Not the Flintstones—it’s the Denisovans
Photo: Tas Walker
Remains of our early post-Flood relatives, the Denisovan people, were found in a cave. That does not necessarily mean that they were fixed cave-dwellers. Caves are often very significant to nomadic peoples, who may visit them periodically for ritual purposes or as burial places due to their permanence. There are people who choose to live in caves today—sometimes
manmade, such as these underground dwellings in Coober Pedy, Australia.
by Carl Wieland and
Robert Carter
Published: 25 January 2011(GMT+10)
In 2008, a single finger bone, allegedly ‘30,000 years old’ and from
a young girl, was found in Denisova Cave, an archeological site in southern Siberia.
It looked like that of a modern human. Later, a solitary tooth was found that was
said to look a bit different from both modern and Neanderthal teeth, and more like
Homo erectus.1,2 DNA in both specimens (the preservation was “almost
miraculous” according to one researcher) has yielded a draft genome, which
shows the following:
- The two specimens were in fact from the same population, though from different individuals.
- The genome was neither typical of a modern person nor typical of a Neanderthal.
It is regarded as coming from a distinct population, a ‘sister group’
to Neanderthals, dubbed the ‘Denisovans’.
- Denisovans like Neanderthals, have clearly intermingled with modern populations.
In particular, some Melanesians found today in places such as Papua New Guinea share
unique genes with the Denisovans. The Denisovans did not appear to mingle with the
ancestors of other modern people, however, unlike Neanderthals, whose genes are
found far and wide in places outside Africa.3
Such genetic isolates likely resulted from further breakup of the already fragmented
human gene pool post-Babel, especially during the harsh centuries of the post-Flood
Ice Age.
As with Neanderthals (from whom these Denisovans probably were a further splitoff),
the evidence from hybridization scotches any notion that these were other than post-Babel
descendants of Adam.
It is likely that there may be yet more such distinct (but distinctly human) populations
turning up. Such genetic isolates likely resulted from further breakup of the already
fragmented human gene pool post-Babel, especially during the harsh centuries of
the post-Flood Ice Age. Small groups coming into sporadic contact with each other
before migrating to more distant regions is the most likely cause of the fact that
some 5% of the genomes of certain Melanesian populations show ‘Denisovan’
ancestry.
One of the leading researchers on this project was Richard Green from the University
of California Santa Cruz. He said:
“Instead of the clean story we used to have of modern humans migrating out
of Africa and replacing Neanderthals, we now see these very intertwined story lines
with more players and more interactions than we knew of before.”
How and when they split off is a matter of conjecture, but, since we know they share
genes with modern people it is clear both [Neanderthals and Denisovans] should be
brought fully into the human family tree.
This is indicative of the state of evolutionary paleoanthropology as well as evolutionary
paleogenetics. The picture, which appeared so clear just a few years ago, is suddenly
garbled with new facts. The creationist interpretation, however, is the same as
always. All people in the world descend from Noah and his family, who lived on the
earth in the first centuries after the Flood. Neanderthals and Denisovans came from
this population. How and when they split off is a matter of conjecture, but, since
we know they share genes with modern people it is clear they both should be brought
fully into the human family tree.
One other interesting thing emerged from the Denisovan study. It was easy to compare
the new population to modern man, but in order to make comparisons to Neanderthal
they needed more and better Neanderthal DNA to be sequenced. The results were startling,
for the Neanderthals turned out to be very close relations to each other, and this
includes individuals from Spain, Germany, Russia and Croatia. They were closer as
a group than any of the modern populations used in the study. That is a very
large area for a very closely related group of people to cover. The authors used
the phrase “drastic bottleneck” to describe what they believe must have
happened in the early years of the Neanderthal family line. We do not feel it is
‘drastic’ to believe the Neanderthals were one family group who spread
out into western Eurasia in the years after the Flood, who intermingled with other
people groups as they also spread out, and who eventually died out as many other
people groups have done in history.
References
- Sciencedaily.com, 22 December 2010, accessed following day.
See also Reich et al., Genetic history of an archaic hominin
group from Denisova Cave in Siberia, Nature, 2010; DOI:10.1038/nature09710.
Return to text.
- Homo habilis was mentioned in this context, too,
but see the earlier discussion
on this ‘phantom taxon’; this does not contribute meaningfully to the
description. Return to text.
- Carter, R.W., Neandertal
Genome Like Ours, 2010. Return to text.
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