Dear humans, We thought it was time we looked through YOUR source code. We found a mystery ancestor. Signed, the computers

The human genome is hiding secrets that point to a mystery ancestor alongside our hominid cousins the Neanderthals and Denisovans, according to AI software. Homo sapiens, the only surviving species in the homo genus, once bred with its extinct relatives Homo neanderthalensis and Homo denisova hundreds of thousands of years ago …

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Many mysteries

"But currently we're one race (i.e. we can completely interbreed and there are no reliable genetic clusters that really point to long term population isolation.)"

Never been to Norfolk and seen the Norfolkers then?

Not so much a gene pool, more of a small puddle....

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Many mysteries

"Never been to Norfolk and seen the Norfolkers then?"

Having heard this so many times I was interested in Leslie et al, 2015, the Nature paper on fine structure of Britain They produced a map in which lowland England came out as homogeneous. The distinct populations were in upland Britain. Norfolk was just part of the amorphous blob. Not distinct from the rest at all.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Many mysteries

"Truth is, the multi-species conventional wisdom is looking more and more pants."

Did anyone catch the 2018 Royal Institutional Christmas Lectures (only 3 - there used to be 5, everything goes downhill)? This year it was a two hander, the anatomist Alice Roberts and a geneticist guest lecturer, Aoife McLysaght. Roberts was presenting the usual Neanderthalis vs Sapiens when McLysaght interjected "it's all one species". It's the old splitters versus lumpers all over again.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, have I got this straight?

Having not inter bred, the "Africans", in this context, are the purest of the species in the homo genus.

Now that's gotta upset a few good ole boys!

[Dabbb]

Re: So, have I got this straight?

Not sure inbred is better than interbred.

[Wellyboot]

Re: So, have I got this straight?

Inbred - in a pool of 1Bn plus? which one is the village idiot.

[James 51]

Re: So, have I got this straight?

Various studies have shown that there is more genetic diversity in Africa than the rest of the world combined but it is better stirred in the rest of the world. Would post links but my phone browser doesn't like multiple tabs.

[Keith Langmead]

Re: So, have I got this straight?

"Various studies have shown that there is more genetic diversity in Africa than the rest of the world combined but it is better stirred in the rest of the world."

Yeah I remember seeing a program with Prof Alice Roberts a while back where she talked about the genetic family tree of humans. Within Africa is was a full tree but everyone leaving Africa came from a single branch. I think it was based on some of the first genetic analysis done on people all round the world, so they could see that looking at people outside of Africa they have a certain common ancestry, but when doing the same comparison for people across Africa the common ancestry was much further back in time. Of course this was quite a few years ago, so with more recent discoveries it may no longer be accurate.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: So, have I got this straight?

"Of course this was quite a few years ago"

The Incredible Human Journey? I don't think it was that long ago and it's being repeated on BBC 4. There was a more recent series called "Origins of us". All worth watching, up to the standards of Horizon of long ago instead of the usual Beeb science programme of 15 minutes padded out to 50mins or an hour.

[JimmyPage]

Maybe there was a monolith invovled ...

sure I saw a documentary about it ....

[Kubla Cant]

Out of Africa

Hey man, have you heard about this place up North?

No. What place is that?

The Neander Valley. It's full of these really hot women. They've got the lot - red hair, brow ridges, really huge noses!

Wow! Is it far?

Not sure, but it's got to be worth a trip.

Let's go!

[Tim99]

Dah, Dah, Dah, Daahh

They came from outer space.

[Anonymous Coward]

Race

"Surely if we all fucked each other the race problem would cease after a few generations?"

Michael X as quoted in OZ 7 in October 1967

[Version 1.0]

Re: Race

We know that skin colour is controlled by genetics but we never ask ourselves why it's distributed in all its variations in the way that it is - it's a minor point really, we're all pink on the inside and happily copulate to generate new variations/generations ... 80,000 years is a lot of generations and our known historical record only goes back about 15,000.

I think it's more likely that there aren't any mystery ancestors - the variations we see today are just the result of isolation - take a population and isolate it in chunks for a couple of hundred thousand years a time, and then rinse and repeat ... Do that for two or three million years and you've got modern genetics.

[wayne 8]

Re: Race

Stop reproducing and all problems would cease.

[arctic_haze]

How do you call someone who hates other species?

A specialist?

[Waseem Alkurdi]

Re: How do you call someone who hates other species?

Nah, they've beaten you to a word: speciesism.

www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/animals/rights/speciesism.shtml (anybody noticed that there's something wrong with the URL tag after the design refresh?)

[Anonymous Coward]

Seen this plot before

The missing ancestor is an ugly pangalactic shapeshifter.

See this Star Trek episode

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: Seen this plot before

I'd rather have a Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster

[FrankAlphaXII]

Re: Seen this plot before

Gotta keep an eye on your girdlesprings and the side-warbling that they cause when installed too close to the gargleblaster.

[FrankAlphaXII]

See Icon Description

It was the exaterrestrials. We'll call 'em Lemurians, unless that's copyrighted by the Theosophical Society or the OTO. If that's the case we'll call them the Star Fairy Tribe.

I'll write a detailed description of why with tons of pseudoscience and occult crap for the low, low price of 39.95, paid monthly.

[K Cartlidge]

Tanu or Firvulag?

Or corporeal Lylmiks?

[SNAFUology]

Convergence

Most exciting news for a long while. it will be interesting to see if it can be confirmed in with much hard evidence.

I'm not such a great of fan of the recent Genetics trumps Archaeology view - both are tools & methods of science observation and must be taken together.

[Sanguma]

common knowledge innit?

Isn't it common knowledge that Donald Trump (and other politicians) is descended from both Piltdown Man (Eoanthropus dawsoni ) and Nebraska Man (Hesperopithecus haroldcookii)? Or did he in fact derive from the Sumatran Rat Monkey? Inquiring minds wants to know.

[Teiwaz]

Re: common knowledge innit?

Sumatran?

Kumquat Rat Monkey more like.

[GruntyMcPugh]

I'm not saying it Hobbits,...

... but it's Hobbits.

Mine's the one with the ring in the pocket.

[Teiwaz]

Re: I'm not saying it Hobbits,...

... but it's Hobbits.

Personally, I think'ses it's ring-twisted river people.

....because they'ses precious.....

...and explains a lot about the human psyche.

...and male pattern baldness.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares about the details ?

If it's a chance to see more of Prof. Alice Roberts on TV :) ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously it came from Outer Space. Chariots of the Gods, anyone?

Might explain how / why the human brain has doubled in size in the last couple of hundred thousand years (which is why human childbirth is *soooo* difficult). And that's with skull bones overlapping, no myelin sheaths around neurons at birth (to make the volume smaller - all done in first year of life), and the gigantic difference between human intelligence and that of the Great Apes despite nearly all of our DNA being common.