Could a Human Not in Our Species Still Exist?

Shown are human remains from the Red Deer Cave people and an artist's reconstruction of a Red Deer Cave man

Could a Human Not in Our Species Still Exist?

An ancient species of human from China, thought to be long extinct, likely survived until at least the last Ice Age 14,000 years ago, new research finds.

Since the timeframe of these so-called Red Deer Cave people, as well as Homo floresiensis (aka Hobbit humans) from Indonesia, overlapped for many years with that of Homo sapiens, it is possible -- however remote -- that a human not in our species could still exist.

"It's always possible that a pre-modern human population still exists somewhere in the world," associate professor Darren Curnoe from The University of New South Wales, who co-led the new study of the Red Deer Cave people fossils, told Discovery News.

Today I thought I'd bring to you a couple of interesting reads, One recently from Discovery.com and the other from a few years back...

Legends of Wildmen of the woods, Little people or even Mountain giants may have a base in mere "Human" lineage reality. It seems the more we will learn about our Human family tree the more it appears that somewhere in our extended family there were or "Are" as the case may be, one that fits the description we hear in legends.

It's good to know that there are some in the Academic realms who are open minded enough to entertain what many of us feel is a real possibility. No, it doesn't appear they'll commit to the possibility but are at least for some, are open minded to the possibility.

Homo floresiensis, for example, was thought to have lived until 12,000 years ago, but anthropologist Gregory Forth from the University of Alberta interviewed multiple Indonesian locals who knew of these "Hobbit humans" long before the archaeological finds and even had particular words to identify these "little not quite human people," Groves said.

If the Hobbits went the probable way of the Neanderthals, however, then their cultures and genomes were simply absorbed into the modern Homo sapiens gene pool due to interbreeding. Nevertheless, it again cannot be fully negated that a human population not of our species still exists.

"So far the evidence has, to say the least, been far from convincing," Curnoe said. "But we should always keep an open mind."

Reading the article published by Discovery.com on Dec 17, 2015, brought back to mind the story I read quite a few years ago about how the Soviets came across one such possible living fossil only to shoot it.

Then there was the stories of Alleged captive Almas

A wildwoman named Zana is said to have lived in the isolated mountain village of T'khina fifty miles from Sukhumi in Abkhazia in the Caucasus; some have speculated she may have been an Almas, but the evidence indicates that she was a human.

Captured in the mountains in 1850, she was at first violent towards her captors but soon became domesticated and assisted with simple household chores. Zana is said to have had sexual relations with a man of the village named Edgi Genaba, and gave birth to a number of children of apparently normal human appearance. Several of these children, however, died in infancy.

The father, meanwhile, gave away four of the surviving children to local families. The two boys, Dzhanda and Khwit Genaba (born 1878 and 1884), and the two girls, Kodzhanar and Gamasa Genaba (born 1880 and 1882), were assimilated into normal society, married, and had families of their own. Zana herself died in 1890. The skull of Khwit (also spelled Kvit) is still extant, and was examined by Dr. Grover Krantz in the early 1990s. He pronounced it to be entirely modern, with no Neanderthal features at all. Another account by Russian anthropologist M.A.Kolodieva described the skull as significantly different from the normal males from Abkhazia: the skull "approaches closest the Neolithic Vovnigi II skulls of the fossil series".

In the 2013 Channel 4 documentary, Bigfoot Files, Professor Bryan Sykes of the University of Oxford showed that Zana's DNA was 100% Sub-Saharan African in origin and she could have been a slave brought to Abkhazia by the Ottoman Empire Sykes however raised questions as to whether Zana could have been from a population of Africans who left the continent tens of thousands of years earlier as her son, Khwit's skull had some unique and archaic characteristics.

In 2015, Prof. Sykes reported that he had run DNA tests on saliva samples of six of Zana's living relatives and a tooth of her deceased son Khwit and concluded that Zana was 100% African but not of any known group, refuting the theory that she was a runaway Ottoman slave. Rather, he believes her people left Africa approximately 100,000 years ago and lived in the remote Caucasus for many generations

So we have legends, myths and stories from all around the world and now intriguing DNA evidence, but none of it really makes much sense or gives us a direct connection to archaic lines still existing, This is a true mystery that hopefully as more evidence comes to light may illuminate missing pieces of our very human family tree.

In the meantime, the search continues...

Have we found evidence of the elusive orang pendek?

Even in this age of satellite mapping and global positioning, there remain "lost worlds" where few humans tread and where species of animal unrecognised by science live. Kerinci Seblat National Park in West Sumatra is one such place. The size of a small country, its dim, steamy interior has never been explored properly. Last month I returned to these jungles for the fourth time to track an elusive and, as yet, unrecorded species of ape known to the locals as the orang pendek or "short man".

This year's expedition was the largest of its kind ever to visit the area. It consisted of two teams. The first, made up of Adam Davies (expedition leader at the Centre for Fortean Zoology), Dave Archer, Andrew Sanderson and myself, would concentrate on the highland jungles around Lake Gunung Tujuh. The second team, consisting of Dr Chris Clark, Lisa Malam, Rebecca Lang, Mike Williams, Jon McGowan and Tim De Frel would have their base in the "garden" area – the more open, semi-cultivated land that abuts onto the true forest. According to local reports, the creature has been sighted here on a number of occasions when it comes down to raid crops such as sugar cane

a reply to: SLAYER69

He doesn't look Asian to me

Looking at Kerinci Sablat National Park on a map, I see that we have only ventured into its very edges, like dipping one's toes into the sea. If I return, I would like to take a party deep into the interior of the jungle. There are other stories here, too, of giant pythons and of an aggressive big cat resembling a prehistoric homothere and known locally as the cigau.

Had to check it on a map for myself.

How small is this area compared to the island, compared to the continent compared to the earth.
Unexplored and untouched. There still tons of regions like this that could bare proof of much earlier civilizations or as some would like to call them missing links (maybe even still alive).

Doesn't this bring out the explorer in you!?
If not that maybe the skeptic inside you?

Another thing, that foot they found next to a rotting log that had been ripped apart.
Do these guys wear some special goggles, good catch nonetheless.

Undoubtedly there are sub species of humans with lesser abilities to think and experience energy.

originally posted by: intergalactic fire

He doesn't look Asian to me

Yes, strange things apparently happen genetically speaking.
It is interesting to note that Archaic Siberian Denisovan DNA shows up strongly in Melaneisans way out in the Pacific
Archaic human admixture with modern humans

There have been several instances of archaic human admixture with modern humans through interbreeding of modern humans with Neanderthals, Denisovans, and/or possibly other archaic humans over the course of human history. Neanderthal-derived DNA accounts for an estimated 1–4% of the Eurasian genome, but it is significantly absent or uncommon in the genome of most Sub-Saharan African people. In Oceanian and Southeast Asian populations, there is a relative increase of Denisovan-derived DNA. An estimated 4–6% of the Melanesian genome is derived from Denisovans. Recent noncomparative DNA analyses—as no specimens have been discovered—suggest that African populations have a genetic contribution from a now-extinct archaic African hominin population.

Very easily. The sheer size of forests and lands a human hasn't touched is large.

Besides, we didn't discover gorilla bones until after they were discovered walking around, and very rarely do we find Chimp bones or still gorilla bones, among many other woodland creatures.

A human sub species, even remotely same intelligence level as us, would never be found unless they wanted to be or by accidental chance.

a reply to: SLAYER69

I was going to argue against the idea based on the amount of studies carried out by the Human Genome Project and similar labs/businesses analysing DNA. I'm still going to argue against it, but maybe with slightly less dogmatism

The HGP analysed the DNA of populations across the world and would have been curtailed by the extent to which 'science' could travel. For example, we can't sample people who we don't have access to. Nevertheless they sampled a very broad set of populations and didn't find evidence of anomalous/'niche' groups living alongside us. The same goes for the ongoing HapMap project that's growing into something highly extensive (and detailed) without stumbling on unusual sub-species/divergent groups.

It means we should temper our certainty and allow for the possibility of surprises on our genetic horizons. As we sample more and more isolated cultures we could see outliers and pointers towards other sub-species. Also, you and me are old enough to have lived during the time when Neanders were long extinct and assumed to be knuckle-dragging morons. That was a view held in certainty and it's since equally as certain that they were not morons and now reside in our own human genome...like the Denisovans. Times change right?

The Orang Pendek, imo, will turn out to be a symptom of whatever causes bigfoot sightings. There'll be rumours, anecdotes and precious little evidence. Adam Davies is someone I admire for having the testicles to stand by his curiosity and spend big on searching; he's cut from a similar cloth as Dr Sykes. At the same time I worry that he's spent too much time with some American hucksters and lost some of his critical thinking. I mean, he started out as a skeptical Fortean and in the past 2-3 years has gotten drawn in to the US bigfoot community. This isn't me having a go at the guy rather than underlining how convincing some conmen can be. It'd be phenomenal for him to be a discoverer of orang pendek and it still won't mean bigfoots live under trees in PNW.

a reply to: SLAYER69

In the remote Amazon or the Siberian taiga? maybe. But in the foothills of the rocky mountains? I doubt it.

What bugs me about bigfoot hunters is they claim to have seen, heard, or smelled them for decades but have yet to provide tangible evidence. But one helicopter can fly over the amazon and encounter a primitive tribe that has never encountered modern man before.

If these humanoids do exist i would imagine they could be found in the remote wilderness where they can thrive in environments large enough to evade modern mans encroachment, or on islands so remote they don't provoke interest whereas the bigfoot would find it hard to maintain a 'community' within a limited area that is often occupied by hikers, rangers, hunters, bigfoot hunting expeditions that charge 20 dollars a day...

a reply to: SLAYER69

Denisovan DNA is alive and well in Australian Aboriginals.

I think its entirely possible. As for the mentioning of "bigfoot" from another comment, I have no clue about those things. Us modern humans are loud and smell of cosmetics, there are lots of animals that avoid us because of that. As for an unknown species of human, I think its totally plausible for them to live undetected forever.

originally posted by: Chadwickus
a reply to: SLAYER69

Denisovan DNA is alive and well in Australian Aboriginals.

It's alive and well in us, along with Neanderthal DNA. Europeans are 2-4% each. When you have your DNA done by the Genome Project, these two issues are tabulated for you.

To me this all begs the question. The definition of a species is:

a group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding.

Link with many variations

One of the key components of the definition is that such interbreeding must produce fertile offspring. Donkeys and horses can mate and produce mules, which are usually (but not always) infertile on account of one having 64 chromosomes and one having 62 leading to mules with 63. And once in awhile you can make tigers and lions and get a Liger:



Given that we have Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA, are we not talking about variations WITHIN the species Homo sapiens? Such pairings with these groups have definitely produced fertile offspring: We are living proof. So it's more like a sub-species or "species complex" issue than a completely different species here.

And even with the "Wild Man" scenarios, at least so far, these have not turned out to be a different species, but perhaps a different population. With the Wild Woman in Russia, for example, her DNA proved African, so the argument turned out much differently. Was she from an escaped slave population or was she actually from an African population that had migrated? That question was never answered.

Bottom line is that we have two different issues here, though they are related (pun half-intended. Sorry!) One is undiscovered slight variations in Homo sapiens, i.e.: Sub-species, and one is completely different and undiscovered species, and example of which might be the mythological Sasquatch. One is nothing more than finding an isolated tribe of humans deep in the jungle. The other would be an earth-shaking discovery.

a reply to: SLAYER69

I love to hear things like this. I want there to be Sasquatch in the wild. It would be the most amazing story of our lives. But the lack of good evidence just never seems to solidify. But just as soon as we think we have it all figured out, nature seems to provide the proper head slap. (Leroy Jethro Gibbs style)

a reply to: SLAYER69

Could a Human Not in Our Species Still Exist?

Absolutely.

That they could exist, doesn't mean that they do exist, however.

a reply to: SLAYER69



Could a Human Not in Our Species Still Exist?

Absolutely a different species of human could exist. Why not?

That they could exist, doesn't mean that they do exist, however.

ah, a double double post. not sure what happened there.

We barely know what's in our oceans, it would be improbable to say that a species like this couldn't exist. Super interesting stuff

a reply to: SLAYER69

No because if not in our species it is not a human.
Our species is Homo, (human) BTW.
Just science, carry on.

originally posted by: cryptic0void
a reply to: SLAYER69

No because if not in our species it is not a human.
Our species is Homo, (human) BTW.
Just science, carry on.

Know what you're saying, that you think bigfoot is "Homo" (ie. Homo the Latin term for "man") but to be picky, our species is H. sapiens (Homo is our genus).