Our human family tree has grown over the past few years.<\/p>\n
For generations, we have studied our lineage in an attempt to paint a much clearer picture of how we came to be what we are today. And through one daydreaming student who turned out to be a major influence on our history, we have made a remarkable discovery of a new type of human being.<\/strong><\/p>\n How has the widening of our DNA history affected how you see yourself?<\/p>\n The concept of our human family tree has shifted from a simple, single-branched line into a more bushy human history.<\/p>\n The rapid expansion of the branches of this tree that explains our ancestry has nearly doubled since the discovery of the Lucy<\/em> fossil in 1974.<\/strong> Human science has taught us that we have between 15 and 30 different species of early humans.<\/p>\n We, as homosapiens are the only human species that survived the test of time. We now know that for most of history, we shared the planet with other species like us.<\/p>\n A mere drop in the sea of time, that is, 70,000 years ago, at least four different types of early humans lived<\/strong> among each other in relative harmony.<\/p>\n Recent evidence has shown that we not only lived alongside our ancient cousins, but we mated with them to create a new line of our history to follow. Most modern humans carry DNA from both Neanderthals and Denisovans<\/strong>, a strange group of humans that was discovered through a single bone in 2010.<\/p>\n We have recently found out that some of our ancient cousins populated Eurasia long before we initially thought.<\/a><\/p>\n The surprising additions to our ancestry have found that “hobbits” existed a long time ago. Humans as small as Frodo populated an Indonesian island as recently as 50,000 years ago.<\/strong><\/p>\n But one South African discovery has lifted the veil on one of our most significant lines of DNA that may explain how we came to be what we are today.<\/p>\n We have worked out that our early human cousins lived on a far more complex diet<\/strong> than just meat and vegetables. We now know that our ancestors ate quite a lot of starchy foods<\/a>, changing how we evolved our diet over time.<\/p>\n A study published in eLife<\/a> has revealed a new family friend that explains a lot about human history and our lineage.<\/p>\n Only a few short years ago, a remarkable discovery was made in the Rising Star cave system in South Africa.<\/strong><\/p>\n A team of researchers led by Lee Berger and Keneiloe Molopyane found evidence of a long-lost ancestor that actually took the time to bury their dead. A revelation in human science, as this was the first recorded evidence of intentional burials.<\/p>\n The good doctors found evidence of what has come to be known as Homo Naledi, <\/em>a small-brained hominin that lived on the African continent.<\/strong><\/p>\n We have developed an understanding of how our Neanderthal DNA has evolved over time<\/a> and what effect it has on humans today. But the Homo Naledi<\/em> discovery proves that our early ancestors intentionally buried their dead in specifically designated caves in South Africa.<\/p>\n The evidence found proves that one cave had a significant concentration of fossils that were found in fetal positions.<\/strong><\/p>\n That suggests that the Homo Naledi<\/em> were rapidly covered by sediment after dying, proving that they buried their dead in ancient “funerals”.<\/p>\n Through the efforts of people like Dr. Keneiloe Molopyane<\/strong>, we have unearthed a remarkable finding that proves our ancestors were capable of so much more complex thought<\/a> than we ever thought.<\/p>\n The discovery catapulted Molopyane into stardom, and she was named National Geographic Emerging Explorer in 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Our human family tree has grown over the past few years. For generations, we have studied our lineage in an attempt to paint a much clearer picture of how we came to be what we are today. And through one daydreaming student who turned out to be a major influence on our history, we have … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":19262,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_focus_keyword":"human,new","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_description":"In a dark and unexplored cave in South Africa, one former daydreaming student found fossils that proved a new type of human being existed in the region.","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-human-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}How our human family tree has grown over the years<\/h2>\n
Our passage through history has been explained thanks to remarkable discoveries<\/h2>\n
A mysterious cave revealed a complex ancestor that buried its dead<\/h2>\n