Friday, October 20, 2017

Goyet Man & Dog @ Belgium & Tianyuan Man @ China

Scientists seem surprised but I would have expected that these two specimens of the same time should be related, and that the first modern humans to enter Neanderthal/ Denisovan territory would bring dogs bred from a common source.

This is because among the first HSS to enter both Europe and China were Y Haplogroup DE dominated peoples who practiced tooth-knocking, matrilineal society, and carried high neanderthal introgression. 

They learned wolf domestication from neanderthals and Denisovans, and perhgaps improved upon it, but we'll save that for another article.

This early northern population's origin is in the middle east, where they mixed with the Mungo Man genome and obtained a high rate of the Mungo Man Chromosome 11 Insertion. 

Neanderthals drove them out of the Middle East starting around 70 thousand years ago, and they were divided into two groups; Y Hap D in the East and Y Hap E in the West. 

Around that time they also entered Africa, driving Y Haps A and B into the badlands and becoming the dominate Y Hap on the continent by 10k ago. 

The European group mainly occupied the Mediterranean during the Paleolithic Period, while Y Hap I is the classic Cro-Magnon group of the Northern regions. 

Y Hap C was also present in both places, and a minor component of the DE population, but was decimated in the agricultural revolution and the later metallurgist invaders.

When the agriculturalist entered China and Europe, they took Y Hap DE's women and drove them into Tibet, Japan, and certain Mediterranean populations. The Y Hap is still prevalent among Basques and Iberians.

Here are the two articles:

A new study in Current Biology analyzed the entire genome of the Tianyuan man who was found near Beijing, China and lived around 40,000 years ago. The Tianyuan man’s genome marks the earliest ancient DNA from East Asia, but this is not the first time we have studied Tianyuan’s genes. 

The Tianyuan skeleton was unearthed near the Zhoukoudian site, about 50 km southwest of Beijing. 
In 2013 paper in PNAS, the same group that published the Current Biology paper showed there is a closer relationship of Tianyuan to present-day Asians, based off his genes, than to present-day Europeans. At that time it was suggested that present-day Asian history has a deep lineage as far back as 40,000 years ago. 
In the last 4 years, we have had more data showing that modern Europeans derive from more prehistoric populations which separated early from other early non-African populations soon after the migration out of Africa. This hasn’t changed our understanding of East Asian ancestry however, showing that Tianyuan’s genetic similarity to Asians remained in comparisons including ancient Europeans without mixed ancestry… 
But, most interestingly it was surprising that when they compared Tianyuan to the 35,000-year-old individual from Belgium, GoyetQ116-1, who in other ways reflected an ancient European, he shared some genetic similarity to the Tianyuan individual that no other ancient Europeans shared. This suggests that the two populations represented by the Tianyuan and GoyetQ116-1 individuals derived some of their ancestry from a sub-population prior to the European-Asian separation. 

https://anthropology.net/2017/10/14/tianyuan-man-genome-reveals-the-nuances-of-asian-prehistory/ 

An international team of scientists has just identified what they believe is the world's first known dog, which was a large and toothy canine that lived 31,700 years ago and subsisted on a diet of horse, musk ox and reindeer, according to a new study. 
The discovery could push back the date for the earliest dog by 17,700 years, since the second oldest known dog, found in Russia, dates to 14,000 years ago. 
Remains for the older prehistoric dog, which were excavated at Goyet Cave in Belgium, suggest to the researchers that the Aurignacian people of Europe from the Upper Paleolithic period first domesticated dogs. Fine jewelry and tools, often decorated with depictions of big game animals, characterize this culture. 

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/27240370/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/worlds-first-dog-lived-years-ago-ate-big/#.WeI7H7pFzDd

MORE:

Dr Krishna Veeramah of Stony Brook University in New York, who is not connected with the study, said wolves are the only big carnivore that has been domesticated. 



To test whether cooperation comes naturally to wolves and dogs, scientists carried out a classic behaviour experiment. 

Known as the rope-pulling test, it involves two animals simultaneously pulling on a rope to pull a tray towards them to get food. 

The animals are rewarded with a chunk of raw meat only if they pull the rope together. 

The scientists found that dogs succeeded at only two of 472 attempts. Wolves, however, managed the task 100 times during 416 attempts. 

Dr Marshall-Pescini of the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna said wolves "did pretty well" at the task, performing on a par with chimpanzees. 

"[Wolves] are incredibly cooperative with each other and they form very strong social bonds," she said. 

Dogs almost never worked together on the rope task, possibly because they wished to avoid conflict. 


''It is possible that their social behaviour was key to this process, and thus studies like this help piece together more of the puzzle,'' he explained. 

The story of how dogs came to be tamed from wolves is complex and hotly debated. 

Some time around 30,000 years ago, wolves moved to the edges of human camps to scavenge for leftovers. [DD: The savanna story, wolf not dog breeding] 

The long process of domestication began to alter the behaviour and genes of wolves and they eventually evolved into the dogs that we know today. 

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-41639176 




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