Human Evolution - Lecture 7 Flashcards
Where do humans come from?
○ 300.000 years ago: modern humans appear in Africa
○ 200,000 years ago: Get to Greece and China but didn’t leave any descendants
○ 70,000 years ago: Disperse to the rest of the world
How did humans disperse?
Walked, 1km per year
How are neanderthals different to us?
○ Bumps on eyebrows
○ Existed 400,000 - 30,000 years ago
○ Overlapped 5,000 years ago
○ Cousins, not ancestors
What did neanderthals do?
○ Collected feathers
○ Had piercings made out of fishbone
○ Lived in family groups: males stayed while females moved between groups
○ Used animal hides (skin) for clothes
○ DIved for shells and made string to make jewellery
○ Made cave art
○ Buried the dead (debated)
How did neanderthals go extinct?
○ Maybe 4,000 of them in the whole of Europe in small groups of a dozen or so which is dangerously small
○ Don’t really know
What happened to neanderthals genome?
○ Genome sequenced
○ Non-africans bred with Neanderthals
○ Around 3% of non-African DNA is Neanderthal
○ Genes involved in skin colour and immune response
What is the difference between human and neanderthals genome?
○ 31,389 single base changes but only 96 amino acid differences between humans and Neanderthals
○ 3117 regulatory regions
What was discovered about the Denisovans?
○ 40,000 year old massive tooth discovered
○ Found a tiny finger bone - crushed to analyse DNA
○ Could use boats
○ Made art?
How are Denisovans related to humans?
○ Modern populations in Asia have Denisovan genes
○ Tibetans got their EPASI allele from the Denisovans
How are Neanderthals and Denisovans related?
Bred with each other
How did Neanderthals and Denisovans smell?
○ Neanderthals and Denisovans would have hated the smell of androstenone due to 2 single base changes
○ Denisovans more sensitive to smells associated with honey
○ Neanderthals more sensitive to sulphurous smells
What were the Hobbit?
○ Tiny looking humans?
○ No DNA extracted from remains as they were found in a humid, warm cave
○ No sign in SE Asian DNA
