Monday, December 09, 2013

After You're Done Wrestling Darwin, Try Tolkien

     It's not just Neanderthals -- orges?  goblins? -- our ancient but modern-human ancestors were foolin' around with; nope, researchers have evidence they were dating Denisovians (ooh, elves?  Maybe?) and one more, unnamed group of hominids, too.

     "Mark Thomas, an evolutionary geneticist at University College London, described the ancient environment to Nature as a 'Lord of the Rings-type world.'"

      Yes, that's what the man said.  I'm starting to suspect that Pratchetts's Discworld novels may be something of a documentary.

3 comments:

Tam said...

It's only in the last 30,000 that there's only been one living species of hominid on the planet.

And that's nothing to if you go back to the Australopithecene days, when you had wildly divergent gracile and robust forms.

Gewehr98 said...

Diversity - there's days I wish I had opposable big toes...

Roberta X said...

To one another, or to the toes of each foot? Trust me, it's overrated. ;)