I found this week’s lectures extremely interesting as we have finally started from ancient ancestors transitioning finally to the evolution up to anatomically modern homo sapiens which are thought to be one our closest ancestors. I found it interesting that in the video of “The Neanderthal in us” the first line stated that Neanderthals were our closest relative when in our lectures it was said that we derived from Archaic Homo sapiens (likely H. heidelbergensis). And it was said that Neanderthal’s had very little crossbreeding between the AMHS.

I also found it interesting that the Neanderthals had such large brains while they lacked the ability to evolve and survive throughout history. While paleoanthropologists study brain size throughout our lectures and has been a trait that has been analyzed throughout our study of early hominins it turned out that the largest brain sized human ancestor did not become one of our early ancestors.  We have also learned so much in recent studies of fossils from paleoanthropologists in their studies.

I found it interesting how many different theories there were about the evolution patterns of the modern-day human. How a multiregional model started as one of our base theories and has been possibly proven not possible as these regional populations changed overtime all together at a same pace. But this would require a huge gene flow as they would have to change all at the same time throughout all the world. This theory has been proven flawed as the modern humans in each society looks drastically different from another region, such as the ancient Asian ancestor looks very similar to the modern Asian population while they look very different from the Europeans or African population. With this model we would all look very similar structurally and racially.

In the article “How a hobbit is rewriting the history of the human race” it is interesting that we are now learning that the Neanderthal may not be the last closest evolutionary relative to disappear from the face of the earth. We have found evidence in Flores as a member of H. floresiesnsis that hung on until about 17,000 years ago. While these Flores people were so small and dwarfed compared to the Neanderthals in size, they did not evolve to be such a small size. Scientists say that these ancient ancestors additionally had dated stone tools from all the way back to 1.1 million years ago. It is interesting that in our historic timeline these Homo floresiensis were living side by side with homo sapiens and have had possible contact on the island. The idea of H. floresiesnsis being the oldest surviving ancestor of humans is extremely interesting as we are still uncovering new discoveries about our history on this planet even after thousands and thousands of years of research. It really makes me wonder if it is possible as humans to hit an end of discoveries for history or will we be constantly finding new ancient species as we dig deeper into the earth.