The tip of a girl's 40,000-year-old pinky finger found in a
cold Siberian cave, paired with faster and cheaper genetic sequencing
technology, is helping scientists draw a surprisingly complex new picture of
human origins. The new view is fast is
supplanting the traditional idea that modern humans triumphantly marched out of
Africa about 50,000 years ago, replacing all other
types that had gone before.
Instead, the genetic analysis shows, modern humans
encountered and bed with at least two groups of ancient humans in relatively recent
times: the Neanderthals, who lived in Europe and Asia, dying out roughly 30,000
years ago, and a mysterious group known as the Denisovans, however, lived in Asia
and most likely vanished around the same time.
Their DNA lives on in us even though they ae extinct. In a sense, we are hybrid species.
A third group of extinct humans, Homo floresiensis, nicked
named "the Hobbits" because of they ere so small, also walked the
earth until about 17,000 years ago. It
is not known whether modern humans bred with them because of the hot, humid
climate of the Indonesian island
of Flores
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