FancyMancy
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Experts recreate the faces of ancient Brits dating back half a MILLION years to reveal the skin tone, eye and hair colour and true identity of our ancestors
© Getty Neanderthal man at the human evolution exhibit at the Natural History Museum in London, England, United Kingdom. The museum exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history. The museum is home to life and earth science specimens comprising some 80 million items within five main collections: botany, entomology, mineralogy, paleontology and zoology. The museum is a centre of research specialising in taxonomy, identification and conservation. (photo by Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images)
Faces of the earliest British residents have been recreated to show what they may have looked like and tell their story.
For the first time, we can see features in these neanderthals faces such as skin tone and eye and hair colour to show what ancestors looked like dating back up to 500,000 years.
The 3D busts are on show at the Elaine Evans Archaeology Gallery, part of Brighton museum, which has just opened.
Experts used a mix of scientific research, technology and DNA analysis to come up with the physical attributes, and how they lived and died.
© Provided by Associated Newspapers Limited Faces of the earliest British residents have been recreated to show what they may have looked like and tell their story. For the first time, we can see features in these neanderthals faces such as skin tone and eye and hair colour to show what our ancestors looked like
The exhibition focuses on seven people, five of whom were early residents of Brighton & Hove, who lived from the Ice Age to the Saxons.
The science behind the facial reconstructions provides an instant understanding of how our ancestors looked over a 500,000 year period.
DNA analysis helped the experts understand the skin, eye and hair colouring.
Forensic artist and sculptor, Oscar Nilsson and Richard Le Saux, have worked for fourteen months to build an accurate and realistic picture of the ancient Britonians.
The stories behind the busts include a woman found with a nail in the back of her skull in an unusual grave and a man buried in a shallow grave among shells.
© Provided by Associated Newspapers Limited The 3D busts are on show at the Elaine Evans Archaeology Gallery, part of Brighton museum, which has just opened
© Provided by Associated Newspapers Limited The experts used a mix of scientific research, technology and DNA analysis to come up with the physical attributes, and how they lived and died
They found that different people from a variety of backgrounds and geographical origins have settled in Sussex through history.
Like Cheddar Man, a bust of a Mesolithic skeleton discovered in 1903 unveiled last year, the exhibition reveals the faces of seven more 'locals' who are believed to have lived and died on the south coast of England.
Britain's oldest complete human skeleton, known as Cheddar Man, was unearthed in 1903 in Gough's Cave in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset.
The prehistoric male lived around 10,000 years ago, and a huge hole in his skull suggests he died a violent death
© Provided by Associated Newspapers Limited The exhibition focuses on seven people, five of whom were early residents of Brighton & Hove, who lived from the Ice Age to the Saxons
© Provided by Associated Newspapers Limited The science behind the facial reconstructions provides an instant understanding of how our ancestors looked over a 500,000 year period
The curators wanted to make design the exhibition to appeal to children and move away from the more traditional 'glass cases with pots and flints' set-up.
They wanted to get away from lengthy historical text.
To tie in with the time period, they recreated the atmosphere of the past using sound, film and images set in a woodland.
One of the seven faces is dark-skinned. Experts now say that people living in Britain before the Bronze Age were dark.
But when fair skinned and blue eyed migrants came to our shores, these people were all but wiped out.
Richard Le Saux said that his latest theory is that this was because of 'disease and not war that caused the deaths of people with dark skin.
Ditchling Road Man from the Bronze Age
© Provided by Associated Newspapers Limited Ditchling Road man was buried in a shallow grave in a crouched position, lying on his left side with a decorated ceramic ¿beaker¿. He lived between 4,287- 4,125 years ago and was between 25 and 35 when he died
Ditchling Road man was buried in a shallow grave in a crouched position, lying on his left side with a decorated ceramic ‘beaker’ on its side by his feet and a barbed and tanged arrow head under his skull.
He lived between 4,287- 4,125 years ago and was between 25 and 35 when he died.
A quantity of snail shells were found opposite his mouth. It seems to have been a basic burial, indicating the man was probably not high status.
Limited DNA results show he probably had light skin, blue eyes, blonde hair. We also know he suffered from loss of teeth and tooth decay.
Patcham woman from the Romano-British era
© Provided by Associated Newspapers Limited Patcham woman was petite and slender with light skin, blue eyes and blond hair and blue eyes. According to research spine shows signs of stress (bending and lifting) and there is joint disease in her right knee and lower spine
Patcham woman dates from the years 210 – 356. She was likely to have been 25 - 35 years of age.
Mystery surrounds the death of Patcham woman whose body revealed a gruesome discovery. This petite and slender woman was found lying on her side with a nail impaled in the back of her skull.
She was likely to have light skin, blue eyes and blonde hair and according to historical research had lived a hard physical life.
Her spine shows signs of stress (bending and lifting) and there is joint disease in her right knee and lower spine.
A further mystery is the male skeleton who was also uncovered lying feet to feet with her, looking in the same direction but obviously pointing away from her.
Whitehawk woman from the Neolithic period
© Provided by Associated Newspapers Limited Whitehawk woman lived between 5650¿5520 years ago. She was small and slender with dark North African or Southern Mediterranean skin. Her eyes were brown and her hair would have been a light shade of brown. The experts believe she died during childbirth
She lived between 5650–5520 years ago and lived to age 19-25.
She was small and slender with dark North African or Southern Mediterranean skin.
Her eyes were brown and her hair would have been a light shade of brown.
Her general health was good but the bones of a baby were found nestling in her pelvis which point to the probability that she died in childbirth.
From tests on the isotope and chemical make-up from her teeth, they think she was not brought up locally and may have come from an area as far away as Hereford.
Slonk Hill man from the Iron Age
© Provided by Associated Newspapers Limited Mystery surrounds the life and death of our Iron Age man whose remains were found north of the Shoreham bypass when work was being done on the A27. Researchers say Slonk Hill man probably had light skin, black or brown hair and brown eyes
He is thought to have lived between 2,413 - 2,226 years ago and he is thought to have died around the age of 24 - 31.
Slonk Hill man probably had light skin, black or brown hair and brown eyes. He was buried in a semi-crouched position at the bottom of a large storage pit.
This is not unusual in the Iron Age – pits were often filled in and ritual deposits made whilst filling including depositing animal bones and skulls.
Slonk Hill man’s bones are fully developed showing he was active, strong and healthy.
The only abnormality is some additional bone growth on the right shin bone which shows that he must have suffered a heavy blow or trauma in that area.
Researchers say that it could have been a farming accident or a physical attack.
Gallery: Recent discoveries has transformed our entire understanding of human history (Business Insider)
1/10
A handful of recent discoveries has transformed our entire understanding of human history
Recent discoveries have revealed that much of the traditional understanding of the human origin story is wrong.
Until the past few years, most anthropologists and archaeologists believed that the first members of our species - Homo sapiens - evolved in East Africa approximately 200,000 years ago.
As that story goes, humanity mostly remained in Africa for the next 140,000 years, then ventured forth as part of a major wave known as the "Out of Africa" migration approximately 60,000 years ago.
In this version of history, those early ancestors took over territories once occupied by less-advanced species, like the Neanderthals. Then humans reached North America about 25,000 years ago.
But this understanding of history has been thoroughly upended by a number of discoveries over the past few years.
There's less certainty now about how long ago modern humans truly evolved, when people spread around the world, and how we co-existed with a number of other hominid species. New findings suggest that many events happened much longer ago in history than researchers previously thought. The process of our own evolution - and our relationships with other co-existent hominin species - are also made messier by many of these discoveries.
Here are some of the recent discoveries that have begun to upend what we thought we knew about the human origin story
2/10
The first Homo sapiens seem to have appeared more than 100,000 years earlier than scientists previously thought — and in different locations.
In 2017, two scientific papers published in the journal Nature described an astounding find: the discovery of remains from Homo sapiens that were more than 300,000-year-old.
[My note: That should be "remains from Homo sapiens that were more than 300,000 years old" or "from 300,000-year-old Homo sapiens". Where do they look and what do they focus on when they're interviewing these journalists?]
The bones were unearthed in Morocco, and showed that humans had been around for far longer than 200,000 years. The discovery was also evidence that our earliest ancestors may not have been located in just one area, since this showed that even the earliest members of our species were in North Africa, far from spots often considered the birthplace of humanity.
"There is no Garden of Eden in Africa, or if there is, it is all of Africa," anthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin, who led the expedition to unearth the skulls, said at the time.
3/10
These discoveries helped lead to a new idea: perhaps Homo sapiens actually evolved all over Africa in interlinked groups that became more similar over time.
As a team of researchers described in a recent paper, groups of Homo sapiens may have evolved contemporaneously all over Africa, instead of just in one primary location.
Not all of these groups would have looked identical at the start, but they may have been close enough to all be considered Homo sapiens, even if they weren't the same as the modern versions of humanity.
So instead of first emerging in a site in East or South Africa (depending on which version of the traditional origin story you subscribe to) and then spreading from there, distantly related groups of humans across the continent could have become more similar over time.
4/10
This idea is known as the "African multiregionalism" theory.
According to this logic, distantly related groups could have all evolved from a widespread ancient hominid relative. In different locations, they may have interbred with and picked up traits from other ancient hominids, as we know Homo sapiens have done over time.
(In general, the term hominid describes great apes, humans, and all our extinct ancestors; the term hominin is a bit more narrow referring only to humans and our more closely related extinct ancestors.)
Ed Yong at The Atlantic wrote that the best way to understand this theory isn't to think of evolution as a tree in which modern humans branched off and became a separate group.
"It's a braided river - a group of streams that are all part of the same system, but that weave into and out of each other," Yong wrote. "These streams eventually merge into the same big channel, but it takes time - hundreds of thousands of years. For most of our history, any one group of Homo sapiens had just some of the full constellation of features that we use to define ourselves."
5/10
We've also discovered new hominids that our ancestors may have lived alongside or even occasionally mated with.
In 2013, two spelunkers in South Africa spotted something promising in a cave. They told National Geographic explorer-in-residence Lee Berger of their find. Berger put out an ad searching for scientists who could excavate, go caving, climb, and fit into tiny spaces. He ended up recruiting an international team of six female scientists - later dubbed "underground astronauts" - who made their way into the cave.
Inside, they discovered thousands of bones from an ancient hominid that had never before been seen. The researchers described it in a 2015 paper with the name Homo naledi.
This small hominid may have lived alongside early Homo sapiens. The discovery also suggested that there may have been many other early hominid species that we co-existed with before becoming the one dominant remaining member of the Homo genus.
6/10
Some early art that was previously attributed to Homo sapiens was really created by Neanderthals.
We may not have been as different from other hominids as scientists used to think.
Even if Homo sapiens evolved before we thought, Neanderthals were around first, appearing in the fossil record at least 400,000 years back. Many researchers assumed those Homo neanderthalis were far more primitive than their later-evolving relatives. But new discoveries challenge that line of thinking.
Long before what researchers refer to as "modern" humans ever reached Europe, our Neanderthal cousins were creating cultural objects and painting in caves in Spain, according to several recently published studies.
The new research pinpointed when some of the first European art that we know of was created, and it turns out the visual work was happening before many places were settled by Homo sapiens. That indicates Neanderthals and early humans may have been very similar cognitively and culturally.
Some early art that was previously attributed to Homo sapiens was really created by Neanderthals. We may not have been as different from other hominids as scientists used to think.
Even if Homo sapiens evolved before we thought, Neanderthals were around first, appearing in the fossil record at least 400,000 years back. Many researchers assumed those Homo neanderthalis were far more primitive than their later-evolving relatives. But new discoveries challenge that line of thinking.
Long before what researchers refer to as "modern" humans ever reached Europe, our Neanderthal cousins were creating cultural objects and painting in caves in Spain, according to several recently published studies.
The new research pinpointed when some of the first European art that we know of was created, and it turns out the visual work was happening before many places were settled by Homo sapiens. That indicates Neanderthals and early humans may have been very similar cognitively and culturally.
7/10
We've also found more genetic evidence that shows ancient humans interbred several times with hominin species like Denisovans and Neanderthals.
We've long known that humans mixed with Neanderthals, since most present-day non-Africans have at least some Neanderthal DNA.
But that wasn't the only other species we mixed with. A 2018 genetic study found that more than once, humans mixed with Denisovans - other hominins that existed when early Homo sapiens were making their way out of Africa.
Up to 5% of the DNA of modern residents of Papua New Guinea show traces of interbreeding with Denisovans. Smaller traces of those ancient liaisons are found across Asia, too, but we still don't know too much about Denisovans and our interactions with them.
8/10
The earliest humans left Africa long before we thought, according to recent research.
The first Homo sapiens may have left Africa and started migrating into Asia more than 120,000 years ago - far earlier than scientists previously thought, according to a review of recent research published in the journal Science in late 2017.
"The initial dispersals out of Africa prior to 60,000 years ago were likely by small groups of foragers, and at least some of these early dispersals left low-level genetic traces in modern human populations," Michael Petraglia, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and an author of the study, said in a press release. "A later, major 'Out of Africa' event most likely occurred around 60,000 years ago or thereafter."
9/10
Some researchers even think humans arrived in North America earlier than the traditionally accepted timeline, though this is still controversial.
Most evidence indicates that humans first reached North America 25,000 years ago. But given the upheaval that other recent discoveries have caused, it seems possible that some groups could have arrived before then.
At least one team of researchers thinks humans could have reached the Americas 100,00 years earlier than the traditionally accepted timeline. That ideas is based on the discovery of mastodon bones at a site near what's now San Diego, California. The bones were found to have been broken apart after the death of the animal, and fragments of what appear to be ancient tools were also found at the site.
That indicates that hominids may have stretched into North America early on. However, the findings are still far from certain. And since other early hominids seem to have been more widespread and intelligent than we thought, it's possible these North Americans weren't Homo sapiens but instead some other ancient ancestor.
10/10
There's still a lot we don't know about the human origin story.
As all these findings show, there's a lot of the human origin story that we have yet to fully understand. Recent research has called into question traditional narratives about the history of our ancestors and the creatures we co-existed with. The reality seems to be messier and less straightforward than previously thought.
We're still finding traces of history buried away in caves or even in large analyses of our genetic code that weren't possible until recently.
We surely have much to learn.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/experts-recreate-the-faces-of-ancient-brits-dating-back-half-a-million-years-to-reveal-the-skin-tone-eye-and-hair-colour-and-true-identity-of-our-ancestors/ar-BBT2Hcs
Part of this article was not very easy to copy, so I apologise if bits of it are messed-up. As for the upside-down question marks (¿ <-- these things), they are from in the article.
They have read where we have said that Satan is about 500 thousands years old and now are trying to show things about Britons, alleging Britain was not White, from around that time. It took them long enough.
A non-White woman discovered(?) in, and named after, Whitehawk? Oh, please don't try to be too blatant, will you?
Which computer games do you think they are plagiarising for these pictures?
I was hoping to share a thread regarding the Brown/Neanderthal-looking "jesus" which an article has said it looked like, but I must have lost the link. I mentioned it here, though.
© Getty Neanderthal man at the human evolution exhibit at the Natural History Museum in London, England, United Kingdom. The museum exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history. The museum is home to life and earth science specimens comprising some 80 million items within five main collections: botany, entomology, mineralogy, paleontology and zoology. The museum is a centre of research specialising in taxonomy, identification and conservation. (photo by Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images)
Faces of the earliest British residents have been recreated to show what they may have looked like and tell their story.
For the first time, we can see features in these neanderthals faces such as skin tone and eye and hair colour to show what ancestors looked like dating back up to 500,000 years.
The 3D busts are on show at the Elaine Evans Archaeology Gallery, part of Brighton museum, which has just opened.
Experts used a mix of scientific research, technology and DNA analysis to come up with the physical attributes, and how they lived and died.
© Provided by Associated Newspapers Limited Faces of the earliest British residents have been recreated to show what they may have looked like and tell their story. For the first time, we can see features in these neanderthals faces such as skin tone and eye and hair colour to show what our ancestors looked like
The exhibition focuses on seven people, five of whom were early residents of Brighton & Hove, who lived from the Ice Age to the Saxons.
The science behind the facial reconstructions provides an instant understanding of how our ancestors looked over a 500,000 year period.
DNA analysis helped the experts understand the skin, eye and hair colouring.
Forensic artist and sculptor, Oscar Nilsson and Richard Le Saux, have worked for fourteen months to build an accurate and realistic picture of the ancient Britonians.
The stories behind the busts include a woman found with a nail in the back of her skull in an unusual grave and a man buried in a shallow grave among shells.
© Provided by Associated Newspapers Limited The 3D busts are on show at the Elaine Evans Archaeology Gallery, part of Brighton museum, which has just opened
© Provided by Associated Newspapers Limited The experts used a mix of scientific research, technology and DNA analysis to come up with the physical attributes, and how they lived and died
They found that different people from a variety of backgrounds and geographical origins have settled in Sussex through history.
Like Cheddar Man, a bust of a Mesolithic skeleton discovered in 1903 unveiled last year, the exhibition reveals the faces of seven more 'locals' who are believed to have lived and died on the south coast of England.
Britain's oldest complete human skeleton, known as Cheddar Man, was unearthed in 1903 in Gough's Cave in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset.
The prehistoric male lived around 10,000 years ago, and a huge hole in his skull suggests he died a violent death
© Provided by Associated Newspapers Limited The exhibition focuses on seven people, five of whom were early residents of Brighton & Hove, who lived from the Ice Age to the Saxons
© Provided by Associated Newspapers Limited The science behind the facial reconstructions provides an instant understanding of how our ancestors looked over a 500,000 year period
The curators wanted to make design the exhibition to appeal to children and move away from the more traditional 'glass cases with pots and flints' set-up.
They wanted to get away from lengthy historical text.
To tie in with the time period, they recreated the atmosphere of the past using sound, film and images set in a woodland.
One of the seven faces is dark-skinned. Experts now say that people living in Britain before the Bronze Age were dark.
But when fair skinned and blue eyed migrants came to our shores, these people were all but wiped out.
Richard Le Saux said that his latest theory is that this was because of 'disease and not war that caused the deaths of people with dark skin.
Ditchling Road Man from the Bronze Age
© Provided by Associated Newspapers Limited Ditchling Road man was buried in a shallow grave in a crouched position, lying on his left side with a decorated ceramic ¿beaker¿. He lived between 4,287- 4,125 years ago and was between 25 and 35 when he died
Ditchling Road man was buried in a shallow grave in a crouched position, lying on his left side with a decorated ceramic ‘beaker’ on its side by his feet and a barbed and tanged arrow head under his skull.
He lived between 4,287- 4,125 years ago and was between 25 and 35 when he died.
A quantity of snail shells were found opposite his mouth. It seems to have been a basic burial, indicating the man was probably not high status.
Limited DNA results show he probably had light skin, blue eyes, blonde hair. We also know he suffered from loss of teeth and tooth decay.
Patcham woman from the Romano-British era
© Provided by Associated Newspapers Limited Patcham woman was petite and slender with light skin, blue eyes and blond hair and blue eyes. According to research spine shows signs of stress (bending and lifting) and there is joint disease in her right knee and lower spine
Patcham woman dates from the years 210 – 356. She was likely to have been 25 - 35 years of age.
Mystery surrounds the death of Patcham woman whose body revealed a gruesome discovery. This petite and slender woman was found lying on her side with a nail impaled in the back of her skull.
She was likely to have light skin, blue eyes and blonde hair and according to historical research had lived a hard physical life.
Her spine shows signs of stress (bending and lifting) and there is joint disease in her right knee and lower spine.
A further mystery is the male skeleton who was also uncovered lying feet to feet with her, looking in the same direction but obviously pointing away from her.
Whitehawk woman from the Neolithic period
© Provided by Associated Newspapers Limited Whitehawk woman lived between 5650¿5520 years ago. She was small and slender with dark North African or Southern Mediterranean skin. Her eyes were brown and her hair would have been a light shade of brown. The experts believe she died during childbirth
She lived between 5650–5520 years ago and lived to age 19-25.
She was small and slender with dark North African or Southern Mediterranean skin.
Her eyes were brown and her hair would have been a light shade of brown.
Her general health was good but the bones of a baby were found nestling in her pelvis which point to the probability that she died in childbirth.
From tests on the isotope and chemical make-up from her teeth, they think she was not brought up locally and may have come from an area as far away as Hereford.
Slonk Hill man from the Iron Age
© Provided by Associated Newspapers Limited Mystery surrounds the life and death of our Iron Age man whose remains were found north of the Shoreham bypass when work was being done on the A27. Researchers say Slonk Hill man probably had light skin, black or brown hair and brown eyes
He is thought to have lived between 2,413 - 2,226 years ago and he is thought to have died around the age of 24 - 31.
Slonk Hill man probably had light skin, black or brown hair and brown eyes. He was buried in a semi-crouched position at the bottom of a large storage pit.
This is not unusual in the Iron Age – pits were often filled in and ritual deposits made whilst filling including depositing animal bones and skulls.
Slonk Hill man’s bones are fully developed showing he was active, strong and healthy.
The only abnormality is some additional bone growth on the right shin bone which shows that he must have suffered a heavy blow or trauma in that area.
Researchers say that it could have been a farming accident or a physical attack.
Gallery: Recent discoveries has transformed our entire understanding of human history (Business Insider)
1/10
A handful of recent discoveries has transformed our entire understanding of human history
Recent discoveries have revealed that much of the traditional understanding of the human origin story is wrong.
Until the past few years, most anthropologists and archaeologists believed that the first members of our species - Homo sapiens - evolved in East Africa approximately 200,000 years ago.
As that story goes, humanity mostly remained in Africa for the next 140,000 years, then ventured forth as part of a major wave known as the "Out of Africa" migration approximately 60,000 years ago.
In this version of history, those early ancestors took over territories once occupied by less-advanced species, like the Neanderthals. Then humans reached North America about 25,000 years ago.
But this understanding of history has been thoroughly upended by a number of discoveries over the past few years.
There's less certainty now about how long ago modern humans truly evolved, when people spread around the world, and how we co-existed with a number of other hominid species. New findings suggest that many events happened much longer ago in history than researchers previously thought. The process of our own evolution - and our relationships with other co-existent hominin species - are also made messier by many of these discoveries.
Here are some of the recent discoveries that have begun to upend what we thought we knew about the human origin story
2/10
The first Homo sapiens seem to have appeared more than 100,000 years earlier than scientists previously thought — and in different locations.
In 2017, two scientific papers published in the journal Nature described an astounding find: the discovery of remains from Homo sapiens that were more than 300,000-year-old.
[My note: That should be "remains from Homo sapiens that were more than 300,000 years old" or "from 300,000-year-old Homo sapiens". Where do they look and what do they focus on when they're interviewing these journalists?]
The bones were unearthed in Morocco, and showed that humans had been around for far longer than 200,000 years. The discovery was also evidence that our earliest ancestors may not have been located in just one area, since this showed that even the earliest members of our species were in North Africa, far from spots often considered the birthplace of humanity.
"There is no Garden of Eden in Africa, or if there is, it is all of Africa," anthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin, who led the expedition to unearth the skulls, said at the time.
3/10
These discoveries helped lead to a new idea: perhaps Homo sapiens actually evolved all over Africa in interlinked groups that became more similar over time.
As a team of researchers described in a recent paper, groups of Homo sapiens may have evolved contemporaneously all over Africa, instead of just in one primary location.
Not all of these groups would have looked identical at the start, but they may have been close enough to all be considered Homo sapiens, even if they weren't the same as the modern versions of humanity.
So instead of first emerging in a site in East or South Africa (depending on which version of the traditional origin story you subscribe to) and then spreading from there, distantly related groups of humans across the continent could have become more similar over time.
4/10
This idea is known as the "African multiregionalism" theory.
According to this logic, distantly related groups could have all evolved from a widespread ancient hominid relative. In different locations, they may have interbred with and picked up traits from other ancient hominids, as we know Homo sapiens have done over time.
(In general, the term hominid describes great apes, humans, and all our extinct ancestors; the term hominin is a bit more narrow referring only to humans and our more closely related extinct ancestors.)
Ed Yong at The Atlantic wrote that the best way to understand this theory isn't to think of evolution as a tree in which modern humans branched off and became a separate group.
"It's a braided river - a group of streams that are all part of the same system, but that weave into and out of each other," Yong wrote. "These streams eventually merge into the same big channel, but it takes time - hundreds of thousands of years. For most of our history, any one group of Homo sapiens had just some of the full constellation of features that we use to define ourselves."
5/10
We've also discovered new hominids that our ancestors may have lived alongside or even occasionally mated with.
In 2013, two spelunkers in South Africa spotted something promising in a cave. They told National Geographic explorer-in-residence Lee Berger of their find. Berger put out an ad searching for scientists who could excavate, go caving, climb, and fit into tiny spaces. He ended up recruiting an international team of six female scientists - later dubbed "underground astronauts" - who made their way into the cave.
Inside, they discovered thousands of bones from an ancient hominid that had never before been seen. The researchers described it in a 2015 paper with the name Homo naledi.
This small hominid may have lived alongside early Homo sapiens. The discovery also suggested that there may have been many other early hominid species that we co-existed with before becoming the one dominant remaining member of the Homo genus.
6/10
Some early art that was previously attributed to Homo sapiens was really created by Neanderthals.
We may not have been as different from other hominids as scientists used to think.
Even if Homo sapiens evolved before we thought, Neanderthals were around first, appearing in the fossil record at least 400,000 years back. Many researchers assumed those Homo neanderthalis were far more primitive than their later-evolving relatives. But new discoveries challenge that line of thinking.
Long before what researchers refer to as "modern" humans ever reached Europe, our Neanderthal cousins were creating cultural objects and painting in caves in Spain, according to several recently published studies.
The new research pinpointed when some of the first European art that we know of was created, and it turns out the visual work was happening before many places were settled by Homo sapiens. That indicates Neanderthals and early humans may have been very similar cognitively and culturally.
Some early art that was previously attributed to Homo sapiens was really created by Neanderthals. We may not have been as different from other hominids as scientists used to think.
Even if Homo sapiens evolved before we thought, Neanderthals were around first, appearing in the fossil record at least 400,000 years back. Many researchers assumed those Homo neanderthalis were far more primitive than their later-evolving relatives. But new discoveries challenge that line of thinking.
Long before what researchers refer to as "modern" humans ever reached Europe, our Neanderthal cousins were creating cultural objects and painting in caves in Spain, according to several recently published studies.
The new research pinpointed when some of the first European art that we know of was created, and it turns out the visual work was happening before many places were settled by Homo sapiens. That indicates Neanderthals and early humans may have been very similar cognitively and culturally.
7/10
We've also found more genetic evidence that shows ancient humans interbred several times with hominin species like Denisovans and Neanderthals.
We've long known that humans mixed with Neanderthals, since most present-day non-Africans have at least some Neanderthal DNA.
But that wasn't the only other species we mixed with. A 2018 genetic study found that more than once, humans mixed with Denisovans - other hominins that existed when early Homo sapiens were making their way out of Africa.
Up to 5% of the DNA of modern residents of Papua New Guinea show traces of interbreeding with Denisovans. Smaller traces of those ancient liaisons are found across Asia, too, but we still don't know too much about Denisovans and our interactions with them.
8/10
The earliest humans left Africa long before we thought, according to recent research.
The first Homo sapiens may have left Africa and started migrating into Asia more than 120,000 years ago - far earlier than scientists previously thought, according to a review of recent research published in the journal Science in late 2017.
"The initial dispersals out of Africa prior to 60,000 years ago were likely by small groups of foragers, and at least some of these early dispersals left low-level genetic traces in modern human populations," Michael Petraglia, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and an author of the study, said in a press release. "A later, major 'Out of Africa' event most likely occurred around 60,000 years ago or thereafter."
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Some researchers even think humans arrived in North America earlier than the traditionally accepted timeline, though this is still controversial.
Most evidence indicates that humans first reached North America 25,000 years ago. But given the upheaval that other recent discoveries have caused, it seems possible that some groups could have arrived before then.
At least one team of researchers thinks humans could have reached the Americas 100,00 years earlier than the traditionally accepted timeline. That ideas is based on the discovery of mastodon bones at a site near what's now San Diego, California. The bones were found to have been broken apart after the death of the animal, and fragments of what appear to be ancient tools were also found at the site.
That indicates that hominids may have stretched into North America early on. However, the findings are still far from certain. And since other early hominids seem to have been more widespread and intelligent than we thought, it's possible these North Americans weren't Homo sapiens but instead some other ancient ancestor.
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There's still a lot we don't know about the human origin story.
As all these findings show, there's a lot of the human origin story that we have yet to fully understand. Recent research has called into question traditional narratives about the history of our ancestors and the creatures we co-existed with. The reality seems to be messier and less straightforward than previously thought.
We're still finding traces of history buried away in caves or even in large analyses of our genetic code that weren't possible until recently.
We surely have much to learn.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/experts-recreate-the-faces-of-ancient-brits-dating-back-half-a-million-years-to-reveal-the-skin-tone-eye-and-hair-colour-and-true-identity-of-our-ancestors/ar-BBT2Hcs
Part of this article was not very easy to copy, so I apologise if bits of it are messed-up. As for the upside-down question marks (¿ <-- these things), they are from in the article.
They have read where we have said that Satan is about 500 thousands years old and now are trying to show things about Britons, alleging Britain was not White, from around that time. It took them long enough.
A non-White woman discovered(?) in, and named after, Whitehawk? Oh, please don't try to be too blatant, will you?
Which computer games do you think they are plagiarising for these pictures?
I was hoping to share a thread regarding the Brown/Neanderthal-looking "jesus" which an article has said it looked like, but I must have lost the link. I mentioned it here, though.