So are we all of us really “out of Africa”?
Well, mostly. Somewhere in the region of 92.5%:
Scientists are trying to envision the ancient couplings and their consequences: when and where they took place, how they happened, how many produced offspring and what effect the archaic genes have on humans today.
Other scientists are trying to learn more about the Denisovans: who they were, where they lived and how they became extinct.
A revolutionary increase in the speed and a decline in the cost of gene-sequencing technology have enabled scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, to map the genomes of both the Neanderthals and the Denisovans.
Comparing genomes, scientists concluded that today’s humans outside Africa carry an average of 2.5 percent Neanderthal DNA, and that people from parts of Oceania also carry about 5 percent Denisovan DNA. A study published in November found that Southeast Asians carry about 1 percent Denisovan DNA in addition to their Neanderthal genes. It is unclear whether Denisovans and Neanderthals also interbred.
The DNA sequencing that led to the discovery of other human progenitors was performed using a pinky bone and molar from a Siberian cave, and this newly discovered strain of humanity died out around 30,000 years ago. The interbreeding between modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans is thought not to have been, strictly speaking, consensual, but it did confer important DNA-based defenses against diseases, as witnessed by the persistence of those DNA strand over the millenia.
Ah the beauty of, and the reward for … diversity.
…color me devastatingly disappointed…I thought that by this time at minimum our resident gadabout/flannel-mouth…a/k/a VX would have chimed in with one of his trademark inanities on this eunni inducing, comment defying subject…but alas he hasn’t… I shall endevor to persevere. Best
PS,fliterman…my new old X best friend…please don’t take this personally…but you’re sublimely hopeless.
I’m confused. Isn’t the earth only, like, 6000 or so years old?
BTW, love the photos showing up in Targets of Opportunity. We need to send said photos to various places to corrupt their youth.
P8, you’ve had a bit of a bug up your nose recently. Do you personally know anyone who believes that the world is only 6000 years old? Because – and I think I may move in different circles than you – I don’t. And even if I did, I can’t grasp quite how that belief might affect me.
Unless I needed it to feel superior, or something. Which I don’t, at the moment.
Um, no, that earlier post was an attempt at sarcasm. I forgot to add an observation about DNA strands and Galactica but I could not think of a clever way to do that.
In response to your question, yes.
Another piece of the puzzle. I was always intrigued by RNA. Seems, since it is passed down unaltered through the mother, we all have the same ancient mother.
There was an interesting book that came out awhile back explaining the science of how we are descended from the
Seven Daughters of Eve.
Of course those seven also were descended from the Mitochondrial Eve
Fascinating stuff.
Filterman;
I read about it many years ago in Scientific American. (er, when it was still a good magazine)
This is truly exciting news! We are now all oficially African American, and we can drop all preferential treatment, because preference is unnecessary if we are all African Americans. Racism is now impossible, because one cannot possibly be racist against members of one’s own race. The world suddenly is a better place. Thanks, Lex!
should have been “officially”…
Heh. I betcha the interbreeding which produced all those Genghiz Khan descendents was not, strictly speaking, consensual either.
Where exactly did the gene sequence responsible for “you hunt, bring back food, and I take half so I can sit on my a$$ and paint hands on cave walls” come from?
That has been identifed as the NEA-l-Dc gene located in the same sequence as the Bureaucrat-3triplicate gene…
I’ve held that Neanderthal was more human than Anthropologists give him/her credit for. Also that
I’m sure that Cro-magnon men went for big busted
Neanderthal girls, too…