No doubt there are many, many other varieties of humans which we'll never know about because we'll never find any bones.<p>What chilling is that shows very clearly that humans can go extinct. In fact, humans go extinct all the time: 50,000 years ago, we shared the earth with at least 5 different varieties of humans (Homo Neanterthalensis, Homo Denisova, Homo Naledi, Homo Florensiensis, and Homo Luzenenensis). Probably also some late surviving populations of Homo Erectus and Homo Rudolfensis. Almost certainly more we'll never know about.<p>Since the last ice age we've been dropping like flies. In fact, we're the only humans left. And what with climate change, accidental nuclear war, or the singularity looming, we are arguably in a more precarious position than we've ever been.
There's a non-zero chance that many of the asiatic H. Erectus[0] found during the late 19th and early 20th century are, in fact, Denisovans or their relatives, but were recovered in a period where our ideas about human migration were quite different from today's . . and <i>long</i> before genetic analysis[1]. When the remains are examined in their entirety, the variations are quite extreme, with brain sizes ranging from near-ape to practically modern.<p>[0] i.e., Java Man
[1] Revealing peoples like the Andaman islanders as having a high proportion of non-Sapiens non-neanderthal DNA, something that would fit into a 19th century anthropology not at all.
Because Neanderthals were discovered in Europe, people think Neanderthal DNA is a marker of European ancestry.<p>East and South Asians, and Native Americans have higher Neanderthal DNA than Europeans.<p>Source: <a href="https://images.app.goo.gl/Q1JLpT6MqiubCHq18" rel="nofollow">https://images.app.goo.gl/Q1JLpT6MqiubCHq18</a>
During much of the Pleistocene, a million square miles of what is now sea floor north of Java all the way to Viet Nam and northeast to Korea, was prime bottom land rivaling Africa in richness and diversity. It would be unsurprising if that was where Denisovans flourished.
One thing I’ve been thinking about lately is whether there is the possibility of a frozen Denisovan or Neanderthal falling out of the permafrost somewhere in Siberia. The oldest mammoth found is around 30000 years old, so maybe a bit out of the ballpark.<p>It seems like it would answer so many questions.
The article says:<p>>In Tibet, Dr. Huerta-Sánchez and her colleagues have found a Denisovan gene that helps people survive at high altitudes<p>Can't it be simply convergent evolution?
> In a new review paper, anthropologists tally all of the fossils that have been clearly identified as Denisovan since the first discovery in 2010. The entire list consists of half a broken jaw, a finger bone, a skull fragment, three loose teeth and four other chips of bone.<p>Right... is that enough? Then:<p>> “What we have found out about Denisovans is that, from a behavioral perspective, they were much more like modern humans,” said Laura Shackelford, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Illinois.<p>How can anyone make those sorts of leaps, on the basis of a tooth and some bone chips?<p>> Dr. Shackelford said findings like these raised the possibility that Denisovans and modern humans coexisted and interacted for tens of thousands of years — though whether they communicated is unclear. “That’s really going down the rabbit hole,” Dr. Shackelford said.<p>What he's saying is we can't tell if these purported species communicated, on the basis of what seems to me to be super lightweight evidence. He said "communicate"!