Another "Homo" from about the same time frame was found in Israel.
Researchers from Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have identified a new type of early human at the Nesher Ramla site, dated to 140,000 to 120,000 years ago. According to the researchers, the morphology of the Nesher Ramla humans shares features with both Neanderthals (especially the teeth and jaws) and archaic Homo (specifically the skull). At the same time, this type of Homo is very unlike modern humans -- displaying a completely different skull structure, no chin, and very large teeth. Following the study's findings, researchers believe that the Nesher Ramla Homo type is the 'source' population from which most humans of the Middle Pleistocene developed. In addition, they suggest that this group is the so-called 'missing' population that mated with Homo sapiens who arrived in the region around 200,000 years ago -- about whom we know from a recent study on fossils found in the Misliya cave.
Timeline: The Nesher Ramla Homo type was an ancestor of both the Neanderthals in Europe and the archaic Homo populations of Asia.
Prof. Hershkovitz adds that the discovery of the Nesher Ramla Homo type challenges the prevailing hypothesis that the Neanderthals originated in Europe. "Before these new findings," he says, "most researchers believed the Neanderthals to be a 'European story', in which small groups of Neanderthals were forced to migrate southwards to escape the spreading glaciers, with some arriving in the Land of Israel about 70,000 years ago. The Nesher Ramla fossils make us question this theory, suggesting that the ancestors of European Neanderthals lived in the Levant as early as 400,000 years ago, repeatedly migrating westward to Europe and eastward to Asia. In fact, our findings imply that the famous Neanderthals of Western Europe are only the remnants of a much larger population that lived here in the Levant -- and not the other way around."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 141540.htm
more about Homo longi or 'Dragon Man.'
The skull was originally found in 1933 by Chinese laborers building a bridge in Harbin, a northern Chinese city, during the Japanese occupation, researchers said. To prevent the skull from falling into Japanese hands, it was wrapped and hidden in an abandoned well. It was only rediscovered in 2018 when the old man who originally hid it told his grandson, shortly before his death.
Their findings suggest that the Homo longi lineage may be our closest relatives -- and may reshape our understanding of human evolution.
Using a series of geochemical analyses, Ji, Ni, and their team dated the Harbin fossil to at least 146,000 years, placing it in the Middle Pleistocene, a dynamic era of human species migration. They hypothesize that H. longi and H. sapiens could have encountered each other during this era.
"We see multiple evolutionary lineages of Homo species and populations co-existing in Asia, Africa, and Europe during that time. So, if Homo sapiens indeed got to East Asia that early, they could have a chance to interact with H. longi, and since we don't know when the Harbin group disappeared, there could have been later encounters as well," says author Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at the Nature History Museum in London.
Looking farther back in time, the researchers also find that Homo longi is one of our closest hominin relatives, even more closely related to us than Neanderthals. "It is widely believed that the Neanderthal belongs to an extinct lineage that is the closest relative of our own species. However, our discovery suggests that the new lineage we identified that includes Homo longi is the actual sister group of H. sapiens," says Ni.
Their reconstruction of the human tree of life also suggests that the common ancestor we share with Neanderthals existed even further back in time. "The divergence time between H. sapiens and the Neanderthals may be even deeper in evolutionary history than generally believed, over one million years," says Ni. If true, we likely diverged from Neanderthals roughly 400,000 years earlier than scientists had thought.
The researchers say that findings gathered from the Harbin cranium have the potential to rewrite major elements of human evolution. Their analysis into the life history of Homo longi suggest they were strong, robust humans whose potential interactions with Homo sapiens may have shaped our history in turn. "Altogether, the Harbin cranium provides more evidence for us to understand Homo diversity and evolutionary relationships among these diverse Homo species and populations," says Ni. "We found our long-lost sister lineage."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 120419.htm
.... and then, like all the rest, we killed them.
You can't wait until life isn't hard anymore before you decide to be happy.
