From 40,000 BC, she gives you the finger.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

DNA Turning Human Story Into a Tell-All

The tip of a girl’s 40,000-year-old pinky finger found in a cold Siberian cave, paired with faster and cheaper genetic sequencing technology, is helping scientists draw a surprisingly complex new picture of human origins.

The new view is fast supplanting the traditional idea that modern humans triumphantly marched out of Africa about 50,000 years ago, replacing all other types that had gone before.

Instead, the genetic analysis shows, modern humans encountered and bred with at least two groups of ancient humans in relatively recent times: the Neanderthals, who lived in Europe and Asia, dying out roughly 30,000 years ago, and a mysterious group known as the Denisovans, who lived in Asia and most likely vanished around the same time.

Their DNA lives on in us even though they are extinct. “In a sense, we are a hybrid species,” Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist who is the research leader in human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, said in an interview.

Continues...

[Tero]

It's confusing to say we carry Neanderthal DNA when 95 % of our DNA is the same. Africans have no N. Dna.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Gene markers happen.

[JimC]

Back then, our species was a fuzzy set...

[Trinity]

I don't want to be descended from someone called Denis

[Svartalf]

It's confusing to say we carry Neanderthal DNA when 95 % of our DNA is the same. Africans have no N. Dna.

Where confusing? Homo Neanderthalensis lived in Europe and Asia, and non Africans have DNA that comes from them, Africans do not have Neanderthal ancestors, period.

[Svartalf]

I don't want to be descended from someone called Denis

Does your father carry the "Genghis Khan gene"?

[Tyrannical]

The new view is fast supplanting the traditional idea that modern humans triumphantly marched out of Africa about 50,000 years ago, replacing all other types that had gone before.

That was such a silly theory anyways.

Modern humans evolved in Africa 200K years ago.
After a 150k years of "chillin" a small group of modern humans left Africa and spread through out the world.
Everybody but that small group stayed in Africa.

[apophenia]

Balderdash. It's impossible to derive any conclusions from genetic material that obviously underwent unknown compression forces during the flood and deposition following the flood. This much is obvious from the spurious radiometric dating. DNA exposed to normal atmospheric pressures does not display such anomalies. Test any sample of known provenance and I'll bet you get a much lower figure.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Take something and lie down.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Science proves: Guys will screw anything.

[JimC]

Science proves: Guys will screw anything.

It was easy in this case. The ladies would have looked at least vaguely to be the same species, quite a step up from sheep and donkeys...

[Thumpalumpacus]

"In this case"?

[mistermack]

It's confusing to say we carry Neanderthal DNA when 95 % of our DNA is the same. Africans have no N. Dna.

If you say it like that, it is confusing, but it's because it's wrong.

What do you mean by Neanderthal dna? ALL of a Neanderthal's dna, or just the tiny amount that made them different?

Because in fact what you should say is that Africans have more than 99% of the TOTAL dna of a Neanderthal.

But they have NONE of the dna that was UNIQUE to Neanderthals.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Good point!