So where did my curly red hair come from? OK – so maybe it’s no longer so curly nor so red, but really where did it come from? There are family tales of Celts and Scots and German Dutch and… I’m a bit of a mutt, but only of the likely to easily sunburn sort – or so I always thought.
A little while ago I saw a really interesting article in the New York Times titled, Genetic Data and Fossil Evidence Tell Differing Tales of Human Origins. I admit it I’m into this science stuff. Always have been a bit of a geek I guess. There’s new information about where we all come from.
“After decades of digging, paleoanthropologists looking for fossilized human bones have established a reasonably clear picture: Modern humans arose in Africa some 200,000 years ago and all archaic species of humans then disappeared, surviving only outside Africa, as did the Neanderthals in Europe. Geneticists studying DNA now say that, to the contrary, a previously unknown archaic species of human, a cousin of the Neanderthals, may have lingered in Africa until perhaps 25,000 years ago, coexisting with the modern humans and on occasion interbreeding with them…”
Maybe folks of a certain persuasion should be calling me Monday too?