More ancient DNA

Another ancient hominid (not neanderthals, perhaps one of their contemporaries, or even an earlier erectus variant) appears to have interbred with humans. About 5% of Melanesian DNA appears to come from this hominid, whereas there seems to have been little or no interbreeding with the predecessors of groups such as Europeans, East Asians or Africans. Earlier results showed that modern Eurasians can trace a few percent of their DNA to Neanderthals.

NYTimes, Nature.

So, the following are true:

1. there were wildly divergent ancient hominids (in terms of development, skull shape, physiognomy) who could and did interbreed

2. different groups of modern humans have different distributions of ancient DNA as a consequence of this interbreeding

Much more discussion by Razib at the link below.

gnxp: ... When I was a freshman at university I took a biological anthropology course. The instructor threw out a question to the class. He noted that some paleoanthropologists observed a continuity between the skulls of Australian Aborigines and some Southeast Asian erectine populations. Australian Aborigines are a very robust people, and have been less affected by the trend toward gracility which has been the norm over the past 10,000 years for most human populations. In any case, the instructor asked for a show of hands whether such a possibility should even be discussed openly. The solid majority of the class rejected an open discussion. When asked by the instructor why, many of the students who rejected an examination of the thesis argued that such a possibility opened the path to de-humanization, oppression, and was politically too sensitive. Milford Wolpoff had obviously lost the propaganda war. The students did not consider the possibility of multiregionalism where all human populations exhibited continuity, rather, they assumed that continuity hypothesized for Australian Aborigines was specific to them, and so would associate that population with the less human branches of the hominin tree.