<story><title>New species of ancient human discovered in the Philippines: Homo luzonensis</title><url>https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/04/new-species-ancient-human-discovered-luzon-philippines-homo-luzonensis/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>llbowers</author><text>I sometimes wonder what it would be like if another species had survived and developed alongside us. They would be humans but....not quite what we conceive of as human(basically our species). What would their culture have been like? Music, art, language, etc.&lt;p&gt;As tribal as our own species is I imagine we would have gone to war eventually and one exterminated the other (assuming no large difference in population, technology, etc.). I think that might have been what happened to Neanderthals?&lt;p&gt;But still, the thought of going about day-to-day business alongside, let&amp;#x27;s say homo floresiensis, has something intriguing to it. Perhaps it&amp;#x27;s the same reason we imagine interaction with extraterrestrial life - it&amp;#x27;s really just a reflection on us and our own humanity.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>barry-cotter</author><text>Humans are already almost as diverse as canids (wolves, dogs, coyotes) as a whole. Until the Bantu arrived in Southern Africa (I think less than 300 years ago, definitely les than 500) the San has been reproductively isolated for at least 200,000 years. You don’t need to wonder what that world would be like, you live in it. All non Sub Saharan Africans are ~2% Neanderthal. Papuans are 5% Denisovan, from probably three different sub populations, likely as different from each other as the major continental ancestry groups of today. Tibetans have a high altitude adaptation from
Denisovans at more or less ~100% fixation that is almost absent among the Han Chinese they otherwise closely resemble.&lt;p&gt;We fought with, killed and mated with the other kinds of human. They may not all still be here but there’s a lot of them in us. Humanity mostly comes from Africa around 200,000 years ago but there’s a lot of deep population structure that’s much older than that.</text></comment>
<story><title>New species of ancient human discovered in the Philippines: Homo luzonensis</title><url>https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/04/new-species-ancient-human-discovered-luzon-philippines-homo-luzonensis/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>llbowers</author><text>I sometimes wonder what it would be like if another species had survived and developed alongside us. They would be humans but....not quite what we conceive of as human(basically our species). What would their culture have been like? Music, art, language, etc.&lt;p&gt;As tribal as our own species is I imagine we would have gone to war eventually and one exterminated the other (assuming no large difference in population, technology, etc.). I think that might have been what happened to Neanderthals?&lt;p&gt;But still, the thought of going about day-to-day business alongside, let&amp;#x27;s say homo floresiensis, has something intriguing to it. Perhaps it&amp;#x27;s the same reason we imagine interaction with extraterrestrial life - it&amp;#x27;s really just a reflection on us and our own humanity.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dalbasal</author><text>Neanderthals or denisovans encountering sapiens probably would have been much like sapiens encountering sapiens of a different culture&amp;#x2F;tribe. Fighting, trading, cultural exchange and some breeding. They would have registered as different tribes but I doubt that the &amp;quot;species&amp;quot; concept (all sapiens unite to defeat the denisovan threat!) would have registered.&lt;p&gt;They weren&amp;#x27;t that different to us biologically, but people can be pretty different from eachother behaviourally) culturally. One tribe is nomadic, eats a lot of elephants, does monogamy and lives in big hierarchical groups. Another is settled, clannish, matriarchal, polygomous and does a lot of fishing. Behaviourally, that&amp;#x27;s a lot of difference.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s possible that neighboring neanderthal tribes we&amp;#x27;re culturally more similar (food, language, art..) to your sapiens tribe than some far off sapiens tribe.&lt;p&gt;Also, it can be little bit misleading to think of those two as separate species. It&amp;#x27;s more that the human gene pool was much deeper then than now. We are all very close genetically today, especially for such a populous and widespread species. Back then, even within groups classed as Sapiens or Neanderthals, the genetic (and to an extent, morphological) diversity that existed was much bigger.&lt;p&gt;The newly discovered species though... Homo Naledi, florisiensis and luzonensis. These guys &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; seem like different species. Hopefully, some DNA will be found and we&amp;#x27;ll know more about them.</text></comment>