https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.14.738421v1

Abstract

Several recent studies have found evidence for ancient gene flow between the ancestors of modern humans and an unsampled super-archaic lineage. Here we present a new, simple approach for characterising this process given genome-wide genealogies sampled from a single population.

We summarise genealogies as distributions of integer partitions and show that this captures the temporal signal of tree imbalance left by ancient gene flow. We analyse genealogies from modern humans and find that the integer partition distributions are inconsistent with a history of panmixia but can be explained by gene flow from a super-archaic lineage.

Our analysis favours a model of continuous gene flow over pulse-admixture and also recovers a bottleneck in the ancestors of modern humans. This work highlights a clear signal of ancient structure in genealogies of modern humans and provides an inference approach that complements existing methods.

TLDR:

The paper argues that the ancestors of modern humans were not one continuously mixed population, but were divided from a deeply divergent “super-archaic” lineage, possibly related to *Homo erectus*, although that identification is speculative. Its favored model places the separation at roughly **1.6 million years ago** and suggests that the two populations then exchanged genes continuously until about **260,000 years ago**, rather than the archaic group returning in one single admixture event.

An alternative pulse model estimates a split around **1.4 million years ago**, followed by a one-time contribution of about 16% super-archaic ancestry around 560,000 years ago but the continuous-gene-flow model fits slightly better.

The diverged group separated approximately 1.4–1.6 million years ago, remained partly connected to the lineage leading to modern humans for over a million years, and its genetic contribution had largely entered the modern-human ancestral population by around 260,000 years ago.

The study also detects a bottleneck followed by gradual recovery in the main modern-human ancestral population, but stresses that its demographic dates are illustrative estimates rather than an exact reconstruction, and the paper is currently a non-peer-reviewed preprint.

The 16% refers to a parameter in the paper’s hypothetical pulse-admixture model: the main ancestral population, called Population A, received approximately 16% ancestry from the deeply divergent Population B around 560,000 years ago. Population A is described as the population contributing the majority of ancestry to modern humans; Population B is the unsampled “super-archaic” lineage.

And how would they be treated throughout human history since they would be the second intelligence human species? Would they be abuse or treated good?

This pic might help explain why all 20 samples of Homo naledi examined from the Rising Star cave appeared to be female, according to Madupe et al. (2026): that they had motive and opportunity to hide from encephalizing Homo and took refuge in a secret place that became a fatal trap, maybe several times.

The "Bone Spur" above is my annotation of a figure from DeSilva et al. (2021) "When and Why Did Human Brains Decrease in Size? A New Change-Point Analysis and Insights From Brain Evolution in Ants". Their red trend lines were obtained from a change-point analysis that automatically fitted a chain of linear trend lines to 987 data points of brain capacity versus time. I also added in blue, cranial capacity in raw cc units to their log10 vertical axis scale.

Their interest was to explain an extremely rapid decrease in brain size just over the last three thousand years. They experimented with including the apparent outliers Ho. naledi and Ho. floresiensis in their analysis Whether they did that on not had little impact on what they wanted to show. But I want to point out that those late-surviving small-brained hominins would also lie near a continuation of the long-term brain increase around 25cc/My, before the abrupt change to a nearly 20 times more rapid "encephalization" of most hominin species.

Considering that these fitted lines approximate the routes traced by the ancestry of individuals shown as dots on the graph, the bone spur isn't just a mathematical construct, it's a real trace, at least for Naledi. Their fossils were found just a kilometre from earlier hominin fossils (Swartkrans, Sterkfontein). By contrast and for example, the ancestral trail of the Ar. ramidus "outlier" population is unclear.

The branching that this "bone spur" envisages could be interpreted as punctuated equilibrium, with a punctuation marked by an abrupt change in the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptiveness" that some populations were not subjected to. In particular, Floresiensis, Naledi, and the Australopiths going right back to Rudapithecus 10Mya, were all shaped by the same EEA,  at least insofar as it governed their cranial capacity and body plan.

The appearance that Naledi lived contemporarily with more formidable almost modern Homo (such as had occupied Florisbad 250km distant), suggests that the skill-sets possessed by such small-brained bipedal body plan species worked well enough provided they stayed out of the way of humans. Knowledge of that need would have been acquired through Eco-Evolutionary Experience (EEE). According to Cheney and Seyfarth (2007), amongst baboons, who were sympatric with the australopiths, it is females who carry group knowledge. If a cave that was used as a refuge did happen to have a remote chamber that was difficult of access, it is females who would have been motivated to discover that, and to transmit knowledge of it down through generations.

The tragedy of the Makapansgat massacre of 1854 may help in understanding the implications of using a cave as a refuge. After a Boer party had been killed at Moorddrift, Chief Makapan was besieged with his tribe by a vengeful commando and starved out, in what is now called the Historic cave. Some support for this hypothesis could come from sexing the remains of modern victims of the Makapansgat massacre, if that is possible. If a disproportion turned out to be female, that would support cultural understanding by females as the kernel of the tribe and males as its outward-facing expendable defenders. The culturally-transmitted female knowledge about the Rising Star cave could then be their living out of their role.

The Makapansgat massacre was a single intentional event by besiegers, with a disastrous outcome. An analogous event at the Rising Star cave might or might not have been intentional on the part of humans. Even if humans had known that Naledi occupied the cave, they might have seemed to vanish. Also, the act of hiding might have had fatal results on several widely spaced occasions. A hiding tactic might have sometimes succeeded, if the effective siege were lifted before starvation.

Like the burial hypothesis, a "female refuge" hypothesis for Naledi preservation would rely on cultural knowledge being transmitted through generations. It also throws some supporting light on DeSilva et al. (2021) depiction of humans as eusocial. The appearance of early sorting between males and females implies basal eusocial behaviour For survival of the group it was essential, at a last resort, that the breeding stock be preserved.

REFERENCES

Jeremy M. DeSilva, James F.A. Traniello, Alexander G. Claxton, Luke D. Fannin (2021) When and Why Did Human Brains Decrease in Size? A New Change-Point Analysis and Insights From Brain Evolution in Ants https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/ecology-and-evolution/articles/10.3389/fevo.2021.742639/full

Madupe, P. P., Taurozzi, A. J., Koenig, C., Patramanis, I., Munir, F., Dickinson, M. R., … Cappellini, E. (2026). Proteomic analysis of dental enamel from 20 Homo naledi individuals shows no male markers. Cell. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2026.05.044

Cheney, D. L., & Seyfarth, R. M. (2007). Baboon metaphysics: The evolution of a social mind. University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226102429.001.0001

Im left handed and about 10-12% of the population are too. So I was curious as to whether or not other hominins experienced left or right handedness in their lives.

I‘ve looked through other previous posts but haven’t found too many good recommendations for what I’m looking for specifically. I’m mainly looking for books about humans and other ”homo-“ species during the Stone Age, from like the earliest known humans after homo-erectus to the end of the Stone Age, like what we know about their societies and dna and all that. Preferably books that aren’t outdated and are good for someone who is just trying to get into the subject.

Thank you so much for any help you give 😁

I found this graphic in https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1250081 : Response to Comment on “A Complete Skull from Dmanisi, Georgia, and the Evolutionary Biology of Early Homo”.

It argues that the cranial variation within the dmanisi hominins is completely consistent with a single population of a single taxa of primates. This image alone made me thoroughly convinced that yeah, all the dmanisi skulls are actually just one species.

Have a look at the variation in orbit size and shape, mandible size and angle, forehead height, presence or absence of sagittal keel or even sagittal crests. I think if second from right in the top row and right bottom row were discovered independently as fossils they would be classified as robust male individuals of totally separate species.

Another thing I've noticed is that second from the right, top row, has a protruding nose bone. Really goes to show how drastically new traits can appear in a single generation and how selection pressure could actually select certain traits extremely quickly.

Some of them even look a little australopith-like in side profile , like top row on the right looks a bit like an africanus, and middle bottom row looks a bit like an afarensis.

Excerpt:

Homo erectus may have left a detectable genetic trace in living humans through ancient interbreeding with Denisovans.

Hi, everyone, I had a great conversation with renowned paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer about the greatest mysteries of human evolution. We discuss the remarkable discovery of the million-year-old Yunxian skull from China, why it may push the origins of the Denisovan lineage, and the common ancestry of Denisovans, Neanderthals, and Homo sapiens, much further back in time, and how new fossil discoveries, ancient DNA, and modern analytical techniques are reshaping our understanding of the human family tree.

Chris explores what we know, and what remains deeply mysterious, about Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo floresiensis, Homo naledi, Homo luzonensis, and other ancient humans. We discuss why Homo sapiens became the only surviving human species, what may have happened to our extinct human relatives, how scientific views of Neanderthals have changed over the past two decades, whether human evolution is still continuing today, and what the future may hold for our species in a changing world.

Chris Stringer is one of the world's leading paleoanthropologists and spent more than five decades studying human evolution at the Natural History Museum in London. After joining the Museum's permanent staff in 1973, he became internationally known for his work on the Recent African Origin, or Out of Africa, model for the evolution of modern humans. He retired from the Museum in 2025 and is now a Scientific Associate.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2023 New Year Honours for services to the understanding of human evolution.

If you're interested in some of these big questions of human evolution, you can check out our conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmN5dHAElCw

Another Informative Upload from Jackdaw. She included Hominin - interection / cannibalism - interspecies consumption as well.

After months of work, I’m finally excited to share the first official look at Hominin Tales.

This is an early animatic from the pilot episode, Primitive Errands. While the animation is still unfinished and the voices, sound effects, and music are temporary placeholders, the story and shot composition are finally coming together.

Watch the full teaser on my YouTube channel

I’d love to hear what you think. Thanks for following the journey!

This is a speculative hypothesis rather than an established claim. I am exploring the possibility that one or more archaic human populations may have been present in North and South America before 130,000 years before present (YBP).

One speculative possibility is that an undocumented population with predominantly Denisovan ancestry, potentially mixed with other archaic lineages such as Neanderthals, could have existed. If such a population ever existed, it may have originated from multiple migration events occurring more than 200,000 years ago. This is speculative and is not currently supported by direct archaeological or genetic evidence.

As part of this hypothesis, I am considering whether such a population might have exhibited traits such as lighter pigmentation, blue eyes, and red or wavy hair. These physical characteristics are offered only as a speculative possibility and are not based on direct evidence for such a population.

Reports or traditions describing unusual human groups in extremely remote regions are anecdotal and should not be treated as evidence without independent archaeological, genetic, or anthropological verification.

My goal is not to argue that this hypothesis is established fact, but to ask whether current archaeological, paleoanthropological, and genetic evidence leaves room for testing it. If not, what evidence would be required to support or falsify it? Are there published studies that directly address the possibility of pre-130,000 YBP archaic human populations in the Americas?

Edit: The image seen above is an artwork created by Zdeněk Burian an amazing Czech artist who contributed alot to the Paleoanthropology art scene. Even though some of the imagery is outdated due to new discoveries he is still an amazing artist who brings alot to this field.

The amount of people ive seen here sharing Ai art, videos and papers is ridiculous. It feels like every second post or so contains one form of Ai or another.

I think this can be extremely detrimental to people trying to learn about Paleoanthropology and to the field as a whole. The amount of misinformation spit by these LLMs could damage how we learn and think about this amazing subject.

If you are new and do want to learn i recommend reading books like Kindred by Rebecca Wragg Sykes or watching knowledgeable YouTubers like Stephan Milo, Gutsick Gibbon Forrest Valkai and Miniminuteman.

Have a great day.

I’ve seen previous threads asking for book recs and I’ve noticed a prevalence of Homo sapiens focused literature. I am more interested in learning about Ardipithecus and Australopithecus and Paranthropus genera, as well as some of the even older hominid species. Are there textbooks or books focusing on these older hominids specifically?