Lone Survivors Summary

In a book titled “Lone Survivors” by Chris Stringer, Stringer presents to us his interpretations of the origin of modern humans. Previously, there were two fossils including a tooth and a finger of a female and male, found in the Denisova cave of Siberia which revealed a species that was perhaps indirectly related to both the Neanderthals as well as Homo Sapiens. In addition, they have unique features that are enough to separate them to their own distinct species. These fossils convinced Stringer that perhaps modern humans today are not a pure species but rather a mixture of other hominid groups. Neanderthal genes may still be in us. This idea was furthered by an anthropologist M. B. Mednikova who wrote the research article “ Distal Phalanx of the Hand of Homo: From Denisova Cave Stratum 12: A Tentative Description” in which she describes a …show more content…
From the fossils he was able to obtain, Stringer speculated in his book that the Denisovans were indeed a sister group to the Neanderthals and split from the Homo Heidelbergensis far before the Neanderthals did. The fact that the Denisova fossil is the “most robust of all” signals that its the species with the most archaic traits (Mednikova 2013: 149). This correctly confirms Stringers’ theory about the old age of the Denisovans relative to the Neanderthals. The Denisovan fossil also correctly confirms Stringer’s speculation of Denisovans’ close affinity to the Neanderthals. One of the evidence can be that the transverse section of the hand fossil is linked to the third and fourth phalanges of a Shanidar Neanderthal as well as the left third distal phalanx of the Kiik-Koba Neanderthal. Mednikova presented data that was on board with Stringer’s conclusions about Denisovans being older yet close to