11 ms·

Found at 14,000ft on the Tibetan Plateau. Very likely altitude adapted denisovans, whose genetic adaptations to living in such low oxygen are still present in m

by themgt 5y ago

Found at 14,000ft on the Tibetan Plateau. Very likely altitude adapted denisovans, whose genetic adaptations to living in such low oxygen are still present in modern day Tibetans. Really incredible.

toshk 5y ago
There are lots of them. In many places in Tibet I've seen them, especially in the old Kham area, they were all over the place. The Tibetans believe it's prove of the depth of meditation that one can put the hand in the rock. Source: https://books.google.es/books?id=OUhmDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA101&lpg=PA101&dq=handprints+in+tibet+himalaya&source=bl&ots=x9_hcHtfcN&sig=ACfU3U09SIhMI7agqN6KpvTVjwlxTBSzRA&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwid-4ftw5jzAhWQHxQKHfSaD1YQ6AF6BAgcEAM#v=onepage&q=handprints%20in%20tibet%20himalaya&f=false https://books.google.es/books?id=OUhmDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA101&lpg=P...
- subsubzero 5y ago
  Thats right, the explanation for these handprints is that Tibetan Buddhist monks have transcended normal human abilities and made handprints in stone. This is for Vajrayana Buddhism or what westerners refer to as Tibetan Buddhism.
  - dwaltrip 5y ago
    Seems unlikely.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cletus 5y ago
What was the evolutionary advantage that being able to live at high altitudes 200,000 years ago gave you? There really weren't that many people around so finding land with available food and water doesn't seem like it would be that much of an issue. One possible argument is that such people would transit high altitudes going between hunting grounds (for example) but is this really enough pressure to produce a genetic advantage like this? Now nature does tend to want to find niches because having food only you can eat tends to be of more value than having abundant food other people can also eat (eg pandas and bamboo). But it's not easy for humans to live at 14,000 feet elevation. Animals are scarce. Vegetation is limited (eg trees likely to be conifers). This is different to just, say, living in Arctic regions as those do have much more available food options (eg fish, migrating game, plants that can grow in the summer) than high altitudes. Has anyone put much thought into this?
- prescriptivist 5y ago
  Just spitballing but maybe at that altitude humans tipped some sort of scale where they were more efficient predators of whatever was up there but below that altitude the larger pleistocene megafauna of the time represented a higher predation risk to humans themselves or there was less post kill (scavenger) competition.
- ericbarrett 5y ago
  Not an anthropologist, but my first hypothesis would be avoiding other humans (war and predation). Perhaps disease-carrying insects as well.
- AlotOfReading 5y ago
  The 'why' is pretty much unknowable. Evolution doesn't push organisms to do new things, it simply responds to existing selective constraints. What we observe is that Humans (even archaic ones) seem to have expanded into virtually every region they could find, regardless of how hospitable it was. This particular set of changes happens to reduce physiological stress at high altitude, so it was preserved in populations experiencing that constraint.
- adolph 5y ago
  High altitude survival probably wasn’t as important as the advantages of efficient oxygen use. Imagine living every day like you blood dope like Lance Armstrong! Live high/train low is a training method in which athletes live at high altitude and train at low altitude, usually with the goal of improving performance at sea level. The main idea is to reap the benefits of high altitude acclimatization while maintaining the intensity of low altitude training. https://www.nsca.com/education/articles/nsca-coach/is-live-hightrain-low-the-ultimate-endurance-training-model/ https://www.nsca.com/education/articles/nsca-coach/is-live-h...
- masklinn 5y ago
  > What was the evolutionary advantage that being able to live at high altitudes 200,000 years ago gave you? Having exclusive use of an ecological niche is pretty advantageous. > There really weren't that many people around so finding land with available food and water doesn't seem like it would be that much of an issue. While density was (likely) quite low, so was "productivity", and people were no less territorial, just because you didn't need all that space didn't mean you'd allow other groups to exploit it.
loonster 5y ago
I wonder how high it was 200k years ago. Edit: another comment mentions the mountains were formed 40-50 million years ago. So I would presume roughly the same height.
- Leherenn 5y ago
  I don't have an answer, but I would say not necessarily the same height. Mountains do not grow all at once or at a constant rate. For instance, there are some parts of the Himalayas that are currently growing at 1-2 cm/y. It is thus not impossible that this place was several hundred meters lower 200k years ago.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  Yeah, 200k is not much in geological terms.
  - masklinn 5y ago
    The himalayas grow actively and quickly, we're talking of cm/year scale. So 200kya means the site could have moved 2+km up (assuming a roughly constant growth rate), which is nothing to sneeze at or ignore. There's one hell of a difference living at 4000m versus 2000.
    - hutzlibu 5y ago
      I remembered that fact, too and was wondering about it, how it fits with it. My conclusion was rather, that the growth rate was probably not constant over that time, because yeah, 2km is quite a lot. But others mentioned that this area was quite unchanged. I am going to investigate..
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Sharlin 5y ago
  And they’re really young for mountains (which is why they’re so high!)
adriand 5y ago
Really amazing. I find this sort of thing absolutely haunting. It's a vivid reminder that there is nothing particularly special about this moment in time: it's only special to us because we're living it. But their present moment was no less vital and immediate and real to them as this moment is to us. And yet, it happened so incredibly long ago! I had the same feeling when I encountered a beautiful statue of a woman that was created in ancient Egypt. It was in a museum and I lingered at the display case, essentially just gazing into her eyes. Her personality shone through in some undefinable way: it felt like encountering another human being across an incredible expanse of time. These moments, I find, are very poignant in the way they remind us of our own mortality — but also our deep connection to our ancestors and to the past.
- bspammer 5y ago
  I disagree, there is something special about this moment in time. We're in an insane inflection point of human development. For millions of years things stayed roughly the same. It's really only in the last 10,000 years that stuff has really kicked off, and the last 300 where human development has gone absolutely crazy. There's several existential threats that might destroy civilization over the next few hundred years (eventually a nuke is going to fall into the wrong hands, not to mention climate change etc). There's a very good chance we're living the most comfortable lives that any creature on this planet will ever experience, past and future. It's truly mindblowing how lucky we are.
  - sgregnt 5y ago
    Just wanted to share my opinion. I'm not sure if the number of existential threads for humanity is now larger than 200k years ago. My take would be it is probably much smallest than even 1k years ago. Nukes will not destroy civilization (it might be horrible disaster on the scale of WW2 but not civ. distruction.). Arguably we are now have better ways to adapt to climate changes and it or meteorite impact. And who knows, in another 100 years we might be an interplanetary species. AI might not be a thread like some suggests, and the up sides to productivity are enormous.
  - willcipriano 5y ago
lugged 5y ago
Would have been closer to 10000 feet back then but incredible nonetheless.
Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
It's awesome, But bit disappointed that the artist's impression shows them bare body without any protection from the elements while clearly showing the elevation. They would have obviously had very thick clothing made up of animal fur.

by themgt 5y ago

Found at 14,000ft on the Tibetan Plateau. Very likely altitude adapted denisovans, whose genetic adaptations to living in such low oxygen are still present in modern day Tibetans. Really incredible.

toshk 5y ago

There are lots of them. In many places in Tibet I've seen them, especially in the old Kham area, they were all over the place. The Tibetans believe it's prove of the depth of meditation that one can put the hand in the rock. Source: https://books.google.es/books?id=OUhmDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA101&lpg=PA101&dq=handprints+in+tibet+himalaya&source=bl&ots=x9_hcHtfcN&sig=ACfU3U09SIhMI7agqN6KpvTVjwlxTBSzRA&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwid-4ftw5jzAhWQHxQKHfSaD1YQ6AF6BAgcEAM#v=onepage&q=handprints%20in%20tibet%20himalaya&f=false https://books.google.es/books?id=OUhmDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA101&lpg=P...

subsubzero 5y ago
Thats right, the explanation for these handprints is that Tibetan Buddhist monks have transcended normal human abilities and made handprints in stone. This is for Vajrayana Buddhism or what westerners refer to as Tibetan Buddhism.
- dwaltrip 5y ago
  Seems unlikely.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

cletus 5y ago

What was the evolutionary advantage that being able to live at high altitudes 200,000 years ago gave you? There really weren't that many people around so finding land with available food and water doesn't seem like it would be that much of an issue. One possible argument is that such people would transit high altitudes going between hunting grounds (for example) but is this really enough pressure to produce a genetic advantage like this? Now nature does tend to want to find niches because having food only you can eat tends to be of more value than having abundant food other people can also eat (eg pandas and bamboo). But it's not easy for humans to live at 14,000 feet elevation. Animals are scarce. Vegetation is limited (eg trees likely to be conifers). This is different to just, say, living in Arctic regions as those do have much more available food options (eg fish, migrating game, plants that can grow in the summer) than high altitudes. Has anyone put much thought into this?

prescriptivist 5y ago
Just spitballing but maybe at that altitude humans tipped some sort of scale where they were more efficient predators of whatever was up there but below that altitude the larger pleistocene megafauna of the time represented a higher predation risk to humans themselves or there was less post kill (scavenger) competition.
ericbarrett 5y ago
Not an anthropologist, but my first hypothesis would be avoiding other humans (war and predation). Perhaps disease-carrying insects as well.
AlotOfReading 5y ago
The 'why' is pretty much unknowable. Evolution doesn't push organisms to do new things, it simply responds to existing selective constraints. What we observe is that Humans (even archaic ones) seem to have expanded into virtually every region they could find, regardless of how hospitable it was. This particular set of changes happens to reduce physiological stress at high altitude, so it was preserved in populations experiencing that constraint.
adolph 5y ago
High altitude survival probably wasn’t as important as the advantages of efficient oxygen use. Imagine living every day like you blood dope like Lance Armstrong! Live high/train low is a training method in which athletes live at high altitude and train at low altitude, usually with the goal of improving performance at sea level. The main idea is to reap the benefits of high altitude acclimatization while maintaining the intensity of low altitude training. https://www.nsca.com/education/articles/nsca-coach/is-live-hightrain-low-the-ultimate-endurance-training-model/ https://www.nsca.com/education/articles/nsca-coach/is-live-h...
masklinn 5y ago
> What was the evolutionary advantage that being able to live at high altitudes 200,000 years ago gave you? Having exclusive use of an ecological niche is pretty advantageous. > There really weren't that many people around so finding land with available food and water doesn't seem like it would be that much of an issue. While density was (likely) quite low, so was "productivity", and people were no less territorial, just because you didn't need all that space didn't mean you'd allow other groups to exploit it.

loonster 5y ago

I wonder how high it was 200k years ago. Edit: another comment mentions the mountains were formed 40-50 million years ago. So I would presume roughly the same height.

Leherenn 5y ago
I don't have an answer, but I would say not necessarily the same height. Mountains do not grow all at once or at a constant rate. For instance, there are some parts of the Himalayas that are currently growing at 1-2 cm/y. It is thus not impossible that this place was several hundred meters lower 200k years ago.
hutzlibu 5y ago
Yeah, 200k is not much in geological terms.
- masklinn 5y ago
  The himalayas grow actively and quickly, we're talking of cm/year scale. So 200kya means the site could have moved 2+km up (assuming a roughly constant growth rate), which is nothing to sneeze at or ignore. There's one hell of a difference living at 4000m versus 2000.
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    I remembered that fact, too and was wondering about it, how it fits with it. My conclusion was rather, that the growth rate was probably not constant over that time, because yeah, 2km is quite a lot. But others mentioned that this area was quite unchanged. I am going to investigate..
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Sharlin 5y ago
And they’re really young for mountains (which is why they’re so high!)

adriand 5y ago

Really amazing. I find this sort of thing absolutely haunting. It's a vivid reminder that there is nothing particularly special about this moment in time: it's only special to us because we're living it. But their present moment was no less vital and immediate and real to them as this moment is to us. And yet, it happened so incredibly long ago! I had the same feeling when I encountered a beautiful statue of a woman that was created in ancient Egypt. It was in a museum and I lingered at the display case, essentially just gazing into her eyes. Her personality shone through in some undefinable way: it felt like encountering another human being across an incredible expanse of time. These moments, I find, are very poignant in the way they remind us of our own mortality — but also our deep connection to our ancestors and to the past.

bspammer 5y ago
I disagree, there is something special about this moment in time. We're in an insane inflection point of human development. For millions of years things stayed roughly the same. It's really only in the last 10,000 years that stuff has really kicked off, and the last 300 where human development has gone absolutely crazy. There's several existential threats that might destroy civilization over the next few hundred years (eventually a nuke is going to fall into the wrong hands, not to mention climate change etc). There's a very good chance we're living the most comfortable lives that any creature on this planet will ever experience, past and future. It's truly mindblowing how lucky we are.
- sgregnt 5y ago
  Just wanted to share my opinion. I'm not sure if the number of existential threads for humanity is now larger than 200k years ago. My take would be it is probably much smallest than even 1k years ago. Nukes will not destroy civilization (it might be horrible disaster on the scale of WW2 but not civ. distruction.). Arguably we are now have better ways to adapt to climate changes and it or meteorite impact. And who knows, in another 100 years we might be an interplanetary species. AI might not be a thread like some suggests, and the up sides to productivity are enormous.
- willcipriano 5y ago

lugged 5y ago

Would have been closer to 10000 feet back then but incredible nonetheless.

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago

It's awesome, But bit disappointed that the artist's impression shows them bare body without any protection from the elements while clearly showing the elevation. They would have obviously had very thick clothing made up of animal fur.