I just wonder what goes through the minds of people who react with so much hostility to a link and accompanying article about anthropology. This is a rugby forum, not an international conference on the topic. I posted the article because I thought it might be of interest. You really must have psychological issues to work yourself up about things like this.
But don't get me wrong, I find all this infantile hostility and the frothing seizures over absolutely nothing to be somewhat amusing. So here it is again:
Most everyone knows that the islands of the South Pacific are some of the most remote and unique places on Earth, but a new study reveals just how unique they really are.
According to a report from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, researchers have found traces of a previously unknown extinct hominid species in the DNA of the Melanesians, a group living in an area northeast of Australia that encompasses Papua New Guinea and the surrounding islands.
A computer analysis suggests that the unidentified ancestral hominid species found in Melanesian DNA is unlikely to be either Neanderthal or Denisovan, the two known predecessors of humankind to this point.
Archaeologists have found many Neanderthal fossils in Europe and Asia, and although the only Denisovan DNA comes from a finger bone and a couple of teeth discovered in a Siberian cave, both species are well represented in the fossil record.
But now genetic modeling of the Melanesians has revealed a third, different human ancestor that may be an extinct, distinct cousin of the Neanderthals.
“We’re missing a population, or we’re misunderstanding something about the relationships,” researcher Ryan Bohlender told Science News. “Human history is a lot more complicated than we thought it was.”
http://all-that-is-interesting.com/paci ... s-ancestor
Not too much of a surprise, really. & I wouldn't be surprised if a similar discovery is made in the Americas some day either. For some time anthropologists have claimed humankind is divided into four major ethnic groups - African, European, East Asian/Native American and South Asian/Austronesian, with considerable hybridisation involving the latter group in South Asia (with Europeans) and South East Asia (with East Asians). DNA appears to have confirmed all this, but Israeli historian Yval Noah Harari goes a step further in his international best seller 'Sapiens' in suggesting the differences emerged principally through hybridisation with other now extinct species of primitive man. Europeans are considered to carry around 2.5% Neanderthal DNA for example, while Asians and Austronesians were thought to have at least that amount of Dinosovian DNA. However, that doesn't explain the obvious differences between East Asians and South Asians/Austronesians. This new finding does. Sub-Saharan Africans are the only ones who didn't hybridise. This includes both black Africans and the San Bushmen who are a minor separate race.
