Massive human head in Chinese well forces scientists to rethink evolution | Anthropology | The Guardian
Prof John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the idea of a new lineage of humans was a provocative claim , because skulls can look similar even among distant relatives. The skull being Denisovan was a good hypothesis, he added, though he was less keen on a new species name. I think it s a bad moment in science to be naming new species among these large-brained humans that all interbred with each other, he said. What we are repeatedly finding is that the differences in looks didn t mean much to these ancient people when it comes to breeding.
Mark Maslin, a professor of earth system science at UCL and the author of The Cradle of Humanity, said: The beautifully preserved Chinese Harbin archaic human skull adds even more evidence that human evolution was not a simple evolutionary tree but a dense intertwined bush. We now know that there were as many as 10 different species of hominins at the same time as our own species emerged.
Genetic analysis shows that these species interacted and interbred our own genetics contain the legacy of many of these ghost species. But what is a sobering thought, is that despite all this diversity, a new version of Homo sapiens emerged from Africa about 60,000 years ago which clearly out-competed, out-bred, and even out-fought these other closely related species, causing their extinction. It is only by painstaking searching and analysis of their fossils, such as the Harbin skull, do we know of their existence.
It must have been very strange to live back then.