Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 53 (3) 2025   doi:10.17746/1563-0110.2025.53.3.107-130

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The Origin of Anatomically Modern Humans in China

A.P. Derevianko

Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Pr. Akademika Lavrentieva 17, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia

Genetic, skeletal, and archaeological studies alike demonstrate that anatomically modern humans originated ~200-150 ka BP in Africa, and this finding cannot be questioned. Over the last 4-5 decades, however, human fossils with undoubtedly modern skeletal markers, dating to 120-40 ka BP, have been discovered in China and Southeast Asia, suggesting that those territories, too, may have been part of the region where H. s. sapiens arose convergently on the basis of H. erectus. An important fact supporting this hypothesis is that a new taxon, Denisovan (informally H. s. denisovan), was established on the basis of the genetic analysis of a bone sample from a phalanx of the fifth finger of a 9-12-year-old girl from Denisova Cave. Also, genetic studies show that all three taxa, African anatomically modern humans, European Neanderthals, and Central Asian Denisovans, had interbred and produced fertile offspring, implying that all these taxa formed an open genetic system with processes such as admixture and assimilation, suggestive of a single species. Based on this conclusion, the following scenario of the origin of H. sapiens sapiens can be proposed: 80-60 ka BP anatomically modern migrants engaged in such processes with H. s. neanderthalensis in Europe, Denisovans in Central Asia, and early anatomically modern descendants of H. erectus (informally H. s. orientalensis) in East and Southeast Asia. The key role in the origin of H. s. sapiens, then, was played by migrants from Africa (informally H. s. africanensis), who were engaged in interbreeding and assimilation with H. s. neanderthalensis, H. s. orientalensis, and H. s. denisovan.

Keywords: H. erectus, Neanderthals, Denisovans, early anatomically modern humans, pebble-flake industry, Paleolithic, Pleistocene, assimilation