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I feel a little heretical in saying that the headlines may say Homo erectus, but the Denisovan connection is pointing me a different direction. The connections over time within China are an old topic, and protein data has made them resurface again. www.johnhawks.net/p/rethinking...

johnhawks.netRethinking Homo erectus and Denisovans with ancient proteinsMixture demonstrated for old fossil teeth hints that anthropologists may have mixed ideas.

15/5/26, 9:09 pm7 reposts22 likes

joel hanes

@joelhanes.bsky.social

15 May

When I took physical anthro half a century ago, the "shovel-shaped incisors" in Chinese erectus and in today's eastern Asian populations were discussed as evidence for a braided line of sapiens descent, incorporating genes from the erectus population.

John Hawks

@johnhawks.net

15 May

This is a classic example, and remains true. The challenge that emerged is that the connections between genes and traits like these are not yet known, and so the possibility of genetic coincidences, parallelism, is hard to rule out. We lost faith in traits, in a way. Biochemistry is catching up.