Australian Centre for Ancient DNA, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.
ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH), The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.
Nat Ecol Evol. 2021 May;5(5):616-624. doi: 10.1038/s41559-021-01408-0. Epub 2021 Mar 22.
The hominin fossil record of Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) indicates that at least two endemic 'super-archaic' species-Homo luzonensis and H. floresiensis-were present around the time anatomically modern humans arrived in the region >50,000 years ago. Intriguingly, contemporary human populations across ISEA carry distinct genomic traces of ancient interbreeding events with Denisovans-a separate hominin lineage that currently lacks a fossil record in ISEA. To query this apparent disparity between fossil and genetic evidence, we performed a comprehensive search for super-archaic introgression in >400 modern human genomes, including >200 from ISEA. Our results corroborate widespread Denisovan ancestry in ISEA populations, but fail to detect any substantial super-archaic admixture signals compatible with the endemic fossil record of ISEA. We discuss the implications of our findings for the understanding of hominin history in ISEA, including future research directions that might help to unlock more details about the prehistory of the enigmatic Denisovans.
东南亚岛屿（ISEA）的古人类化石记录表明，至少有两种特有“超级古老”物种——吕宋人（Homo luzonensis）和弗洛里斯人（H. floresiensis）——在大约 5 万年前现代人类到达该地区时就已经存在。有趣的是，ISEA 各地的当代人类群体携带了与丹尼索瓦人（Denisovans）——一种目前在 ISEA 缺乏化石记录的单独古人类谱系——发生古老杂交事件的独特基因组痕迹。为了探究化石和遗传证据之间的这种明显差异，我们对来自 ISEA 的 200 多个现代人类基因组进行了超级古老基因渗入的综合搜索，其中包括 400 多个现代人类基因组。我们的研究结果证实了 ISEA 人群中存在广泛的丹尼索瓦人祖先，但未能检测到任何与 ISEA 特有化石记录相匹配的大量超级古老的混合信号。我们讨论了我们的研究结果对理解 ISEA 古人类历史的影响，包括未来可能有助于揭示有关神秘丹尼索瓦人的史前更多细节的研究方向。
