Should we discuss the elephant in the room? There's a thread of research influenced by Chinese nationalism that champions the thought of either the origins of sapiens in Asia or, at the very least, the evolutionary origins of the Chinese in Asia rather than Africa. I've seen Chinese geneticists argue that the genetic evidence is opposite of the out of Africa theory. I'm really starting to wonder if this discrepancy between genetic evidence and the morphological analyses coming out of the region is biased for this reason. Or is it really just a matter of morphology and DNA not behaving in a lockstep manner?
You ask a good question and the nationalist element is an important one to keep in mind with work not only in China but in many other nations also. Homo longi, or “Dragon man”, is a name coined in part for its nationalist dimension, so is “Denisovan” for Russia. Keeping that in mind, in this case the morphology does indeed pose some interesting contrasts with genetics. But that can be taken too far: morphology *never* provides equivalent information to genomes, there is always overlap in morphology between closely related populations and species and interpreting individuals as part of a tree is a choice that will always lead to some misleading conclusions.
"Denisovan" name was actually proposed by Western scientists, Russian archaeologists suggested "altaiensis" term. There are some some other anthropological concepts that have nationalist aspects, in case of Russia, for example, the Indo-European origin story on south Russian plane, which seems to be fairly correct, and some amusingly weird theories like Etruscans being early Russians. But Denisovans is not any kind of national origin mythology.
But in Russia as well as China there is more pushback against a standard "Out of Africa" dogma which is considered a largely ideological framework, and I think it is correct to a significant degree.
“Denisovan” is quite an interesting history. It is true that Derevianko suggested altaiensis and the term Denisovan was first suggested by David Reich. Altaiensis never went very far for reasons that are well-known in paleoanthropology. I know all the people involved on the Russian side and they are diverse in their views on the name.
To me the interesting part is upstream from these decisions. The Denisova name was promoted following a kind of urban legend about the cave's history, in preference to the Altaian name for the cave, Aju-Tasch (Аю-Таш), which translates as “bear rock”. The replacement of the Altaian name is not at all surprising in the context of the archaeological work from the 1980s on, although this is a rare site in the region which was given some kind of historical idea for a name instead of either a simple place name or being named for an archaeologist.
In retrospect it's probably ironic that the Denisovans could have been “bear people” to compete directly with the “dragon people”.
The concept of a completely independent hominin evolution in East Asia that gave rise to modern Chinese is widely off the mark, I think, but all recent discoveries point closer to multi-regional evolution concept with a significant ancient local substrate in modern East Asians. Most of Eurasians though have majority ancestry from a small population that survived after a bottleneck 70-60 ky ago, which is traditionally referred to as "Out of Africa" migrants, but in fact have a debatable origin, and more broadly can be placed in West Eurasia.
Thanks for the confidence! I had a tough time finding the best tone on this story. What I came to was what I saw as a big missed opportunity in the publication. I think a lot of the hoopla would be more on target if the DNA evidence is taken seriously.
Should we discuss the elephant in the room? There's a thread of research influenced by Chinese nationalism that champions the thought of either the origins of sapiens in Asia or, at the very least, the evolutionary origins of the Chinese in Asia rather than Africa. I've seen Chinese geneticists argue that the genetic evidence is opposite of the out of Africa theory. I'm really starting to wonder if this discrepancy between genetic evidence and the morphological analyses coming out of the region is biased for this reason. Or is it really just a matter of morphology and DNA not behaving in a lockstep manner?
You ask a good question and the nationalist element is an important one to keep in mind with work not only in China but in many other nations also. Homo longi, or “Dragon man”, is a name coined in part for its nationalist dimension, so is “Denisovan” for Russia. Keeping that in mind, in this case the morphology does indeed pose some interesting contrasts with genetics. But that can be taken too far: morphology *never* provides equivalent information to genomes, there is always overlap in morphology between closely related populations and species and interpreting individuals as part of a tree is a choice that will always lead to some misleading conclusions.
"Denisovan" name was actually proposed by Western scientists, Russian archaeologists suggested "altaiensis" term. There are some some other anthropological concepts that have nationalist aspects, in case of Russia, for example, the Indo-European origin story on south Russian plane, which seems to be fairly correct, and some amusingly weird theories like Etruscans being early Russians. But Denisovans is not any kind of national origin mythology.
But in Russia as well as China there is more pushback against a standard "Out of Africa" dogma which is considered a largely ideological framework, and I think it is correct to a significant degree.
“Denisovan” is quite an interesting history. It is true that Derevianko suggested altaiensis and the term Denisovan was first suggested by David Reich. Altaiensis never went very far for reasons that are well-known in paleoanthropology. I know all the people involved on the Russian side and they are diverse in their views on the name.
To me the interesting part is upstream from these decisions. The Denisova name was promoted following a kind of urban legend about the cave's history, in preference to the Altaian name for the cave, Aju-Tasch (Аю-Таш), which translates as “bear rock”. The replacement of the Altaian name is not at all surprising in the context of the archaeological work from the 1980s on, although this is a rare site in the region which was given some kind of historical idea for a name instead of either a simple place name or being named for an archaeologist.
In retrospect it's probably ironic that the Denisovans could have been “bear people” to compete directly with the “dragon people”.
Interesting story, thank you!
The concept of a completely independent hominin evolution in East Asia that gave rise to modern Chinese is widely off the mark, I think, but all recent discoveries point closer to multi-regional evolution concept with a significant ancient local substrate in modern East Asians. Most of Eurasians though have majority ancestry from a small population that survived after a bottleneck 70-60 ky ago, which is traditionally referred to as "Out of Africa" migrants, but in fact have a debatable origin, and more broadly can be placed in West Eurasia.
Naw, Chris Stringer sums it up best with "mostly out of Africa."
Having seen some "over the top" headlines in the popular press, I was waiting for your sober, cautious opinion. Thanks for keeping us on track.
Thanks for the confidence! I had a tough time finding the best tone on this story. What I came to was what I saw as a big missed opportunity in the publication. I think a lot of the hoopla would be more on target if the DNA evidence is taken seriously.