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Mysterious ‘super-archaic’ populations had multiple trysts with human ancestors

sciencemag.org

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Re: Mysterious ‘super-archaic’ populations had multiple trysts with human ancestors

#41

Post by jimktrains2 »

chmod775 wrote: post #20
jimktrains2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Species is a much more fluid term than I think you realize. Also, we don't know that most people are more or less unaffected by covid-19. We're only beginning to understand long term affects of even mild cases. Please don't spread misinformation.

> Species is a much more fluid term than I think you realize. I am aware it sometimes tells you nothing at all. > We're only beginning to understand long term affects of even mild cases. Please don't spread misinformation. Asymptomatic cases are not the same as mild cases. Besides, always assuming the worst-case scenario, especially when all previous experience tells us to be optimistic, is not a workable strategy.

My point wasn't to assume the worst, but to point out that we don't know what the long term affects of even mild cases are, and there is a non-trivial amount of mild-and-worse cases.

Re: Mysterious ‘super-archaic’ populations had multiple trysts with human ancestors

#42

Post by jimktrains2 »

autokad wrote: post #25
dragonwriter wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Covid is comparable to flu with a higher mortality rate. So, like 1918 pandemic flu?

the 1918 spanish flu death rate was around 20%. It was only in March 2020 after covid19 was mainstream news it got edited in Wikipedia to show 2% (not sure if that's changed by now), you can check the edit history. But in short, in 1918, there were coffin shortages, compared to the toilet paper shortages with covid19. covid19 and the Spanish flu are not even in the same weight class, not even a little bit, whereas ye…

I agree that some people may think things are worse than they are. I feel like the zeitgeist, at least in my area, is a lingering uncertainty of exactly how bad things are, due to a lack of testing, and of how bad things can get, as we saw in italian and new york hospitals.

My understanding, however, is that the transmissibility of covid-19 is 3 to 10 times greater than the common flu. For instance, our local public transit agency doesn't have dozens of drivers testing positive for the flu and having symptoms each year. Coupled with the, something between 2 and 10 times greater death rate, the largest concern is overrunning hospitals if there is a bad wave in an area. As another example, because it's more transmissible, my community is also worried about getting infected because don't want to infect family if we get it, whereas I don't think we worry about the same with the flu.

My understanding of the current situation is that if everyone would wear a mask and social distance, there would be very little reason to continue with many of the other precautions that have been instituted. As you said, we live with the flu, so we don't need to make the transmissibility 0.

I'm going to be very interested to look back at this in a decade and see what we've learned and what could have been differently. How overblown, or conversely, how valid are our fears right now? The biggest problem is we just don't know, and won't for a while.

Re: Mysterious ‘super-archaic’ populations had multiple trysts with human ancestors

#43

Post by AlotOfReading »

tzs wrote: post #40

> The story of human evolution is full of ancient trysts. Genes from fossils have shown that the ancestors of many living people mated with Neanderthals and with Denisovans, a mysterious group of extinct humans who lived in Asia In the case of Neanderthals, isn't that "all" people rather than "many" people? Neanderthals are believed to have gone extinct 40000 years ago. But there was an article here the other day abo…

I'm not sure it's 'all'. Khoi-San peoples were pretty well isolated reproductively until recently and diverged before the Neanderthal introgression dates that I'm aware of. They're pretty much the reason the mt-MRCA and Y-MRCA dates are so old.

Re: Mysterious ‘super-archaic’ populations had multiple trysts with human ancestors

#44

Post by tsimionescu »

autokad wrote: post #25
dragonwriter wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Covid is comparable to flu with a higher mortality rate. So, like 1918 pandemic flu?

the 1918 spanish flu death rate was around 20%. It was only in March 2020 after covid19 was mainstream news it got edited in Wikipedia to show 2% (not sure if that's changed by now), you can check the edit history. But in short, in 1918, there were coffin shortages, compared to the toilet paper shortages with covid19. covid19 and the Spanish flu are not even in the same weight class, not even a little bit, whereas ye…

If the flu is .1% and CV19 is between 0.5-1%,that means that it is between 5 and 10 times as deadly. I'm not sure I would call that 'about the same'.

Also, these are the numbers for CV19 given unprecedented social distancing measures, entire hospitals dedicated to it, border closures and so on. If nothing had been done, it seems likely, given regional examples like Italy's Bergamo area, the death rate could easily be 10 times what is observed today, if not more.

Equally, with much stronger and more targeted measures, the death and infection rate can be brought to essentially 0 without impacting the whole population as much, as shown by Vietnam.

It is still absurd to call a disease that has already killed many more people than malaria this year 'similar to the flu'. Sure, the flu is bad, but in conservative estimates, Covid19 is 5 times worse (and in more equal comparisons, where we would take similar measures to what we do for flu, it is probably more than 100 times worse).

Re: Mysterious ‘super-archaic’ populations had multiple trysts with human ancestors

#45

Post by tsimionescu »

gen220 wrote: post #35
adenozine wrote: post #2

Man, I've always actually kinda wondered about this. I know it's macabre, but I think about human migratory routines and when different groups clashed back when life was so primitive and brutish, they're must've been those tendencies to rape and sexually conquer the opposition. Surely that is reflected in the genetic ledger of time. What a crazy insight. Genetics is such an interesting field. It's bonkers there's jus…

I encourage you to explore the early history of the pre-Roman Empire peoples. These were largely mythologies that the romans retroactively constructed for themselves (i.e. they had the opportunity to omit the raping and kidnapping in retellings, but chose not to). It’s full of “and then tribe X invaded and the land of Y, took their women and enslaved their men”. Back and forth for centuries. This behavior was cyclica…

I think GP was thinking about early humans, back when other species of humans still existed.

From what I understand, the most common view is that in hunter-gatherer times there was much less inter-group violence than there was after the advent of agriculture, simply because there was much less of a notion of territory and any need to defend it before agriculture was a thing.

Re: Mysterious ‘super-archaic’ populations had multiple trysts with human ancestors

#46

Post by raducu »

holoduke wrote: post #14
jimktrains2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Species is a much more fluid term than I think you realize. Also, we don't know that most people are more or less unaffected by covid-19. We're only beginning to understand long term affects of even mild cases. Please don't spread misinformation.

Covid is comparable to flu with a higher mortality rate. Don't make it bigger than it is. 99.95% of the people are doing perfectly fine. Genetics are thus pretty effective

Please, please, please stop saying that it is comparable to the flu in any way!

I got a mild case of COVID-19, even the doctors in the hospital agreed on that; I was able to help other patients do stuff they couldn't, I could easily climb 2 floor worth of stair while 90% of the patients had to make frequent resting stops.

37 days after first symptoms, I'm still not back to my previous energy levels, I still cough, I got tinnitus in my right ear and pain when ejaculating.

None of this has ever happened with any flu or cold that I ever got.

Re: Mysterious ‘super-archaic’ populations had multiple trysts with human ancestors

#47

Post by tsimionescu »

Ygg2 wrote: post #28
jimktrains2 wrote: post #4

It's a running joke in Dr who, where as humanity spreads into the starts there eventually ceases to be any pure humans (and many other alien species) because humans will mate with anything. I think it's most interesting to think of how fluid what we mean by species really is. We've always known it was fluid, but I think many people never really consider that when thinking about ourselves.

Dr. Who is wrong. We could not mate with anything amongst the stars. Even if aliens exist they would be radically different. You might as well as bone your VCR. The act of separation would create new species. Not our drive to bone.

Given that we have absolutely no idea what other biological systems could look like, what you're saying seems extremely likely, but not an absolute certainty.

Re: Mysterious ‘super-archaic’ populations had multiple trysts with human ancestors

#48

Post by [deleted] »

chmod775 wrote: post #5
dfischer wrote: post #3

Interesting in the limelight of pandemics in regards to the closing paragraph: > Today, H. sapiens doesn’t have the possibility of quickly grabbing a load of diversity by mating with another group: For perhaps the first time in our history, we’re the only humans on the planet. It’s another reason to miss our extinct cousins, says population geneticist Carina Schlebusch of Uppsala University. “To have such a large den…

This sentence doesn't make any sense: "H. sapiens doesn’t have the possibility of quickly grabbing a load of diversity by mating with another group". It would make sense if she specifically referred to Homo sapiens sapiens, but for Homo sapiens that "other group" would be of a different species and we thus we shouldn't be able to produce fertile offspring with them. Also Homo sapiens sapiens have plenty of genetic di…

[deleted]

Re: Mysterious ‘super-archaic’ populations had multiple trysts with human ancestors

#49

Post by mytailorisrich »

dfischer wrote: post #3

Interesting in the limelight of pandemics in regards to the closing paragraph: > Today, H. sapiens doesn’t have the possibility of quickly grabbing a load of diversity by mating with another group: For perhaps the first time in our history, we’re the only humans on the planet. It’s another reason to miss our extinct cousins, says population geneticist Carina Schlebusch of Uppsala University. “To have such a large den…

Even as the single human species we used to be spread into isolated groups, that's why different populations have specificities (e.g. skin colour, but also other adaptations).

Now that we have such a huge and interconnected population diversity will fade and adaptation will slow.

Re: Mysterious ‘super-archaic’ populations had multiple trysts with human ancestors

#50

Post by 082349872349872 »

adenozine wrote: post #2

Man, I've always actually kinda wondered about this. I know it's macabre, but I think about human migratory routines and when different groups clashed back when life was so primitive and brutish, they're must've been those tendencies to rape and sexually conquer the opposition. Surely that is reflected in the genetic ledger of time. What a crazy insight. Genetics is such an interesting field. It's bonkers there's jus…

We're told that when Ghengis Khan said Ahnold's famous Conan line, he wasn't just interested in "hearing the lamentations" of their women...

https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/23975/what-was-t...

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