Humanity’s Unknown ‘Ghost’ Ancestor Discovered

Anatomically, the modern human species we know today emerged on the African continent 300,000 years ago. Homo heidelbergensis or evolved from a similar species, and people who migrated out of Africa gradually replaced or joined local archaic human populations. interbred.

The remains of a young girl who lived right during this interbreeding shocked scientists. After the discovery, scientists began studying ancient and modern human genetic code. deep learning algorithms thanks to partially proved a theory that had been around for a long time.

A never-before-discovered intermediate ancestor of man has been discovered

No one knew who these young girl’s remains belonged to, but there was a definite difference. These remains belonged to a teenage girl from more than 50,000 years ago, and scientists have never seen modern humans before. a ‘hybrid’ ancestor it looked like. Scientists have also found evidence that the person to whom these remains belonged was not alone.

In the research that started in 2019, scientists found that with the help of an artificial intelligence, modern humans emerged from Africa and spread to Eurasia. intermingled species during the great migration researched. Thanks to artificial intelligence, which compares the genes in the remains with the genes of modern humans, the person to whom the 50,000-year-old remains belonged was revealed during this interbreeding. discovered to be an intermediate type of human ancestor.

Until now, it was thought that Neanderthals and Denisovans were the interrelated species in this migration. However, in this study, it was revealed that a third ancient species lived in Eurasian DNA a long time ago, thanks to deep learning algorithms.

Using a statistical technique called Bayesian inference, the researchers found that what they call “backcrossing,” in other words, modern humans interbred during migration to Africa. of a “ghost” archaic population They found the proof.

But according to scientists, the work is just getting started. Applying this kind of AI analysis is a new technique in the field of human lineage, and the known fossil evidence we’re dealing with can be extremely scant. On the other hand, according to the research, what the team found not only explains a long-forgotten process of introversion, but also It informs us about who we are today.