Live Screenshot
Source link:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/oct/17/neanderthals-kept-early-homo-sapiens-out-of-europe?CMP=fb_guPublished by: THE GUARDIAN on 17 Oct 2015
1657 views · Last view: 17 hrs ago
News Text (from THE GUARDIAN)
The discovery of a hoard of ancient human teeth in a Chinese cave has forced scientists to reconsider our species’ relations with our closest evolutionary cousins, the Neanderthals. The find, revealed in the science journal Nature, shows modern humans must have left their African homeland andreached southern China more than 80,000 years ago.
This unexpectedly early date contrasts with our ancestors’ far more recent arrival in Europe - about 45,000 years ago – and suggests Homo sapiens was prevented, for some reason, from moving there for tens of thousands of years. Anthropologist María Martinón-Torres, from University College London – a member of the team that made the discovery – is confident of the reason. She blames the Neanderthals.
“Homo sapiens evolved in Africa and emerged from the continent about 100,000 years ago and swept eastward with little apparent resistance from other hominid species they encountered. But when they headed north, they reached the Levant [...]
Explore More
The Guardian NeanderthalSearch Google Search Explore Topics
Who are The Guardian?The Guardian is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as The Manchester Guardian, and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers The Observer and The Guardian Weekly, The Guardian is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of The Guardian in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of The Guardian free from commercial or political interference".
Who were Neanderthal?Neanderthals are an extinct group of archaic humans who inhabited Europe and Western and Central Asia. Neanderthal extinction occurred roughly 40,000 years ago with the immigration of modern humans (Cro-Magnons). Neanderthals were characterised as a unique species of underdeveloped human, in particular by Marcellin Boule. By the mid-twentieth century, it was believed that human evolution progressed from an ape-like ancestor through a "Neanderthal phase" to modern humans. This gave way to the "Out of Africa" theory in the 1970s. With the sequencing of Neanderthal genetics first in 2010, it was discovered that Neanderthals interbred with modern humans.
