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When the ancestors of modern humans left Africa 50,000 years ago they met the Neandertals. In this encounter, the Neandertal population contributed around two percent of the genome to present day non-African populations. A collaboration of scientists from Aarhus University in Denmark, deCODE Genetics in Iceland, and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have conducted the most comprehensive study to date using data obtained from 27,566 Icelanders, to figure out which parts of our genomes contain Neandertal DNA and what role it plays in modern humans. Every person of non-African decent shares around two percent of...

The journal PNAS has recently published an article... which refutes the similarities between the teeth of modern Asians and the Denisovans, an extinct human population that coexisted with Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals and whose DNA is present in 4-6 percent of the current populations of Australia, Melanesia and Papua New Guinea... The study, by the paleoanthropologist María Martinón-Torres and two other dental specialists, Richard Scott from the University of Reno (U.S.) and Joel Irish from the University of Liverpool (UK), refutes this conclusion. On one hand, the high frequencies of molars with three roots in Asian populations refers to the...

Newly discovered archaeological sites in southern and northern India have revealed how people lived before and after the colossal Toba volcanic eruption 74,000 years ago... The seven-year project examines the environment that humans lived in, their stone tools, as well as the plants and animal bones of the time. The team has concluded that many forms of life survived the super-eruption, contrary to other research which has suggested significant animal extinctions and genetic bottlenecks. According to the team, a potentially ground-breaking implication of the new work is that the species responsible for making the stone tools in India was Homo...

UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA—The massive Toba volcanic eruption on the island of Sumatra about 74,000 years ago did not cause a six-year-long "volcanic winter" in East Africa and thereby cause the human population in the region to plummet, according to new University of Arizona-led research. The new findings disagree with the Toba catastrophe hypothesis, which says the eruption and its aftermath caused drastic, multi-year cooling and severe ecological disruption in East Africa. "This is the first research that provides direct evidence for the effects of the Toba eruption on vegetation just before and just after the eruption," said lead author Chad...

"We found the very first evidence for archaeological assemblages in association with the Toba ash", says Petraglia. "We found Middle Palaeolithic assemblages below and above the ash indicating the technologies being used at the time of the event. When the stone tool assemblages were analyzed from contexts above and below the ash, we found that they were very similar........We therefore concluded that the Middle Palaeolithic hominins survived the eruption and there was population continuity. This is not what would have been expected based on general theories that the Toba super-eruption decimated populations." Moreover, similar findings published by Christine Lane, et...

...a team of archaeologists excavating in India then claimed to have found evidence that modern humans were there before the eruption possibly as early as 120,000 years ago, much earlier than Europe or the Near East were colonised. These findings, based on the discovery of stone tools below a layer of Toba ash, were published in Science in 2007. Now Professor Richards working principally with the archaeologist Professor Sir Paul Mellars, of the University of Cambridge and the University of Edinburgh, with a team including Huddersfield University s Dr Martin Carr and colleagues from York and Porto has published his...

The idea that humans nearly became extinct 75,000 ago because of a super-volcano eruption is not supported by new data from Africa, scientists say. In the past, it has been proposed that the so-called Toba event plunged the world into a volcanic winter, killing animal and plant life and squeezing our species to a few thousand individuals. An Oxford University-led team examined ancient sediments in Lake Malawi for traces of this climate catastrophe. It could find none... Researchers estimate some 2,000-3,000 cubic kilometres of rock and ash were thrown from the volcano when it blew its top on what is...

Super-eruption: no problem?Tools found before and after a massive eruption hint at a hardy population. Katharine Sanderson Massive eruptions make it tough for life living under the ash cloud. A stash of ancient tools in India hints that life carried on as usual for humans living in the fall-out of a massive volcanic eruption 74,000 years ago. Michael Petraglia, from the University of Cambridge, UK, and his colleagues found the stone tools at a site called Jwalapuram, in Andhra Pradesh, southern India, above and below a thick layer of ash from the eruption of the Toba volcano in Indonesia —...

In new research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, we detail how during this remarkable journey the ancestors of modern humans met and genetically mixed with a number of archaic human groups, including Neandertals and Denisovans, and several others for which we currently have no name. The traces of these interactions are still preserved in our genomes. For example, all modern non-African populations contain about 2 percent Neandertal ancestry. This strong universal signal shows that the original Neandertal mixing event must have happened just after the small founding population left Africa. We can even use the Neandertal...

The jawbone of a little-known form of ancient human has been discovered in western China. Scientists say these people lived as long as 150,000 years ago, and they were part of a group called Denisovans. The Denisovans are a mystery. Up until now, their only remains — a few bone fragments and teeth — came from a cave called Denisova in Siberia. In 2010, scientists concluded from those fragments and their DNA that Denisovans were slightly different from us — Homo sapiens — and slightly different from Neanderthals, but that they lived contemporaneously. In short, they were a third kind...

Such evidence is tough to interpret at this point, paleoanthropologist María Martinón-Torres of University College London said at the meeting. Interbreeding of closely related populations, such as Denisovans, Neandertals and H. sapiens, generates novel skeletal features that can obscure what started out as, say, a distinctive Denisovan look, she suggested. Whatever evolutionary niche these mysterious hominids occupied, at least three separate Denisovan populations interbred with ancient humans, population geneticist Murray Cox of Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand, also reported at the meeting. Genetic remnants of two of those populations appear in modern aboriginal groups in Papua New Guinea,...

Bones recently found in a Siberian cave have given researchers a new glimpse into the timeline of an extinct human species. The species – known as Denisovans – at one time lived alongside Neanderthals in the same cave, the evidence showed. The only fossil evidence of the Denisovans was uncovered in Denisova Cave in the Russian Altai Mountains back in 1980, and amount to three teeth and bone fragments. “Denisovans are a sister group to Neanderthals – that is, they are closer in terms of shared ancestry to Neanderthals than they are to modern humans,” study leader and geochronologist Dr. Richard...

...and it was worn by a man! The suspicion is that the tiara - or diadem - was made by Denisovans who are already known to have had the technology 50,000 or so years ago to make elegant needles out of ivory and a sophisticated and beautiful stone bracelet. The tiara maybe the oldest of its type in the world. It appears to have had a practical use: to keep hair out of the eyes; it's size indicates it was for male, not female, use. Another theory, although related to tiaras made 20,000 years later by people living around river...

“An interesting aspect of the Denisova 11 genome is that it allows us to learn things about two populations — the Neanderthals from the mother’s side, and the Denisovans from the father’s side,” said co-author Dr. Fabrizio Mafessoni, from the Department of Evolutionary Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.The researchers found that Denisova 11’s father, whose genome bears traces of Neanderthal ancestry, came from a population related to a later Denisovan found in the cave.The mother came from a population more closely related to Neanderthals who lived later in Europe than to an earlier Neanderthal found in...

DNA extracted from bone fragments found in the cave show the girl was the offspring of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father. The discovery, reported in Nature, gives a rare insight into the lives of our closest ancient human relatives. Neanderthals and Denisovans were humans like us, but belonged to different species. "We knew from previous studies that Neanderthals and Denisovans must have occasionally had children together," says Viviane Slon, researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) in Leipzig, Germany. "But I never thought we would be so lucky as to find an actual offspring of...

Pygmy population near cave where Homo floresiensis fossils were found appears to have evolved short stature independently from the mysterious ancient hominins A fossil skeleton found in a cave on Flores Island, Indonesia, in 2004 turned out to be a previously unknown, very small species of human. Nicknamed the "hobbit" (officially Homo floresiensis), it remains a mysterious species with an unknown relationship to modern humans. Intriguingly, the current inhabitants of Flores include a pygmy population living in a village near the Liang Bua cave where the fossils were found. An international team of scientists has now sequenced and analyzed the...

Critical review of growing archaeological and palaeoenvironmental datasets relating to the Middle and Late Pleistocene (300-12 thousand years ago) hominin dispersals within and beyond Africa, published today in Nature Human Behaviour, demonstrates unique environmental settings and adaptations for Homo sapiens relative to previous and coexisting hominins such as Homo neanderthalensis and Homo erectus. Our species' ability to occupy diverse and 'extreme' settings around the world stands in stark contrast to the ecological adaptations of other hominin taxa, and may explain how our species became the last surviving hominin on the planet. The paper, by scientists from the Max Planck...

NEW YORK — A startling new report asserts that the first known Americans arrived much, much earlier than scientists thought — more than 100,000 years ago __ and maybe they were Neanderthals. If true, the finding would far surpass the widely accepted date of about 15,000 years ago. Researchers say a site in Southern California shows evidence of humanlike behavior from about 130,000 years ago, when bones and teeth of an elephantlike mastodon were evidently smashed with rocks. The earlier date means the bone-smashers were not necessarily members of our own species, Homo sapiens. The researchers speculate that these early...

　 Is this stunning bracelet made by Paleolithic man for his favourite woman really 70,000 years old? By The Siberian Times reporter 02 August 2017 Startling new scientific evidence is to be reviewed by international experts which - if true - would transform our knowledge of the skills and sophistication of early man. A stunning discovery by team of Novosibirsk Institute of Archeology and Ethnography. Picture: Anatoly Derevyanko It is already known as the oldest stone bracelet in the world, believed to have been made not by ancient Homo sapiens but the extinct Denisovan species of early humans,  and previously  dated as being between 40,000 - 50,000 years old. The bracelet was found in 2008 in so-called Stratum 11 of world famous Denisova cave in the Altai region of Siberia. New findings suggest it could be 65,000 to 70,000 years old, long before ancient people were believed to capable of making such remarkable objects. Maksim Kozlikin, a researcher form the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography, Novosibirsk, indicated Australian specialists were among those to obtain exceptional results on the bracelet's age.  'Preliminary results have been received to date Stratum 11 where the bracelet was found to 65,000-to-70,000 years,' he said.  'So it all goes towards changing the dating of the find to more ancient.' It is understood that further checks were made, and the results were 'verified and verified again', according to one Russian report, citing scientists involved with the bracelet.  'Scientists are certain that multiple big headlines are coming up,' reported Novosibirsk TV Channel 10. This month experts from Russia will meet scientists from the University of Wollongong in Australia, and University of Oxford in the UK.  Professor Mikhail Shunkov, director of the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography, said: 'Our colleagues from Australia and Oxford are coming here in August, we will be discussing the dating then.' 'The bracelet is stunning - in bright sunlight it reflects the sun rays, at night by the fire it casts a deep shade of green'. Pictures: Anatoly Derevyanko, Konstantin Tynayev The bracelet was exhibited in Paris this year, carrying a label showing it to be 50,000 years old with the approval of scientists. 'Made 50,000 ago, for this kind of object and with the (known) level of technologies... this is (already) a world-level phenomenon,' said Dr Shunkov.  He said consensus on the age would be announced after the experts had discussed the dating, and that a major scientific journal study was expected. 'Until then, I will refrain saying anything,' he said, adding that some data was 'ambiguous' and required clarification. 'If or when we agree, we will have to prepare a publication first,' he said. Dr Shunkov and Denisova Cave in The Altai Mountains. Pictures: The Siberian Times  Efforts by The Siberian Times to reach the Australian scientists on their dating work were unsuccessful.  The bracelet is thought to have adorned a very important woman or child on only special occasions.  Scientists conclude it was made by our prehistoric human ancestors, the Denisovans, and shows them to have been far more advanced than ever realised. 'The bracelet is stunning - in bright sunlight it reflects the sun rays, at night by the fire it casts a deep shade of green,' said Professor Anatoly Derevyanko, the institute's former director.  'It is unlikely it was used as an everyday jewellery piece. I believe this beautiful and very fragile bracelet was worn only for some exceptional moments,' he said.  What made the discovery especially striking was that the manufacturing technology is more common to a much later period, such as the Neolithic era. Picture: Konstantin Tynayev The bracelet was found inside the famous Denisova Cave, in the Altai Mountains, which is renowned for its palaeontological finds dating back to the Denisovans, known as homo altaiensis, an extinct species of humans genetically distinct from Neanderthals and modern humans. Made of chlorite, the bracelet was found in the same layer as the remains of some of the prehistoric people and is thought to belong to them. What made the discovery especially striking was that the manufacturing technology is more common to a much later period, such as the Neolithic era.  Indeed, it is not clear yet how the Denisovans could have made the bracelet with the skills they had.  'Next to the hole on the outer surface of the bracelet can be seen clearly a limited polished zone of intensive contact with some soft organic material,' said Dr Derevyanko. Pictures: Anatoly Derevyanko Writing in the Novosibirsk magazine, Science First Hand, Dr Derevyanko said: 'Two fragments of the bracelet of a width of 2.7cm and a thickness of 0.9 cm were found. The estimated diameter of the find was 7cm.  'Near one of the cracks was a drilled hole with a diameter of about 0.8 cm. Studying them, scientists found out that the speed of rotation of the drill was rather high, fluctuations minimal, and that was there was applied drilling with an implement - technology that is common for more recent times. 'The ancient master was skilled in techniques previously considered not characteristic for the Paleolithic era, such as drilling with an implement, boring tool type rasp, grinding and polishing with a leather and skins of varying degrees of tanning.' Сonsensus on the age would be announced after the experts had discussed the dating, and that a major scientific journal study was expected. Pictures: Konstantin Tynayev  Chlorite was not found in the vicinity of the cave, and is thought to have come from a distance of at least 200km, showing how valued the material was at the time. Dr Derevyanko said the bracelet had suffered damage, including visible scratches and bumps although it looked as if some of the scratches had been sanded down. Experts also believe that the piece of jewellery had other adornments to make it more beautiful. 'Next to the hole on the outer surface of the bracelet can be seen clearly a limited polished zone of intensive contact with some soft organic material,' said Dr Derevyanko.  'Scientists have suggested that it was a leather strap with some charm, and this charm was rather heavy. 'The location of the polished section made it possible to identify the 'top' and 'bottom' of the bracelet and to establish that it was worn on the right hand.' Professor Anatoly Derevyanko, former director of Novosibirsk Institute of Archeology and Ethnography Redating the age of the bracelet would also mean other items found in the same layer were also older. A striking example is a Paleolithic needle now dated at 50,000 years. This is also seen as be made by the extinct Denisovans. Located some 150 km south of Barnaul, the the cave has immense palaeontological importance.  Over the years a number of remains have been found there, including some of extinct animals such as the woolly mammoth. In total evidence of 66 different types of mammals have been discovered inside, and 50 bird species. The most exciting discovery was the remains of the Denisovans, a species of early humans that dated back as early as 600,000 years ago and were different to both Neanderthals and modern man. In 2000 a tooth from a young adult was found in the cave and in 2008, when the bracelet was found, archaeologists discovered the finger bone of a juvenile Denisovan hominin, whom they dubbed the 'X woman'.  Further examination of the site found other artifacts dating as far back as 125,000 years. Dr Shunkov has suggested that the bracelet indicates the Denisovans - though now extinct - were more advanced than Homo sapiens and Neanderthals. 'In the same layer, where we found a Denisovan bone, we found interesting things; until then it was believed these the hallmark of the emergence of Homo sapiens,' he said.  'First of all, there were symbolic items, such as jewellery - including the stone bracelet as well as a ring, carved out of marble.' 'These finds were made using technological methods - boring stone, drilling with an implement, grinding - that are traditionally considered typical for a later time, and nowhere in the world they were used so early, in the paleolithic era. At first, we connected the finds with a progressive form of modern human, and now it turned out that this was fundamentally wrong.  'Obviously it was  Denisovans, who left these things.' The 7 centimetre (2 3/4 inch) needle was made and used by our long extinct Denisovan ancestors This indicated that 'the most progressive of the triad' (Homo sapiens, Homo Neanderthals and Denisovans) were Denisovans, who according to their genetic and morphological characters were much more archaic than Neanderthals and modern human.'  But could this modern-looking bracelet have been buried with older remains, perhaps dug into the cave floor in a later era to hide it? The experts considered this possibility but rejected it, saying they believe the layers were uncontaminated by human interference from a later period. The soil around the bracelet was also dated using oxygen isotopic analysis. The unique bracelet is now held by the Museum of History and Culture of the Peoples of Siberia and the Far East in Novosibirsk.  Irina Salnikova, head the museum, said of the bracelet: 'I love this find. The skills of its creator were perfect. Initially we thought that it was made by Neanderthals or modern humans, but it turned out that the master was Denisovan, at least in our opinion.'   　 

People today of Native American, European, Asian, and North African heritage have Neanderthal DNA in their genomes, with percentages estimated between 1-4 percent. As a result, the majority of people alive today are related to these humans that, as a distinct population, are thought to have gone extinct 39,000-41,000 years ago. An international team of researchers led by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology has just overcome the problem, allowing for whole genome sequencing of five Neanderthals who lived 39,000-47,000 years ago. The findings, reported in the journal Nature, provide important insights into Neanderthal history before and...