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Denisovans had Brown Hair, Brown Eyes and Dark Skin

Denisovans were a now extinct species of humans that were contemporaries of Neanderthal and that lived in a range from Siberia to Southeast Asia. Their genome has now been completely sequenced and, among other things, reveals that they had brown hair, brown eyes and dark skin. It also reveals that they interbred with Neanderthal and us. Per the article:

In addition, more Denisovan genetic variants were found in Asia and South America than in European populations. However, this likely reflects interbreeding between modern humans and the Denisovans' close relatives, the Neanderthals, rather than direct interbreeding with the Denisovans, researchers said....These current Denisovan findings have allowed the researchers to re-evaluate past analysis of the Neanderthal genome. They discovered modern humans in the eastern parts of Eurasia and Native Americans actually carry more Neanderthal genetic material than people in Europe, "even though the Neanderthals mostly lived in Europe, which is really, really interesting," Reich said....Comparing the Denisovan genome with ours confirmed past research suggesting the extinct lineage once interbred with ours and lived in a vast range from Siberia to Southeast Asia. The Denisovans share more genes with people from Papua New Guinea than any other modern population studied.

http://news.discovery.com/human/mysterious-extinct-human-fossil-120...

Tags: Denisovans, Humans, Hybrids, Interbreeding, Jubinsky, Neanderthal

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by John Jubinsky on September 13, 2012 at 5:40pm

I don't know that much about it either. I suppose they should be considered different breeds (for lack of any other term that comes to mind) of the same species just as there are different breeds of dogs that can produce hybrid offspring. I agree that an interesting question is that of how far back in archaic human examples one can go and still find some that could have interbred with us. Thinking out of the box a little (or a lot) I think eventually, and probably illicitly, archaic human examples will be cloned and then, for whatever the reasons, will be desired by modern humans as marital partners.

Permalink Reply by Ant Mac on September 13, 2012 at 11:28pm

Yup. One thing you learn when you mix with any of the humans, is that they have a roving eye like mice have a cheese fetish.

*70 000 year old grandmama by way of what might even be another species*

"Why, helloooo there Nanna . . . wanna bump uglies?".

( sorry. lol )

Looks are almost not an issue with people, of course. Some of us find it more compelling than otherwise, a large difference in superficial appearence. I guess we will never know just how far back we were "human" enough that someone from then could make humans with someone from now.

Permalink Reply by michele ricketts on September 16, 2012 at 4:16pm

Hey any female in a waned moon or the back of a cave could be a proposition. Even today the term is " beer goggles" in the UK for before closing time in a bar.
Africans have been known to find red-heads unattractive. Did a nethandral female even find a homo-sapien attractive as we would suppose?!

Permalink Reply by Ant Mac on September 16, 2012 at 6:15pm

Exactly so. If they ever shared a cave I am thinking they would first have to have considered each other somehow "people".

Stranger things have happened of course. One thing I know as a life long fisherman, is you can meet up with someone else who is fishing, and you don't need language, or anything like a common culture for the other parts of your life, you have an instant kinship of fishing.

With hand signals and smiles you can swap ideas of surprising complexity about the sport, with someone who you could not even find out where in the world they are from with words.

I remember meeting two blokes from one of the French speaking parts of Africa, we couldn't do more than swap names, verbally. Yet we fished together side by side for a morning, laughing, joking and trying to interact and showing one another our tackle :P and in the end I would have let them come back to my campsite for sure, even if we had been different flavours of caveman.

I think probably the C.Manon and Neanderthals had a lot more in common than they did different.