Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution • Hacker News Board

Re: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

#101

Post by summa_tech » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 1:45 PM UTC

throwup238 wrote: post #98

like_any_other wrote: post #7

Is there any species, other than humans, that is found all across the globe (i.e. geographically separated), and has not differentiated into subspecies? Wolves, elephants, tigers, bears, and foxes have all been categorized into multiple subspecies each, distinct but able to interbreed.

Many researchers now refer to neanderthals as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis , a subspecies of modern humans. It doesn’t get talked about much because it’s a sideshow without an easy resolution, but the question of modern and archaic human speciation is far from a settled problem and many of the species formerly considered to be separate are now often lumped in as subspecies.

First, I like your username. Second, I think it may be a problem of ebb and flow of scientific discourse (shifts in how we apply the definition of species) more than reflecting underlying reality, which - as you said - has no easy resolution.

Re: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

#102

Post by lukan » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 1:48 PM UTC

bluebarbet wrote: post #89

John7878781 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Two bird populations living in the same locale but divided by a mountain range therefore not naturally breeding with each other would classify as a different species, even if they could breed with each other. Really? I thought the requirements for species classification were: (1) must be able to reproduce and (2) offspring must be fertile. Is it less objective than that?

Thought experiment. Three populations, A, B, and C, divided geographically along a line. Individuals from group A can breed successfully with those from B but not with those from C. Individuals from group C can breed successfully with those from B but not A. How many species are there? This is why the term "species" can never be entirely objective. I remember the eureka moment I had when I finally understood this (ad…

Is that based on a real example or hypothetical?

Re: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

#103

Post by cineticdaffodil » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 1:54 PM UTC

samsartor wrote: post #65

like_any_other wrote: post #7

Is there any species, other than humans, that is found all across the globe (i.e. geographically separated), and has not differentiated into subspecies? Wolves, elephants, tigers, bears, and foxes have all been categorized into multiple subspecies each, distinct but able to interbreed.

My understanding is that humans have very limited genetic diversity compared to most other animals, because of the population bottlenecks we've been through. And further, that diversity is mostly between individuals, not between groups. The distinction is easy to see in cats vs dogs: they both have similar overall genetic diversity but two Chihuahuas have virtually all the same genes (the small angry ones) while two…

I ve read this in a breathless ("help my ideology is under attack by reality") voice and it took a page away fro interesting discussions.

My pet theory is that the species inherited a loop deformation by default from our ancestors, defacto splitting the species planetwide into three subspecieses. One adapted to peace, one adapted to strife, one adapted to all out carnage. The obvious benefits of various adaptions of what we perceive as mental sickness, but what are actual adaptions to the loop communicating themselves. In this small moment where one (peacetime) insanity is uprooted to replace with a (wartime) insanity, might we be free in the anti gravity of the situation to discuss complex answers before the yikes of you silence us for the rest of the cycle? Thanks for the gag in all these years, that helped and did nothing.

Re: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

#104

Post by orsorna » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 1:56 PM UTC

like_any_other wrote: post #93

orsorna wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And then the dogma that we are all the same is co-opted by people who would see their ethnic group wiped out Are you referring to certain people? People sympathetic to Palestinians? I mean yeah obviously it's wrong to preach equity for me but not for thee, but I'm not really going to get into a pissing match about Israel/Palestine, sorry, because that's deflection from my point. So there are two choices here: 1) All…

Nobody talks about "performance metrics" when distinguishing between Sumatran and Siberian tigers. What happens instead is humans try to preserve their populations and distinctions. "It's all the same" is corrosive to preservation.

Superiority is absolutely a distinguishing feature when preserving their populations and distinctions. It's why racial genocides even occur.

Re: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

#105

Post by afpx » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 1:58 PM UTC

bluebarbet wrote: post #89

John7878781 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Two bird populations living in the same locale but divided by a mountain range therefore not naturally breeding with each other would classify as a different species, even if they could breed with each other. Really? I thought the requirements for species classification were: (1) must be able to reproduce and (2) offspring must be fertile. Is it less objective than that?

Thought experiment. Three populations, A, B, and C, divided geographically along a line. Individuals from group A can breed successfully with those from B but not with those from C. Individuals from group C can breed successfully with those from B but not A. How many species are there? This is why the term "species" can never be entirely objective. I remember the eureka moment I had when I finally understood this (ad…

Even within one species, not every individual can successfully breed with every other.

Re: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

#106

Post by throwup238 » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 2:00 PM UTC

summa_tech wrote: post #101

throwup238 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many researchers now refer to neanderthals as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis , a subspecies of modern humans. It doesn’t get talked about much because it’s a sideshow without an easy resolution, but the question of modern and archaic human speciation is far from a settled problem and many of the species formerly considered to be separate are now often lumped in as subspecies.

First, I like your username. Second, I think it may be a problem of ebb and flow of scientific discourse (shifts in how we apply the definition of species) more than reflecting underlying reality, which - as you said - has no easy resolution.

It’s not the ebb and flow so much as avoiding pointless academic bikeshedding. A bunch of very competitive explorer archaeologists named the separate species based on morphological skeletal differences decades before we even knew about DNA and now as the evidence accumulates, the question has gone from hard facts to a debate what is a species vs subspecies. Nobody really cares about the latter because it makes no functional difference to the research, so they let the problem lie until new interesting evidence presents itself. We know the species could interbreed, which is what matters to us now, not whether their taxa is three words or two (which is what this boils down to, some people write one way, some people the other and both know what each other is saying)

Re: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

#107

Post by stainablesteel » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 2:13 PM UTC

greazy wrote: post #20

like_any_other wrote: post #7

Is there any species, other than humans, that is found all across the globe (i.e. geographically separated), and has not differentiated into subspecies? Wolves, elephants, tigers, bears, and foxes have all been categorized into multiple subspecies each, distinct but able to interbreed.

The definition of what constitutes a species is a human construct. Two bird populations living in the same locale but divided by a mountain range therefore not naturally breeding with each other would classify as a different species, even if they could breed with each other. So your question is hard to answer.

my understanding of what classifies something as being a part of the same species is the fact that they can make children that are viable to have children themselves

horses and donkeys can breed to make mules, but the mules usually cant reproduce, this is the same with tigons and ligers but sometimes the females are viable

so if they can produce children that can produce children, they're the same species. where this line is blurred, so is the species line. geographical barriers have nothing to do with it.

Re: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

#108

Post by daveguy » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 2:17 PM UTC

ralfd wrote: post #92

samsartor wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that humans have very limited genetic diversity compared to most other animals, because of the population bottlenecks we've been through. And further, that diversity is mostly between individuals, not between groups. The distinction is easy to see in cats vs dogs: they both have similar overall genetic diversity but two Chihuahuas have virtually all the same genes (the small angry ones) while two…

> The average european person and the average east asian person are a little bit different genetically, but way less different than any two real europeans or two east-asians are to one another. This is always touted as an “racism-is-not-only-immoral-it-is-scientifically-wrong” argument, but it is a fallacy. Example: The average height (a trait with very high heritability) of Dutch men is 6’0 feet (183 cm) and the ave…

None of what you said refutes the fact that genetic diversity is just as different within two people of the same ethnicity as it is between different ethnicities.

You listed a handful of traits from a handful of genes. And from that you make an argument about relative distributions of entire genomes of entire populations. Do you realize the fact that brothers are genetically similar compared to a stranger in no way implies the similarity or difference of entire populations?

Even the traits you mention are just a handful of physical traits. There are about 20,000 protein encoding genes and 180,000 non-encoding. Protein encoding genes code for the structures in our body. The other 180,000 genes code for all kind of dynamics -- the rna that turns genes to proteins, how proteins are expressed in different cells to make them different cells, how relative expression levels change in response to external stimulus, etc. So, the set of genes to consider is clearly all 200,000 genes and not just the 20,000 protein encoding genes much less the handful of protein encoding genes responsible for something like eye color.

Unfortunately for racists but fortunately for the vast majority, the world is a great big melting pot with all the different ethnicities producing all kinds of variety. So much that the blend complexity long ago surpassed any tiny set of visible trait uniformity.

I honestly don't know how so many people fall for these simplistic illogical racist arguments. But it makes me happy to know that racists are about 200,000 years to late to shove the entire human race into tiny little boxes based on physical traits.

Re: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

#109

Post by Mikhail_K » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 2:21 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #86

Mikhail_K wrote: post #77

From the article: We finally observed signals of selection for combinations of alleles that today are associated with three correlated behavioural traits: scores on intelligence tests (increasing 0.74±0.12), household income (increasing 1.12±0.12) and years of schooling (increasing 0.63±0.13). These signals are all highly polygenic, and we have to drop 449–1,056 loci for the signals to become non-significant(Extended…

> That's the part that the speech police is afraid of. Why? This article just focuses on changes in West Eurasia (probably because that's what they had data for), but the bulk of changes that resulted in behavioral modernity surely occurred in Africa - where the genetic variability for them to occur was and still is far greater than elsewhere - and plausibly similar changes occurred in other regions such as Central E…

> the bulk of changes that resulted in behavioral modernity

> surely occurred in Africa

"Surely" without examining the actual evidence is almost surely wrong.

Re: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

#110

Post by masfuerte » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 2:36 PM UTC

ralfd wrote: post #92

samsartor wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that humans have very limited genetic diversity compared to most other animals, because of the population bottlenecks we've been through. And further, that diversity is mostly between individuals, not between groups. The distinction is easy to see in cats vs dogs: they both have similar overall genetic diversity but two Chihuahuas have virtually all the same genes (the small angry ones) while two…

> The average european person and the average east asian person are a little bit different genetically, but way less different than any two real europeans or two east-asians are to one another. This is always touted as an “racism-is-not-only-immoral-it-is-scientifically-wrong” argument, but it is a fallacy. Example: The average height (a trait with very high heritability) of Dutch men is 6’0 feet (183 cm) and the ave…

A few hundred years ago Europeans were very much shorter too. The Chinese have increased in height within just the last couple of generations. In both cases this isn't because their genes changed, it's because their diets changed. Diet also explains the difference between the Netherlands and the Philippines.