A paper published by Vialet, 2018 attempts to understand how modern humans settled East Asia. It reports that different "lineages" must have interacted to explain the outcome. People from the islands in South East Asia could have contributed to the final admixture, depending on variable sea levels. Vialet analyzes a scenario with "demographic “sources” and “sinks” and where repeated colonization, extinctions and recombination may help explain the morphological variability of the population." Clearly, Denisovans, possible extant archaics like Homo erectus interacted with modern humans in this region.
Vialet cites Zanolli (2013) who notes a reduction in the size of teeth, which differs from the classic Asian Homo erectus s.s. (sensu stricto) and, interestingly ntoes that "Such a degree of dental reduction, from both a morphological (i.e., molar inter-ratio, loss of main cusps) and a metric perspective has been only identified in the Middle Pleistocene sample from Sima de los Huesos, in Atapuerca" in Spain. This means that teeth became smaller and are similar to the Atapuerca hominins, similar to those of modern humans, but, they don't know why!
Atapuerca remains have provided nuclear DNA that links them to Neanderthals, however, their mitochondrial DNA placed them very close to te Denisovans.
Zanolli is at a loss when it comes to explaining this situation, and speculate that the smaller teeth may be due to "more complex scenarios envisaging frequent population interchanges (possibly from sources to sinks) and/or regional variation by isolation" and also "possible connections between Asia and Europe."
They tend to believe that this dental reduction "is more likely resulted either from replacement or introgression by admixture with continental immigrating groups" Interestingly the African Homo heidelbergensis" and the Chinsese Homo erectus as well as the early specimens from Sanigran in Indonesia share similar featues.
These articles show that Denisovans, Neanderthals, and their Spanish ancestor in Atapuerca are linked to East Asian people. Somehow, these people replaced the classic Eurasian erectus. They surely interacted with them, admixing and replacing them. The hominins living in East Asia when modern humans reached the area (or evolved there, becoming modern humans), carried the signs of Eurasian people. Where does the Out of Africa myth fit in this panorama?
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall ©
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