Clovis First

The "Clovis Fist" theory has recently received some media attention due to the publication by one of its staunch defenders that suggests a post-Clovis date for one of the oldest pre-Clovis sites in the Americas, suggesting that it is far more recent than previously believed. (see my post on the new date for ancient Monte Verde site in Chile).

But, what exactly do we mean by Clovis or pre- and post-Clovis? Today I will summarize the Clovis First theory.

It al began in Clovis, New Mexico, USA

A young man named Ridgely Whiteman found some stone points and mammoth bones in 1929 in a spot known as Blackwater Draw, a temporary stream that, ~10 miles SW of Clovis, New Mexico (see Google Map). Whiteman had been following the discovery of the Folsom stone points in Folsom, in northwestern New Mexico (see map) when he made his discovery.

A few years later, in 1932 archaeologist Edgar B. Howard and his student John L. Cotter had been digging in Buttler cave close to Carlsbad, New Mexico, 150 mi. (250 km) southeast of Clovis. While stopping in Carlsbad, the scientists learned from an amateur archaeologist, A.W. "Pete" Anderson, who had founded an archaeologist society in Clovis, about the Clovis finds. Anderson led them to the site. Howard and Cotter excavated the area and discovered some distinctivly shaped stone tools with fluted points. They were deemed to be old, as they lay beneath a layer of sediment that contained buffalo bones and another type of stone tools, the ones that had been discovered in Folsom (Folsom points), and which were considered to be Pleistocene artifacts.

Over the next five years Howard dug at the site, and in 1935 he published Clovis Evidence of Early Man in North America

This discovery was important because it followed the discovery of a pointed stone tool discovered by Jesse Higgins in 1926, near Folsom, also in New Mexico. The digging also produced bones from an extinct species of bison, suggesting a Pleistocene age for human beings in America.

At that time, the official doctrine that had been imposed 30 years earlier by Ales Hrldicka and William Henry Holmes of the Smitshonian Institution, and Thomas Chamberlin of the United States Geological Survey, refused to accept that humans had reached America before the end of the last Ice Age, and placed their arrival around 3,000 to 10,000 years ago. The discovery of the Folsom points, and the Clovis stone tools confirmed that the 10,000 year-old ceiling could be ignored. These tools suggested that there had been people in North America around 13,000 years ago.

The prevailing orthodox dogma was replaced by a new theory, the "Clovis First" one. Which proposed that the people that had designed and used these fluted stone points, were the first to reach America from Asia, through Beringia. They spread across the empty North America with their stone points and used them to hunt "big game", the megafauna. They were mammoth hunters, and had reached America following the mammoths across Beringia during the period of the great ice-melt at the end of the last Ice Age some 13,000 years ago.

Clovis hunters and mammoths. University Press of Colorado, from Frontiers in Colorado Paleoindian Archaeology: From the Dent Site to the Rocky Mountains, edited by Robert H. Brunswig and Bonnie L. Pitblado, 2014, 2 nd ed.

Clovis and the Ice-Free Corridor

C. Vance Haynes, 1964 analyzed the dates of the Clovis sites and found that they spanned a period of around 500 to 1,000 years, between ~11 or 11.5 ky to 12 ky, none were older than that date, which confirmed that they were the "first" to reach America because "The glacial history of Alaska, Canada, and the Great Lakes region indicates that, for the first time in at least 15,000 years, an ice-free, trans-Canadian corridor opened up approximately 12,000 years ago. Since Clovis points are distributed from coast to coast south of the Valders ice border, the abrupt appearance of Clovis artifacts in the stratigraphic record of the High Plains some 700 years later suggests that Clovis progenitors passed through Canada during [this] time."

Now, Clovis and the "Ice Free Corridor" dogma became linked. The geologists of that time believed that the whole of the northern part of North America had been covered by a seamless sheet of ice, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, so it was only natural that when the ice melted, and a clear corridor appeared, mammoths, and the humans that hunted them, poured into the southern reaches of North America. Before that time, the access into the New World was blocked by the ice sheet.

The Clovis-First theory had been taught to hundreds of archaeologists since the late 1930s, and became part of their mindset, the new orthodoxy that replaced the previous one (Hrldicka's late Beringian entry).

Due to the glacial ice blocking the way, nobody could have entered America earlier than 12,000 years ago (unless you believe that humans were around before the Last Glacial Maximum some 25 kya, but such old dates are still looked upon with disgust). Neat, tidy, dogmatic, and... wrong,

Cracks in the structure

But, during the 1970s, some new sites were discovered, and their dates seemed to be older than the 13ky limit supported by the Clovis First theory, Meadowcroft Rockshelter in the US ( Adovasio, Gunn, Donahue, and Stuckenrath, 1978) dated at 16 to 19 ky, and Monte Verde in Chile are two examples. They were relentlessly attacked by the orthodoxy, but somehow have managed to survive the onslaught.

Why would modern human beings well adapted to dealing with cold glacial climates (they lived in Siberia, northern Eurasia during the last 50 ky) take so long to reach the New World? They sailed across the Wallace Line into Australia 50 kya ago, why would they camp in Beringia for 15-20 ky? Were they waiting for an ice-free corridor to open, or is the theory flawed?

This is not a scientific discussion, the dogma and prejudice, the personal interests in academia and petty enmity have led to the confrontation between clovis-firsters and those proposing an early peopling of America.

Archaeologists dig, identify, select, sort, analyze and interpret data. Conclusions in academic publishing are analog to a building that is built, brick by brick, on the foundation of previous findings. So if scholar after scholar find that 13,000 years is the oldest date unearthed in America, it becomes accepted as a fact. But, if nobody digs deeper to see what the sediments aged 15, 20, or 25 ky old contain, how can we be sure that 13 ky is the oldest age? It requires new, unexpected discoveries to shake the structure, and move forward in our understanding of how the Universe, and learn more about us, as humans.

Orthodoxy builds complacency. Disputing established beliefs is not good for someone wanting to forge an academic career.

So, older sites are not on the agenda. Nobody looks for them, and if found, they are dismissed, discarded, and demolished. To make matters worse, potential coastal routes into America, that skirted the glacial ice fields, lie along the now submerged continental shelf, beyond the reach of archaologists.

Dating is also an issue, stone tools are not easy to date, radiocarbon methods require organic matter, not always present, and luminescence dating also has limitations. Then, there is the issue of interpreting the data. Did the Clovis tools originate in America, were they brought there by a group of people from Asia? Did the toolage spread with the people as they moved across the continent, or was the know-how culturally transmitted to other groups of different populations?

Why are there no Clovis points beyond North America (or Venezuela, where Clovis-like tools have been found)? In South America, the main stone tool technology is the distinctive "Fishtail" or "Fell's Cave" points, dated to 10-11 kya, also found in Central America, contemporary with the Clovis points. Both are shown below:

Now we know that the ice free corridor opened up earlier (Meltzer et al., 2022), 15.5-16 kya. Where were the Clovis people between 16 and 13 kya? Surely someone entered America at that time, before the oldest Clovis points.

Another theory proposes a coastal route where people used boats and bypassed the ice blockage (Davis and Madsen, 2020). This pushes the arrival date to even earlier periods.

And finally, there are may pre-Clovis sites, older than 13,000 years, that were reported across the continent, I will only mention some of them: Pendejo Cave USA (55,000 years), Cacao shelter, Argentina (40,000 years), Hartley, USA (37,000 years), Chiquihuite Cave in Mexico (33,000 years), Claromecó, Argentina (30,000 years), Gault (26,000 years), Meadowcroft Rock shelter, White Sands USA, and Pedra Furada, Brazil (24,000 years).

Now, nearly one century later you would expect the Clovis to be considered early arrivals, but, not the first to reach the Americas, But, a bad penny always turns up again, so the Clovis-first theory refuses to die, as shown by the recent paper attacking the early age of Monte Verde.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

All the Introgression posts in one place

I decided to index the posts and the papers that I cited in them, to have in one single post, links to all of them. Over the years I posted about Neanderthal, Denisovan, Ghost, Super-Archaics, and unknown archaics introgressing (or not) with Modern Humans or with the ancestors of our lineage at different times (before the split with Neanderthals and Denisovans, or after that split), and also with humans injecting alleles into Neanderthals! Very confusing, and sometimes contradictory.

Our lewd ancestors and their dallies

What is the basis of these events? Politely termed admixture and introgression, the only way our ancestors could have exchanged genes is through sexual intercourse. They were sexually aggressive.

Research by Emma Nelson, Campbell Rolian, Lisa Cashmore, Susanne Shultz, 2010 (Digit ratios predict polygyny in early apes, Ardipithecus, Neanderthals and early modern humans but not in Australopithecus. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 2010; DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2010.1740) reported that the finger bones of fossil ancestors (bones that are affected by sex hormones in the womb), can predict their levels of promiscuity and competitiveness (polygynous hominins! who had more than one mate). This study found that Ardipithecus ramidus, Neanderthals, and early anatomically modern human (like Qafzeh 9) were more polygynous than modern humans, while Australopiths had a lower polygyny. Strong sex drives that led to many mating events.

Below I list my posts with the corresponding citations, and the outline of the research in them.

• May 2018: Archaic hominins admixed with Pygmies in Africa, citing: Psing Hsun Shieh et al, 2016. Summary: at least one introgression of archaics into pygmies ~9 kya.
• May 2018: More on archaic introgression into H. sapiens in Africa: the source of African's genetic diversity, citing: Hammer et al., 2011. Summary: modern Africans' DNA has a ~2% introgression that took place ~35 kya, from an archaic that split from our lineage 700 kya.ed DNA, ) that introgressed ~35 kya from an archaic population that split from the ancestors of anatomically modern humans ~700 kya
• May 2019: Archaic Ghost population admixed with Modern Humans in Africa, citing: Lorente-Galdos et al, 2019. Summary: a divergent ghost archaic population that split from the ancestors of modern humans 528 kya introgressed into Africans at the following frequencies:~ 4.0% in Khoisan, ~ 4.3% in Mbuti Pygmies, and ~ 5.8% in Mandenka.
• September 2019: Super Archaic Hominin admixture with Denisovans, Neanderthals and Africans, citing: Hubisz, Williams, and Siepel, 2019. Summary: (i) 1% of Denisovan genes introgressed from super-archaic hominin that diverged from Human lineage 1 million years ago (MYA). (ii) 0.75% of Altai Neanderthal, and 0.70% of Vindija Neanderthal introgressed from super-archaic. (iii) Some of it passed from Denisovans to Humans. (iv) Detected super-archaic admix in Africans. (v) 3% of Neanderthal genes are an introgression from Anatomically Modern Humans ~200-300 kya.
• June 2019: Archaic humans admixed with modern humans in Africa, citing: S. Langley, Miga, Karpen, C. Langley, 2018. Summary:a distinct, old introgressed archaic lineage (~1.1 MYA) consistent with recent admixture with an extinct archaic in Africa.
• October 2025: Neanderthals and Denisovans in India?, citing: Kerdoncuff, Laurits Skov, Nick Patterson, et. al., 2024. Summary: Beside their introgressed Neanderthal and Denisovan ancestry, 0.37 to 0.48% of Indian ancestry is from another unknown archaic.
• October 2025: Archaic admixture in humans that is neither Denisovan or Neanderthal, citing: Tucci et al., 2018, Mondal, Bertranpetit & Lao, 2019. Summary: The first paper did not find any unknown archaic introgression in SE Asian pygmies, the second one did: a third introgression in all Asian and Oceaninans from an extinct population of the Neanderthal-Denisovan clade or a one that diverged early from Denisovans. First Neanderthals admixed with humans 1.3% frequency 69 kya, then Denisovans introgressed in Oceanians 1.6% frequency, 43 kya, and the unknwon archaic added 2.6% 51 kya. The archacic dates back to 304 kya. Teixeira and Cooper, 2019. Also support a third introgression with an extinct hominin (not Neanderthal or Denisovan), and finally Yuan et al., 2021 suggest that the most recent, of two, Out of Africa events may have mated with undiscovered archaics in South Asia or that ancestors of Neanderthals and Denisovans admixed with superarchaics.
• February 2026: On the Diversity of Africans, citing: Durvasula and Sankararaman, 2020. Summary: introgression into four West African populations, with frequencies of 2 to 19% from an archaic population that diverged before the split of Neanderthals and modern humans. It took plase 43 kya (95% HPD: 6 - 124 kya).

Continues below, after the picture with Hollywood's fantasy about love 1 million years ago (the actors look too tanned and clean don't they?).

One Million Years B.C. (1966), prehistoric love and survival, with Rachel Welch and John Richardson. Source

• February 2026: Diversity in Africa. Some explanations on why it is so diverse, citing: Skoglund et al., 2017, Jakobsson et al., 2025 and Padilla-Iglesias et al., 2025. Summary: deep stratification in Africa may come from admixture with an unknown archaic African group predating the divergence of Humans from Neandertals and Denisovans. Western Africans may have introgressed with archaics.
• February 2026: Did Humans admix with Neanderthals? Paper in Nature says NO, citing: Tournebize and Chikhi, 2025. Summary: There was no admixture between humans and Neanderthals, it is an artifact of mistaken models.
• April 2026: Human Ancestors Interbred with Two Distinct Populations of Superarchaics, citing: Rogers, Islam, Brand, and Webster, (2026). Summary: at least two distinct superarchaic populations admixed with us: one into archaic Eurasian populations (Denisovans and Neanderthal-Denisovan ancestors), an superarchaic that diverged earlier from the human lineage than did the second superarchaic, that admixed within Africa, contributing DNA to early modern humans.
• April 2026: A New March 2026: Paper on Archaic introgressions in Humans, citing: Zhang, Biddanda, Johnson, O’Dushlaine, Moorja, (2026). Summary: two introgressions with super-archaics. (i) inside of Africa with a ghost population that diverged from ours over 500 kya it is found in all humans, Africans and non-Africans. (ii) Superarchaic admixture at 0.3% frequency in Oceanians. This population diverged 1.77 Mya from humans. (iii) All non-Africans carry admixture with Neanderthals and Denisovans.

Last Updated on April 08, 2026

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Human Ancestors Interbred with Two Distinct Populations of Superarchaics

As mentioned in a previouspost, there were many research article published last month. Today's post looks into one (not peer reviewed) published on March 23 in Biorxiv, that states that two different superarchaic populations admixed with the ancestors of modern humans, within Africa, and with the ancestors of both Denisovans and Neanderthals. Then, the Denisovans received another superarchaic introgression. The H. sapiens branch also mated with Neanderthals.

This is the article on, yes, another introgression: Alan R. Rogers, Md Touhidul Islam, Colin M. Brand, Timothy H. Webster, (2026). Human Ancestors Interbred with Two Distinct Populations of Distant Relatives. bioRxiv 2026.03.22.713509; doi: https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.03.22.713509

The paper's abstract reads: "Ancient DNA has shown that a distantly-related “superarchaic” population interbred first with the ancestors of Neanderthals and Denisovans and later with Denisovans themselves. Other work has shown that a superarchaic population interbred with the African ancestors of all modern humans. But it is not yet clear whether these events involved the same superarchaic population. Here, we use the distribution of derived alleles among populations to evaluate hypotheses about superarchaics and their relationship to other hominins of the Pleistocene and Holocene. We find evidence for at least two distinct superarchaic populations. The one contributing to archaic Eurasian populations (Denisovans and Neanderthal-Denisovan ancestors) diverged earlier from the human lineage than did the one contributing to early moderns in Africa. These findings reveal previously unrecognized structure among hominin populations of the Pleistocene."

Greek letters are episodes of gene flow; roman letters are populations: X, Africa; Y, Europe; N, Neanderthal; D, Denisovan; S, Superarchaic. Z is a superarchaic population that diverged more recently than S and contributed ancestry (ζ) to ancestral moderns. XY, ND, and XYND label ancestral populations.. Fig2 in Rogers, Islam, Brand and Webster, (2026).

The authors argue that some archaic lineage, which they don't identify, called Z shared genes (ζ) with the lineage of ancestors that, after the split of Neanderthals and Denisovans, lead to H. sapiens (XY). In a previous paper (Rogers, A. R., Harris, N. S. & Achenbach, A. A. (2020). Neanderthal-Denisovan Ancestors Interbred with a Distantly-Related Hominin. Science Advances 6, eaay5483.) they had suggested that a superarchaic popultion called S admixed (δ) with the branch that had split from the ancestors of modern humans, and lead to Neanderthals and Denisovans (ND). The S superarchaics later admixed (β) with Denisovans (D), while Neanderthals (N) received an archaic modern Human (XY) genetic input (γ). Neanderthals injected (α) genes into Eurasian modern humans (Y) but not into Africans (X).

This is the explanation provided by tha authors for these interactions:

"To make sense of this, we pointed out that the first wave of emigration out of Africa happened early in the Pleistocene, when Homo erectus spread across Eurasia. Later, during the Middle Pleistocene, humans evolved larger brains and began making Acheulean tools. Both of these innovations appear in Africa before Eurasia, suggesting a second wave of emigration out of Africa. We proposed that this second wave interbred with the Eurasian descendants of the first, during what we refer to as the δ episode of admixture. It seemed plausible that, before this contact, the two populations had remained largely isolated because of the difficulty of traveling between Africa and Eurasia. (At least during the Upper Pleistocene, human contact between these continents was largely restricted to relatively brief periods when the Sahara was humid.)
Now we have evidence of a second superarchaic population, Z, which diverged after the first and later interbred with the ancestors of modern humans. This contact presumably occurred in Africa, because it happened before moderns spread into Eurasia. We considered the possibility that this second superarchaic population was the same as the first—see model... Thus, there were two superarchaic populations, and it seems likely that the second (population Z) was African.
This is puzzling, because it implies that two African populations—population Z and the ancestors of moderns, Neanderthals, and Denisovans—remained essentially isolated across roughly a million years. What kept them apart? Africa has no mountain barriers as large as the Himalayas or the Alps. There are deserts, but these were not continuously arid. The results of Ragsdale et al. (see above) suggest that these populations may not have been isolated after all—perhaps there was a continuous trickle of gene flow between them. Yet somehow (as discussed above) population Z acquired many mutations that show up in modern humans but not in Neanderthals and Denisovans. If there was gene flow between these populations, it must have been weak."

Comments

This is an interesting hypothesis, that needs to be polished a little. It could also be expanded by imagining even later admixture events (μ) from Z into the African group X that added to its diversity during the past 50 ky. However, it does not break the Out of Africa paradigm as it suggests that after H. erectus left Africa heading into Eurasia (are they , humans in Africa developed Acehulean tools (typical of H. erectus) and left Africa in a 2nd migration. However, this does not seem to be reflected in the trees of the paper, so I am a bit confused.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Was Homo habilis a member of our homo genus?

In several posts I had suggested that it was possible that Homo habilis was the first hominin to leave Africa and reach Eurasia. Following some authors, I wondered if they were related to the Flores Island Hobbits, as posited by Arguea et al., 2017. But, as research advances, new analysis appears and definitions shift, possibly an earlier hominin left Africa for Asia (see my post on Australopiths in Dmanisi Georgia). However, Homo habilis have always intrigued me, as they are the first, and oldest members of our Homo genus, and their name, Habilis, is a Latin word that means "skilfull", the first in our lineage to make stone tools (Oldowan, which look like chopped pebbles or cobbles).

Recently, new research has looked into Homo habilis, trying to understand its place in the hominin tree. This post looks into two new papers published last January, on Homo habilis, and their status in our family tree.

The first one is Tattersall, I. (2026). An identity for the inscrutable Homo habilis. The Anatomical Record, 309(3), 546–549. https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.70145, published on Jan. 24, 2026. Tattersall suggests that this hominin was the outcme of Leakey grouping together an assortment of bones and proclaiming they were the first stone tool makers back in 1964. At that time human-like attributes were linked to cognition, and therefore stone tools were an indicator of brainier hominins, hence it was included in the Homo genus, unlike the more primitive Australopithecines. Tattersall says that "This motley assortment is notably varied in morphology, age, and body parts represented, and it gives Homo habilis a suspiciously heterogeneous and long-lived hypodigm (approximately 2.8–1.6 Ma)... Homo habilis emerges as a relatively diminutive early hominin toolmaker that possessed a remarkably archaic upper body skeleton and was presumably a significant interactor in the woodlands and bushlands of what are now Tanzania and Kenya (and maybe of Ethiopia too) during the period centering around 1.8–2.0 Ma. "

Are they Homo?

Tattersall suggests these remains of H. habilis are not actually Homo, as they have much smaller bodies than the erectus, who are genuine Homo, and have longer arms that seem adapted to living among trees, he does not classify them as Australopiths either, he suggests a new placement outside of the Homo branch:

"On the basis of the limited material known, the habilis fossils from Olduvai and Ileret fail to qualify as Homo... That exclusion contrasts starkly with the very morphologically distinct and only slightly younger Turkana materials, such as the skeleton WT 15000 and the cranium ER 3733, that are often assigned to Homo ergaster... Homo erectus africanus.
But does this necessarily mean that the relatively diminutive ER 64060/1 individual, with its postcanine megadonty and elongated arms, should be classified as Australopithecus? Of course not. It just means that it is excluded from Homo, although not necessarily from the larger Homo clade that findings at sites such as Ethiopia's Ledi-Geraru (Villmoare et al., 2015, 2025) suggest may already have been diversifying, in parallel to the australopith one, as early as around 3 Ma"

Small, slender, and adapted to trees...

The second paper written by Grine, F. E., Yang, D., Hammond, A. S., Jungers, W. L., Lague, M. R., Mongle, C. S., Pearson, O. M., Leakey, M. G., & Leakey, L. N. (2026). New partial skeleton of Homo habilis from the upper Burgi Member, Koobi Fora Formation, Ileret, Kenya. The Anatomical Record, 309(3), 485–545. https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.70100, published on Jan 13. 2026, is more forgiving (it was also cited by Tattersall). The paper focuses on a thorough analysis of the remains of a specimen known as KNM-ER 64061 from Koobi Fora (2.02–2.06 Ma), a Homo habilis.

This individual was tiny, and had less body mass than the erectus it weighed 30.7–32.7 kg (67.7-72.1 lbs) and 1.6 m tall (5.25 ft), though they try to avoid the issue, the authors recognize adaptations that imply an arboreal lifestyle:

"As a consequence of these various uncertainties and concerns, we are hesitant to infer specific behavioral repertoires for KNM-ER 64061 as an individual or for H. habilis as a species. Thus, features of the OH 7 hand (phalanges with a thicker palmar cortex and proximal and intermediate phalanges with high relative bending strengths) may be related to arboreality in H. habilis, but they may equally represent the condition inherited from a phylogenetic precursor of H. habilis that was more arboreal. Similarly, the relatively long forearm of H. habilis may have enabled a greater degree of arboreal locomotion in this species than in H. erectus, but whether arboreality was indeed practiced by H. habilis must remain a matter of speculation."

H. habilis and H. naledi

Homo habilis predates Homo erectus but both species probably overlapped for 500,000 years in East Africa, which reveals different types of archaic humans living in the same region at the same time. They also probably co-existed with the archaic-looking Homo naledi (Lee R Berger, John Hawks, Paul HGM Dirks, Marina Elliott, Eric M Roberts, 2017) which was dated to the very recent age of ~250 ky in South Africa.

This paper proposes that H. naledi with its mossaic of archaic and some (few) modern features, could be located in the Homo habilis branch of hominins: "Phylogenetic scenarios for H. naledi place its origin either: (1) somewhere among the poorly resolved branches leading to H. habilis, H. rudolfensis, H. floresiensis and Au. sediba (Berger et al., 2015; Dembo et al., 2016); Thackeray, 2015): (2) as a sister to H. erectus and larger-brained Homo including H. sapiens (Dembo et al., 2016); or (3) as a sister to a clade including H. sapiens, H. antecessor, and other archaic humans (Dembo et al., 2016) (Figure 2). Maximum parsimony analysis of a large dataset of cranial and dental traits supports scenario 1, placing H. naledi among the most basal nodes of the Homo phylogeny."

H. naledi, with a brain one-third the size of ours (and said to bury its dead and engage in rock art!!) is a controversial hominin. It seems to have existed between ~2.50 to 0.23 My ago, co-existing with the common ancestor of Neanderthals, Denisovans and H. sapiens, and also with the first humans, overlapping with us in South Africa. A second paper by Hawks et al, also from 2017, described the site where they were found, in South Africa, and includes the following image which I adapted from Fig. 36 in Hawks et al., 2017. A picture is worth more than 1,000 words. As you can see, the H. naledi and H. habilis (and A. sediba) are all very similar and different to the Homo erectus skulls, but the H. Naledi is 300 ky old, while the H. habilis ones are over 1.8 million years (My) old, and A. sediba is roughly 2 My old.

Comparison of skulls ancient hominins. Adapted from Fig. 36 Hawkes et al., 2017

The primitive looking naledi and habilis fossils have shorter and smaller skulls with a slanted face and tend to group together in their appearance. The H. erectus are larger, and have bigger brains and elongated skulls. They are the "real" first homo people. However, if the Dmanisi people were Australopiths, then, we should not underestimate the abilities of those that preceded the homo lineage. Perhaps they too, with crude stone tools could have moved across Eurasia and, reached Sunda, Southeast Asia and Eastern Asia over 2 My ago. Are the tiny trolls, gnomes, and elves of our mythology the memory of Australopiths or Homo habilis encountered by modern humans on their trek across Eurasia and America?

Since 1959, but more recently Plummer et al., 2023, and Mongle et al., 2025 suggest that the East Africa Paranthropus boisei, a sister hominin related to ours, was capable of flaking stones with an Oldowan technology, 2.5 to 3 My ago: "These fossils suggest that P. boisei was capable of tool making and use in some capacity." So, toolmaking is not exclusive to our homo lineage.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

A New March 2026: Paper on Archaic introgressions in Humans

March 2026 has seen plenty of research papers published regarding hominins! This post will look into another introgression paper, that found not one, but two separate admixture events with archaics. One took place within Africa before Modern Humans set out on their Out of Africa migration, the second one affected people in Melanesia and Papua New Guinea, Oceanians.

This is the article: Yulin Zhang, Arjun Biddanda, Sarah A. Johnson, Colm O’Dushlaine, Priya Moorja, (2026). Recovering signatures of archaic introgression using ancestral recombination graphs, nioRxiv 2026.03.03.709416; doi: https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.03.03.709416

Introgression Inside of Africa

They detected a first admixture with a ghost (unknown population) that added genes from a "super-archaic lineage" into the ancestors of all humans (Africans and Non-Africans), because it took place before the Out-Of-Africa event, in Africa.

"The ghost lineage, with a divergence time similar to Neanderthals, could plausibly correspond to Middle Pleistocene Homo groups or African Homo heidelbergensis populations that directly admixed with modern human ancestors before the OOA dispersal. For the super-archaic lineage, one potential candidate —compatible with the split time of approximately 1.8 Mya— is Homo erectus, as suggested by earlier studies."

The authors admit that it could have been one, single event, or there could have been more: "additional episodes of gene flow among structured African populations may have occurred but remain difficult to resolve with present data."

They noticed that the introgressed alleles could have been modified due to the action of natural selection perhaps because they provided adaptative benefits.

The paper says that their software (TRACE) found the following archaic ancestry in contemporary people from different regions, where N is Neanderthal, and D, Denisovan:

• Europeans. N: 0.99%; D: 0.03%.
• East Asians. N: 0.97%; D: 0.10%.
• South East Asians. N: 0.78%; D: 0.10%.
• Oceanians. N: 0.73%; D: 0.66%.

But, apart from Neanderthal and Denisovan alleles they also detected an introgression from a "ghost" source distantly related to Neanderthals and Denisovans: "Ghost segments exhibit deep divergence in marginal trees and show nearly identical genetic affinity to both sequenced Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes, indicating that they originated from an unsequenced lineage equally related to both archaic groups."

It was found in all modern humans at frequencies that ranged from 0.49 to 1.1%. This includes Sub-Saharan Africans.

Africans have more unique segments

The interesting part is that although non-Africans and Africans share alleles of the ghost introgression, "...both East and West Africans harbor a greater diversity of unique ghost segments." The authors don't attribute this enrichment and divergence to a recent or ancient admixture with archaics after the OOA event. Instead, they attribute it to the bottleneck caused by the OOA that led to the loss of these variants, now only found in East and West Africans.

Dates

The calculated "coalescence time" between human and ghost genes is, on average, 830,000 years (95% CI: 0.61–1.27 Mya).

This data leads the team to conclude that "an unknown archaic population, which diverged over 500,000 years ago, introgressed into the common ancestors of all modern humans prior to the OOA migration, resulting in similar patterns of ghost ancestry in non-Africans and Africans."

Denisovans injected super-archaic ancestry in Oceanians

Then they found a second introgression!

Previous studies have suggested that Denisovans may have mated with a super-archaic hominin (possibly Homo erectus), and as Papuans, Melanesians, and Southeast Asians have the highest level of Denisovan ancestry (they admixed when humans reached Sundaland, and the Philippines), the researchers wondered if the admixing led to a flow of super-archaic genes from Denisovans to humans.

They looked for super-archaic alleles contained within the Denisovan segments found in modern Oceanians. Their analysis revealed the 0.73% of Neanderthal and 0.66% of Denisovan ancestry mentioned further up, and also, a 0.33% introgression of super-archaic "ghost" ancestry.

"we infer that the super-archaic segments embedded within Denisovan ancestry tracts contributed almost 0.3% of the total detected Denisovan ancestry in Oceanians. This estimate constitutes a very conservative lower bound on the true fraction of super-archaic ancestry, as our analysis is restricted to Denisovan-introgressed regions in modern humans, requires segments longer than 20 kbp, and excludes loci where the sequenced Denisovan carries super-archaic ancestry. Using the marginal trees in SINGER, we estimate the coalescence time between these super-archaic segments and modern human lineages to be approximately 1.77 Mya (95% CI: 1.13–3.98 Mya), consistent with earlier reports."

The age given above points at Homo erectus, who was present in Eurasia 1.77 Mya.

The two introgressions. Copyright © 2025 by Austin Whittall

I prepared the map above to show what the paper says: An archaic ghost population in Africa (red circle) admixes with Modern Humans prior to the OOA (blue circle). These introgressed modern humans go into Eurasia (losing some of the archaic alleles due to founder effects and bottlenecks, and also spread across Africa (violet arrows) where the archaic signal remains stronger, one group heads towards SE Asia, Sunda and Melanesia, where Denisovans (green) live. These Denisovans had previously admixed with a Super-Archaic (yellow) somewhere in Asia (dashed yellow line). (2) is the Denisovan-Oceanian admixture, and (1) is the admixture within Africa. The red population is linked distantly to Denisovans and Neanderthals.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Neanderthals actually came from Human Beings! (March 2026 paper says)

A very interesting suggestion was prepublished on March 13 in Biorxiv by David Reich, 2026, it is work in progress, and a model, but its title tells it all: Hypothesis: A modern human range expansion ~300,000 years ago explains Neandertal origins.

Trying to explain why the split date between the human lineage and Neanderthals differs when you consider nuclear DNA (765-550 kya) or mtDNA (365-400 kya), or why the original Y chromosome of Neanderthals appears to have vanished, and what we have found is so similar to ours, and that their mtDNA is remarkably similar to ours, Reich suggests that they are a population that arose from modern humans introgression with archaics in Europe. This also explains some incongruent dates and other oddities found in the Atapuerca Sima de los Huesos remains. Simple hypothesis that is very similar to the proposal maed by Cosimo Posth published in Nature, which I commented in a post back in 2017 (An even older Out of Africa event (270kya)!!). Posth suggested that African inflow was "responsible for providing the mtDNA to the Late Pleistocene Neanderthals might have been an even earlier Middle Pleistocene gene flow from Africa, occurring in a time interval that we date between 413 and 268 ka... The temporal corridor for this introgression event between 460 ka and 219 ka is compatible with the evidence of archaeological similarities between Africa and western Eurasia during the Lower to Middle Paleolithic transition39 and potentially may explain the dissimilarities in Middle Paleolithic industries between eastern and western Eurasia. Environmental changes across this time span might have facilitated a hominin expansion out of Africa and potentially spread cultural innovations such as the Levallois technology into Eurasia." Reich developed the concept. Below is the Abstract of Reich's paper

"Abstract.
This paper demonstrates the feasibility of the hypothesis that Neandertals formed when a population using recently developed Levallois stone tool technology expanded between 400-250 thousand years ago (ka). In Europe, their range expansion into an area with Sima de los Huesos-like people led to massive introgression of local archaic genes producing a population with around 95% archaic ancestry (Neandertals); if this range expansion was sex-biased it would provide a simple explanation for why Neandertals retain modern human lineage Y chromosomes or mitochondrial DNA. In Africa, interbreeding with local archaic humans led to more modest archaic admixture and the deep substructure detected in all modern humans today. This proposal explains four previously perplexing similarities of modern humans and Neandertals—sharing of mitochondrial DNA, Y chromosomes, Levallois tools, and 300-200 ka date of formation by mixture—even while Neandertals and Denisovans cluster genome-wide."

This is the paper: Hypothesis: A modern human range expansion ~300,000 years ago explains Neandertal origins David Reich. bioRxiv 2026.03.11.711219; doi: https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.03.11.711219.

This paper is interesting because it also mentions humans mixing with archaics inside of Africa, a source of diversity:

"... ancestors of all modern humans including sub-Saharan Africans were deeply substructured, due to the coming together a few hundred thousand years ago of lineages that began diverging a million or more years ago. For example, ref. 16 models modern human ancestry as largely derived from a mixture of about 80% from a lineage that was most closely related to Neandertals and Denisovans, and 20% from a lineage that diverged from it around 1.5 million years ago, with the two coming together around 300 ka. The remixture is estimated to date to around the same time as the genetically inferred interbreeding of modern humans and archaic humans in the ancestors of Neandertals 300-200 ka. This raises the possibility that these mixtures in Europe and Africa had related causes: a range expansion of a successful population interbreeding with local archaic groups. In Europe, there was massive introgression of local genes because barriers to producing viable offspring were few. In Africa, the mixture was with a more divergent archaic lineage, result in a lower γ (cross-group interbreeding rate), and less introgression..."

This is the reference "ref. 16" cited above: Cousins T, Scally A, Durbin R, (2025) A structured coalescent model reveals deep ancestral structure shared by all modern humans. Nat Genet 57, 856–864.

Comments

I am surprised at the different conclusions that the same datasets of human genes and fossils produce (some are mutually exclusive): humans and Neanderthals are the same, humans and Neanderths split after the Denisovans split, Denisovans and humans split after the Neanderthal split, dates that range from 500 to over 1 million years, introgressions all over (Denisovan to Neanderthal to Human, Human to Neanderthal, Denisovan to Human, one or more lineages of superarchaics introgressing into different hominins). Surely they can't all be right.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

The ~25,000-year-old Santa Elina Site in Brazil

Santa Elina is an archaeological site located deep inland, roughly 100 km (60 mi.) from Cuaiba, the capital of the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil, close to the border with Bolivia (see Google map) it is a rock shelter that has provided evidence of human presence there 25,000 years ago, or more.

See: Vialou D, Benabdelhadi M, Feathers J, Fontugne M, Vialou AV. Peopling South America’s centre: the late Pleistocene site of Santa Elina. Antiquity. 2017;91(358):865-884. doi:10.15184/aqy.2017.101

Having mentioned in a previous post the recent article that suggests a recent (4-8 ky) age for the Monte Verde site in Chile, which had been dated to 18.5 ky, I am glad that there are many more older sites in America that suggest an early date for human colonization.

Early and distant Population

It is located far from the Atlantic and Pacific coastal routes, deep inside Brazil, in an area south of the Amazon forest, yet covered with thick jungles. It is near the Cuaiba River, which forms part of the Paraná-Río de la Plata Basin, and could have helped people move through the region.

Excavations began here in 1984 and yielded remains of a giant sloth (Glossotherium) whose bone osteoderms (that formed part of its thick protective hide) have been dated to 27,000 ±2000 years ago. Charcoal remains have also been dated to 23,120±260 years ago.

There have been later occupations (~9,000 to 10,000 years ago), with more tools, ornaments, and sloth remains. Researchers conclude that: " The dates indicate two periods of human occupation, with a date of 23120±260 BP for the first, and a date of 10120±60 BP for the beginning of the second. These dates confirm the association between archaeological artefacts and Glossotherium bones. Subsequent occupations terminated around 2000 BP.!

Figure 1. Location and general view of the study area. (a) General location of the site (base map adapted from Google Earth); (b) location of the site in Brazil, the Mato Grosso State, and distribution of the major regional biomes; (c) general overview of the Serra das Araras in the studied region; (d) view of the location of the Santa Elina rock shelter (at the base of the rock wall that appears in the center of the photograph, as indicated by the arrow). Map and photographs by Caroline Bachelet. (Color online).
From Rita Scheel-Ybert and Caroline Bachelet, 2020

A study of the ecology and plants of the site by Rita Scheel-Ybert and Caroline Bachelet, 2020 gives information about the climate conditions during the occupation periods mentioned further up: "Since it was first occupied, the Santa Elina rock shelter has been part of the cerrado biome [Cerrado is a tropical savanna located in Central Brazil, with grasslands, forests, and shrublands]. At about 27,000 cal BP (AZ-1) the site was surrounded by a forested environment. The small charcoal sample does not allow for further climatic inferences, but previous paleoecological studies corroborate the existence of a cold and humid climate in Central Brazil between about 27,000 and 20,000 BP (Salgado-Labouriau et al. 1997). This same study demonstrated a decrease in humidity from about 18,500 BP onward, with a very dry climate until about 11,500 BP (Salgado-Labouriau et al. 1997). During this interval, evidence of human occupation in Santa Elina shelter is scarce or nonexistent (Vialou et al. 2017)... Between about 11,000 and 10,000 cal BP (AZ-2) the occupation resumes; "

Charcoal remains in the cave mean that there was fire, and fire seems to imply human presence, although natural fires are not uncommon and don't require a human agent. Sheel-Ybert and Bachelet write that "Fire is an ancient and important ecological agent in the cerrado (Coutinho 1990). Natural and anthropogenic fires have coexisted in its domain for thousands of years (Miranda et al. 2009): cerrado fire events have been recorded in Central Brazil since 32,400 yrs BP (Salgado-Labouriau et al. 1997). Some authors question the human presence in this region before about 11,000 yrs BP (e.g., Schmitz 1990), thus precluding the possibility of human-induced fires before the Holocene, but the chronology of the earlier occupation in Santa Elina pushes back the antiquity of human colonization."

But, regarding the cave's charcoal, they state that "The anthracological assemblage of the earliest occupation of Santa Elina rock shelter (SU-III), dated at about 27,000 cal BP, consists of a set of 16 samples, each one presenting between one and six taxa. This result is consistent with short-term human occupations, in which case temporary combustion activities would have likely produced these charcoal samples. Yet, we cannot exclude the possibility that this evidence could also have been produced by natural fires... [However,] We therefore argue that the charcoal retrieved in this unit was produced in short-term combustion features related to episodic and sporadic human activities, one of which might have involved the butchering of giant sloths."

Conclusions

The evidence seems to suggest ancient human presence. Of course, human remains would be much better, but fire, tools and butchered giant sloths are strong evidence of an early human presence in south-central South America. It also prompts us to explore and find more similar places. There must be many undiscovered sites hiding in plain site in the jungles of South America, possibly even older than Santa Elina.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

More on Monte Verde and the Clovis fighting back

In my previous post about a paper published in Science by Surovell et al, suggesting that the Monte Verde site in Chile is far younger than previously reported, I hinted at a Clovis-first bias in Surovell. I mentioned some of his work that revealed his preference for a late peopling of America, today's post wants to make clear that Surovell does not agree with the notion of an early peopling of the New World.

Below I quote an article that quotes Surovell on this new paper. (Source).

In this article published in a Wyoming newspaper, Surovell states that he was struck by the notion of an early peopling of America. He said: "How do you get people to southern Chile over 14,000 years ago, while leaving basically an invisible record further north? Occasionally, we find remarkable things, but Monte Verde was a statistical outlier in terms of age, location, and human behavior" My reply is lack of imagination.

I can suggest how this happened: people reached America long ago, say 30 kya, and marched south, dispersing across the New World (this is equally valid for any date, 50, 100, 900 kya) and some groups died out, others survived, but as this happened long ago, they are several meters (or feet) below the level commonly dug up by archaeolgists. Nobody digs deep enough to unearth anything older than the orthodox age of 15 (max) kya.

If you don't dig deeper you will not find evidence. Nevertheless, there are several sites across the Americas showing pre-Clovis remains. But, mindsets are hard to crack!

The article in the Wyoming paper says "Even as he taught classes at UW that included Monte Verde, he was stuck on how unusual it was for a site of that age to exist so far south. It left him with a desire to return to the important site, collect more evidence, and either confirm or refute the work from the past."

Well, if people arrived 50 kya, why should a site 18 ky old surprise us! Only if we believe that humans reached America much later (bias!)

Surovell goes on record stating that "All of these pre-Clovis sites are unusual, unreplicated finds." Well, considering that most scholars, including this guy are so reluctant to consider other alternatives, it is not unusual to find that these sites are "unreplicated", funding goes to mainstream, orthodox academics. Those on the fringe find it difficult to finance their research.

Considering the mindest of current U.S. average citizens (flat-earthers, antivaxxers, anti-evolution - pro-creationists, and science deniers) I am not surprised that they stand by outdated ideas from the early 1900s and support a late peopling of America.

Surovell admits his preference for the Clovis First hypothesis: "Based on his career of research, buffeted by the findings at Monte Verde, Surovell believes there’s more merit to the original “Clovis First” model that many archaeologists have discounted because of the discovery of Monte Verde." Surovell says: "We have hundreds of Clovis sites that have been independently found by hundreds of people... Of those sites, a couple dozen have produced the exact same style of spear point that are all unusual in the way they’re made, and date exactly to the same time. We’ve found the same thing at different locations in North and South America. You can say that for Clovis. You can’t say that for pre-Clovis." I rest my case. Prejudice and preconceptions should not guide science.

In case you are wondering about me, this is a blog, not a scientific paper, I am not a paid University academic, I hold no chair in any College, I am a layman. However, I expect a higher standard from formal scholars, paid researchers, people who should go into the field with an open mind and let the facts show the way. In this case, I feel that prejudice, bias, and preconceptions lead to finding "evidence" to support dogma.

"He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors."
—Thomas Jefferson

I believe that science should try to uncover objective facts. But, it is flawed by human shortcomings like preconceptions. The scientific method should help avoid bias due to errors in the design of research, and the interpretation of data. However, I see paper after paper reinforcing previous (unchallenged) beliefs, something known as "confirmation bias" or, outright papers whose aim is to discredit 50 years of thorough research based on the unconfirmed assumption that humans reached America less than 15 kya. Open minds, let the facts show the way... that is the way.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Monte Verde site in Chile is far younger than thought!

I have posted several times menitoning the Monte Verde site in Chilean Patagonia, in the Lake District (see it on Google maps). It has been proclaimed and dated as the oldest site in Southern South America (and most of America) with an age of around 15,000 to 18,000 years. However, new research published in Science by Surovell et al., last week, suggests that it is far more recent, just 8.2 to 4.2 ky old!

The research paper is this one: Todd A. Surovell et al., A mid-Holocene age for Monte Verde challenges the timeline of human colonization of South America. Science 391, 1283-1288 (2026). DOI: 10.1126/science.adw9217.

The Very Old Age of Monte Verde (until now)

First reported by the team that had excavated the site since 1977, Tom D. Dillehay & Michael B. Collins, 1988, in an article published in Nature, the authors stated that "We report here two carbon-14 dates from charcoal taken from cultural features associated with the older materials of ∼33,000 yr BP. These findings provide additional evidence that people colonized the Americas much earlier than was previously thought."

Above is a view of the site (Source), it is set on the western side of the Andes in an area with forest coverage, by a stream. This area was heavily glaciated during the Ice Ages which carved out the lakes in the regin (Llanquihue, Todos los Santos, Ranco, etc.) it is also close to several active volcanoes (Osorno, Puyehue, Puntiagudo, Calbuco), and not far from the Pacific Ocean.

Dillehay et al, 2008 gave old, but not so old, dates to the site: "Remains of nine species of marine algae were recovered from hearths and other features at Monte Verde II, an upper occupational layer, and were directly dated between 14,220 and 13,980 calendar years before the present (∼12,310 and 12,290 carbon-14 years ago)." and again, Dillehay et al, 2015, an old date: "New evidence of stone artifacts, faunal remains, and burned areas suggests discrete horizons of ephemeral human activity in a sandur plain setting radiocarbon and luminescence dated between at least ~18,500 and 14,500 cal BP."

Over the course of 38 years, the site has been proclaimed as ancient, among the oldest in America, and it surely is, but now, controversy about its age has flared up again.

Much more recent: Clovis First Strikes Back

I must be fair and let you know that Todd Surovell, author of the paper suggesting a much later date for Monte Verde, does not believe in an early peopling of America. This position is clear, as we can see in Surovell et al., 2022: "[Our] findings support the hypothesis that the first human arrival to the New World occurred by at least 14,200 years ago in Beringia and by approximately 13,000 years ago in the temperate latitudes of North America. Strong evidence for human presence before those dates has yet to be identified in the archaeological record."

Surovell et al., 2018 also criticize early arrival, question the continuity of pre-Clovis and later Clovis paleoindians, and the Pacific coastal route vs. the inland one (favored by Surovell).

Having mentioned this, below I will comment Sturovell's new 2026 paper, and what it says about Monte Verde, its age and the arrival routes into America:

The researches looked at the sedimentary layout of the Monte Verde site, erosion, and volcanic ash, and concluded that it is half or even one-quarter of the formerly acknowledged age!

The authors state the following (I highlight the important part) "We argue that radiocarbon and luminescence dates from alluvial exposures, in combination with the identification of a tephra dated to 11,000 years B.P. stratigraphically underlying the archaeological component, suggest that Monte Verde cannot be older than the Middle Holocene (8200 to 4200 years B.P.). With colonization no longer anchored by Monte Verde, our revised chronology supports a more recent date of human arrival to South America."

Their analysis of sedimentary deposition of glacial sediments, volcanic ashes, and tree trunks that were later eroded is neat and seems coherent, and of course, the will to validate their preconceptions and the beliefs they support (like a late peopling of America).

Pushing their Clovis cause, the authors caution that "...any inferences made about the peopling of the Americas based on a Late Pleistocene date for this site should be reevaluated. Although a pre-Clovis human presence in the Americas is accepted by many archaeologists, a Holocene age for Monte Verde leaves open the possibility of later initial colonization. The acceptance of the pre-Clovis age of Monte Verde led some to reject migration through the ice-free corridor as a possible route of initial entry, and a coastal route along the Cordilleran ice margin has been suggested to be more likely. Although our findings do not preclude the possibility of earlier dates of initial entry to the Americas, they do support an initial interior migration into continental North America as a viable colonization hypothesis. As demonstrated here, the age of the MV-II component should not be used as a constraint or check on colonization models derived from other sources, including the genetics of modern or ancient populations. Our findings also underscore the critical need for independent study and verification of early sites."

I look forward to comments and rebuttals. This is indeed an interesting development!

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Oldest Homo Sapiens Sites in the Old World

The map below caught my attention while reading a new article by Zhang et al., 2026 it shows the oldest sites where Homo sapiens remains have been found.

Two things surprised me: (1) Despite Africa being touted the "Cradle of Mankind", 40% of the sites over 100 ky are found in Eurasia. (2) Of the 50 to 30 ky sites, 3 are found in Africa, and the other 14 are in Eurasia and Australia. Of course, the map shows partial information, so there are more sites in Africa, but it is suprising to notice such a prevalence of sites outside of Africa.

Fig. 1. Examples of early H. sapiens fossils older than 100 ka (red circles) and younger specimens dating to 50–30 ka ago (yellow circles) in Africa, Eurasia and Oceania. Fig 1 from Zhang et al., 2026

The oldest H. sapiens fossil outside of Africa is from the Greek Cave of Apidima where Apidima 1 skull was found (210,000 years old); see Harvati et al. 2019.

The second oldest is the 190,000-year-old jawbone from the Misliya Cave in Israel, reported by Hershkovitz et al, 2018.

The oldest African site is the Irhoud, Morocco, reported by Hublin et al, 2017, and dated to 315±34 kya. However these hominins have a mix of archaic and modern features that make some scholars wonder if it is a human or another hominin: "[They] have a facial morphology very similar to extant H. sapiens, as well as endocranial volumes that fall within the contemporary range of variation. However, their braincase shapes are elongated rather than globular, suggesting that distinctive features of brain shape, and possibly brain function, evolved within H. sapiens." (Scerri et al., 2018).

The next two African specimens are equal to, or younger than the Eurasian specimens!: Both from Ethiopia, the 195,000-year-old remains from Omo Kibish, and 160,000-year-old bones from Herto. A 2022 paper pushes the dates further back in time to ~230 kya. However, note that they may not be modern humans at all: "The Herto hominids are morphologically and chronologically intermediate between archaic African fossils and later anatomically modern Late Pleistocene humans. They therefore represent the probable immediate ancestors of anatomically modern humans. Their anatomy and antiquity constitute strong evidence of modern-human emergence in Africa." (White et al., 2003).

What is Anatomically Modern Human?

The key issue in my (layman's) opinion is that there seems to be no clear definition of what an Anatomically Modern Human is. Someone who looks like us even though they may not yet have developed behaviors similar to ours.

With a handful of deformed and partial remains (a pice of jaw here, a skullcap there, a few teeth over there) it is impossible to decide if those people who differ from us, and also between themselves, are the norm, or probably outliers of populations that had large intra-population variability.

Does a globe-shaped skull imply more homo-sapiens-similarity than a human-like jaw? Where is the line? Does an oblong skull like the ones found in Morocco count as humans or not? A mossaic of features is human? or primitive? What do archaeologists think about this?

We know that brain size evolved in homo species, and this growth influenced the shape of the skull as different areas of the brain developed, pushed by genetic changes and natural selection. More complex cognitive abilities appeared, the stone tools used by homo individuals gradually changed, improving, becoming more efficient in the use of knapped stone. Acheulean tools of erectus were used for over 1.5 million years, unchanged. Then came Mousterian, Levallois and microblades in a faster sequence of improvement mirroring the changing behavior of our ancestors. The discovery of fire, clothing, use of bone, wood, complex tools, needles, fishooks, symbols engraved on small objects, rock art, burials, all reflect behavioural growth as brains developed.

This evolution led from small skulls, with slanted faces, massive jaws, no chins, heavy browridges, to current gracil, rounded skulls, chins, and high forehads over flat faces.

Is there a sharp line between Modern Humans and "the rest"?

Pearson, 2008 looked into this matter in a detailed paper that ponders the archaic and modern morphology, the reasons for variability (evolutionary adaptation, genetic drift, and the shortcomings of the statistical and biological approaches to the subject.

A very interesting research article by Simon Neubauer, Jean-Jacques Hublin, and Philipp Gunz, 2018, analyzed the shape of the skulls and brains, as well as their size. Contemporary human beings have globular (balloon-shaped) brains with an upright forehead and a prominent parietal, the area occupied by the cerebellum is larger and rounded. Or faces are flat. On the other hand, the homo people before us had slanting faces, and elongated brains. (see image comparing a Human and a Neanderthal skull and brain, from Fig. 1 in the 2018 paper above. The authors compared different parameters of brains and skulls of Homo erectus, Neanderthals, and "Humans" from three periods: (1) very early specimens (200-300 kya) from Morocco and Ethiopia, (2) later people from the Middle East and East Africa (100-130 kya), and (3) more recent humans 35-10 kya. The images below show how they align using Principal Component Analysis:

Fig. 2 bgPCA of endocranial shape (top) and Fig. 4 bgPCA of endocranial form (bottom). Arrows show the Evolutionary trends of shape changes in archaic and modern individuals are shown as regressions on geologic age. Simon Neubauer, Jean-Jacques Hublin, and Philipp Gunz, 2018

Clearly, there is an evolution from primitive to modern features, with group (2), which included these samples: three from the Levant, Skhul V, Qafzeh 6 and Qafzeh 9 ages 115 ky, and one from Africa, the Ngaloba LH 18 skull from Laetoli, Tanzania (120 kya), closest to moderns and group (3), the latter aged 10 to 30 kya, have brains and skulls that are definitely modern.

Even Anatomically Modern Humans, as they dispersed across the globe following the OOA events carried different skull shapes that can still be identified in contemporary people, and have been used to suggest two migrations and two routes into Eurasia (the "two layer" hypothesis). One comprising Papuans and Oceanians following a South Asian route shares elongated skulls with Africans, the other across Central Asia into Siberia, Europe and East Asia has globular skulls, Europeans have compact jaws, Native Americans and NE Asians share large skulls, higher faces and cranial vaults with tighter foreheads (see Matsumura et al., 2022 and Matsumura et al., 2019).

Even modern humans carry introgressions that modified their skull shape (Neanderthals), as reported by Goovaerts et al., 2025, which has added diversity to non-Africans. Human chins are linked by genes to the flatter face of Homo sapiens. Reearch by Schuch et al., 2025 found that slower and shorter growth after birth, and bone reorption during childhood is a distinctivly human feature, found in all modern humans and absent in Neanderthals, that leads to gracile faces lacking Neanderthal prognathism (jaw protrusion).

Scerri et al., 2018, discusses and questions the orthodox notion that modern humans evolved and emerged within one single, specific population located in a particular region of Africa. The paper aruges that fossils from the early days of humans are very different, and the genetic evidence pointing at a very deep and ancient population structure within Africa (I have mentioned this in other posts, involving isolation, small groups, archaic interbreeding and mutation rates that are different to non-Africans) also supports a multiregional origin involving separate populations, an "African Multi-regionalism."

These isolated popualtions in different environments evolved separately at different paces, and this would explain why they show a combination of archaic and modern traits (they were boxed off in different regions of Africa by very dry deserts and dense tropical jungles —n mountains or glaciers in Africa— and faced different environmental challenges). This article also puts forward some unanswered questions and suggests directions for future research:

"Resolving the speciation of H. sapiens and the character of ancestral populations represents a crucial first step in understanding the emergence of the morphological features that diagnose our species during the later Middle Pleistocene
...
Finally, were some of our anatomical traits inherited from transitional African forms before they became extinct? The range of dates for H. naledi and H. heidelbergensis confirms the late survival of at least two archaic species in Africa. The size and environmental diversity of Africa, particularly the poorly investigated forested regions, may have permitted the late survival of more archaic species as well as of early forms of H. sapiens. These discoveries have fuelled speculations that H. sapiens may have interbred with archaic species in Africa itself. Distinguishing admixture between species from the reintegration of diverse H. sapiens lineages represents a major challenge, with significant taxonomic implications.
...
while a globular braincase does seem to represent a synapomorphy of extant H. sapiens, can it be effectively characterized for application to the fossil record? We emphasize that H. sapiens is a lineage with deep and likely diverse African roots that challenge our use of terms such as ‘archaic H. sapiens’ and ‘anatomically modern humans’. Unless they can be operationalized with more clearly defined traits, such categories will have declining value. Diagnostics of H. sapiens must reflect trajectories of evolution rather than static views of our species – which has changed, and continues to change, at various scales."

Into Africa

I believe that it is possible that the homo group leading to Modern humans probably evolved in the Middle East, and moved into Africa from there. However, this notion is contrary to what science believes is the correct approach to our ancestry, and outlined above by Scerri et al. I have the feeling that Chinese scholars will continue their push to have humans appear and evolve in Eastern Asia. Future publications and research will show us how these ideas develop.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025by Austin Whittall © 

Blood Groups, Denisovans, Neanderthals, and modern humans

A research paper by Villanea FA, Huerta-Sanchez E, Fox K., (2021) investigated the ABO Genetic Variation in Neanderthals and Denisovans (Mol Biol Evol. 2021 Jul 29;38(8):3373-3382. doi: 10.1093/molbev/msab109. Erratum in: Mol Biol Evol. 2021 Dec 9;38(12):5835. doi: 10.1093/molbev/msab261. PMID: 33892510; PMCID: PMC8321519). This is very interesting, because contrary to what one would expect, these ancient relatives belong to the same ABO blood groups that modern humans have.

Blood Groups: A, O, B

This study looked into the ABO allele (gene) that is located on chromosome 9 and that codes certain enzymes known as glycosyltransferase that in turn modify H antigens on red cells, this defines an individual's blood group: group O individuals have the H antigen, a precursor for A and B antigens, group A has only A antigen, group B carries B antigen, and group AB has both A and B antigens, and as mentioned, group O have neither A or B antigens.

Original and Later A blood group

The original and ancestral A allele appeared ~3.5 million years ago. However, according to Kitano et al., 2012 it vanished around 2 million years (My) ago and remained absent for 1.75 My. The modern A blood group found in humans originates from an ABO*A allele that was created recently in the first H. sapiens some 260,000 years ago, from the fusion of ABO*B with ABO*O (B and O blood group alleles).

O Blood Group

O blood group allele appeared after the Δ261 deletion in the A gene, around 2 million years ago as the O02 variant.

It is therefore older than Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Modern humans. It was first carried by the common ancestor of those hominins. Lalueza-Fox C., Gigli E., et al., (2008) detected genes for blood group O (finding a variant known as O01) in the remains two Neanderthal men from El Sidrón, Spain, dated to ~50.000 years ago (50 kya). But O01 is a "newer" variant, O02 is the basal one.

B Blood Group

The B blood group, according to Gueuning et al., 2023 emrged "from the recombination between ancestral alleles of ABO∗A2 and ABO∗O.O2."

O haplotypes

There are two main branches within the O haplogroup: O01 and O02, and they include sub-branches.

Haplotype O02 is also the most ancestral of the O blood group variants. Kitano et al., 2012 place it as the oldest branch of this group ~2 million yers old, followed by the second variant, O01, 1.5 million years ago.

Recent research conducted by Gueuning et al., 2023 studied ABO blood groups using samples gathered in Zurich, Switzerland (so we can imagine a farily uniform Central European population). I will focus on their findings regarding the O blood group.

They found the following frequencies: ABO∗O.01.01: 40.95%, and ABO∗O.01.02: 22.65%, followed by a very low frequency of the ancestral variant, ABO∗O.02: 2.11%.

Regarding the phylogenetic tree it is shown below adapted from Fig. 3 in Guening et al., 2023:

The tree shows O02 separated from the O01 variant, and within the O01 variant, two separate branches, one O.01.02 more divergent and basal, followed by O.01.01 (which contains to sub-branches).

The authors noted these splits: "we observed in the phylogenetic tree deep splits separating the ABO∗O clades. The split between ABO∗O.02 and ABO∗O.01 alleles was even more pronounced in the phylogeny... The 2 major O-phenotype groups (ie, ABO∗O.01 and ABO∗O.02) were paraphyletic to each other with deep (ie, ancient) splits, showing that these groups are not closely related in evolutionary terms." Furthermore, the younger O01.01 "ABO∗O.01.01 appeared evolutionary closer to the cluster of ABO∗A1, A2, and B than ABO∗O.01.02."

O01.02 and Native Americans

This is relevant and interesting, because the O.01.02 variant represents half of the Amerindian O blood group variants. And O itself is found at very high frequencies in Native Americans (up to 100% in some groups). More on this below.

Native American Anomaly: extremely high O frequency, and their haplotypes

Blood group O is the most frequent blood group in the world. Its approximate global the frequencies are the following (Source): African: 50.2%, East Asian: 40.4%, South Asian: 39.4%, Middle East: 38.3%, European: 42.3%, and the highest prevalence is found among people of Latin American descent, with 57.4%. But Latinos are an blend of Native Americans (the ones that survived the Great Dying caused by the Discovery of America), African slaves and Europeans, so what is the prevalence among genuine or pure Native Americans?

Native Americans

The Native people of South American "are unique in that they have completely lost both the A and B alleles" the O blood group is found at frequencies close to 100% (Source), especiall among South American Native Americans.

The Nomenclature! an equivalence table

As with most things related to genetic names, the nomenclature changed over the years, papers published 10 or 20 years ago employ one notation, and more recent ones use another. This is frustrating for a layman like myself. However, to simplify things see the following equivalence table:

in italics the dbRBC or old name and in brackets, the (alt.) name (Source).

• ABO*O.01.01 = O01 (O1)
• ABO*O.01.02 = O02 (O1v)
• ABO* O.01.75 = O75 (O1v(G542A))

Below is the table, modified to show the new naming, it shows the mutations in the bases that distinguish the basal O(1) from A1, all are the same except for the deletion at 261. Then there are the mutations from O(1) to O(1v) where "v" stands for Variant. This table comes from Llop et al, 2008

I will be using the "old" notation from now on.

Almost all Amerindians belong to one of the three following haplotypes: O(1), O(1v) —O1 variant, and a specific mutation of O(1v) known as O(1v(G542A)), also written as O1v542.

O(1v), including its mutation G542A is the most common among Native Americans, accounting for 70-80% of all Amerindian O blood type individuals (Source) except for the peculiar Ecuadorian natives, the Cayapas, where O1 is more prevalent. They also have a rare mtDNA which may hint at a different source for their original, founding population.

Haplotype O(1) is the next most frequent, followed by some other very rare alleles as you can see in the following frequency table (1 = 100%), which includes some Amerindian groups.

Amerindian O haplogroups adapted from Table 6 and Table 10 in Estrada-Mena, 2010

The second table shwon above compares different Amerindian Populations with Asian ones. Translation of the Spanish words: Población is population, Aymara from Bolivia (Aymara b) and Chile (Aymara Chi), Japanese (Japoneses), Chinese (Chinos), and Koreans (Coreanos) and Mixed Latin-Native - Mestizo (Mest Chi).

The Mutation G542A

The G542A mutation is consistently found across Native American populations in frequencies of 12% to 45% of the total O blood group haplotypes.

It is rare in the rest of the world and found at very low frequencies (Estrada-Mena et al., 2010 and Llop et al, 2008 and Gueuning et al., 2023.)

Below is another table showing the mutations that distinguish O variants from the basal A1 blood group. The table is adapted from Yip, 2000. I added the O(1v) G542A line, and highlighted the two mutations, the deletion at position 261, and the marker for the 6542A mutation, where a guanine base flips to adenine G→A at position 542.

Mutations A and O groups adapted from Table 1 in S. Yip, 2000

As you can see, O1 differs from the A1 allele by the deletion Δ261 (marked with "—) at position 261. The O1v allele has another 9 substitutions besides de Δ261. O1v is found in Eurasians and Table 1 from Villanea et al., 2021 show it at a 28% frequency.

Rare outside of America

Estrada-Mena, 2010 indicates that the O1v(G542A) haplotype has been found in some non-American populations: 6 Danes, 2 Kuwaitis, and 1 person from England. (He cites Olsson et al. 1998; Yip 2000; and Yip et al. 2006).

The study conducted in Zurich, Switzerland identified Gueuning et al., 2023 two, 2, (out of 154 samples) carrying the O1v(G542A) mutation (in the modern nomenclature it is called ABO∗O.01.75, and described the mutation as the regular O1v (modern name ABO*O.01.02) as follows: "ABO∗O.01.02 background with additional c.542G>A." The ABO∗O.01.02 is what they call O1(v), present in 31 out of 154 samples, or 22.65% frequency.

According to Estrada-Mena, this extreme rarity in the Old World of the O(1v(G542A)) or ABO* O.01.75 allele could be due to three options:(1) Gene flow of Native Americans or Latinamericans into the Old World, after European discovery. (2) Recurring mutation, it turns up by chance, infrequently, the G542A mutation crops up in different populations, but this is unlikely, as it needs to appear within the O(1v) haplotype to cause this mutation which is almost exclusively Amerindian. (3) It is an ancestral polymorphism, that appeared before human beings, in one of our ancestors. But since it is found at such a low frequency, and absent in all other Eurasian and African populations, this is also unlikely. Option (1) seems the most logical. I agree.

The Society of Blood Transfusion (ISBT) nomenclature shows that ABO*O.06 (former O53 or O6) and ABO*O.01.11 (former O11) both carry the c.542G>A mutation, but neither are within O1v, and they also carry other mutations.

Why is it so prevalent in America?

While the North American native people have a high prevalence of O, the Aleut, Eskimo/Inuit and Athabaskans of northern North America have high frequencies of A and B haplogroups. This difference is due to a later migration into America and a different genetic origin compared to the first wave to reach America ~20 kya (orthodox dating).

The high frequency of blood type O among current Native Americans could be due to a founder effect (it was already present at a very high rate among the people who first reached America), genetic drift (random mutations led other blood groups to fade away and vanish while O increased its frequency), natural selection due to the new environment and pathogens found in America that favored O over the other blood groups. The diseases introduced by Europeans, like smallpox could have also played a role in enhancing O group among native populations.

A study by Halverson and Bolnick, 2008 analyzed the blood types of ancient remains from eastern North America and found that "The precontact ABO frequencies were not significantly different from those observed in extant Native Americans from the same region, but they did differ significantly from the ABO frequencies in extant Siberian populations... [these] findings are most consistent with the hypothesis of a founder effect during the initial settlement of this continent.

The similar frequencies in ancient and contemporary populations seems to show that selection hasn't played a role. The difference with Siberians, on the other hand is interesting, orthodox intrepretation is of course, the founder effect, but it could also imply that current Siberians are not related to the people that were the source of the migrants that moved into America./p>

Interestingly, one of the co-authors of the Neanderthal, Denisovan, and human O-type blood paper that is the subject of this post, Fernando Villanea, in his 2010 thesis, Evolution of the ABO Blood Group Locus in Pre-Columbian Native Americans, evaluated and analyzed "four hypotheses... to explain the low overall Native American diversity and the high within Native American variance of ABO allele frequencies: a) Founder’s effect in the original population, b) Post-European contact reduction of diversity, c) PostEuropean contact natural selection and d) High population structuring following subsequent migrations into the continent."

In his conclusions, Villanea did not attribute the blood-type distribution among Amerindians to an initial founder effect, but to one due to the dispersal of small populations across the vast continent. He found that the "results are consistent with ABO diversity being lost as a result of isolation as populations migrated deeper into the continent and not as a result of a bottleneck in the original founder population." (Hypothesis d). Small groups or bands of natives moving across an empty territory, and expanding quickly in them plus genetic drift associated with these small populations shaped the blood groups of the New World.

Regarding smallpox, it is true that ABO bood types play a role in immunity, and it is possible that the O allele provided better fitness against that disease, but Villanea also found (like Halverson and Bolnick, 2008) that ancient pre-contact blood types that he sampled, this time, from West Coast remains from the U.S. show a similar diversity to the current one.

These comments about the relevance of O-type blood among Native Americans are significant, yet the paper by Villanea FA, Huerta-Sanchez E, Fox K., (2021) did not include any Amerindian or American data!! Below I will discuss this paper.

Neanderthal and Denisovan Blood Group O in modern humans

Going back to the paper by Villanea, Huerta-Sanchez, and Fox, 2021, which is the subject of today's post, the relevant part is that they detected the allele that is responsible for O blood group in two Siberian Neanderthals, the Altai Cave specimen, and the Chagyrskaya person, as well as in Denisovans.

These two Neanderthals lived in different periods, with the Altai Cave person living around 120,000 years ago (120 kya) and the other individual from nearby Chagyrskaya, living 80 kya.

We all carry two copies of an allele for blood group, one inherited from our mothers, the other from our fathers. The Altai Cave Neanderthal carried two O2 variants (he was homozygous, as both were identical, meaning they were both Os), while the Chagyrskaya Neanderthal had one O2 and one O1 (also homozygous). They also analyzed the genes of the Croatian Vindija Neanderthal from 50 kya, who carried one O1 allele and a rare variang called-cis-AB that does not code for O blood group (he was heterozygous); the Chagyrskaya Neanderthal individual was homozygous carying O1 and O2 alleles. Finally they analyzed a Denisovan from ~50 kya and found that it carried two different O1 alleles which have not yet been found in humans.

The authors note that "perhaps more surprisingly, the O2 allele variant found in Siberian Neanderthals can be found at low frequencies in modern Europeans and Southeast Asians, and the O1 allele variant found in Siberian and European Neanderthal is also found at very low frequency in modern East Asians." They then suggest that both alleles O1 and O2 were passed on to humans due to admixing with Neanderthals and that they have been positively selected for as they are more divergent than other chuks of Neanderthal genome in humans, meaning that they are still with us because they serve an adaptive purpose.

The image below summarizes Villanea et al.'s paper's findings:

Fig. 1.Archaic ABO haplotype sharing through time, and geographic location for three Neanderthal and one Denisovan individuals. The O2 allele found in the earlier Altai Neanderthal is found in modern humans in Europe and Southeast Asia. The Chagyrskaya Neanderthal presents the same O2 allele (but different haplotype background) and a O1 allele shared with the later Vindija Neanderthal, and found in modern humans East Asia. The Denisovan O variants are not directly shared with either Neanderthals or modern humans.. Adapted from Villanea FA, Huerta-Sanchez E, Fox K., (2021)

Below is Table 1 from this paper, captioned "Genotypes for Eight ABO Variants and their Frequencies in the 1,000 Genomes Panel, Including Chromosome 9 Position in the Human Genome (Hg19, build37), as well as Genotypes for Each Chromosome in the Four Archaic Individuals."

The Nomenclature Changes!!

As you can see in the table above, Villanea et al. don't use the terminology "exon 7, 542 G→A", instead they employ numbers (top row) like 136131056 but this terminology which replaced the exon and SNP one, has also been superseded! The NIH gene viewer, for the ABO locus now uses a different number system (see here) so the numbers that ranged from 136125788 to 13615061709 for the ABO gene now are 133250401 to 133275201. See the gene online here.

The Amerindians Were Ignored in This Study

Surprisingly, this paper only included data from Old World modern humans, the authors discarded American populations, which is surprising, considering that Native Americans have the highest frequencies of O blood group in the world, almost 99% of Amerindians in South America carry O blood group. Why ignore it?

Villanea with Bolnick and others, 2013 studied the uniqueness of Amerindians finding that "Our results support a Beringian origin of O1v(G542A) , which is distributed today among all Native American groups that have been genotyped in appreciable numbers at this locus." So the preceding, basal root for this 542 mutation, the O1v had to be either Beringian or Siberian. Not an introgression from Europe after 1492. But see what the current paper says:

The authors justify this exclusion of Amerindians arguing that the O group samples that they found were of European origin (even among the African Americans they sampled). I quote them, and have introduced my comments in bold font:

"Identifying the origin of archaic introgression in admixed populations is complex. For example, American populations can trace portions of their genomes to European and African ancestry, as a consequence of European colonization of Native Americans, and the African slave trade. Because of these historical events, archaic introgression present in modern American individuals can be inherited from any of these sources in brackets.
[But what about isolated and almost pure natives like those of the Amazon? Why not include ancient samples of pre-contact people, like the ones used by Villanea, co-author of this paper, in his thesis?]
For the American populations in the 1,000 Genomes Project panel, including two African populations sampled in the Southwest United States and Barbados, we used ancestry calls from Martin et al. (2017) to distinguish if purported archaic ABO alleles sit in European-ancestry genome tracks. This allowed us to properly track archaic introgression to Europe, rather than being retained ancestrally in African populations, or introgression with the Asian ancestral populations from which Native Americans descend. For our genetic distance results, we thus excluded six populations sampled in America (MXL, PUR, PEL, CLM), including two African populations (ASW, ACB), after determining that all introgresssed ABO haplotypes are exclusively located in European ancestry tracks, thus providing a confusing look at archaic introgression."
[Why use Latinos? They are admixed by definition, MXL (Mexicans from Loa Angeles), PUR (Puerto Ricans), PEL (Peruvians from Lima), and CLM (Colombians from Medellín) all carry European and also African genes from the past 500 years! "Pure" contemporary and Amerindian samples are available, and would have come in handy to expand the scope of this study.]

Furthermore, study after study has shown that Amerindians and Latinamericans carry particular variants of blood group O, that are prevalent in America, how can these belong to "European ancestry tracks"? It seems odd to me.

Diego and Neanderthals

Estrada-Mena, 2010 suggests that the uniquely Amerindian mutation O1v(G542A) emerged in Beringia during the "standstill" there as a founder effect. This would explain its absence in Siberia and its exclusive presence in the Americas. A sound explanation.

But I am not bound by orthodoxy so, as I posted back in 2014 "the ample distribution of O1v(G542A) could also be explained by admixture with a Neanderthal population carrying the allele, which arose promoted by the selective advantage of conferring resistance against the infectious diseases of the New World. On the other hand, the alleged "cradle" of Amerindians, Eastern Asia, has the highest global frequency for type B blood allele. America... has the lowest, mostly among in Western Alaska due to recent East Asian admixture" Yes, we could also attribute the lack of B blood group to a founder effect or genetic drift, but there is additional proof.

There is a very rare blood group, called Diego (see my 2015 post about it), found in America and Central Asia. It is an Amerindian trait and dates back to the peopling of the New World. According to a paper published last year in Nature by Stéphane Mazières, Silvana Condemi, Wassim El Nemer & Jacques Chiaroni, 2025, it is ancient, the AR33K woman, from Amur in China, dated to 33 kya, carried the Diego D1*01 allele, however, her blood group was B. The paper states: "... before 30ky the Diego blood group might have already taken shape, before settling the Americas and comigrating with the nomads of the Mongolian steppes. Unfortunately, we could not corroborate any other DI*01 in Siberian individuals dating from the initial colonization of the Americas. " The next earliest ancient individual comes from a later population from Yana River, NEO239, Who lived 7,500 years ago. The paper also reports that "two Band3 Memphis alleles (Diego blood group system) have been observed in ... Denisova11 and Yana1." Denisova 11 or "Denny" is 90 ky old, and a hybrid of Denisovan and Neanderthal, while Yana1 id 30 ky old. The authors add that the D1*01 "may have appeared in South Siberia before migrating to the Americas and Central Asia."

O Blood Group and Amerindians

There is a clear link between Neanderthals, Denisovans, and blood group O. Apart from those mentioned futher up, the O2 type which is currently rare (1.1% frequency) was reported ( Mazières et al., 2025) in other ancient human beings from Russia 34 ky old, Sunghir2 and Sunghir3, as well as two Neandertals, Chagyrskaya D (50-60 kya) and GoyetQ56-1 (43 kya), so it was probably more prevalent in the distant past. Then there is Denisova 3 ("Pinky") from 52-72 kya, who carries the O blood group allele (Condemi et al., 2021).

Kitano et al., 2012 speculated that "Homo erectus had only B and O alleles until its later stage... [and] that the frequency of O allele was quite high among Neandertals."

So, blood group B, virtually absent among the first wave of people to reach America is also ancient, found in the heterozygous Neanderthal from Vindija. and in the AR33K woman. It was also present among ancients, but at lower frequencies.

There is an association between O blood group, Diego group, and Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern Amerindians. The admixing could have taken place in Asia, with a swift migration, as mentioned in my previous three part posts on MUC 19 from South Siberia, into America. It could also have ocurred with Neanderthals in America.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall ©