A single unforgettable image comes to mind when we ponder human origins: a coaching ape slowly standing and morphing in a tall, erect human male poised to conquer every bit of habitable land on this planet. We walk this earth-we, this unparalleled experiment in evolution-reflexively assuming we are the crown of creation.
But the ancient of man picture is looking as dated as the flat earth. A series of scientists and technological breakthroughs have altered much of our fundamental understanding of human understanding of human evalution. In the new view, the path to homo sapians was amazingly dilatory and indirect. Along the way, our planet witnessed many variations of the human form, multiple migrations out of Aferca, interspecies trysts, and extinctions that ultimatly wiped out all hominid species exept one.
Unexpected fossil finds keep showing us an ever-expanding variety of human and prehuman species. Probably the most stunning of these recent discoveries is Ardipithecus ramidus, an ancestor who displayed a fantastical mosaic of ape and human traits. A. ramidus apparently climbed trees but also walked upright some 4.4 million years ago-more than half a million years before the long accepted origin of bipedalism.
Our ideas about later human evolution, meanwhile, having been shattered by the remains of a tiny, novel human species with a small but intricatly folded brain. Called homo floresiensis and nicknamed the "hobie" people, this species found in Indonesia rewrites the scientific story of how humans migrated out of Aferca and came to populate the whole world. The hobbits overlapped in time and space with homo sapiens, showing that even in relatively recent history more than one human species shared our planet-a situation evocative of the colorful world.
The emerging field of paleogenetics has brought perhaps the most surprising news of all. Using DNA sequencing, sientists have learned that anatomically modern humans interbred with homo na=eanderthalensis or the Neanderthals, probably around 60,000 years ago in the Middle East, before they fanned out to populate Europe and Asia. We not only share the planet with our cousinsbut share our DNA as well. Today 1 to 4 percent of the genome for population living outside Aferca is Neanderthal. Asimilar form of genetic analysis has also just revealed an entiryely new human group, previously unknown: the Denisovans, cousin to Neanderthals. All we have of them is a 50,000 year old pinky finger and most of a molar, found in a cave in Denisova, siberia. But those fragments were enough to determine that humans living in New Guinea today carry nearly 5 percent Denisovan DNA.
as anthropologists useing all the latest tools-genomics, computer analisis and increasingly sopisticated imaging-to extend deep secrets from the latest fosil finds, they are replacing the ancient of man with captivating new picture of human family. It edges us to decively closer to understand ing not only where we came from but also what made us so much more successful than other, superfiecially similar primates.
But the ancient of man picture is looking as dated as the flat earth. A series of scientists and technological breakthroughs have altered much of our fundamental understanding of human understanding of human evalution. In the new view, the path to homo sapians was amazingly dilatory and indirect. Along the way, our planet witnessed many variations of the human form, multiple migrations out of Aferca, interspecies trysts, and extinctions that ultimatly wiped out all hominid species exept one.
Unexpected fossil finds keep showing us an ever-expanding variety of human and prehuman species. Probably the most stunning of these recent discoveries is Ardipithecus ramidus, an ancestor who displayed a fantastical mosaic of ape and human traits. A. ramidus apparently climbed trees but also walked upright some 4.4 million years ago-more than half a million years before the long accepted origin of bipedalism.
Our ideas about later human evolution, meanwhile, having been shattered by the remains of a tiny, novel human species with a small but intricatly folded brain. Called homo floresiensis and nicknamed the "hobie" people, this species found in Indonesia rewrites the scientific story of how humans migrated out of Aferca and came to populate the whole world. The hobbits overlapped in time and space with homo sapiens, showing that even in relatively recent history more than one human species shared our planet-a situation evocative of the colorful world.
The emerging field of paleogenetics has brought perhaps the most surprising news of all. Using DNA sequencing, sientists have learned that anatomically modern humans interbred with homo na=eanderthalensis or the Neanderthals, probably around 60,000 years ago in the Middle East, before they fanned out to populate Europe and Asia. We not only share the planet with our cousinsbut share our DNA as well. Today 1 to 4 percent of the genome for population living outside Aferca is Neanderthal. Asimilar form of genetic analysis has also just revealed an entiryely new human group, previously unknown: the Denisovans, cousin to Neanderthals. All we have of them is a 50,000 year old pinky finger and most of a molar, found in a cave in Denisova, siberia. But those fragments were enough to determine that humans living in New Guinea today carry nearly 5 percent Denisovan DNA.
as anthropologists useing all the latest tools-genomics, computer analisis and increasingly sopisticated imaging-to extend deep secrets from the latest fosil finds, they are replacing the ancient of man with captivating new picture of human family. It edges us to decively closer to understand ing not only where we came from but also what made us so much more successful than other, superfiecially similar primates.
