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!

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

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.

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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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!

Not sure if it can go that far, but the original multi-region hypothesis I learned in grad school a while back noted the commonality of traits from early erectus to late erectus in each of four areas of the world, with influence from those to modern populations. Shovel-shaped incisors was one example of Asian traits carried into modern populations.But genetics will be adding a lot more clues, so stay tuned!

And this all occurred earlier than has been commonly assumed under the traditional out-of-Africa hypothesis.

Right. That chart in Post 8 almost certainly under-represents the amount of hanky-panky going on.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/...s-new-dwarf-human-species-7566527Posting here for lack of a better spot:Mysterious new dwarf human species probed after scientists find 3 million year old skull in cave

A multi-disciplinary team of scientists have discovered the skull of a weird, unique extinct human and who was found in an underground cave.

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Scientists have discovered a skull belonging to a previously unknown species of human from three million years ago.

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The research team made up of paleoanthropologists stumbled across the remains in an underground cave and have now put together a skeleton which stands at 4ft 9 tall and is described as "a really, really strange creature."

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Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and his co-horts stumbled across 15 individuals skeletons which they believe make up a tribe of the bizarre human species - and now they've found the missing link.

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And while they resemble homo sapiens - like modern day humans - the species could more more than 2.8 million years old.

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With all of these finds lately, and the addition of DNA evidence going back hundreds of thousands of years, things are getting interesting!