4. The first British people were black DNA from one of Britain’s fist people, Cheddar Man, shows that he was very likely to have dark brown skin and blue eyes. And, despite his eponym, we also know from his DNA that he couldn’t digest milk. Cheddar man skeleton. Channel 4 While it’s fascinating, and perhaps surprising, to learn that some of the first people to inhabit the island that is now known as Britain had dark skin and blue eyes, this striking combination is not altogether unpredictable given what we’ve learnt about Paleolithic Europe from ancient DNA. Dark skin was actually quite common in hunter gatherers such as Cheddar Man who were living in Europe in the millenia after he was alive – and blue eyes have been around since the Ice Age. 5. Immigrants from the East brought white skin to Europe So, if dark skin was common in Europe 10,000 years ago, how did Europeans get their white skin? There are no hunter gatherers left in Europe, and very few remaining around the world. Agriculture has replaced hunting as a way of life, and in Europe we know that farming spread from the Middle East. Genetics has taught us that this change also involved significant movement of people. We also now know that there was also a large influx of people from the Russian and Ukrainian Steppe around 5,000 years ago. As well as DNA, the Yamnaya people brought domesticated horses and the wheel into Europe – and maybe even proto-Indo-European, the language from which almost all modern European languages originate. A good bet for where white skin came from is that is was introduced by either the Yamnaya or Middle Eastern immigrant groups. It will have then become ubiquitous as a result of its benefit as an adaptation to low levels of sunlight – light skin pigmentation is thought to help people better absorb sunlight and synthesise vitamin D from it.

When DNA was sequenced from a fossilised finger from a cave in the Altai mountains of Siberia, which was thought to be Neanderthal, genetic analysis showed that it was actually a new species of human, distinct from but closely related to Neanderthals. Analysis of its full genome showed that these “Denisovans” also had sex with our ancestors. Tibetans, who live among some of the highest mountains in the world, are able to survive at altitudes where most people are encumbered by the lack of oxygen. Genetic analysis has shown that Tibetans, along with Ethiopian and Andean mountain dwellers, have special genetic adaptations that allow them to process oxygen in this rarefied mountain air. We now know that these genetic adaptations to altitude in Tibetans – they have a specific variant of a gene called EPAS1 - were in fact inherited through ancestral mating with Denisovans. It turns out that improvements in immunity, metabolism and diet among modern humans are also due to beneficial genetic variants inherited through this interbreeding with both Neanderthals and Denisovans.

The Harbin cranium reminds us of the vast expanse of Asia, whose fossils and scientists are now coming to the fore.

may have interbreed

Now a team of Chinese, Australian and British researchers has finally solved the puzzle – the skull represents a previously unknown extinct human species.

While the shape of the family tree presented here is likely to stand the test of time, it is still too early to accept these predicted divergence dates as definitive.

The older estimates presented by this study may result from the use of new techniques, called Bayesian tip dating, which aren’t normally used in evolutionary studies. These can take into account both morphological and molecular data and make predictions about the possible sequence and date of the divergence of species.

The predicted dates for the common ancestors between human lineages do not match the dates of actual discovered fossils, or those predicted by the analysis of DNA.

Homo longi can now takes its place among an ever increasing number of hominin species across Africa, Europe and Asia.

There are, however, still significant points of concern about the dating of this phylogenetic model, as recognised by the authors.

But the new discovery pushes Neanderthals one step further away from ourselves and makes simple comparisons between two species much less important to understanding what ultimately makes us who we are.

Dubbed Homo longi, which can be translated as “dragon river”,

The research, published as three studies in the journal Innovation, suggests this is our closest relative in the human family tree.

It must have been late 1941 or early 1942. Jews were required to wear the Star of David and to obey a 6 p.m. curfew. I had gone to play with a Christian friend and had stayed too late. I turned my brown sweater inside out to walk the few blocks home. As I was walking down an empty street, I saw a German soldier approaching. He was wearing the black uniform that I had been told to fear more than others – the one worn by specially recruited SS soldiers. As I came closer to him, trying to walk fast, I noticed that he was looking at me intently. Then he beckoned me over, picked me up, and hugged me. I was terrified that he would notice the star inside my sweater. He was speaking to me with great emotion, in German. When he put me down, he opened his wallet, showed me a picture of a boy, and gave me some money. I went home more certain than ever that my mother was right: people were endlessly complicated and interesting. (Kahneman, 2003, p. 417)

Daniel Kahneman (/ˈkɑːnəmən/; Hebrew: דניאל כהנמן‎; born March 5, 1934) is an Israeli psychologist and economist