Dali Man

The Dali cranium is interesting to modern anthropologists as it is possibly a well-preserved example of archaic Homo sapiens; it has a mixture of traits from Homo erectus and Homo sapiens.[6] The details of the face and skull are however distinct from European Neanderthals and earlier European hominids, such as remains found in Petralona cave and Atapuerca.[7]

There has been considerable debate regarding how to classify the fossil in terms of species, with some anthropologists insisting it to be a regional variant of Homo heidelbergensis and others categorizing it as an early representative of Homo sapiens, and as such there is no current consensus on the species status of the Dali fossil.[10][11] Some anthropologists, notably many Chinese representatives, cite the characteristics of the Dali cranium and other similar Chinese fossils of that era as evidence for genetic continuity in modern H. sapiens today, arguing that Dali's traits are commonly found in modern Chinese H. sapiens populations. In turn, it was argued that modern Chinese humans did not evolve in Africa, but instead evolved in China from a separate lineage of H. erectus.[12] This position would be consistent with the "Multiregional hypothesis," which states that different human populations across the planet had evolved with current racial characteristics in separate environments, and is contrary to the popular "Recent single-origin hypothesis," which asserts that modern H. sapiens evolved solely in Africa and spread throughout the planet during a recent exodus. But it has also been suggested that Dali man, if determined to belong to Homo sapiens, may represent an earlier expansion of archaic H. sapiens out of Africa predating the later more successful expansion ancestral to modern non-African populations.[13]

Professor and DNA specialist, Jin Li, of the Research Center of Contemporary Anthropology at Shanghai Fudan University (RCCASFU) claims he has proved modern China's African ancestry based on DNA testing techniques. In 1998, Chinese scientist Chu Jiayou concluded through analyzing DNA microsatellites of Han Chinese and Chinese ethnic minorities that the ancestors had migrated to China from Africa via South Asia.[14] Africans are the most genetically diverse peoples of the Earth, specifically Sub-Saharan Africa,[15] and have more genetic variation within the continent than the rest of the world combined. Various genetics studies have revealed that Europeans share a common ancestor from about 1,000 years ago,[16] and North East Asians share a common ancestor from 3,000 to 3,600 years ago.[17]

An assortment of primitive Homo skulls have tentatively been placed with the Dali find. The Maba Man, a 120 to 140 000 year old fragmentary skull from Guangdong in China shows the same general contours of the forehead.[18] A partial female skeleton with skull from Jinniushan (also China) seems to belong to the same group, characterized by a very robust skull cap but less robust skull base.[19][20][21] A possibly fourth member could be the Narmada skull from the Madhya Pradesh in India, consisting of a single robust cranial vault.[22]

The Denisova hominin, represented originally by a very robust finger bone found in the Altai mountains in Russia, and to which especially the find of a partial mandible in the Baishiya Karst Cave on the Tibetan Plateau in China was later added, are still in discussion if they might be linked to the Dali people (see Denisovan §Specimens). DNA studies show the Denisovans with Mitochondrial DNA linking them to a very deep split in the human tree.[23] This would make the DNA erectus rather than heidelbergensis or other more recent splits.[24] However, the analysis of the nuclear DNA points to a sister group relationship with the neanderthals.[25] Thus, it is possible that the archaic humans in Asia were a mixture of neanderthal relatives and an already widespread Asian erectus population.[26]

• List of human evolution fossils