Just a brief post to share a paper published yesterday (Introgression, hominin dispersal and megafaunal survival in Late Pleistocene Island Southeast Asia
Joao C Teixeira, Guy S Jacobs, Chris Stringer, Jonathan Tuke, Georgi Hudjashov, Gludhug A Purnomo, Herawati Sudoyo, Murray P Cox, Ray Tobler, Chris SM Turney, Alan Cooper, Kristofer M Helgen
bioRxiv 2020.07.24.219048; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.24.219048).
The authors were looking into the "super-archaic" hominins that were discovered in the Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) region: Homo luzonensis and H. floresiensis, which were contemporary to anatomically modern humans (AMH). As modern populations in the region have a high level of Denisovan introgression they wanted to find out if there was also a signal of introgression from the super-archaics in the region.
Their analysis failed to detect super-archaic admixture but they reached an interesting conclusion:
"An alternative explanation is that H. luzonensis and H. floresiensis belong to a hominin clade that is considerably less divergent from AMH than is currently accepted, possibly being the latesurviving descendants of an earlier radiation of a Denisovan-like lineage across ISEA.
This would imply that hominin occupation of Flores (1.2Ma) and the Philippines (700ka) was not continuous and that the ubiquitous Denisovan ancestry across ISEA, which includes signals of admixture from a Denisovan population that diverged from the Altai Denisovans ~280ka, results from AMH admixture with one or both of these groups.
Indeed, the patterning of Denisovan ancestry across ISEA is consistent with separate Denisovan introgression events in the Philippines and, potentially, in Flores. Despite the complete lack of support for this scenario from current morphological interpretations, it is possible that pronounced dwarfism and prolonged periods of endemic island evolution for H. floresiensis and H. luzonensis complicate morphological assessments and phylogenetic placement of these groups.
While it would simplify the search for ‘southern Denisovans’ if they could be linked with the dwarfed hominins of Flores and Luzon, existing archaeological and morphological data and Flores as a more likely location for the sources of Denisovan-like DNA."
Below a map of the sites where Denisovan, Flores and Luzon hominins' remains were found:
Could the Denisovans be a link to the Homo erectus population of Asia? Current research links them to Neandertals in western Eurasia.
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2020 by Austin Whittall ©
Super interesting,
ReplyDeletethanks.
What if the similarities in both neanderthal and denisovan are just the hallmarks of Homo Erectus and this is why the similar dna signal is seen in those far eastern places as a relationship to western Neanderthals.
ReplyDeleteIts been recently discovered that European neanderthal had its Y haplotypes replaced by Sapiens at around 120-180K years. Maybe they look more similar to us because of that introgression and the farther east one goes the less similar to Sapiens that Denisovan people looked in the Middle Paleolithic but they looked more like Neanderthals maternal side. The 480,000 year old Spanish hominids had a relationship with Denisovans too. That predated the Neanderthal introgression with Sapiens. Perhaps Denisova 1 is true derived Homo Erectus. Perhaps Denisova 2 is a hybrid of Denisova 1 and who preceded them into Southeast Asia.