Apr 29, 2020

A General Overview Of Extinct Species Of Humans

A general overview of extinct species of humans.

Most MYSTERIOUS Extinct Human Species!
From prehistoric neanderthal fossils to ancient ancestor dna, here is a top 10 list of strange mysteries explaining human evolution!



10 Mysterious Extinct Human Species



Extracts of some early humans that we have inherited a great deal of culture from (earliest art, for example, is known to be by Neanderthals);

One of the early extinct humans are thought to be homo heidelbergensis that averaged 6 feet (so must have had taller individuals) and had larger brains than us:






Another interesting one is a species that had a flat face and larger brains than us, again;





Here is an extinct species of human that may have had a much higher IQ than us and not to mention a larger brain;




Another theory I want to emphasize is that there may have been alot of variation in early humans and thus alot of people who are basically just one species of humans may have been classified into many. A brow ridge can have many shapes, i.e. it can be big or large and differ from person to person. We simply don't have enough information but we did find a bunch of skulls of various sizes in the same area and time period, so it does suggest many skull shape variations was normal in ancient times even more than today.




Here is the jawbone of a human that could be very large. A giant compared to us.








Finally, a human like a hobbit has also been found that went extinct a while back.









Related Articles;

National Geographic: Why Am I Denisovan? 

When our ancestors first migrated out of Africa around 60,000 years ago, they were not alone. At least two of our hominid cousins had made the same journey—Neanderthals and Denisovans. Neanderthals, the better known of the two species, left Africa about 300,000 years ago and settled in Europe and parts of western Asia. The Denisovans are a much more recent addition to the human family tree. In 2008, paleoanthropologists digging in a cave in southern Siberia unearthed a 40,000-year-old adult tooth and an exquisitely preserved fossilized pinkie bone that had belonged to a young girl who was between five and seven years old when she died.

Recently, scientists successfully extracted nuclear DNA from the pinkie bone and conducted comparison studies with the genomes of modern humans and Neanderthals. Studies show the girl was closely related to Neanderthals, yet distinct enough to merit classification as a new species of archaic humans, which scientists named “Denisovan” after the cave where the pinkie bone was found. The Denisovan genome also suggests the young girl had brown hair, eyes, and skin.

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According to one theory, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern humans are all descended from the ancient human Homo heidelbergensis. Between 300,000 to 400,000 years ago, an ancestral group of H. heidelbergensis left Africa and then split shortly after. One branch ventured northwestward into West Asia and Europe and became the Neanderthals. The other branch moved east, becoming Denisovans. By 130,000 years ago, H. heidelbergensis in Africa had become Homo sapiens—our ancestors—who did not begin their own exodus from Africa until about 60,000 years ago.


By comparing the genomes of apes, Denisovans, Neanderthals, and modern humans, scientists hope to identify DNA segments unique to the different groups. Early results already suggest modern humans underwent genetic changes involved with brain function and nervous system development, including ones involved in language development, after splitting from Neanderthals and Denisovans. Identifying and understanding these genetic tweaks could help explain why our species survived and thrived while our close relatives died out.


The Guardian: Scientists find evidence of 'ghost population' of ancient humans Traces of unknown ancestor emerged when researchers analysed genomes from west African populations


Scientists have found evidence for a mysterious “ghost population” of ancient humans that lived in Africa about half a million years ago and whose genes live on in people today.
Traces of the unknown ancestor emerged when researchers analysed genomes from west African populations and found that up to a fifth of their DNA appeared to have come from the missing relatives.
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Unlike today, the world was once home to many related species or subspecies of human. And when they stumbled upon one another, mating was not out of the question. As a result, modern Europeans carry a smattering of Neanderthal genes, while indigenous Australians, Polynesians and Melanesians carry genes from Denisovans, another group of archaic humans.
Previous studies have hinted that other ancient humans once roamed Africa, but without any fossils or DNA to pore over, researchers have struggled to learn more about them.
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The findings are far from definitive, but according to the scientists’ best estimates, the ghost population split from the ancestors of Neanderthals and modern humans between 360,000 and 1m years ago. The group of perhaps 20,000 individuals then bred with the ancestors of modern west Africans at some point in the past 124,000 years.
But other explanations are possible, Sankararaman said. There may have been multiple waves of mating over many thousands of years. Or a number of different populations of so-far-unknown archaic human relatives. “It’s very likely that the true picture is much more complicated,” he said. Details of the work are published in Science Advances.
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“It’s an exciting moment because these studies open a window showing us that there is much more than we thought to learn about our ancestors. But actually knowing who those ancestors were, how they interacted, and where they existed is going to take fieldwork to find their fossil and archaeological remains.
“We do not know what this African population may have been. It is tempting to speculate. But I’ve got to say it is just too soon to know. We haven’t discovered enough fossils in most of Africa to say we know what was there.”

Science Mag: Genetic data on half a million Brits reveal ongoing evolution and Neanderthal legacy

Neanderthals are still among us, Janet Kelso realized 8 years ago. She had helped make the momentous discovery that Neanderthals repeatedly mated with the ancestors of modern humans—a finding that implies people outside of Africa still carry Neanderthal DNA today. Ever since then, Kelso has wondered exactly what modern humans got from those prehistoric liaisons—beyond babies. How do traces of the Neanderthal within shape the appearance, health, or personalities of living people? For years, evolutionary biologists couldn't get their rubber-gloved hands on enough people's genomes to detect the relatively rare bits of Neanderthal DNA, much less to see whether or how our extinct cousins' genetic legacy might influence disease or physical traits. But a few years ago, Kelso and her colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, turned to a new tool—the UK Biobank (UKB), a large database that holds genetic and health records for half a million British volunteers. The researchers analyzed data from 112,338 of those Britons—enough that "we could actually look and say: ‘We see a Neanderthal version of the gene and we can measure its effect on phenotype in many people—how often they get sunburned, what color their hair is, and what color their eyes are,’" Kelso says. They found Neanderthal variants that boost the odds that a person smokes, is an evening person rather than a morning person, and is prone to sunburn and depression.


BBC: Neanderthals cooked and ate vegetables

Professor Alison Brooks, from George Washington University, told BBC News: "We have found pollen grains in Neanderthal sites before but you never know whether they were eating the plant or sleeping on them or what. "But here we have a case where a little bit of the plant is in the mouth so we know that the Neanderthals were consuming the food." More like us One question raised by the study is why the chemical studies on Neanderthal bones have been wide of the mark. According to Professor Brooks, the tests were measuring proteins levels, which the researchers assumed came from meat. "We've tended to assume that if you have a very high value for protein in the diet that must come from meat. But... it's possible that some of the protein in their diet was coming from plants," she said. This study is the latest to suggest that, far from being brutish savages, Neanderthals were more like us than we previously thought.


Article: How we discovered that Neanderthals could make art

One of the key traits of behavioural modernity is the capacity to use, interpret and respond to symbols. We know that Homo sapiens have been doing this for at least 80,000 years. But its predecessor in parts of Eurasia, the Neanderthal, a human ancestor that became extinct around 40,000 years ago, has traditionally been regarded as uncultured and behaviourally inferior. Now our new study, published in Science, has challenged this view by showing that Neanderthals were able to create cave art.
The earliest examples of symbolic behaviour in African Homo sapiens populations include the use of mineral pigments and shell beads – presumably for body adornment and expressions of identity.
However, evidence for such behaviour by other human species is far more contentious. There are some tantalising clues that Neanderthals in Europe also used body ornamentation around 40,000 to 45,000 years ago. But scientists have so far argued that this must have been inspired by the modern humans who had just arrived there – we know that humans and Neanderthals interacted and even interbred.
One of the key traits of behavioural modernity is the capacity to use, interpret and respond to symbols. We know that Homo sapiens have been doing this for at least 80,000 years. But its predecessor in parts of Eurasia, the Neanderthal, a human ancestor that became extinct around 40,000 years ago, has traditionally been regarded as uncultured and behaviourally inferior. Now our new study, published in Science, has challenged this view by showing that Neanderthals were able to create cave art.
The earliest examples of symbolic behaviour in African Homo sapiens populations include the use of mineral pigments and shell beads – presumably for body adornment and expressions of identity.
However, evidence for such behaviour by other human species is far more contentious. There are some tantalising clues that Neanderthals in Europe also used body ornamentation around 40,000 to 45,000 years ago. But scientists have so far argued that this must have been inspired by the modern humans who had just arrived there – we know that humans and Neanderthals interacted and even interbred.
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A new era

We used uranium-thorium dating to investigate cave art from three previously discovered sites in Spain. In La Pasiega, northern Spain, we showed that a red linear motif is older than 64,800 years. In Ardales, southern Spain, various red painted stalagmite formations date to different episodes of painting, including one between 45,300 and 48,700 years ago, and another before 65,500 years ago. In Maltravieso in western central Spain, we showed a red hand stencil is older than 66,700 years.
These results demonstrate that cave art was being created in all three sites at least 20,000 years prior to the arrival of Homo sapiens in western Europe. They show for the first time that Neanderthals did produce cave art, and that is was not a one off event. It was created in caves across the full breadth of Spain, and at Ardales it occurred at multiple times over at least an 18,000-year period. Excitingly, the types of paintings produced (red lines, dots and hand stencils) are also found in caves elsewhere in Europe so it would not be surprising if some of these were made by Neanderthals, too.
We don’t know the exact meaning of the paintings, such as the ladder shape, but we do know they must have been important to Neanderthals. Some of them were painted in pitch black areas deep in the caves – requiring the preparation of a light source as well as the pigment. The locations appear deliberately selected, the ceilings of low overhangs or impressive stalagmite formations. These must have been meaningful symbols in meaningful places.
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It is perhaps also now time that we move beyond a focus on what makes Homo sapiens and Neanderthals different. Modern humans may have “replaced” Neanderthals, but it is becoming increasingly clear that Neanderthals had similar cognitive and behavioural abilities – they were, in fact, equally “human”.


Science Daily: 40,000 year old evidence that Neanderthals wove string
Researchers have discovered the first evidence of cord making by Neanderthals, dating back more than 40,000 years, on a flint fragment from the prehistoric site of Abri du Maras in the south of France.


Contrary to popular belief, Neanderthals were no less technologically advanced than Homo sapiens.
An international team, including researchers from the CNRS, have discovered the first evidence of cord making, dating back more than 40,000 years (1), on a flint fragment from the prehistoric site of Abri du Maras in the south of France (2). Microscopic analysis showed that these remains had been intertwined, proof of their modification by humans. Photographs revealed three bundles of twisted fibres, plied together to create one cord. In addition, spectroscopic analysis revealed that these strands were made of cellulose, probably from coniferous trees.
This discovery highlights unexpected cognitive abilities on the part of Neanderthals, who not only had a good understanding of the mathematics involved in winding the fibres, but also a thorough knowledge of tree growth.
These results, published on 9 April 2020 in Scientific Reports, represent the oldest known proof of textile and cord technology to date.


Note: This article leaves out all the evidence for cometary impact which could alter some conclusions as many people would have been wiped out by the comet including whole cultures, such as the Clovis culture (as one example).

Extract from Science Alert: Nine Species of Human Once Walked Earth. Now There's Just One. Did We Kill The Rest?


Nine human species walked the Earth 300,000 years ago. Now there is just one. The Neanderthals, Homo neanderthalensis, were stocky hunters adapted to Europe's cold steppes.
The related Denisovans inhabited Asia, while the more primitive Homo erectus lived in Indonesia, and Homo rhodesiensis in central Africa.
Several short, small-brained species survived alongside them: Homo naledi in South Africa, Homo luzonensis in the Philippines, Homo floresiensis ("hobbits") in Indonesia, and the mysterious Red Deer Cave People in China.
Given how quickly we're discovering new species, more are likely waiting to be found.
By 10,000 years ago, they were all gone. The disappearance of these other species resembles a mass extinction. But there's no obvious environmental catastrophe – volcanic eruptions, climate change, asteroid impact – driving it.
Instead, the extinctions' timing suggests they were caused by the spread of a new species, evolving 260,000-350,000 years ago in Southern Africa: Homo sapiens.
The spread of modern humans out of Africa has caused a sixth mass extinction, a greater than 40,000-year event extending from the disappearance of Ice Age mammals to the destruction of rainforests by civilisation today. But were other humans the first casualties?

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