Humanity's Best Friend: How Dogs May Have Helped Humans Beat the Neanderthals

The Atlantic ^ | 14 May 2012 | Megan Garber

[rmlew]

Humans came along only 40,000 or so years ago? What did we come from?
The ancestor of Homo sapiens sapiens is Homo sapiens idaltu. Homo Sapiens idaltu was descended from Homo rhodesiensis. However, Homo Sapiens Sapiens did interbreed with Neanderthals and Denisovians.

[Crucial]

Yet another reason to choose dogs over cats.

[BroJoeK]

avacado quoting article: "Somewhere between 45,000 and 35,000 years ago, early humans came along."
comment: "Humans came along only 40,000 or so years ago? What did we come from?"

The article refers to the first arrival of humans in Europe, "Somewhere between 45,000 and 35,000 years ago".

After many decades of scientific debate, and several hypotheses, the "consensus" these days is that humans evolved in eastern Africa, and that "Mitochondrial Eve" and "Y-chromosome Adam" lived there between 142,000 and 200,000 years ago.

As to the "what" humans came from, we evolved from non-human hominids, of whom remains from dozens of species or sub-species have been identified.
So, which of those were, or were not, our ancestors? That's hard to say.
However, the DNA evidence we have from Neanderthals suggests that guys then were as horny as today, and would pretty much mate with anyone who'd let them... ;-)

And that suggests multiple-choice answer D: "all of the above."

[dsc]

http://www.themandus.org/
http://www.themandus.org/what_they_looked_like.html

[darth]

Thanks for the cool info.