The Weekly WTF: Today’s humans (that’s us) are a hybrid of modern human and two more ancient human species.
That’s right. According to the New York Times, there’s been a scientific breakthrough that’s revolutionizing the way science thinks of human development.
The scientific community has always had an uncontested view that 50,000 years ago, more or less genetically modern humans started to leave Africa and populate the earth. The theory was that modern humans replaced any previous genetic relatives to humans. But scientists are now learning that there are still traces of non-modern human genetic material in the genes of humans alive today. It was previously known that many humans share up to 5% of the same genes as Neanderthals had, but it’s now coming to light that there’s a completely new type of pre-modern human whose genes live on in many of us: the Denisovans.
The New York Times reported the story with a very helpful and also rather mind-blowing visualization:
