Up until about 20,000 years ago, it seems that cre­ators and view­ers of art alike spent a good deal in one par­tic­u­lar cave: Liang Metan­duno, locat­ed on Muna Island in Indone­sia's South­east Sulawe­si province. The many paint­ings on its walls of rec­og­niz­able humans, ani­mals, and boats have brought it fame in our times as a kind of ancient art gallery. But in recent years, a much old­er piece of work has been dis­cov­ered there, one whose cre­ation occurred at least 67,800 years ago.
The findings, published on Wednesday in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, reveal that, far from being a recent human cultural invention, kissing is an ancient trait deeply rooted in our biology. This is the first time anyone has taken a broad evolutionary lens to examine kissing. Our findings add to a growing body of work highlighting the remarkable diversity of sexual behaviors exhibited by our primate cousins, said Matilda Brindle, lead author of the study and an evolutionary biologist in the Department of Biology at Oxford, in a statement.
Scientists have long speculated what caused the downfall of the Neanderthals, but a new study suggests they never truly went extinct at all. Scientists in Italy and Switzerland claim the ancient group of archaic humans didn't experience a 'true extinction' because their DNA exists in people today. Over as little as 10,000 years, our species, Homo sapeins, mated and produced offspring with Neanderthals as part of a gradual 'genetic assimilation'.
Geneticist Svante Paabo demonstrated that DNA can be extracted from human fossils that are thousands of years old. His team was the first to sequence the complete genome of Neanderthals, our closest human relatives, and discovered that Homo Sapiens had sex and children with them. He also revealed the existence of a third, previously unknown human lineage, the Denisovans, thanks to genetic material extracted from a tiny bone of a girl who lived in a Siberian cave some 50,000 years ago.
The modern form of the gene ADSL in humans reduces enzyme stability compared to that found in Neanderthals or Denisovans, suggesting significant biochemical differences between species.
