[HN Gopher] Philippine ethnic group has most Denisovan DNA
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Philippine ethnic group has most Denisovan DNA
Author : DocFeind
Score : 141 points
Date : 2021-08-14 16:25 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.uu.se)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.uu.se)
| codezero wrote:
| Interesting tidbits from the paper[0]:
|
| Negritos diverged from Papuans 53kya!
|
| They estimate the East Asian influx as being only about 2200ya!
|
| Wild to imagine what pressures caused those two events.
|
| [0] https://www.cell.com/current-
| biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)...
| pcrh wrote:
| From that report it seems that the level of Denisovan DNA in
| modern Aya Magbukon is just under 4% (fig 3D), if I have
| understood it correctly. Otherwise they are about 90%
| Australasian, with 10-15% East Asian (Fig 1D).
|
| So there was quite a bit of displacement of Denisovans, with
| some interbreeding.
| WolfCop wrote:
| Does anyone know of good books or other resources to teach kids
| (7-10 years old) about the evolution of humans? Things like
| different homo species, how they are related, evidence that has
| been found, etc.
| jhart99 wrote:
| I remember a really good issue of national geographic that I
| read as a kid that talked all about this. Level is a bit higher
| but they showed how they have found evidence through bones and
| dated them in different ways and how they reconstructed
| different parts of the evolution to modern Homo sapiens.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Any idea on the timeframe of publication?
| mistrial9 wrote:
| the stories have really changed in the last ten to twelve years
| with DNA evidence; so much that one 'recent' book may not be in
| sync with another
| cpu_qwerty wrote:
| In terms of books, I'd say Reich's "Who We Are and How We Got
| Here" is still the best popular intro available.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| My kids enjoyed this series, which is sort of a mixture of fun
| and facts about Neanderthals, it's very silly and fun:
|
| https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/series/LNE/lucy-and-andy-...
|
| When they were younger, we read the kids this:
|
| https://www.amazon.ca/Our-Family-Tree-Evolution-Story/dp/015...
|
| This is also a good one we have which covers evolution more in
| depth:
|
| https://www.amazon.ca/Evolution-Story-Earth-Jay-Hosler/dp/08...
|
| There appear to be some others out there now that didn't exist
| when my kids were younger. This one looks good:
|
| https://www.amazon.ca/Sapiens-Graphic-History-Birth-Humankin...
| oofabz wrote:
| I recommend CARTA, the Center for Academic Research & Training
| in Anthropogeny. They have many academic lectures on human
| evolution on their website. In particular, check the "Past
| Symposia" section.
|
| https://carta.anthropogeny.org/
| diego_moita wrote:
| For those interested in genetic analysis of human evolution I
| highly recommend David Reich - Who We Are and How We Got Here.
|
| It is really a fantastic book.
| 08-15 wrote:
| For those who think David Reich is a scientist, I recommend
| "Genetic evidence for complex speciation of humans and
| chimpanzees", John Wakeley's reply "Complex speciation of
| humans and chimpanzees" and "Patterson et al. reply" to
| Wakeley's reply. (All published in Nature in 2006, 2008, 2008,
| respectively.)
|
| It's a fantastic demonstration of modern science at work.
| jmpman wrote:
| My buddy's grandparents are from that group. Someone's getting
| some old Geico commercial YouTube links.
| ryan_j_naughton wrote:
| The article doesn't mention the percentages, which is
| disappointing
| ImaCake wrote:
| The published academic article seems to estimate an upper bound
| of about 4%, but I might be interpreting that wrong. It is
| worth noting that the information is here based on single
| nucleotide variants which don't tell us _everything_ about the
| genome, but a convenient proxy for most of it.
| jhart99 wrote:
| They give confidence intervals in the text for about 51 MB(mega
| bases) which would be about 2 percent or so if that was across
| the whole mappable genome. Just a note that does not translate
| to 2% different genes or something, but rather that specific
| mutations they know can be traced back to a specific
| population. Most would have no effect.
| codezero wrote:
| It's hard to sus an absolute percent but my best guess from
| some figures is 5% but I could be way way off.
| jacobsievers wrote:
| From the article: "Compared with Australians and Papuans, the
| Negritos' Denisovan ancestry was up to 46 per cent higher..."
| Fordec wrote:
| 46 percent higher than what? Do Australians have 0% of total?
| 50% of total?
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| > Denisovans apparently interbred with modern humans, with
| about 3-5% of the DNA of Melanesians and Aboriginal
| Australians and around 7-8% in Papuans deriving from
| Denisovans. [0]
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denisovan
| im3w1l wrote:
| Do they have the same 7-8%? Or one piece of the puzzle
| each?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| 46% higher, but what total percentage of DNA is Denisovan?
| ummonk wrote:
| The notable thing is that there was never a land bridge to the
| Philippines, so the denisovans would have swum or most likely
| traveled by canoe to the Philippines.
| StreamBright wrote:
| Or we miss crucial details about our history.
| throwawaycities wrote:
| History provides plenty of examples of humans transporting
| other humans and other species across seas against their will.
| dmoy wrote:
| Note that larger oceangoing ships were not invented until
| about 25,000+ years later.
|
| Transporting humans against their will is a non-sequitur when
| considering the mode of transit. It would be canoes, rafts,
| or swimming. Whether voluntarily or not.
| newsclues wrote:
| I'm pretty sure I tied up another kid and transported them
| to an island as a child at summer camp in the 90s.
|
| It's possible.
| throwawaycities wrote:
| As I said there are plenty of examples in history of
| transporting humans against their will, and yes those
| historical examples include canoes and rafts.
|
| I think it's much more probable there had to have been
| complex social relationships between these groups rather
| than the only possibility being that 1 species of prehumans
| developed single person boats used to migrate to these
| islands and then a second species of prehumans
| independently developed boats that also held a maximum of 1
| person and used them to migrate to the same islands already
| inhabited by the 1 group, and then the 2 groups interbred
| per the article.
| chronic2703 wrote:
| > History provides plenty of examples of humans transporting
| other humans and other species across seas against their
| will.
|
| And looking at history, it seems this accelerated the
| positive development and advancement of the human species.
| 08-15 wrote:
| It is far more notable that there is exactly one known
| Denisovan fossil, namely the distal phalanx the whole
| "Denisovan Genome" was sequenced from. One could argue that she
| was just another Neanderthal, but that didn't do the vanity of
| the authors of "Genetic history of an archaic hominin group
| from Denisova Cave in Siberia" [Reich2010] justice.
|
| Regarding the admixture, the analysis doesn't indicate the
| direction. If a Denisovan had offspring with an ancestor of
| present day Philippinos and the offspring stayed with the
| humans, that would create exactly the same D-statistics as if
| the child stayed with the Denisovans.
|
| I think the most believable scenario is that humans migrated
| through an area that was already inhabited by Neanderthals,
| some of them had fun with the locals, and _the_ Denisovan is an
| offspring of such a family. That 's much easier to believe than
| Denisovans, who somehow never left traces in the fossil record,
| living all over Asia and contributing genes to _all_ present
| day Melanesians.
|
| [Reich2010] has a single sentence to rule out this scenario:
| the fossil is a tiny bit too old to be affected by the
| migrating modern humans. That relies on stratigraphic dating
| (C14 fails at around 50ka), and that relies on the assurance of
| the archaeologists that "most of the site was disturbed, but
| _this_ fossil is from the _undisturbed_ part! " Yeah, right.
|
| As you said, Denisovans, assuming there was ever more than one,
| and assuming they weren't just Neanderthals, probably swam to
| the Philippines. Isn't it amazing how much we can learn from a
| single pinky bone?
| patall wrote:
| But there are multiple known Denisovans by now, i.e
| https://www.pnas.org/content/112/51/15696
|
| There is even a known Neanderthal Denisovan hybrid:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06004-0
|
| (Of course, that doesn't make it less amazing how much we can
| learn from a single bone)
| bugzz wrote:
| We have plenty of Neanderthal genetic sequences. So seeing
| even just one Denisovan sequence showing a large divergence
| from all the other Neanderthal sequences is enough to
| demonstrate a separate, distinct population.
| 08-15 wrote:
| How much is large?
|
| The dendrogram is right here:
| https://www.eva.mpg.de/genetics/genome-projects/neandertal/
|
| The difference between the Denisovan and the Neanderthals
| is bigger than between San and French, but not by much.
| Keep in mind that the archaic genomes are noisy, and noise
| adds to their distance.
|
| At the time, the debate was whether Neanderthals and the
| Denisovan constitute different species or just different
| subspecies. (Taxonomy is fun. You get to name species you
| discover after yourselves. I'd love to discover a new
| species, but in a pinch, a subspecies will do.)
|
| You use the meaningless term "population". Whatever, let
| them be different populations. Now we have two populations,
| namely the "Denisovan" and the "Altai Neanderthal" living
| in the same cave, at roughly the same time.
| legutierr wrote:
| I would wager that the integration of the Denisovians with this
| community's other ancestors happened in mainland Asia, long
| before their decedents traveled to the Philippines.
| kurthr wrote:
| Yep, when you're looking at relatively low concentrations
| that are constantly falling (each generation) then looking at
| an island to find a higher concentration makes a lot of sense
| long after concentrations were actually high.
| ummonk wrote:
| You're arguing for a founder effect explaining the higher
| Denisovan proportion on the island vis a vis other parts of
| southeast asia?
| [deleted]
| garbagetime wrote:
| Are you implying that wouldn't make sense? Because it makes
| sense to me.
| ummonk wrote:
| That was my first thought when I had seen news of the
| paper, but the paper had some data to suggest the
| negritos split off from other sapiens before the
| denisovan introgression.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Makes sense. Denisovan descendants go to Philippines, the
| ones left behind get killed off by some other land-based
| group.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| This jives in interesting ways with Southeast Asian folklore,
| which has held since time immemorial that semi-mythical divine
| beings called "Lemurians" were the true ancestors of modern-day
| humans, and the bringers of civilization and culture to that part
| of the world. Could it be that ancient Denisovans were in fact
| the Lemurians of popular lore?
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| I thought that Lemuria/Lemurians was a hypothesis developed by
| Europeans in the 19th century. Wikipedia doesn't mention
| anything about its presence in traditional folklore. Is there a
| similar myth indigenous to Southeast Asia that you might have
| mixed up with Lemuria?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemuria
| vmh1928 wrote:
| The Leprechauns of South East Asia. So what does that make the
| Leprechauns of Ireland? A remnant of Denisovans that fled west?
| prox wrote:
| Lemurian is a theosophic invention afaik, so not really an
| ancient myth.
| screye wrote:
| would be hilarious if Hanuman was a denisovan.
| frutiger wrote:
| Wouldn't it be the other way: Sapiens would be the semi-divine
| beings bringing civilisation to the local Denisovans?
| taylorfinley wrote:
| That framing gets my anti-colonialist emotions stirring.
|
| I guess it depends which myth you're more likely to subscribe
| to, the 'white savior' or the 'noble savage' (please don't
| mistake this post for advocating those tropes)
|
| Edit: Getting downvoted to hell because people are so
| sensitive and think I'm implying early homo sapiens were
| light-skinned. That's silly and I probably should have just
| not posted anything in a conversation like this where
| everyone is looking to be offended. That said I'm leaving
| this here for context.
| pram wrote:
| Maybe applying contemporary ideology to legendary
| prehistory events that happened 30,000 years ago is boldly
| moronic. Makes you think.
| taylorfinley wrote:
| Clearly I need to break this down in to very simple
| terms, since people think they understand my post and
| clearly don't and are labeling me 'bodly moronic' because
| of their own misunderstanding.
|
| One person speculated that a mythical story might be
| evidenced by this finding, that the Denisovans might have
| been the civilizing divines spoken of in legend. Another
| person said, wouldn't it be the Sapiens that were divine?
| I called out my own anti-colonial bias, recognizing that
| my frame has me inclined to believe the first framing
| ('denisovians were the divines in the legend'), and then
| speculated that there's a spectrum of opinions one could
| have and which group you label 'divine and civilizing'
| and the other 'not-divine and un-civilized' depends on
| your own biases.
|
| But go on and downvote me and call me names because
| you've misunderstood my point.
| [deleted]
| garmaine wrote:
| You are getting down-voted because you are posting a knee-
| jerk emotional response. The poster you are originally
| replying to isn't making any kind of comparison to European
| colonialism, you are. Then you are getting upset at your
| own comparison. That is not productive.
|
| For the record I interpreted the original post as saying
| "the legend speaks of another race coming and bringing
| civilization. Since the timeline is such that the
| denisovans were there first and the sapians came after,
| wouldn't it make more sense that this is a legend told by
| the denisovans about sapians?"
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > you are posting a knee-jerk emotional response
|
| You have no idea what their emotions are. Please don't go
| there. If something doesn't make sense to you, just ask.
| ertian wrote:
| He explicitly says that the 'framing' gets his emotions
| stirring.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| It is well possible that Sapiens were black and Denisovans
| white.
| frutiger wrote:
| Yeah the Sapiens arriving into the Philippines were almost
| certainly dark skinned. You might want to check your
| biases.
| [deleted]
| taylorfinley wrote:
| That's so blatantly obvious I didn't even think to
| explain that I was attempting to draw a parallel between
| homo sapiens thinking homo sapiens are the 'civilizing
| force' and europeans thinking europeans are the
| 'civilizing force'
|
| Edit: for context, I am from Hawaii and as such deeply
| interested in the Polynesian migrations. I have taken
| anthropology courses on human migration patterns across
| the Pacific. I would laugh at anyone who suggested the
| early homo sapiens migrations were light-skinned.
| decremental wrote:
| I read threads like this and just think "I no longer have
| any connection to this world."
| [deleted]
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| More like we no longer have any connection with people
| who spend too long getting polarized by the internet. Go
| to the area in question and ask people their thoughts on
| how their creation myths tie into sapians, denisovians,
| and colonialization. I would assume you'd get alot of
| confused stares.
| s5300 wrote:
| You're in a place with some of the most neurodivergent
| people, often on the Autism/Asperger's spectrum (myself
| included), who also feel the need to be dwelling/posting
| on an online forum such as this.
|
| That said, discussions will often get exceedingly hard to
| understand or relate to, especially on any "normal"
| emotional level...
|
| Don't think anything going on here is much related to the
| world we live in as a whole. It's like, a representation
| well under 0.25%
|
| Go outside, talk with normal people if you've had a
| little bit much HN
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| No. The time Sapiens and Denisovans would have gotten
| together was well before any humans had developed agriculture
| or civilization. Neanderthals were also in the mix in
| Southeast Asia.
| ilamont wrote:
| There's an interesting connection to Taiwan, which also ties into
| early migration to more distant parts of Southeast Asia and
| Australia:
|
| _Our current understanding is that after humans migrated out of
| Africa, they flowed down through South East Asia, hopping across
| narrow straights and between islands. From Timor, they used
| rudimentary rafts or dugout canoes to cross to Papua New Guinea,
| then headed down the scythed curve of the Bismarck Archipelago,
| and reached the far edge of the Solomon Islands by around 40,000
| years ago. There, nothing but the open ocean lay ahead of them,
| and so these people - the Near Oceanians - stopped, and Remote
| Oceania remained uninhabited.
|
| Then some 5,000 years ago, a group of humans from what is now
| Taiwan left their home shores and journeyed south through the
| Philippines and Indonesia into Near Oceania. Called
| Austronesians, they brought with them sophisticated maritime
| technology and seafaring skills. They mixed with populations of
| the Near Oceanians, forging a new people - the Lapita - who then
| struck out to populate the rest of the Pacific. ...
|
| "Our analyses suggest that humans left Taiwan more than 5,000
| years ago, and that admixture between the Austronesian incomers
| and the populations of Near Oceania started only 2,000 years
| later," Patin says. "The expansions from Taiwan therefore took
| some time, and may have involved a maturation phase in the
| Philippines or Indonesia."_
|
| https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/palaeontology/denisovan-d...
| poisonarena wrote:
| maybe thats why they are so nice
| chalcolithic wrote:
| What about other extinct human species? Are there similar
| findings?
| StreamBright wrote:
| There are few interesting findings recently.
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2021-06-25/unusual-ancie...
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