- What's interesting is that the population remained isolated for tens of thousands of years.
Generally speaking, people move around and are promiscuous. Staying isolated for that long implies a physical barrier, because cultures generally don't survive for 40,000 years. But an isolated population means genetic issues - but if the population is big then they should have spread at least somewhat.
- I’ve been enjoying a podcast called Our Prehistory. If you are interested in this kind of stuff, the first few episodes get really into this, and it’s definitely sunk some misconceptions I had about evolution (that other species groups lived among the Homo Sapiens), why they died out, more branches than originally thought etc.
by contingencies
0 subcomment
- Paper @ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08793-7
"Our admixture dating analysis points to events far back in time, suggesting a more heterogeneous spread of pastoralism and food production in the Sahara compared to Morocco and East Africa"
- Curious how this post says '5 Hours ago' but if you search or click 'smithsonianmag.com' up there, you see this as a post that says 3 days ago?
- oh my god they were roommates
- [dead]
- [flagged]
- What exactly is "mysterious" about it?
Click-baity title?
by begueradj
4 subcomments
- > "despite practicing animal husbandry—a cultural innovation that originated outside Africa"
Animal husbandry was a response to unproductive hunting. And since desertification - hence unproductive hunting- started long time ago in Africa, it makes sense that animal husbandry started there too before it appeared elsewhere.
by Vox_Leone
4 subcomments
- Please accept my critique to Smithsonian Mag made in good faith: never use the word 'mysterious' [a nod to the magical thinking] in a science context. Really looks like CNN-ish dark pattern. The URL slug has a better word choice:
7000-year-old-skeletons-from-the-green-sahara-reveal-a-previously-unknown-human-lineage-
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