DNA from Lost Human Population Leads to More Questions than Answers.

 The Sahara as we know it today is so much different than what it once was. In its glory, it was an oasis full of life and beauty, and proved to be a channel for ideas to spread. The dessert and who inhabited it has been a mystery. Recently, geneticists were FINALLY able to examine gene sequences from the skeletons of two women. There is proof of pottery that came from outside the dessert, proving they had contact with people outside of their own families, but their genetics say the opposite...

The genes derived from the women show that they do not share genetic links to the African cultures surrounding the Sahara. In fact, the skelton has around 10 times LESS genetic code in common with Neanderthals, then current populations in the surrounding areas. There lies the mystery.

And to make it even weirder, there was clear signs of communication with other civilizations, due to the pottery and agricultural ideas that were shared, but no signs of gene mixing between them. 

The populations of the "green Sahara" have always been a mystery as it seems every new discovery leads to more questions, like in 2013 when a common burial ground used over 4 millenia, and had a random switch from only women and children to male burials. 

As technology advances we get more insight into our past, and I look forward what answers we get to how our species evolved to what we are today, and why these Saharan skeletons are an outlier to sciences prior beliefs. 

Saharan Genetics

2013 Findings

Virus fighter may have played a key role in human evolution

According to a new study , researchers have discovered a virus fighting protein in humans and other primates that triggers an eruption in genetic mutations that may have sped up the evolution of our species.

Way before humans were on this earth viruses have been inserting their genetic material onto the host and tricking the hosts cell into making more of the virus. Overtime of having invasive viruses, our body builds up a natural immunity called retrovirus to counteract and destroy the virus. Also our bodies have mutated this DNA into so called APOBEC proteins that seek out certain combinations of the complimentary bases that make up DNA. These proteins chemically convert the base cytosine to uracil during translation , disrupting the gene.

In 2012, researchers at Cornell University found that certain APOBEC proteins do the same thing in cancer changing the bases causing lots of mutations that further the cells into uncontrolled growth.

But how did this effect human evolution ?

If these mutative APOBEC proteins were active in a sex cell such as sperm or egg, these mutations could possibly affect future generations and could forever alter the course of evolution. All together the researchers found around 40,000 mutations occurring in 10,00 clusters in chimp and human genomes that they think were caused by these proteins. One mutation can change the physically and chemically attributes of a person , being able to control these APOBEC proteins to specifically mutate certain genomes can be terrifying.

Researchers are now calculation what percentage of the genetic changes that mad us human were cause by APOBEC proteins. A newborn is expected 70 new mutations in its genome but just one of these proteins can introduce thousands of them in one generation , speeding up the rate of evolution rapidly.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/04/virus-fighter-may-have-played-key-role-human-evolution

A new species of human , the "Hobbit"

Scientists have made the startling discovery of a lost world of small archaic humans only a meter tall (3 feet) , who hunted dwarf elephants and Komodo dragons on an Indonesian island as recently as 18,000 years ago. The researchers uncovered the skull and skeleton of an adult human female with a brain the size of a grapefruit and a body the size of a Hobbit. This diminutive new species lived on the tropical island of Flores , dubbed Homo floresiensis.

Something didn't add up for the scientist though, Now, many of the same scientists who made the discovery have revised their estimate of the fossils age, based on an exhaustive new analysis of the cave’s geology. Instead of living 18,000 years ago, as they originally reported, the hobbit lived between 60,000 and 100,000 years ago some 10,000 years before H. sapiens arrived in the region . The original date of 18,000 years ago would have put the "Hobbit" living hand in hand with homo sapiens.

To get the new dates of 60,000 and 100,000 years old the scientist went about it with a new method. Instead of carbon dating the bones found the scientist carbon dated the sediment around it. Dating on the gravelly sediment layer containing the fossils suggested it was deposited between 100,000 and 60,000 years ago. Just above it is a layer of volcanic ash that was dated to about 60,000 years ago. This suggests that the fossils themselves couldn’t possibly be younger than 60,000 years old, disproving the 18,000 year old date.

With this new data, it is not thought that homo sapiens to have spread to Southeast Asian islands and into Australia 50,000 years ago. The teams report of the much older sediments as well as the fossils themselves suggest the fossils could have not belong to homo sapiens. There is evidence of homo sapiens in the cave 11,000 years ago, whether homo floresiensis survived long enough to interact with modern humans is the question to ask now.

Shrunken head. A new human species (right-hand skull) is much smaller than its putative ancestor, Homo erectus.