40,000-year-old remains reveal evidence of other human species disappearing

(NLDO) - When our species Homo sapiens appeared, the world had 8-9 other human species. But they all mysteriously became extinct.

According to SciTech Daily, the remains of a Neanderthal man found in a cave in France have revealed evidence of the disappearance of this ancient human species.

Neanderthals are the species of human thought to have the most in common with us Homo sapiens in the genus Homo (Human), which had about 8-9 species at the time 300,000 years ago, when our species appeared.

Despite their good health, large brains, and incredible development in toolmaking, hunting, social organization, etc., they mysteriously disappeared.

Members of an isolated community of Neanderthals have been found in a cave in France - Illustration AI: ANH THU

Now, through a Neanderthal man in France, a team from the Globe Institute at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark) supports one of the major hypotheses about this extinction.

“The newly discovered Neanderthal genome has a different origin than other late Neanderthals previously studied, supporting the idea that their social organization was different from ours,” explains lead author Associate Professor Martin Sikora.

More specifically, the man's genome, dated to around 40,000 years ago, showed no close genetic connection to known Neanderthal communities in the area.

This proves that this man belongs to a Neanderthal lineage from somewhere far away, without blood mixing for many generations, meaning his community lived very isolated.

According to Associate Professor Sikora, many of the human genomes have previously revealed similar traces of inbreeding, which would cause a lack of genetic diversity.

So scientists think they lived in small groups for many generations and that may have been the habit of the species.

"We know that inbreeding reduces genetic diversity in a population, which can be detrimental to their survival if it occurs over a long period of time," said Associate Professor Sikora.

So it seems that Neanderthals were very different from our ancestors in their views on finding a mate.

Much previous paleoanthropological evidence suggests that Homo sapiens have had the habit of exchanging marriages between distant communities for a long time.

Our ancestors even mated with Neanderthals, and it seems to have been a Homo sapiens-type relationship that actively moved into a different species community.

In other words, compared to this ancient human species, our species known as "Homo sapiens" was more likely to connect with other groups from the beginning.

It is an advantage to the population in terms of survival.

It is possible that other human species have followed the same path as the French heterosexual community, as previous studies have shown that other species are not as socially developed as Homo sapiens.

Yet, the ancient human species Neanderthals or Denisovans somehow still exist among us, or rather, among our DNA passed down through interspecies "marriages" that occurred tens of thousands of years ago.

The new study was just published in the scientific journal Cell Genomics.

Source: https://nld.com.vn/hai-cot-40000-nam-tiet-lo-bang-chung-cac-loai-nguoi-khac-bien-mat-196240916094637796.htm