in part:

The picture on the left (source) shows quite nicely that according to current understanding, Africans are nested within Eurasian genetic variation. The modern humans have the following structure:

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(Early modern human lineage detected as admixture in the Altai Neandertal, ((Asians, Europeans), Africans)),

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and then there are two deeper layers of Eurasian hominins (Neandertal/Denisovans) and the "Mystery hominin" that mixed into Denisovans.

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Africans are thus just a leaf of the Eurasian family tree, casting serious doubt--if this model is to be believed--to the position that H. sapiens originated in Africa and are descended from people who never left the continent. It seems much simpler to derive them from an early migration (~200kya?) from Asia which would nicely explain why the continent's first sapiens populations appear tentatively in the northeastern corner, and why they do not replace archaic hominins for most of the 200 thousand years until today. In a reversal of perspective it is not Skhul/Qafzeh that are the "migration that failed", but rather the Omo 1 outlier is.

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I'm still on the fence about the multiregional hypothesis. It's abundantly clear to me that hominin lineages were not cleanly divided into discreet units, and that our species is not descended from a single tribe of intrepid explorers coming out of Africa. However, I still feel like there's a whole lot of overinterpretation going on.In my mind, the Multiregional hypothesis would have predicted a much higher rate of introgression than is being detected. All detected mixing has so far been attributable to very small numbers of events, so it seems clear to me that the major pattern in human evolution has been divergence among regional populations/species, rather than admixture.

It would be interesting if we could determine whether this was due to a small number of occasional events,Or it was due to reduced interfertility\compatibility, so only a few offspring survived.Enjoy

Or the superior sapiens genetic material swamping out the other stuff as older generations gave way to newer ones.

How would this work? Natural selection deselecting offspring? Usually there is some "hybrid vigor" when there is interbreeding, a factor that is used in domestic animal breeding programs.A reduction of interfertility is something that would be expected on the path to genetic isolation. Mules are an example where the reduction in interfertility still produces offspring, but they have severely limited ability to breed -- even though they do show "hybrid vigor" ...Enjoy

The superior genetic material gets selected for every generation.As the generations pass, the amount of inferior material swimming through the populations lessens. Every selection for one thing is a selection against something else.

Just curious -Is there a standard definition of "episode" or "event" when talking about interbreeding?One couple - one child?
One family for one generation?
Tribe/clan for ten generations?I guess a related question would be -Do we have any idea of the populations we are talking about for each of the branches - 10's 100's 1,000's ..... alive at one time?

At this point the amount of interbreeding is pretty much unknown. Up until recently it was largely thought that no interbreeding took place, but with genetic studies we're finding out it was pretty common. Next I guess will be filling in more of the details.The big news from recent finds is the date and nature of the out-of-Africa movement for modern humans is being refined, and the multi-regional hypothesis is being reexamined.Stay tuned!