14,000-year-old
hominin thigh bone has archaic affinities.
In 2012, human remains differing
from the modern condition were reported from two sites 300 km (185 miles) apart
in southwest China: Longlin Cave in Guangxi Province, and Maludong (‘Red Deer Cave’) in Yunnan Province. The Longlin remains
have been radiocarbon dated to 11,500 years old, and those from Maludong to 14,000
years old. The Longlin remains included a partial skull, a temporal bone
fragment probably belonging to the skull, a partial lower jawbone and some
fragmentary postcranial bones. The cheek bones of the skull are broad and flared sideways; the
browridges conspicuous; the chin less prominent than in Homo sapiens; and the remains are very robust. The Maludong remains
include a skullcap, two partial jawbones and a partial thighbone.
Popularly
reported as the Red Deer Cave people, the hominins were at first thought to
represent a single population, but newly-published work suggests that the Longlin
skull has affinities to early modern humans. The bony labyrinth (the bony outer
wall of the inner ear) of the temporal bone fragment is modern in appearance
and it is possible that the skull’s unusual shape might be the result of
interbreeding between archaic and modern humans. It has been suggested that Longlin
was located in a ‘hybrid zone’ – a border between relict archaic and modern
populations. Similar hybrid zones occur with some non-human primate
populations.
The Maludong
thighbone is now claimed to show affinities to archaic humans, in particular those
from the Early Pleistocene. There is a scarcity of later archaic human remains
in East Asia, and the authors of the new report are reluctant to assign the thighbone
to a particular archaic human species. However, the likeliest possibility is
that the thighbone represents a late survival of Homo erectus in China. Regardless of species, the implications of
these new findings is that isolated populations of archaic humans were still in
existence in China as late as 11,500 years ago and that some of these
populations were interbreeding with modern humans.
References:
1. Curnoe, D. et al.,
Human Remains from the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition of Southwest China
Suggest a Complex Evolutionary History for East Asians. PLoS One 7
(3) (2012).
2. Curnoe, D., Ji, X.,
Taçon, P. & Yaozheng, G., Possible Signatures of Hominin Hybridization from
the Early Holocene of Southwest China. Scientific Reports 5,
12408 (2015).
3. Curnoe, D. et al.,
A Hominin Femur with Archaic Affinities from the Late Pleistocene of Southwest
China. PLoS One (2015).
