Fossil finds in China are challenging ideas about the evolution of modern humans and our closest relatives
July 15, 2016, Chinese Academy of Sciences
On the outskirts of Beijing, a small limestone
mountain named Dragon Bone Hill rises above the surrounding sprawl.
Along the northern side, a path leads up to some fenced-off caves that
draw 150,000 visitors each year, from schoolchildren to grey-haired
pensioners. It was here, in 1929, that researchers discovered a nearly
complete ancient skull that they determined was roughly half a million
years old. Dubbed Peking Man, it was among the earliest human remains
ever uncovered, and it helped to convince many researchers that humanity
first evolved in Asia.
Since then,
the central importance of Peking Man has faded. Although modern dating
methods put the fossil even earlier—at up to 780,000 years old—the
specimen has been eclipsed by discoveries in Africa that have yielded
much older remains of ancient human relatives. Such finds have cemented
Africa's status as the cradle of humanity—the place from which modern humans and their predecessors spread around the globe—and relegated Asia to a kind of evolutionary cul-de-sac.
But the tale of Peking Man has haunted generations of Chinese
researchers, who have struggled to understand its relationship to modern
humans. "It's a story without an ending," says Wu Xinzhi, a
palaeontologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of
Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing. They
wonder whether the descendants of Peking Man and fellow members of the
species Homo erectus died out or evolved into a more modern species, and
whether they contributed to the gene pool of China today.
Keen to get to the bottom of its people's ancestry, China has in the
past decade stepped up its efforts to uncover evidence of early humans
across the country. It is reanalysing old fossil finds and pouring tens
of millions of dollars a year into excavations. And the government is
setting up a US$1.1-million laboratory at the IVPP to extract and
sequence ancient DNA.
The investment comes at a time when palaeoanthropologists across the
globe are starting to pay more attention to Asian fossils and how they
relate to other early hominins—creatures that are more closely related
to humans than to chimps. Finds in China and other parts of Asia have
made it clear that a dazzling variety of Homo species once roamed the
continent. And they are challenging conventional ideas about the
evolutionary history of humanity.
"Many Western scientists tend to see Asian fossils and artefacts
through the prism of what was happening in Africa and Europe," says Wu.
Those other continents have historically drawn more attention in studies
of human evolution because of the antiquity of fossil finds there, and
because they are closer to major palaeoanthropology research
institutions, he says. "But it's increasingly clear that many Asian
materials cannot fit into the traditional narrative of human evolution."
Chris Stringer, a palaeoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum
in London, agrees. "Asia has been a forgotten continent," he says. "Its
role in human evolution may have been largely under-appreciated."
Evolving story
Em sua forma típica, a história do Homo sapiens começa na África. Os detalhes exatos variam de um para outro, mas os principais personagens e eventos geralmente permanecem os mesmos. E o título é sempre 'Fora da África'.
Nesta visão padrão da evolução humana, o H. erectus evoluiu pela primeira vez há mais de 2 milhões de anos (ver "Duas rotas para a evolução humana"). Então, algum tempo antes de 600.000 anos atrás, deu origem a uma nova espécie: Homo heidelbergensis, os remanescentes mais antigos dos quais foram encontrados na Etiópia. Cerca de 400.000 anos atrás, alguns membros da H. heidelbergensis deixaram a África e se dividiram em dois ramos: um se aventurou no Oriente Médio e na Europa, onde evoluiu para os neandertais; o outro foi para o leste, onde os membros se tornaram Denisovans - um grupo descoberto pela primeira vez na Sibéria em 2010. O restante da população de H. heidelbergensis na África acabou por evoluir para a nossa própria espécie, o H. sapiens, há cerca de 200.000 anos. Então esses primeiros humanos expandiram seu alcance para a Eurásia, 60.000 anos atrás, onde substituíram os hominídeos locais por uma quantidade minúscula de cruzamentos.
Nesta visão padrão da evolução humana, o H. erectus evoluiu pela primeira vez há mais de 2 milhões de anos (ver "Duas rotas para a evolução humana"). Então, algum tempo antes de 600.000 anos atrás, deu origem a uma nova espécie: Homo heidelbergensis, os remanescentes mais antigos dos quais foram encontrados na Etiópia. Cerca de 400.000 anos atrás, alguns membros da H. heidelbergensis deixaram a África e se dividiram em dois ramos: um se aventurou no Oriente Médio e na Europa, onde evoluiu para os neandertais; o outro foi para o leste, onde os membros se tornaram Denisovans - um grupo descoberto pela primeira vez na Sibéria em 2010. O restante da população de H. heidelbergensis na África acabou por evoluir para a nossa própria espécie, o H. sapiens, há cerca de 200.000 anos. Então esses primeiros humanos expandiram seu alcance para a Eurásia, 60.000 anos atrás, onde substituíram os hominídeos locais por uma quantidade minúscula de cruzamentos.
A hallmark of H. heidelbergensis—the potential common ancestor of
Neanderthals, Denisovans and modern humans—is that individuals have a
mixture of primitive and modern features. Like more archaic lineages, H.
heidelbergensis has a massive brow ridge and no chin. But it also
resembles H. sapiens, with its smaller teeth and bigger braincase. Most
researchers have viewed H. heidelbergensis—or something similar—as a
transitional form between H. erectus and H. sapiens.
Unfortunately, fossil evidence from this period, the
dawn of the human race, is scarce and often ambiguous. It is the least
understood episode in human evolution,
says Russell Ciochon, a palaeoanthropologist at the University of Iowa
in Iowa City. "But it's central to our understanding of humanity's
ultimate origin."
The tale is further muddled by Chinese fossils analysed over the past
four decades, which cast doubt over the linear progression from African
H. erectus to modern humans. They show that, between roughly 900,000
and 125,000 years ago, east Asia was teeming with hominins endowed with
features that would place them somewhere between H. erectus and H.
sapiens, says Wu (see 'Ancient human sites').
"Those fossils are a big mystery," says Ciochon. "They clearly
represent more advanced species than H. erectus, but nobody knows what
they are because they don't seem to fit into any categories we know."
The fossils' transitional characteristics have prompted researchers
such as Stringer to lump them with H. heidelbergensis. Because the
oldest of these forms, two skulls uncovered in Yunxian in Hubei
province, date back 900,000 years1, 2, Stringer even suggests that H.
heidelbergensis might have originated in Asia and then spread to other
continents.
But many researchers, including most Chinese palaeontologists,
contend that the materials from China are different from European and
African H. heidelbergensis fossils, despite some apparent similarities.
One nearly complete skull unearthed at Dali in Shaanxi province and
dated to 250,000 years ago, has a bigger braincase, a shorter face and a
lower cheekbone than most H. heidelbergensis specimens3, suggesting
that the species was more advanced.
Such transitional forms persisted for hundreds of thousands of years
in China, until species appeared with such modern traits that some
researchers have classified them as H. sapiens. One of the most recent
of these is represented by two teeth and a lower jawbone, dating to
about 100,000 years ago, unearthed in 2007 by IVPP palaeoanthropologist
Liu Wu and his colleagues4. Discovered in Zhirendong, a cave in Guangxi
province, the jaw has a classic modern-human appearance, but retains
some archaic features of Peking Man, such as a more robust build and a
less-protruding chin.
Most Chinese palaeontologists—and a few ardent supporters from the
West—think that the transitional fossils are evidence that Peking Man
was an ancestor of modern Asian people. In this model, known as
multiregionalism or continuity with hybridization, hominins descended
from H. erectus in Asia interbred with incoming groups from Africa and
other parts of Eurasia, and their progeny gave rise to the ancestors of
modern east Asians, says Wu.
Support for this idea also comes from artefacts in China. In Europe
and Africa, stone tools changed markedly over time, but hominins in
China used the same type of simple stone instruments from about 1.7
million years ago to 10,000 years ago. According to Gao Xing, an
archaeologist at the IVPP, this suggests that local hominins evolved
continuously, with little influence from outside populations.
Politics at play?
Some Western researchers suggest that there is a hint of nationalism
in Chinese palaeontologists' support for continuity. "The Chinese—they
do not accept the idea that H. sapiens evolved in Africa," says one
researcher. "They want everything to come from China."
Chinese researchers reject such allegations. "This has nothing to do
with nationalism," says Wu. It's all about the evidence—the transitional
fossils and archaeological artefacts, he says. "Everything points to
continuous evolution in China from H. erectus to modern human."
Mas o modelo de continuidade com hibridização é combatido por esmagadores dados genéticos que apontam para a África como a fonte dos humanos modernos. Estudos de populações chinesas mostram que 97,4% de sua constituição genética é de ancestrais humanos modernos da África, com o restante vindo de formas extintas como os neandertais e os denisovanos5. "Se houvesse contribuições significativas do H. erectus chinês, eles apareceriam nos dados genéticos", diz Li Hui, geneticista populacional da Universidade de Fudan, em Xangai. Wu argumenta que a contribuição genética dos homininos arcaicos na China poderia ter sido perdida porque nenhum DNA ainda foi recuperado deles.
Many researchers say that there are ways to explain the existing
Asian fossils without resorting to continuity with hybridization. The
Zhirendong hominins, for instance, could represent an exodus of early
modern humans from Africa between 120,000 and 80,000 years ago. Instead
of remaining in the Levant in the Middle East, as was thought
previously, these people could have expanded into east Asia, says
Michael Petraglia, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford, UK.
Other evidence backs up this hypothesis: excavations at a cave in
Daoxian in China's Hunan province have yielded 47 fossil teeth so
modern-looking that they could have come from the mouths of people
today. But the fossils are at least 80,000 years old, and perhaps
120,000 years old, Liu and his colleagues reported last year6. "Those
early migrants may have interbred with archaic populations along the way
or in Asia, which could explain Zhirendong people's primitive traits,"
says Petraglia.
Another possibility is that some of the Chinese fossils, including
the Dali skull, represent the mysterious Denisovans, a species
identified from Siberian fossils that are more than 40,000 years old.
Palaeontologists don't know what the Denisovans looked like, but studies
of DNA recovered from their teeth and bones indicate that this ancient
population contributed to the genomes of modern humans, especially
Australian Aborigines, Papua New Guineans and Polynesians—suggesting
that Denisovans might have roamed Asia.
María Martinón-Torres, a palaeoanthropologist at University College
London, is among those who proposed that some of the Chinese hominins
were Denisovans. She worked with IVPP researchers on an analysis7,
published last year, of a fossil assemblage uncovered at Xujiayao in
Hebei province—including partial jaws and nine teeth dated to
125,000–100,000 years ago. The molar teeth are massive, with very robust
roots and complex grooves, reminiscent of those from Denisovans, she
says.
A third idea is even more radical. It emerged when Martinón-Torres
and her colleagues compared more than 5,000 fossil teeth from around the
world: the team found that Eurasian specimens are more similar to each
other than to African ones8. That work and more recent interpretations
of fossil skulls suggest that Eurasian hominins evolved separately from
African ones for a long stretch of time. The researchers propose that
the first hominins that left Africa 1.8 million years ago were the
eventual source of modern humans. Their descendants mostly settled in
the Middle East, where the climate was favourable, and then produced
waves of transitional hominins that spread elsewhere. One Eurasian group
went to Indonesia, another gave rise to Neanderthals and Denisovans,
and a third ventured back into Africa and evolved into H. sapiens, which
later spread throughout the world. In this model, modern humans evolved
in Africa, but their immediate ancestor originated in the Middle East.
Not everybody is convinced. "Fossil interpretations are notoriously
problematic," says Svante Pääbo, a palaeogeneticist at the Max Planck
Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. But DNA
from Eurasian fossils dating to the start of the human race could help
to reveal which story—or combination—is correct. China is now making a
push in that direction. Qiaomei Fu, a palaeogeneticist who did her PhD
with Pääbo, returned home last year to establish a lab to extract and
sequence ancient DNA at the IVPP. One of her immediate goals is to see
whether some of the Chinese fossils belong to the mysterious Denisovan
group. The prominent molar teeth from Xujiayao will be an early target.
"I think we have a prime suspect here," she says.
Fuzzy picture
Apesar das diferentes interpretações do registro fóssil chinês, todos concordam que o conto evolucionário na Ásia é muito mais interessante do que as pessoas apreciaram antes. Mas os detalhes permanecem confusos, porque tão poucos pesquisadores escavaram na Ásia.
Quando eles o fizeram, os resultados foram surpreendentes. Em 2003, uma escavação na ilha das Flores, na Indonésia, resultou em uma pequena hominidade9, que os pesquisadores chamaram de Homo floresiensis e apelidaram o hobbit. Com sua estranha variedade de feições, a criatura ainda provoca debates sobre se é uma forma anã do H. erectus ou alguma linhagem mais primitiva que chegou até a África e sudeste da Ásia e viveu até recentemente, há 60 mil anos. No mês passado, mais surpresas surgiram de Flores, onde pesquisadores encontraram os restos de um hominídeo semelhante ao hobbit em rochas de cerca de 700.000 anos10.
Quando eles o fizeram, os resultados foram surpreendentes. Em 2003, uma escavação na ilha das Flores, na Indonésia, resultou em uma pequena hominidade9, que os pesquisadores chamaram de Homo floresiensis e apelidaram o hobbit. Com sua estranha variedade de feições, a criatura ainda provoca debates sobre se é uma forma anã do H. erectus ou alguma linhagem mais primitiva que chegou até a África e sudeste da Ásia e viveu até recentemente, há 60 mil anos. No mês passado, mais surpresas surgiram de Flores, onde pesquisadores encontraram os restos de um hominídeo semelhante ao hobbit em rochas de cerca de 700.000 anos10.
Recuperar mais fósseis de todas as partes da Ásia ajudará claramente a preencher as lacunas. Muitos paleoantropólogos também pedem melhor acesso aos materiais existentes. A maioria dos fósseis chineses - incluindo alguns dos melhores espécimes, como os crânios de Yunxian e Dali - são acessíveis apenas a um punhado de paleontólogos chineses e seus colaboradores. "Disponibilizá-los para estudos gerais, com réplicas ou tomografias, seria fantástico", diz Stringer. Além disso, os sítios fósseis devem ser datados de maneira muito mais rigorosa, preferencialmente por múltiplos métodos, dizem os pesquisadores.
Mas todos concordam que a Ásia - o maior continente da Terra - tem muito mais a oferecer em termos de desvendar a história humana. "O centro de gravidade", diz Petraglia, "está mudando para o leste".
Explore further:
Largest group of fossil humans are Neanderthals after all
More information:
Jane Qiu. How China is rewriting the book on human origins, Nature (2016). DOI: 10.1038/535218a
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