New light on the man in 2011
In 2011, geneticists drilled on in human history, and ancient archaeological findings were interpreted again.
Thanks genforskerne we learned in 2011 about how modern humans - Homo sapiens - migrated out of Africa and who they met on the road.
The dead man type called denisovanerne is known only from scanty findings of at least 30 000 years old teeth and bones.
But the researchers have managed to extract DNA, and thus one can look for genspor from denisovanerne among today's people.
Indigenous
These gene pores were found among some ethnic groups in Australia, New Guinea and Melanesia. Also a group of indigenous peoples in the Philippines has denisovaner slot in the genes.
This may be evidence that these people are descendants of the first wave of immigration from Africa and into Asia. Some of the ancestors and their mothers had children with denisovanere that was already there from before.
This was a bit of denisovaner genes with us, even if this human form died out. When the forefathers and mothers of today's majority population in countries such as China, Vietnam and Indonesia came was probably denisovanerne already gone. See the Science article.
A Danish-led study of the genetic material of a deceased Australian Aborigines told some of the same story of a migration to Asia in several waves. See article on forskning.no.
Research on genetic mixing between Homo sapiens and extinct human types is only in its infancy and provides new results in 2012. The struggle to obtain DNA from Flores-man, also known as hobitten.
Out of Arabia?
2011 also had more knowledge of the way from Africa. In the desert sands in the United Arab Emirates archaeologists found stone tools dated to be 125,000 years old.
They resemble the tools made by humans in East Africa from the same period.
This suggests a much earlier migration from Africa than many have believed, and that the first humans left Africa via the Horn of Africa and the Arabian peninsula.
This is a faster route than via Egypt and the Suez, which has been the way we used to have the most faith. From Arabia, people can be walked on through Iran to India.
From Africa, these emigrants with a well developed sense of art, symbols, and dressing up. Researchers from the University of Bergen, working in South Africa and participated in the publication of the discovery of what may be the oldest dye.
The color used to decorate objects or makeup.
In place early
When did Homo sapiens in Europe? New interpretations of old findings from Italy and the UK told us in 2011 that this happened early, already between 45 000 and 43 000 years ago.
This gives room for modern humans lived simultaneously with Neanderthals over a long period of several thousand years. See Reuters article here.
Neanderthals were a punch, and was perhaps even more hardy and better organize your life in extreme environments than we thought.
Three geologists from Bergen participated as an international team published that they had found stone tools - probably from Neanderthals - much farther north than previously.
The discovery was made in the Ural Mountains in Russia, not far from the Arctic Circle. It is dated to the end of the Neanderthal period. This part of Northern Europe was not covered by ice. Perhaps this was one of the Neanderthals very last refuge?
There is much we do not know about Neanderthals. Why had such powerful thighs but very short puts? They may have been adapted to a life in the mountainous Europe, and short put may have given an advantage in the uphill, said U.S. researchers.
Upright walking
Long before modern humans, Neanderthals and denisovanere lived there a diversity of primates in Africa that walked on two legs.
Some of these were regulars mothers and fathers of the people. 2011 gave so much we do not know someone new and almost-complete findings from the prehistory of the type of Lucy or Ardi.
Fotknokkelen fit into a general picture of the upright walking occurred.
This creature was known as the nutcracker man, thanks to solid bone in the jaws.
According to new research in 2011, he ate only grass.
Fresh eyes examined also Karabo and MH2, two skeletons of the species Australophithecus sediba as two million years ago fell into a cave in South Africa.
Research on Karabo, a male in his teens, showed that he had many features that can be interpreted to mean that his art can earn a place much closer to the trunk of our family tree.
Tough guy eating grass
A slightly more distant relative of us, Paranthropus boisei, has been seen as a bit of a tough guy, thanks to a well-developed jaw. Known as the nutcracker man assumed that species had hard fare on the menu.
