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Homo (from Latin homÅ 'human') is a genus of great ape (family Hominidae) that emerged from the genus Australopithecus and encompasses only a single extant species, Homo sapiens (modern humans), along with a number of extinct species (collectively called archaic humans) classified as either ancestral or closely related to modern humans; these include Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis.
The migrating modern human populations are known to have interbred with earlier local populations, so that contemporary human populations are descended in small part (below 10% contribution) from regional varieties of archaic humans. [note 2] After the Last Glacial Maximum, North Eurasian populations migrated to the Americas about 20,000 years ago.
Some evidence of archaic humans settling and migrating throughout Asia from Africa can be proven with the skulls found in the Upper Cave in Zhoukoudian, China. Since the Zhoukoudian skull is a Homo erectus (Homo ergaster), scientists generally agree that it had ultimately originated from Africa, since Homo erectus originated from there.
Archaic humans in Europe beginning about 0.8 Ma (cleaver-producing Acheulean groups) are classified as a separate, erectus-derived species, known as Homo heidelbergensis. [3] H. heidelbergensis from about 0.4 Ma develops its own characteristic industry, known as Clactonian.
The most archaic human fossils from the Middle Pleistocene (780,000–125,000 years ago) [18] have been found in Europe. Remains of Homo heidelbergensis have been found as far north as the Atapuerca Mountains in Gran Dolina, Spain, and the oldest specimens can be dated from 850,000 to 200,000 years ago. [19] [20]
The Neanderthal DNA found in modern human genomes has long raised questions about ancient interbreeding. New studies offer a timeline of when that occurred and when ancient humans left Africa.
The results show that haplogroup D introgressed 37,000 years ago (based on the coalescence age of derived D alleles) into modern humans from an archaic human population that separated 1.1 million years ago (based on the separation time between D and non-D alleles), consistent with the period when Neanderthals and modern humans co-existed and ...
The findings suggest that very early human history was complex, and modern humans likely interacted with Neanderthals — and other types of archaic humans, including the enigmatic Denisovans ...