Homo Sapiens, Neanderthals, and Woman-X
No, this is not X-men 4, this is a new discovery of a different type of hominid seperated from us and neanderthals and living in Asia.
The full and fascinating read is here
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8583254.stm
But the short version is that the DNA from a small bone fragment shows a new different kind of proto-us living in Central Asia between 48,000 and 30,000 years ago.
To me, the crazy part is that the DNA shows that this X-woman last shared a common ancestor with humans and neanderthals 1 million years ago. This means that for about 970,000,000 years, we have no damn evidence at all of a completely different hominid species. Thats a long time.
1) We have almost no idea about how human development and the spread of homo sapiens came about (sidenote - firefox does not have the word sapiens in its dictionary. Ironic? I think so), for a really good discussion of this see Bill Bryson's a brief history of nearly everything.
2) What other types of hominids are out there that we have no idea about? So far, we dont have many - but we missed one which stuck around for at least about a million years, could we have missed a lot more? I am guessing yes.
The full and fascinating read is here
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8583254.stm
But the short version is that the DNA from a small bone fragment shows a new different kind of proto-us living in Central Asia between 48,000 and 30,000 years ago.
To me, the crazy part is that the DNA shows that this X-woman last shared a common ancestor with humans and neanderthals 1 million years ago. This means that for about 970,000,000 years, we have no damn evidence at all of a completely different hominid species. Thats a long time.
1) We have almost no idea about how human development and the spread of homo sapiens came about (sidenote - firefox does not have the word sapiens in its dictionary. Ironic? I think so), for a really good discussion of this see Bill Bryson's a brief history of nearly everything.
2) What other types of hominids are out there that we have no idea about? So far, we dont have many - but we missed one which stuck around for at least about a million years, could we have missed a lot more? I am guessing yes.
Comments
Post a Comment