Sout5heast Asia crowded with archaic human groups long before we turned up.
Posted: Wed Jul 17, 2019 4:41 pm
A map showing where the ancestors of modern humans appear to have met and mixed with archaic hominins. Author provided
The other pulse of modern humans headed south down the Malaysian Peninsula and into Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) where a big surprise awaited.
"Around 55,000-50,000 years ago, a population of modern humans left Africa and started on the long trek that would lead them around the world. After rapidly crossing Eurasia and Southeast Asia, they travelled through the islands of Indonesia, .."
"While moving through ISEA, the modern human population appears to have met – and mixed with – two more archaic human groups. Hunter-gatherer populations in the Philippines preserve signals of yet another Denisovan-mixing event (marked 4 on the map), after they had diverged from the main wave of modern humans moving through ISEA. "
"The ancestral population of modern humans then appears to have split as it moved across Asia with one pulse dispersing north into mainland Asia, where it met and mixed with a Denisovan group (marked 2 on the map). These Denisovans were genetically close to those we already know about from the Altai mountains. "
"ISEA was clearly a very crowded place around 50,000 years ago, occupied by many different archaic human groups on many different islands. But shortly thereafter there was only one survivor: us.
Full https://theconversation.com/southeast-a ... -up-119818