A very important paper: a more precise timing for the split from Denisovans (793-812kya), a more precise admixture in modern populations (6.0±0.9% for Papuans, 0% for the rest), and a list of genes that modern humans had acquired since -- some of them known to affect brain development, autism, language.
This paper opens up much more questions than answers: if there was interbreeding between Denisovans and AMH, that would mean that it is the same species (technically), but more importantly, it also means that the common ancestor was not that different from AMH. That's a pretty strong statement given the time estimated for the split.
Here is the link, definitely worth a read: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6104/222.full.pdf
No comments:
Post a Comment