New Clues to Archaic Human Evolution

The evolutionary history of humans just gets more interesting every day.

Last month (Nov. 5) I reported on an anatomical analysis of a series of archaic human skulls that challenged the “multiple species” theory of archaic human evolution. The authors of the study concluded that despite marked anatomical differences between the skulls, they could in fact all have belonged to one species.

New evidence using DNA analysis seems to support the notion of interrelatedness of seemingly distinct groups of archaic humans. The oldest sample of human DNA ever analyzed comes from a fossil of an ancient human ancestor who lived in Spain nearly 400,000 years ago. As expected, this DNA shares many features with the DNA of the Neanderthals who lived on the same continent. However (and surprisingly), it most closely resembles the DNA of a group of ancient humans called the Denisovans, who lived in Siberia nearly 4,000 miles away and more than 300,000 years later.

In light of the new DNA findings, scientists are going to have to think seriously about how far archaic humans might have traveled, and about how much they might have interbred when they came in contact with each other. If in fact they did come in contact with each other and interbreed, it may be time to consider that archaic humans all belonged to one species, and not the multiple species generally described by most paleoanthropologists.