A new view of geneticists on the development of Homo

"Scientific Russia" The use of computer models in combination with genetic data allowed us to find out new details of the relationship of various representatives of the genus Homo.

This was reported by a geneticist from the University of Texas Ryan J. Ryan J. Bohlender at the annual conference of the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) – see the press release Ancient Human History More Complex than Previously Thought, Researchers Say.

Bolender and his colleagues have developed a new computer model that takes into account, first of all, the data we know about the size of the population of certain regions in certain epochs, as well as the estimated dates of separation of different species, for example, the separation of Neanderthals from the ancestors of Homo Sapiens, the separation of Denisov man. Then they compared the resulting model with genetic data, in particular, with the genome of modern man. After that, they changed various parameters in their model and assessed how much in different variants this model coincides, or does not coincide, with real genetic data.

Many of the results obtained by Bolender do not correspond to our current ideas. For example, it turned out that the oldest population of Africa was about 50% larger. The separation of the Neanderthals most likely occurred about 440 thousand years ago, that is, 100 thousand years earlier than is commonly believed. This is especially unexpected, since recently scientists, on the contrary, have strongly emphasized the numerous contacts between Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens.

Bolender, on the other hand, believes that the various branches of Homo mixed much less on the territory of Eurasia than is usually believed, and, again, in contradiction with the accepted opinion, he claims that the level of these contacts was about the same in Europe and in East Asia.

In short, if Bolender's conclusions are accepted by the scientific community, they will lead to a revision of many well-established opinions. But we also need them to be accepted. But for this, first of all, it is necessary to be sure of the correctness of the model developed by him.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  26.10.2016