'Wild People' Were Species Of Early Human, Speculates Folklorist Michael Heaney

USA Today:

Siberia's Denisova cave held the pinky bone of an unknown early human species, a genetics team reported in March. The Naturejournal study, led by Johannes Krause of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, offered no answer for what happened to this "archaic" human species, more than one million years old and living near their human and Neanderthal cousins as recently as 30,000 years ago.

Read the whole story: USA Today

Comments

[angrymanspokane]

03:22 PM on 06/21/2010

Some of us are more evolved than others...

[wm1066]

01:04 PM on 06/21/2010

Their was a tribe of South American Indians unlike any other Indian in the Americas, called the Yaghan, or Canoe Indians of Terra Del Fuego. They were very hairy and went naked year round in the harsh climate the tip of South America, they could have been from a neandertal people. They went extinct when the Europeans tried to get them to wear clothes and the clothes kept them damp and they got sick and died out. They kept a hearth in their canoes to keep themselves warm.

[thunder puck]

07:04 PM on 06/21/2010

They weren't hairy; they weren't Neanderthal.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_wKGNetZTKHo/SxVPKMNjm0I/AAAAAAAAGKk/FHuc-p91Mjw/s1600/Yaghan+family.jpg

[Budokan]

12:39 PM on 06/21/2010

Hardly extinct. They're still around today. They're called conservatives.

[wm1066]

12:35 PM on 06/21/2010

Robert Graves has an explanation for one eyed giants, he said they were the bones of elephants ( the elephant has one hole in the center of its skull) that early people saw and theorized that they had only one eye. I think I read that in his book "The White Goddess" or "Greek Myths" or "Hercules, My Shipmate". He had an excellent grasp of history.

[Paulo1]

09:51 AM on 06/21/2010

Bah, if the HufPo wants to do a science piece it should not rely on a cross link to USA Today which is not exactly the wealth of scientific knowledge. This piece was journalistic puff and speculation.

[GonzoBrawler]

09:42 AM on 06/21/2010

a.k.a the RNC, & the GOP!!!

[slogward]

06:31 AM on 06/21/2010

No,they survived in Brussels and now run the European Union.

http://nbyslog.blogspot.com/2010/06/revealed-whats-really-being-bailed-out.html

[Wombat]

07:00 AM on 06/21/2010

This is old news. They already found found them in the La Brea tar pits, cloned them and now they run the California Republican party

[spandautoseattle]

02:24 AM on 06/21/2010

For more than 10000 years the human population grew from a relatively small number steadily and spread slowly over this planet, in the process running into species and "strange" human relatives completely unknown to the first colonists. Insular living cousins with different appearances than that of the dominant group must have been encountered all along this time (and still we find tribes that were unknown).
How they disappeared? LOL.
"Hal...halloo, me Zurp. How do, uhm, you do..."
"It's a witch, a monster, kill, kill, kill....!"
Humans. Sometimes the answers are too easy.

[flurryup]

01:53 AM on 06/21/2010

There were no black ppl in Serbia.

[thunder puck]

12:47 AM on 06/21/2010

This article really is just bullocks.

[BannedInBoston]

02:01 PM on 06/21/2010

Don't you mean "ballocks"?

[thunder puck]

06:59 PM on 06/21/2010

No, BULLOCKS. As in "Never Mind the Bullocks"

[timewaster2dcore]

12:40 AM on 06/21/2010

Laplase75 said:

Sorry, but evolution is a fact.
--------------------------------------------

It's NOT a fact; it's a theory, and theories could become obsolete over time. Some theories in the past have become useless nowadays.

[thunder puck]

12:44 AM on 06/21/2010

so is gravity. or does your world just suck?

[blutigeroo]

02:21 AM on 06/21/2010

The funny thing is that there is more factual evidence to support the theory of evolution than the theory of gravity being a force.

[ancientmarinader]

01:26 AM on 06/21/2010

Anything that superceded evolution would still have to explain all of the same facts. That's a pretty tall order without it just being evolution under a different name.

[pene]

11:20 PM on 06/20/2010

the monkey people!!!! (Battlestar Galactica, redux)

[confuseddemocrat]

11:21 PM on 06/20/2010

why won't they make a BG movie?

[BannedInBoston]

12:05 AM on 06/21/2010

Who copped the concept from "Planet of the Apes" who copped it from "The Wizard of Oz"....

[confuseddemocrat]

11:17 PM on 06/20/2010

why are they classified as different species?

A species, classically, is defined as a group of genetically similar individuals which upon mating produces viable offspring (of both sexes) that are capable of reproduction

If these different homonids (neanderthals, Cro-Magnon, modern humans, "archaic hominid") were capable of interbreeding, then they represent true "races" of one human species rather than different hominid species

P.S. I think that today's classification of races are artificial since they are only based on skin color ....more likely we all represent the last remaining "racial variation" of humans

[Cinnamonape]

11:34 PM on 06/20/2010

The Demisova specimen is genetically distinct from the Neanderthal samples in terms of DNA and separated at least 1 million years ago from the common Neander-modern root. No modern or Neander DNA shows intermixing with it.

Recent work suggests that modern humans outside of Africa may have interbred with Near Eastern Neanderthal individuals (though there is no evidence that European or Caucasus Neanders have modern H.sapiens genes). That level of mixing was small...perhaps 1/50 ancestors would have been from Neanderthal...49/50 would have been African "moderns".

There could have been very strong selection against hybridization...and this is seen in some organisms we normally attribute to different species (wolves-dogs-coyotes; horse-donkeys). In each of these cases there is some evidence of a small degree of past admixture...though they have since developed even stronger isolating mechanisms.

BTW Cro-Magnon is fully MODERN H.sapiens.

[BannedInBoston]

12:10 AM on 06/21/2010

Wrong! Lions and tigers can mate to produce offspring, as can horses and _asses (the animal variety, that is....) Closely related species within the same genus can interbreed and produce offspring. The genus in this case is _homo -- _Homo Sapiens and _Homo Neanderthalensis, separate species belonging to same genus....

[horhay]

02:21 AM on 06/21/2010

While I agree that closely related species within the same genus can interbreed and produce offspring. Lions and tigers are only known to have produced offspring in captivity. Their habitat ranges don't overlap in the wild. The hybrid offspring is also prone to behavioral and genetic disorders, & often not able to reproduce.

As for horses and donkeys(asses) producing offspring, the result is called a mule. Horses and donkeys chromosomes don't match up so the hybrid result of a mule is sterile/infertile. There have been some cases of female mules being able to breed, but it is very uncommon.

[whiskeytangofoxtrot451]

11:17 PM on 06/20/2010

Really? A human species that died out 30,000 years ago was written about by Herodotus 2500 years ago? How did he hear about them? Some folklorist ties an ancient fossil to writings separated by 27,500 years with no evidence connecting the two and this is considered worth writing about?

[binksmom85]

10:35 PM on 06/20/2010

Get the movie "13th Warrior" (?)