New early human discovered in 130,000-year-old fossils at Israeli cement site
By: NBC News (originally published by Reuters)
Another ancestor on the human evolutionary tree? Seems almost Biblical.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Scientists say they have discovered a new kind of early human after studying pieces of fossilized bone dug up at a site used by a cement plant in central Israel.
The fragments of a skull and a lower jaw with teeth were about 130,000 years old and could force a rethink of parts of the human family tree, the researchers from Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem said Thursday.
Nesher Ramla Homo — named after the place southeast of Tel Aviv where it was found — may have lived alongside our species, Homo sapiens, for more than 100,000 years, and may have even interbred, according to the findings.
The fragments of a skull and a lower jaw with teeth were about 130,000 years old and could force a rethink of parts of the human family tree, the researchers said.AMMAR AWAD / Reuters
The early humans, who had very large teeth and no chin, may have also been ancestors of the Neanderthals, the study added, challenging the current thinking that our evolutionary cousins originated in Europe.
"The discovery of a new type of Homo is of great scientific importance," said Israel Hershkovitz of Tel Aviv University, one of the leaders of the team that analyzed the remains.
"It enables us to make new sense of previously found human fossils, add another piece to the puzzle of human evolution, and understand the migrations of humans in the old world."
Dr Yossi Zaidner of the Hebrew University found the fossils while exploring the mining area of the Nesher cement plant near the city of Ramla, the universities said in their statement.
Excavators uncovered the bones about 25 feet deep among stone tools and the bones of horses and deer.
The study said the Nesher Ramla resembled pre-Neanderthal groups in Europe.
"This is what makes us suggest that this Nesher Ramla group is actually a large group that started very early in time and are the source of the European Neanderthal," said Hila May, a physical anthropologist at the Dan David Center and the Shmunis Institute of Tel Aviv University.
Experts have never been able to fully explain how Homo sapiens genes were present in the earlier Neanderthal population in Europe, May said, and the Nesher Ramla may be the mystery group responsible.
The jaw bone had no chin and the skull was flat, she said. 3D shape analysis later ruled out relation to any other known group.
What they did match, May said, were a small number of enigmatic human fossils found elsewhere in Israel, dating back even earlier, that anthropologists had never been able to place.
"As a crossroads between Africa, Europe and Asia, the land of Israel served as a melting pot where different human populations mixed with one another, to later spread throughout the Old World," said Dr Rachel Sarig, from Tel Aviv University.
Sheela Athreya, a Texas A&M University paleoanthropologist who was not involved in the study, said the new research "gives us a lot to think about in terms of the history of population groups in this region, and how they may have interacted with populations in other regions, in Europe and North Africa."
The Nesher Ramla fossils "look like something on a lineage heading toward Neanderthal," said Eric Delson, a paleoanthropologist at Lehman College in New York who was not involved in the study. He characterized the findings as "fossils of what appears to be an intermediate variety — this group may be predecessors to Neanderthals in this area."
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With so many ancestors spread across regions and time, how can we claim all humans are the same? We don't all share the same ancestors.
DNA nuclear and mitochondrial DNA) tells the whole story. Among modern humans, there is no difference in DNA as a species. What can be hypothesized is that modern man is a combination of all these early species. For instance, we know that Neanderthal genes are present in modern man.
Really interesting article, Nerm!
But not all ancestors of modern man intermingled with Neanderthals. Only a portion of the modern human population have Neanderthal ancestry. The same is true of Denisovans. And more ape and hominin ancestors are being discovered.
Human evolution progressed differently in different regions with different ancestors. That's why humans are not homogenous; there are distinct evolutionary differences.
around 71 million in this country alone...
By now we should have learned to stay off that road; it has never led to a good place.
Nobody does - thus we care about diversity. But we are all the same in every way that matters for impacting how we value and treat each other.
If you walk on two feet and have the range and motion and so forth common to humans, and have the physical and mental dexterity common to humans, and share similar emotions and feelings and self expression and self consciousness that humans do, then you are a human being no matter if there is some "difference" between one group of distant ancestors and another. People know who is or isnt a human being.
As far as I know there is only one reason to wonder how can we claim all humans are the same, and it an ugly one.
If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck then it's probably a duck. But there are many different species of ducks. And each one needs to be treated according to its type; what works for one type won't necessarily work another type. A dabbling duck isn't the same as a diving duck isn't the same as a perching duck isn't the same as a sea duck.
We can bring different species of ducks together to create a domestic duck. But that domestic duck isn't the result of evolution. That artificially created duck loses diversity. In the same manner, treating all types of humans the same loses diversity, too.
Weirdly (at least I think it's weird), modern East Asian people appear to have the highest percentage of Neanderthal DNA .
Abbas will say it was a Palestinian, WAAAY predating Moses.