From Newsgroup: talk.origins
On 5/16/2026 8:20 AM, Ernest Major wrote:
https://www.johnhawks.net/p/rethinking-homo-erectus-and-denisovans
QUOTE:
The hypothesis in the paper: The ZHS are late Homo erectus, and this
Asian Homo erectus branch evolved both A253G and M273V, which are not
found in Homo antecessor or earlier hominins. Some descendants of this
ZHS H. erectus population interbred with Denisovans sometime after
400,000 years ago, M273V introgressed into some Denisovans, and much
later Denisovans transferred that change to the ancestors of some living people.
A rCLDenisovan geographic variationrCY hypothesis: The ZHS teeth come from a Denisovan population. The common Denisovan ancestors evolved M273V, and
both ZHS Denisovans and the Siberian Denisovans share this change. The
ZHS Denisovan branch additionally evolved A253G.
An rCLearlier introgressionrCY hypothesis: ZHS are an early Denisovan population and have M273V from the common Denisovan ancestor. The
ancestors of the ZHS Denisovans did mix with earlier Homo erectus, and
this is where they picked up A253G.
rCLIntrogression into the ghostrCY: ZHS are Homo erectus or some previously-unknown group. Their ancestors evolved A253G, and they picked
up M273V from a Denisovan source.
END QUOTE:
These are all possible scenarios, but he doesn't take into consideration
that more ancient sequence has already been found in the Denisovan
genome that has already been proposed to have come from a distantly
related Homo that Denisovans interbred with in Asia. Neanderthals do
not have these sequences. This relative has been proposed to be the
Asian Homo erectus. What needs to be done is to determine if the M273V Denisovan variant exists among the more ancient DNA sequences that have already been identified. These ancient sequences (possibly H. erectus sequences) only exist as short haplotypes within the Denisovan genome,
and some of them have been transferred to modern humans from Denisovans
(the ancient (H. erectus?) haplotypes are flanked by Denisovan sequence
in modern humans).
Ron Okimoto
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