New Human Ancestor Increases Odds of Mysterious Elders

My pet theory regarding ancient civilisations, and in particular pyramids, revolves around the concept of “mysterious elders”, a human species more advanced than us in many ways, helping us evolve culturally for selfish reasons.

In the Bible they were known as the Nephilim or the Watchers. In most ancient cultures they were the strangers who arrived and taught all sorts of education, including waterworks, writing, and construction. Perhaps they still exist? Supposedly Neanderthals could walk amongst us unnoticed (if they still existed), so other recent hominid species could also presumably do likewise.

Just like dragons and unicorns, the evidence required is a fossil or two. Fossils are unfortunately quite rare (all fossilised human bones could fit in the back of of a pickup truck…), and if a species was quite low in numbers, we might never find that evidence.

But, as luck would have it, we might have the first evidence for enlightened relatives. So far all we know is that we have new members to the family tree of our species:

“It was a shock to find DNA from a new type of ancestor that has not been on our radar screens,” says geneticist Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. These enigmatic hominids left Africa in a previously unsuspected migration around 1 million years ago, a team led by Pääbo and Max Planck graduate student Johannes Krause reports in a paper published online March 24 in Nature.

The researchers base their claim on DNA from a finger bone belonging to a hominid that lived in the Altai Mountains of central Asia between about 48,000 and 30,000 years ago.

…Tattersall regards the new mitochondrial DNA sequence as so distinctive that, unless disproved by further evidence, it must represent a new type of hominid.

Statistically speaking, the more randomly found fossils you have, the greater the odds of picking the eras of their existence. With just a single finger, the chances of this new species lasting a million years (and even through to the present day) are the same as it lasting a number of generations in the single digits.

Related posts:

1. New Hominid = Mysterious Elders
2. Siberia: A New, Recent Hominin Added to the Mix
3. Human evolution speeding up?
4. Humans previously almost died out
5. Stegomastadon: Another Unexplained Extinction