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Top discoveries about ancient people from DNA in 2023 (johnhawks.net)
91 points by softwaredoug 40 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 9 comments



> [On a sense of smell:] Denisovan missense variants had a stronger response than their human orthologs, which de March and coworkers narrowed down to “odors contemporary humans perceive as spicy, balsamic, and unpleasant”. Neandertals, on the other hand, had a much lower response for the missense variants which were found in these genes.

I struggle to interpret this (not least because of the mis- prefix: does this mean incorrectly sensing? Does spicy in scent mean something that would map to food spices?) But does it mean that Denisovans would have disliked things we think of as smelling bad, far more than Neanderthals would? Would a Denisovan have bathed more for personal hygiene, or have avoided spicy food, or...? Would a Denisovan today have a strong aversion to some perfumes or colognes (the ones with woody, tobacco, musk scents)?

There is this vague sense of wonder that there were human populations with preferences that were _different_ to our own.


Missense is a genetic term referring to one nucleotide being replaced, fwiw


en.wiktionary.org

missense (countable and uncountable, plural missenses) (biology) A damaged DNA sequence that is meaningful but has an incorrect meaning, with the result that its products do not do what they are supposed to do.


I don't think we can go from someone being more sensitive to some kinds of smells to predicting what their reaction to these smells is. For one, context plays a huge role. I love Parmesan even if it smells ever so slightly like vomit for example.


Or you can think of dogs with a superior sense of smell that will also eat feces.

For all we know, a superior sense of smell may have driven our ancestors to enjoy foods more than modern humans do.


My grandfather referred to it as "stinky foot cheese". I still covered my spaghetti with it...he did not. lol


It’s impressive how ancient DNA maps our origins though it feels like piecing together a story with missing chapters


It’s more accurate to say we are piecing together a thousand page book with just 20-50 sentences at random.


Each new piece adds to the picture, but it reminds us of just how much remains undiscovered




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