John Hawks (and many others) got their gene navigation wrong.

Genetics and tools/art point at the same direction, yet many "experts" look at the opposite direction. Wonder why?

Background facts

The oldest and most sophisticated human production ever to have been found is this bracelet from the Denisova cave in Siberia. For details see here.

Whereas others go from Africa to south-east Asia Klevius goes the opposite direction via central and western Eurasia

 1 Floresiensis inhabited Flores (Indonesia) from some 100,000 years ago to at least 13,000 years ago.  Brain size like a chimp but used stone tools and fire.

2 The Red Deer Cave remains (11,500-14,500) in southern China may well fit as the product of mating between pre-modern Homos and Denisovans.

3 Tam Pa Ling (some 60,000 BP) in Laos. Archaic modern.

4 Denisovan (40,000-80,000 BP) in Altai/Siberia related to e.g. Melanesians, Neanderthals.

5 The skulls of west Eurasian Homos were considerably bigger than those in south and south-east Asia.

6 So called late or northern Neanderthals may have been a Denisovan-Homo hybrid. 

New brain power from tiny south-east Asians spread via central-Asia and created the first truly modern humans when they met with the big-skulled west-Eurasians.

Here's a map showing the framework of Peter Klevius theory on how modern humans evolved (it's been out for almost a decade now under the title Out of Africa as pygmies and back as global mongoloids).

 Here's a map showing the top limits of what we now know about tool production and art

Do note:

1 Floresiensis, with a brain size barely over a chimp produced tools and behavior "appropriate" for someone with a much larger brain.

2  There's no sign whatsoever of a modern development in South Asia before 38,000 BP, i.e. after the sophisticated bracelet was produced in the Siberian Denisova cave.

3. Aurignacian tools and art sophistication went West from Denisovan, i.e. into the protein rich big skulled Neanderthal and Homo sapiens territory.

Denisovan genome

Meyer et al: Interestingly, we find that Denisovans share more alleles with the three populations from eastern Asia and South America (Dai, Han, and Karitiana) than with the two European populations (French and Sardinian) (Z = 5.3). However, this does not appear to be due to Denisovan gene flow into the ancestors of present-day Asians, since the excess archaic material is more closely related to Neandertals than to Denisovans (table S27). We estimate that the proportion of Neandertal ancestry in Europe is 24% lower than in eastern Asia and South America (95% C.I. 12–36%). One possible explanation is that there were at least two independent Neandertal gene flow events into modern humans (18). An alternative explanation is a single Neandertal gene flow event followed by dilution of the Neandertal proportion in the ancestors of Europeans due to later migration out of Africa. However, this would require about 24% of the present-day European gene pool to be derived from African migrations subsequent to the Neandertal admixture.


 John Hawks: How did Asians end up lacking any evidence of Denisovan ancestry, when the peoples of Sahul (Australia and New Guinea) have six percent?

Svante Pääbo’s group: An alternative explanation is a single Neandertal gene flow event followed by dilution of the Neandertal proportion in the ancestors of Europeans due to later migration out of Africa. However, this would require about 24% of the present-day European gene pool to be derived from African migrations subsequent to the Neandertal admixture.

John Hawks: We know that Neandertals of Europe and Central Asia lived in an environment that was relatively marginal for their technology and subsistence pattern. The Denisovan population could well have lived in parts of South or Southeast Asia -- subtropical and tropical areas comparable to Africa in their ecological diversity and resource richness.

Peter Klevius: The real" resource richness" was the cold West-Eurasian steppe, only it needed a better brain to be fully utilized.

We might have imagined that the Denisovan population would be more diverse than Neandertals -- that it might have been comparable in diversity to part of Africa, if not the entirety of Africa. The genome is inconsistent with that picture. How can we explain the apparent contrast?

1. Maybe Denisovans didn't live in South or Southeast Asia at all. If not, that demands that we explain how Australians got their genes.

Peter Klevius: Simple! They got them from the original stock that hadn't reached Siberia as yet.

2. Maybe the population was geographically extensive and diverse, but the genome from Denisova Cave doesn't represent it well. If so, we might discover that Sahulians actually have even more ancestry from this group. Alternatively, we might find that the early history of the population was widely shared, but the recent history diverged between Siberian and other branches of the Denisovan-inhabited region.

 Peter Klevius: Dear John, what are you saying! "Maybe the population was geographically extensive and diverse, but the genome from Denisova Cave doesn't represent it well". What we are researching is the evolution of what we consider the modern human. And if the if the extremely sophisticated bracelet found in the Denisova cave has any connection to the Denisovans, whose child was found beside it, then that represents exactly what we are looking for, doesn't it. As it stays right now the Denisovan bracelet is the oldest and the most advanced find ever on the planet!

3. Maybe African diversity emerged from a much more complex series of interactions than we now appreciate. The demographic model of Li and Durban doesn't encompass admixture, just the probability of gene coalescence across time. We have recently begun to appreciate the reality of ancient African population structure. If those initial African populations were more divergent from each other than Neandertals and Denisovans, their later mixture would give rise to a picture of early population expansion, even if each of them had relatively low (Denisovan-like) diversity.

Peter Klevius: First we need to know the amount and frequency of gene migration from Eurasia to Africa.

Meyer et al: One way to identify changes that may have functional consequences is to focus on sites that are highly conserved among primates and that have changed on the modern human lineage after separation from Denisovan ancestors. We note that among the 23 most conserved positions affected by amino acid changes (primate conservation score ≥ 0.95), eight affect genes that are associated with brain function or nervous system development (NOVA1, SLITRK1, KATNA1, LUZP1, ARHGAP32, ADSL, HTR2B, CBTNAP2). Four of these are involved in axonal and dendritic growth (SLITRK1, KATNA1) and synaptic transmission (ARHGAP32, HTR2B) and two have been implicated in autism (ADSL, CNTNAP2). CNTNAP2 is also associated with susceptibility to language disorders (27) and is particularly noteworthy as it is one of the few genes known to be regulated by FOXP2, a transcription factor involved in language and speech development as well as synaptic plasticity (28). It is thus tempting to speculate that crucial aspects of synaptic transmission may have changed in modern humans.

Peter Klevius: If the Denisovan brain structure was essentially different mixing would have imprinted considerable changes. And although some have suggested that these changes went in the opposite direction, i.e. that Denisovan was more "primitive", there seems to be no real base for such a conclusion due to the fact that we really don't have a clue as yet as to how gene interaction works on this level.