Notice how some of our relationships are, to choose one representative version, hoagie-like? We meet someone, and that meeting leads to meeting relatives and friends. It also leads to meeting those far on the periphery of relationships and sometimes, also, enemies. It’s a society in your hand, that is, in every handshake.
We’ve heard much about our interconnectedness, including our “degrees of separation.” Now we even hear about our connectedness to Neandertals and Denisovans. Seems our ancestors were pretty active making, if not friends, definitely connections. Those connections are in the DNA of almost everyone save Africans, who are everyone’s ultimate parents.
Seventeen researchers (Benjamin Vernot, et al.) ran around collecting DNA for comparison and matched both Neandertal and Denisovan genes with non-African populations (Europeans, Asians, Melanesians). The ancestors of those non-African groups made connections a long time ago. A guy walks into a cave, sidles up to a rock, asks for a bone-marrow drink, and grunts at the woman next to him, “Hey, Babe, ever wonder what it’s like to spend some time with a modern human? Come outside, I want to show you my new wheel. It’s the latest model; it’s round.”
Well, what Denisovan or Neandertal wouldn’t fall for such sophistication? No wonder modern humans make a pyramid of groups based on an African origin and mixed in varying proportions. It’s a world of hominin hoagies, many different, but all rather good.