This super-archaic group would have diverged from the common ancestor of modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans between 0.9 and 1.4 Ma, or earlier . Denisovans also carried a highly distinct mitochondrial lineage that diverged from others around 0.7–1.4 Ma and that was probably obtained from this population. Although it is tempting to speculate that this super-archaic population could correspond to H. erectus or some related group, its genetic divergence seems too recent to align with the first appearance of fossil H. erectus at least around 1.8 Ma. Populations related to Homo
antecessor might be an alternative. pdf
“The molecular data must, however, be combined with the prehistoric and paleoanthropological ones, involving the emergence of a new biological model. I believe this is represented by the first appearance in the fossil record of the globular form of the cranium (with all its cascading effects), which current data indicate occurred in East Africa about 250 thousand years ago.”
The paper finds evidence for a genetic mixing event between two separate populations, which split about 1.5 million years ago and then mixed again about 300,000 years ago.
................. https://www.pnas.org/doi/epub/10.1073/pnas.2318903121
then review records from parts of China that would have hominin presence extend back to 2.1 Mya, older than H. erectus in Africa.
The large ambiguity in age control of Eurasian hominin sites assigned ages greater than about 1.1 Mya is a significant issue with the MIS 34 depopulation model (2). At the very least, we suspect that the number of hominin sites in Eurasia which may turn out to have substantiated ages greater than ~1.1 Mya is likely to be small, and thus, attribution of population fluctuations to specific triggers, such as MIS 34, will be difficult to distinguish from vagaries of discovery of sparse occurrences.On the other hand, there is a robust concentration of Eurasian hominin sites at around 0.9 Mya (Fig. 1), which coincides with a reported age gap of hominin sites in Africa and an independently dated genomic inference of a severe human bottleneck (1). The timing corresponds to MIS 22, a powerful climate trigger perhaps 1/3 larger in terms of ice volume and the modeled climate effects of MIS 34 (2). The genomic bottleneck model is intriguingly connected to the Galerian migration hypothesis (15), which stated that “Europe was first inhabited in the late Early Pleistocene … possibly during the waning stages of MIS 22 and the ensuing MIS 22/21 transition at ~0.9 to ~0.85 Mya” when “(m)igrations occurred in the form of expansions of the Galerian food web, to which hominins presumably belonged, through a Po-Danube conduit that connected the Gates of Europe (e.g., Turkey, the Levant, Caucasus) with Europe. This conduit opened, meaning that it became terrestrial and ecologically sustainable for Galerian food web expansions, for the first time during the EPT”.
https://www.sapiens.org/biology/homo-longi/
the Asian human species Homo erectus was a critical evolutionary step, giving rise to all later hominin species. And now we know that Homo longi evolved in Asia too. It therefore looks like Africa was a destination as well as a point of origin for the spread of human species.
Really? Homo erectus is also from Africa - not Asia....
the most complete fossil individual of this species is known as the ‘Turkana Boy’ – a well-preserved skeleton (though minus almost all the hand and foot bones), dated around 1.6 million years old. Microscopic study of the teeth indicates that he grew up at a growth rate similar to that of a great ape. There is fossil evidence that this species cared for old and weak individuals. The appearance of Homo erectus in the fossil record is often associated with the earliest handaxes, the first major innovation in stone tool technology.
Zhu Zhaoyu (朱照宇); Dennell, Robin; Huang Weiwen (黄慰文); Wu Yi (吴翼); Qiu Shifan (邱世藩); Yang Shixia (杨石霞); Rao Zhiguo (饶志国); Hou Yamei (侯亚梅); Xie Jiubing (谢久兵); Han Jiangwei (韩江伟); Ouyang Tingping (欧阳婷萍) (2018). "Hominin occupation of the Chinese Loess Plateau since about 2.1 million years ago". Nature. 559 (7715): 608–612.
compelling evidence for advanced technical abilities among early Pleistocene hominins in East Asia, significantly earlier than previously assumed. The outstanding record of refit sets in CJW prompts a challenge to the prevailing model of technological stasis in East Asia throughout the lower and middle Pleistocene
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2313123121
hominins with advanced technologies may have migrated into high latitude East Asia as early as 1.1 Mya.
https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-erectus
The Peking Man Site at Zhoukoudian, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is a significant archaeological site showcasing evidence of early human habitation, including Homo erectus (Peking Man) and Homo sapiens (Upper Cave Man), dating back hundreds of thousands of years
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_longi
H. longi has been hypothesized to be the same species as the Denisovans, but this has not been confirmed.
H. longi is broadly anatomically similar to other Middle Pleistocene Chinese specimens. Like other archaic humans, the skull is low and long, with massively developed brow ridges, wide eye sockets, and a large mouth. The skull is the longest ever found from any human species. Like modern humans, the face is rather flat, but with a larger nose.
“Our research shows clear signs that our evolutionary origins are more complex, involving different groups that developed separately for more than a million years, then came back to form the modern human species,” says Richard Durbin from Cambridge’s Department of Genetics, co-author of the new study in Nature Genetics.
The paper finds evidence for a genetic mixing event between two separate populations, which split about 1.5 million years ago and then mixed again about 300,000 years ago.
this ancient mixing contributed up to ten times that amount and is found in all modern humans. "Some of the genes from the population that contributed a minority of our genetic material, particularly those related to brain function and neuronal processing, may have played a crucial role in human evolution," Cousins said, according to DW.
The researchers discovered that genes inherited from the second population were often located far from regions of the genome linked to gene functions, indicating a process known as purifying selection, where natural selection eliminates harmful mutations over time. This suggests that the inherited genes from the second population may have been less compatible with the majority genetic background.
“Immediately after the two ancestral populations split, we see a severe bottleneck in one of them – suggesting it shrank to a very small size before slowly growing over a period of one million years,” says Scally. “This population would later contribute about 80% of the genetic material of modern humans, and also seems to have been the ancestral population from which Neanderthals and Denisovans diverged.”
Moreover, we find a strong association between regions derived from the major ancestral population and human–Neanderthal or human–Denisovan divergence, suggesting that the majority population was the primary ancestral population to Neanderthals and Denisovans.
Another outstanding question is who these two ancestral populations were. Potential candidates include Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis, though more evidence is needed in order to make a link.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-025-02117-1
500,000 year old Homo Erectus to 200,000 year old Dragon Man skull in China...
The Enigmatic Secret of Peking Man's Skull Fossil Revealed
The "Dragon Man" skull, a nearly complete fossilized cranium found in Harbin, China, is believed to be at least 146,000 years old
The Hualongdong skull, also known as the Harbin cranium or "Dragon Man," is a well-preserved, nearly complete skull discovered in China, and it's proposed that it represents a new, previously unknown species of ancient human, dubbed Homo longi
https://globalnews.ca/news/9887674/skull-china-early-human-species/
With these findings, it is possible that modern human morphologies are present as early as 300 ka and earlier than the emergence of modern humans in East Asia.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047248423000908?via%3Dihub#fig2
what it means to be “anatomically modern” in East Asia is an unresolved issue (claims to such a status exist for fossils that date as far back as ∼80 ka ago, and mosaic anatomies, including features that are fully modern, can be found in the crania of fossils as old as ∼300 ka, such as the Hualongdong 6 skull; Dennell et al., 2020; Wu et al., 2021, Wu et al., 2023).
One skull (but only one of several) from Omo Kibish looks much like a modern human at 195,000 years old, while another found in Nigeria’s Iwo Eleru cave, appears very archaic, but is only 13,000 years old. These discrepancies illustrate that the process wasn’t linear, reaching some single point after which all people were modern humans.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0024024
Results point to a morphological similarity with late archaic African specimens dating to the Late Pleistocene. A long bone cortical fragment was made available for U-series analysis in order to re-date the specimen. The results (∼11.7–16.3 ka) support a terminal Pleistocene chronology for the Iwo Eleru burial as was also suggested by the original radiocarbon dating results and by stratigraphic evidence.
deep population substructure in Africa and a complex evolutionary process for the origin of modern humans. They further highlight the dearth of hominin finds from West Africa, and underscore our real lack of knowledge of human evolution in that region.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/epub/10.1073/pnas.2318903121
“human ancestors went through a severe population bottleneck … between around 930,000 and 813,000 y ago” (1). The bottleneck was attributed to a “0.9 Mya event” associated with a decrease in marine surface temperature, an inferred long period of drought, and extensive mammal turnover in Africa and Eurasia;
“We now believe that the Denisovans were members of the Homo longi species,” said Prof Xijun Ni of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, last week. “The latter is characterised by a broad nose, thick brow ridges over its eyes and large tooth sockets.”
Homo sapiens also appears to have interbred with Denisovans on more than one occasion. “Indeed, there is good evidence that some modern humans interbred with genetically distinct Denisovans on multiple occasions,” said Kelso. “This suggests that the two groups coexisted for an extended time, with some studies suggesting a last contact as recently as 25,000 years ago.”
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