Human ancestor started taking alcohol 10 million years ago

10 million years ago the hominids took alcohol. A paleogenetic study had discovered when the enzyme that metabolizes de fruits alcohol (ADH4) was activated. It was when the human, gorilla and chimpanzee common ancestor left the trees. The fallen fruit, near almost rotten, was the food which ate the first hominids who moved in the floor.

In a very mature fruit it can be the same alcohol quantity as in a beer.

Nevertheless, the dominant theory affirms that humans begin taking alcohol 9000 years ago when the agriculture and sedentarism extended around the world. The accumulation of fruits and grains cause the people to try new conservation forms, for example, fermentation. That was the way to transform the food in alcoholic drinks.

The ADH4 enzyme is located in the beginning of the digestive tract and metabolizes a great variety of alcohol molecules. Despite that, the common ancestors enzyme couldn’t metabolize efficiently the little alcohol molecules

In addition, the orangutan (Which is arboreal) haven’t got this enzyme. So, the activation of this enzyme occurred after the orangutan lineage was separated from the common ancestor.

In my opinion it is a good explanation of our predisposition to take alcohol.

Moreover, I don’t think that the agriculture was the only reason why humans started taking alcohol. I think they had tasted it before, surely with corrupted fruits as the article said. It is not strain because it is know that elephants and other animals use to “get drunk” with very mature fruits and they enjoy it. So, why not humans?

Does the Tooth fairy also take chimps teeth?

In the same group as humans, chimps, and the rest of apes have the same dentition pattern, which means all of them have 20 teeth, in the same order across the board. But, as well as humans, apes have  “milk teeth” that are lost when the individual became an adult. 

Contrary to scientists’ beliefs, the age at which a chimpanzee gets its first permanent molar tooth doesn’t predict when the ape will stop being care by their parents and start eating solid foods. The finding could alter the way anthropologists think about how ancient hominid infants matured.

In many primate species, when they start eating solid food the first tooth marks begin to appear. Experts have claim that this is common in chimpanzees and closest humans’ relatives. To support that Harvard University’s Tanya Smith and colleagues photographed the gaping mouths of five wild infant chimpanzees in Uganda between August 2011 and December 2012. Each chimp’s lower first molar emerged by age 3.3, but all of the infants continued to suckle after the tooth erupted — some beyond age 4, the team observed. Due to that, scientists might need to rethink using the presence of the first molar in a hominid fossil as a sign of weaning, the researchers report online January 28 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Many primates are born with teeth already erupted and only great apes and humans typically remain toothless after a month of postnatal life. Indeed, eruption of teeth offers an excellent method to gauge both the matura- tion of individuals and to compare the life histories of species.

The least-known fact that emerged from the literature survey was that many, perhaps most, primates have teeth already emerged at birth and almost all will have erupted teeth within two weeks. But in lumurs’ family all individuals observed to date appear to have teeth erupted at birth. Although day-of-birth records are not yet available at least 16 teeth were emerged in a 9-day-old, so it is highly likely that teeth are present at birth in this species also. 

Summing up, the conclusion is that, as our far cousins, apes have “milk teeth” and receive the visit of the tooth fairy when they are young. 

The secret about the mosquitos

The base of the fourth films in the Jurassic Park series have been destabilized, because scientists have poured cold water on any hopes that dinosaurs can be resurrected in the way they are in the films. 

Since the director Steven Spielberg firstly came up with the idea of making a film in 1993 in which dinosaurs were resurrected from a little peace of DNA from a mosquito fossilized in amber 130 millions years ago, many scientists became sceptic and started to try to find an answers that can prove if this phenomenon could be even possible. So after a lot of efforts, those experts have confirmed that such techniques cannot be done. 

Using highly sensitive DNA sequencing techniques, researchers at the University of Manchester attempted to extract DNA from insects in subfossilised copal, the harden resin from trees that is a precursor of amber. The scientists found they were unable to detect any ancient DNA in the samples they examined, which were between 60 to 10,600 years old. 

However, by the time they try to extract the DNA from amber samples that are millions years do, the possibilities were not so many as they can expect from the films. 

Dr David Penney, an amber expert at the University of Manchester, said: "Intuitively, one might imagine that the complete and rapid engulfment in resin, resulting in almost instantaneous demise, might promote the preservation of DNA in a resin entombed insect, but this appears not to be the case. So, unfortunately, the Jurassic Park scenario must remain in the realms of fiction."

Nevertheless, Universal Pictures has not take the hint and has announced that the next year another film, Jurassic World will be released. 

35,000-year-old drawing found in Indonesia challenges idea that art began in Europe

Around 40,000 years ago, early Europeans were the first to begin smearing pigment on walls, or so the story goes. But now paintings of animals and hand stencils on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi have been identified as just as old as their European equivalents, A group of indonesian and australian archeologist published last Wednesday in Nature the founding of 39.000 years old prehistorical drawns.

Dated rock art from Leang Lompoa

There are animal pictures and hand printings. C14 probes had detected some strokes that are capable to compete in ancient with a large red dot of 40.800 years old found in the cave El Castillo, in Cantabria (Spain).

The similar dating of two different paintings separate by more than 13 thousand kilometres suggest new questions about how appeared the first human art manifestations.

It is though that the cave art maybe appeared independently in modern human populations in Europe and Asian Southeast. But also is possible that it was a common practice in the first humans who left Africa many years before.

Nevertheless, this probes only precisate the minimun age of the paintings, so they could be more ancient.

There are 12 hand tracks and two animal figures, in seven different caves. The ancienst drawn is a human hand track. Is also important the drawn of a babirusa (local mammal known as a pig-deer). A barely perceptible red line below may represent the ground that it is walking on. Next to this painting, which adorns the ceiling of a 4-metre-high cave, is a human hand stencil, made by pressing a hand against the rock and spraying wet pigments over it.

Analysing the uranium in these deposits revealed that the babirusa image is at least 35,400 years old, meaning it is among the earliest identified figurative paintings in the world. The hand stencil is at least 39,900 years old (see picture above, top right), making it the oldest example of this common ancient art form ever found 

Dated rock art from Leang Timpuseng.

The babirusa image, plus a painting of what could be a pig that is at least 35,700 years old, are likely to fuel the debate over how art evolved. Some say simple dots and lines came first, followed by outline representations of the world and, eventually, complex murals. Others think that art's development was not so linear, and that sophisticated murals, possibly including those at France's Chauvet cave, date right back to the earliest stages.

 Ancient stencils (Image: Kinez Riza)

Hand prints could be a signature, or might be early signs of mysticism. Paul Pettitt of Durham University in the UK is elaborating another hypothesis. "To me this is beginning to look like a plausible scenario for how humans invented figurative art," he says. "It's not so surprising that our ancestors would place this important natural tool on a wall and trace it. It will then occur to these people that they have created an outline... and that if a hand can be represented in outline, so can anything else."

If Pettitt is right, the hand stencil was how our ancestors discovered that a three-dimensional object could be represented with a two-dimensional line.

Colononization of Madeira was years ago

The man could have been in the Portuguese archipelago of Madeira 400 years before it was colonized by Portugal. This was revealed by the dating of ancient bones of a house mouse found in a fossil site of Ponta de São Lourenço. 

According to the study, led by the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) and published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, house mice would have arrived on the island before the year 1036, most likely transported in a boat, as the note of CSIC has recently explained. The article also suggests that the introduction of this species would have led to an ecological catastrophe. 

Until now it had documented the arrival of man-they Macaronesia Atlantic north-five archipelagos in two successive waves: 

• Aboriginal, limited to the Canary Islands for two millennia.
• Colonial, from the fourteenth century onwards, which occurred in all the islands of the archipelagos. 

According to historical data, the Portuguese took possession of Madeira officially in 1419, when colonization began. 

The research team, which also included Germans and the University of La Laguna scientists analyzed two samples of bones found in Ponta de São Lourenço. 

The small size of the first date it prevented, but the second one has been dated between 900 and 1030, which is the earliest testimony of the presence of mice in Madeira. "The current populations of house mouse Madeira show similarities in mitochondrial DNA with those of Scandinavia and northern Germany, but not with those of Portugal. Therefore, this second sample analyzed leads to think that the Vikings were led home to the island mouse. However, it is a conclusion that must be ratified with new morphological and genetic studies of fossil Ponta de São Lourenço, since to date there are no historical references to Macaronesia Vikings travel" says CSIC researcher Josep Antoni Alcover, Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies (CSIC mixed and the University of the Balearic Islands). 

Apart from modifying the historical data, the new dating extends the time frame in which the most significant ecological changes occurred on the island. According to investigators, the first man would have triggered the extinction of endemic bird species in the archipelago of Madeira (consisting of Madeira and Porto Santo). 

Once seated, the population of mice, which hardly differs from the current house mice, have reached a high density because of its reproductive potential and the absence of rats. Their predatory activity would have focused on the eggs and chicks of small and medium birds such as quail or rails. The bones obtained from Holocene deposits indicate that at least two thirds of the endemic birds and two non-endemic species became extinct. They would also have played a significant role in enabling the prosperity of other predators such as owls. "The introduction of the mice probably led to an ecological catastrophe, based on the extinction of endemic birds and changing the ecology of the island 400 years earlier than previously thought" CSIC researcher highlights.

13,300 year old spear made of woolly rhinoceros horn found on Arctic island

The spear tip. Picture: The Siberian Times 

Studies on the intriguing rhino spear are still ongoing but this remarkable find seen as having considerable archeological significance.

The spear tip, almost 90cm in length and seemingly still sharp enough to kill, was found on the island of Bolshoy Lyakhovsky, off the northern coast of Siberia, as researchers hunted for remains of woolly mammoths.

If all the information is confirmed, it will be the northernmost point where a human implement was found, three degrees latitude further north than we had known before.

Previously ancient tools were found at a site on the Yana River, on the Siberian mainland, some 380 km to the south.

Bolshoy Lyakhovsky island on the map. Picture: Russian Geographical Society

This find helps the understanding of how far north people penetrated in the Paleolithic Era.

The weapon was dated as being 13,300 years old after being sent for analysis to Groningen University in the Netherlands. Rhinos in Siberia died out around 12,000 years ago.

The spear is also in one-piece, so it could be made only from the horn of a big, mature rhino. Woolly rhinos were rather dangerous animals, and hunting them could be regarded as a huge trophy.

Previously, woolly rhinoceros horn has been seen as a component in the construction of ancient spears in Siberia, for example in the coupling of a stone tip to the shaft.

The woolly rhino's horn is rather hard, but flexible at the same time. It consists of keratin - a substance that makes up our hair and nails. Deer horn or cow horn, by contrast, consist of bone substance.

Replica of a woolly rhino created by Remie Bakke

One possibility that needs scientific evidence is that it was used to kill mammoths which, like the woolly rhinos, are long extinct. The spear suggests these early Siberians were accomplished hunters.

At the Yana River site, dating back approximately 30,000 years, were found such artifacts as axes, stone scrapers, worked quartz crystals, tools made of wolf bone, and spear foreshafts made of mammoth tusk and rhinoceros horn.

Anatomically modern humans overlapped and mated with Neanderthals

Recently, genomic studies have shown that Neanderthals interbred with modern humans, and that non-Africans today are the products of this mixture.

Neanderthals come from Homo heidelbergensis, who left Africa (more or less) half million years ago, and developed in Europe and Asia. Homo sapiens left Africa much more recently, 100-120 thousand years ago.

That´s the reason why it´s believed that the mixture happened 50-60 thousand years ago in Middle East. There anatomically modern humans overlapped and mated with Neanderthals such that non-African humans inherit ~1 to 3% of their genomes from Neandertal ancestors.

Regions that harbour a high frequency of Neanderthal alleles are enriched for genes affecting keratin filaments, suggesting that Neanderthal alleles may have helped modern humans to adapt to non-African environments. Neanderthals were used to a cold, dark and escarce enviroment, while Homo sapiens were adapted to a warm and abundant one.

It were indentified multiple Neanderthal-derived alleles that confer risk for disease, suggesting that Neanderthal alleles continue to shape human biology. An unexpected finding was that regions with reduced Neanderthal ancestry are enriched in genes, implying selection to remove genetic material derived from Neanderthals.

This researchs prove definetly that modern human had more than one DNA source, which made the genoma we have today.

Free interpretation of how a modern human and neanderthal would look like

Sources:

• http://evoanth.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/when-did-humans-leave-africa/
• http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v507/n7492/full/nature12961.html
• http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/how-neanderthal-dna-changed-humans-140129.htm