HOW MIDNIGHT DIGS AT A HOLY TIBETAN CAVE OPENED A WINDOW TO PREHISTORIC HUMANS LIVING ON THE ROOF OF

HOW MIDNIGHT DIGS AT A HOLY TIBETAN CAVE OPENED A WINDOW TO PREHISTORIC HUMANS LIVING ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD
NOVEMBER 15, 2020



New DNA data has confirmed that a Himalayan cave high on the Tibetan Plateau once hosted representatives of the enigmatic species of extinct human beings known as Denisovans, research recently published in the journal Science has revealed.

The scientists, led by the Lanzhou University of China and backed up by archaeologists, geologists and geneticists from Australia, Germany and the U.S., said that new DNA and archaeological evidence demonstrated the long-term presence of humans at high altitude some 120,000 years earlier than previously understood—modern humans were not thought to have inhabited the Tibetan Plateau until some 40,000 years ago.

The find confirms that the first modern hominins to inhabit the area were not Neanderthals, as was previously assumed, instead of showing that Denisovan populations are more likely to have been widespread and not limited to Siberia, where the only previously known fossil fragments were discovered in 2010.

“We detected ancient human fragments that matched mitochondrial DNA associated with Denisovans in four different layers of sediment deposited around 100,000 and 60,000 years ago,” said Associate Professor Bo Li of the University of Wollongong, the team’s dating specialist and co-author of the new research.

More:
https://archaeology-world.com/how-midnight-digs-at-a-holy-tibetan-cave-opened-a-window-to-prehistoric-humans-living-on-the-roof-of-the-world/?utm_source=pushengage&utm_medium=push_notification&utm_campaign=pushengage

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From last year:

A Revealing Piece of Ancient Human History, Discovered in a Tibetan Cave
The remarkable, fossilized jawbone has no chin, and the teeth within it are exceptionally large.

ED YONG
MAY 1, 2019

In 2008, scientists working in Denisova Cave—a cold site in Siberia’s Altai Mountains—uncovered a strange pinky bone, broader than a typical human’s. The DNA within that bone revealed that its owner belonged to an entirely new group of ancient hominins, distinct from Homo sapiens or Neanderthals. That group became known as the Denisovans.

Researchers have since decoded the Denisovan genome. But still, no one can say what they looked like. Every known Denisovan fossil would fit in your palm—that pinky, three teeth, and a remarkable bone sliver from a Denisovan-Neanderthal hybrid. And all of these remains came from the same cave.

But now, an international team of scientists has announced the identification of another Denisovan fossil, from a site 1,500 miles away. It’s the right half of a jawbone, found some 10,700 feet above sea level in a cave in China’s Xiahe County, on the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau. The Xiahe mandible, as it is now known, is not only the first Denisovan fossil to be found outside Denisova Cave, but also the very first Denisovan fossil to be found at all. It just took four decades for anyone to realize that.

The mandible was discovered by a local monk in 1980 and donated to Lanzhou University. There, it lay unstudied until 2010, when a team led by Fahu Chen and Dongju Zhang—a climatologist and an archaeologist, respectively—began examining it in earnest. The world learned about the existence of the Denisovans at around that time, and though fossils had only been recovered from Siberia, it was clear that these hominins likely existed throughout much of East Asia. Smatterings of Denisovan DNA still persist in the genes of living people in this region and beyond, and how else could it have made it into the genomes of modern Tibetans or Melanesians? Still, “I never imagined that [the Xiahe mandible] could be a Denisovan,” Zhang says.

More:
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/05/denisovan-jawbone-roof-world/588442/



photos of the area in Tibet:

https://tinyurl.com/y6dw39be







Scientists Created Picture of Our Ancient Ancestor Look Using DNA
September 23, 20190

https://www.naukrinama.com/stressbuster/scientists-created-picture-of-our-ancient-ancestor-look-using-dna/