Denisovian DNA Sequenced

[Yazata]

In 2008 - 2010, human-like teeth and bones were recovered from a cave in a place called Denisova in Russia. (Siberia, actually.) They appear to be from a species of hominins different from the Neanderthals, who lived contemporary with the Neanderthals, about 100,000 years ago. They were hunter-gatherers and appear to be another abortive side branch of the human family tree that sadly is extinct today. The size of their teeth suggests that they had larger jaws than modern humans and may have physically resembled Neanderthals. Evidence is that they lived in, or at least seasonally visited Siberia for a long period, tens of thousands of years.

The new DNA evidence (both mitochondrial and nuclear) reveals that today's Melanesians (black-skinned, frizzy-haired Negroid-appearing people who live in the southwest Pacific area) share about 5% of the Denisovians' genes, indicating that the Denisovians interbred with the early anatomically-modern humans spreading out of Africa through their range.

http://phys.org/news/2015-11-dna-analysi...clues.html

[C C]

Everybody seems to have their own admixture of archaic humans, except certain groups of Africa. Even there, though, there's genetic signs of mingling with an unknown ancient population. A rising alternative theory to all this is that modern humans and the various archaic divisions may have received their genetic similarities from an even earlier ancestral group which they all had in common (something later than homo erectus, etc).

[Yazata]

Everybody seems to have their own admixture of archaic humans, except certain groups of Africa.

I'm not really up to speed on the genetics of early humans, though I understand that a lot of research is being done on it.

My understanding is that Africans have the most genetic diversity of all anatomically modern humans, which makes sense if everyone elsewhere is descended from small geographically isolated bands that left Africa.

So the early Africans must have been the largest and most diverse interbreeding population. It would be interesting to know how diverse that population was, and whether there were any other early subspecies of Homo that contributed to it.

Homo erectus had left Africa and spread across Eurasia long before, and it was evolving too, apparently throwing off new developments like the Neanderthals, Denisovians and the little Flores island hobbits. And apparently the arriving early modern humans had some sexual contact with these different types.

My impression is that little is currently known about this stuff.