Red Deer Cave people


The Red Deer Cave people were the most recent known prehistoric archaic human population. Fossils dated to the Bølling-Allerød warming, between about 14,500 to c. 11,500 years ago, were found in Red Deer Cave and Longlin Cave in Southwest China.
The fossils exhibit a mix of archaic and modern features and are tentatively thought to represent a late survival of an archaic human species, or of a hybrid population of Denisovan hominin and modern human descent, or alternatively just "robust early modern humans, probably with affinities to modern Melanesians".
Evidence shows large deer were cooked in the Red Deer Cave, giving the people their name.

Discovery and dating

In 1979, the partial skull of a cave dweller was found in Longlin Cave in the Guangxi region of China. Additional human remains were excavated from Maludong, Yunnan Province, in 1989.
In 2012, the Red Deer Cave fossils were indirectly radiocarbon dated between 14,300 and 12,600 years before present, using charcoal found in the fossil deposits. The single Longlin fossil was dated to 11,500 years before present.
The partial thighbone discovered in Maludong in 1989 and the partial jaw, cranial bones, and teeth. The dating of the bones has led to confusion and division among researchers. The anatomy of the bones, without successful DNA testing, shows them to be archaic humans, like early Homo erectus or Homo habilis which lived around 1.5 million years ago in Africa. Researcher Darren Curnoe believes that the cave people were a new evolutionary line. This is because of the skulls are different from both modern humans and human skulls found in Africa dating back 150,000 years. From the thighbone analysis, it is believed that they roamed the same landscape as modern humans for 60,000 years.

Anatomy

In spite of their relatively recent age, the fossils exhibit archaic human features.
The Red Deer Cave dwellers had distinctive features that differ from modern humans, including: flat face, broad nose, jutting jaw with no chin, large molars, prominent brows, thick skull bones, and moderate-size brain. As other pre-modern humans, their body size was small, with an estimated mass of.
From the shape of the thighbone, it is believed the Red Deer Cave People may have been knock-kneed. Curnoe's previous works showed the bones and teeth were remarkably similar to that of archaic humans. This is despite them having lived only between 14,000 and 11,000 years ago. The reconstruction of the Maludong femur confirmed it was very small and the outer shell or walls being very thin. The areas of the wall that were of high strain the femur neck are long and the place of muscle attachment for the primary flexor muscle of the hip is very large and faces strongly backward.

Classification

Experts are reluctant to classify the Red Deer Cave people as a new species. They might represent a previously unknown archaic human lineage, or the result of mating between Denisovans and modern humans, or alternatively a thoroughly anatomically modern human population with unusual physiology. However, research shows the Red Deer Cave people appear similar to more archaic lineages such as Homo erectus or Homo habilis. Specifically, the specimen appears most similar in most of the characteristics to KNM-ER 1481, Homo Erectus from 1.89 Mya found in Africa. Others have noted similarities to Australopithecus . Attempts to isolate ancient DNA from the fossils have not been successful.
One theory suggests that the Red Deer Cave people were early humans that settled into the region more than a 100,000 years ago and became isolated. The high mountains and deep valleys are ideal in isolating species geographically, so it is possible for a species to migrate to the area and become isolated over time. The environment and climate of Southwest China are unique owing to the tectonic uplift of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. The Yunnan province still has today some of the greatest biodiversity in all of China.
Since no DNA has successfully been extracted from the bones yet, the research that has been done is also leading the conclusion that the Deer Cave People can be the result of being a hybrid with modern humans. Another theory that has been stated by Maciej Henneberg, a professor at the University of Adelaide and an expert in human anatomy, is that the bone is not primate at all. It may be a deer's femur that has degraded to the point it was misidentified.