
A 160k-year-old jaw in a Tibetan cave might explain high altitude living - jelliclesfarm
https://www.businessinsider.com/160000-year-old-jaw-from-human-ancestor-in-tibet-cave-2019-5
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RenRav
> _The bone turned out to be the very first Denisovan fossil ever found
> because the specimens found in the Denisova Cave in Siberia 's Altai
> Mountains were unearthed 28 years after the monk's discovery. But
> researchers didn't know that at the time._

Interesting, so the Denisovans might have been called something else if they
had only looked at this?

~~~
danans
> the Denisovans might have been called something else

You have to admit that Denisovan has a nicer ring than more descriptive "Late
Pleistocene Pan Asian Hominid"!

~~~
jacobolus
To be fair, those are only descriptive through our familiarity. If you look
just at etymology that combination could be plenty ambiguous:

Pleistocene = “most new” in Greek.

pan- = “all” in Greek.

Asia = “northwest Anatolia” in Hittite.

Hominid = “human-looking” in Latin/Greek mashup.

~~~
danans
Yes but the immediate meaning of those terms is the totality of their
definition in normal communication.

I love - or am practically obsessed with - etymologies, but an etymology is
the linguistic equivalent of of a fossil.

Much as evolution reused terrestrial therapod dinosaur feathers for flight in
their bird descendants, language creates new meanings and concepts by reusing
older ones. And thankfully we don't communicate in etymologies.

~~~
jacobolus
I think we are making compatible claims.

Naming this sketchily understood category of ancient people after some cave in
Russia (itself named after one Denis, an 18th century religious separatist
hermit who lived there by himself) is only obscure at the start. As we become
familiar with the name “Denisovan” it becomes a fine description, whether or
not we know or care about Denis or his cave.

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hosh
I heard of a Tibetan legend, of the founding of the Tibetan people came when a
monkey met an ogress.

[https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/teaching-e...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/teaching-
evolution-to-tibetan-monks/)

Perhaps there is a seed of truth to that after all.

~~~
ip26
How long can legend persist, though?

Denisovans are speculated to have existed no more recently than 15,000 years
ago- in New Guinea, at that. That's at minimum 700 generations ago. This jaw
find is 8,000 or more generations ago.

~~~
davidw
Here in Oregon, there are native legends that reference the eruption of Mt
Mazama (which is now Crater Lake), some 7500 years ago.

~~~
WalterBright
Suppose a group has 1000 random legends. What are the odds that one of them
might sort of match a distant event?

It could be like those headlines "Psychic Predicted The Last 3 Elections".

~~~
hosh
The Tibetan origin legend is not random, has been around for a long time, and
is an important part of the Buddhist and Bon traditions within Tibet. The
“monkey” is referencing the same race of hominid as the legendary Hanuman in
Hindu myths. The idea here passed down in the Tibetan tradition is that the
wild race of “ogres” have been civilized by noble influences.

So while random legends might be that, there may be other characteristics of
legends that are not being accounted for with a purely random selection.

~~~
WalterBright
People used a similar argument to say that the eye could not have evolved from
random mutations.

Perhaps you underestimate the time scale involved here?

~~~
hosh
I am not using the same argument. I am not arguing that something must be true
by disproving something. I think you misundersand what I am suggesting here.

I am suggesting that there may be a legend that was somehow carried from the
days that the Denisovians (ogress) mated with Homo Sapiens (monkey), so that
that the modern-day Tibetans carried those genes for living in high altitudes.
That mechanism for passing on those genes are exactly what the the article is
suggesting.

At no point am I saying that these legends were somehow the cause. I am not
sure how you got to that idea.

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WalterBright
> is more than 1,400 miles from there.

I don't know why paleontologists think this is a large distance to humans.
Modern individuals often walk that distance.

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proc0
Many people from Peru and Bolivia (edit: I guess also Mexico) also inherited
some genes like these in Tibet that let you breathe at high altitudes. I'm
wondering if it could be the same explanation since natives of the Americas
allegedly crossed that land bridge from Asia. These people's chests and lungs
are quite large compared to a normal person and you can see it in the body
type.

~~~
sanxiyn
We know genetic basis of high-altitude adaptation for Tibetans and Andeans is
different. So probably not.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
altitude_adaptation_in_hu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
altitude_adaptation_in_humans)

~~~
hinkley
Ethiopians have a third adaptation that’s a bit like one of the others but
still distinct.

I have a theory that early Martians will see some gene input from all three of
these groups and I’m curious what the results will look like.

~~~
WalterBright
Interesting that you said that. I've concluded long ago that the only way we
can successfully live off earth is to adapt our bodies to live with different
gravity, air pressures, etc.

~~~
hinkley
Be it space or submarine habitats, at some point it has to make sense to have
some workers who are adapted to hypoxic situations, if only for emergency
work. You go to work, you have kids, the kids fall in love, you have grandkids
that might have one, both, or neither of the genes. A few more mingled
generations and a little selective pressure here and there and soon you have
specialists with two copies of the genes.

I think it's plausible for things to play out something like this, a bit
different from Kim Stanley Robinson's predictions in a few critical ways:

You have a group of people on Mars who can survive and reproduce in cheaper
habitats than everyone else, eventually they'd realize they could sod off and
do their own thing. Lower barrier to entry maybe overcomes economic and
political pressure, and pretty soon they outnumber everybody else. Your first
group that refer to themselves as ethnic 'Martians': Tall, dark skinned,
barrel chested (because of the air) individuals who speak a pidgin of English,
Amharic, Quechua, and a handful of Tibetan words, and don't answer to Earth.

They are the first people who can walk the terraformed surface without
equipment, and they explode out onto the surface. A fresh wave of earthlings
from above 10,000 feet arrive and bolster the numbers and gene pool. As
terraforming continues, a second wave inundates the First Peoples with many
immigrants who swarm to the lowlands. There is a comedian who does an entire
monologue on the crazy customs of the New Coloradans, and how they never seem
to get along with the New New Mexicans (which leads to 3 full minutes of
material on why the hell they called it New New Mexico). For her second tour,
she asks why so many Mormons are there. This trickle never really slows down,
and Albuquerque and El Paso become a kind of continuous concierge service
where people come to live for a year, and then either go home or to the space
port to fly to Mars (people who go through Albuquerque have better outcomes,
but El Paso competes on price).

Eventually a third wave brings people from everywhere, and the 'Old Ways' find
themselves in the highlands at first, and on the slopes of Olympus Mons later,
where no amount of terraforming will ever create a popular destination for
lowlanders or Earthers.

~~~
WalterBright
We won't need to wait for evolution. We'll be engineering the people directly
with gene editing.

~~~
hinkley
The genes have already evolved, you're just selecting for them, which doesn't
take long.

The rich have access to gene editing. I seriously doubt working class Martians
will. And I'm not sure that safe gene editing will get here before Mars
colonies do. I could see it going either way. People will try it anyway, and
some will win the lottery while others lose.

~~~
WalterBright
We already have gene editing. Last week's "60 Minutes" featured a young woman
being cured (so far as the doctors can tell) of sickle cell anemia with gene
editing.

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whlr
(paywalled) article:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1139-x](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1139-x)

~~~
anthk
lynx open it just fine.

EDIT: ok, no.

