Mysterious Ancient Humans Now Have a Face
When Qiaomei Fu discovered a new kind of human 15 years ago, she had no idea what it looked like. There was only a fragment of a pinkie bone to go on.
The fossil chip, found in a Siberian cave called Denisova, looked as if it might have come from a 66,000-year-old relative of today's humans, or maybe a Neanderthal. But Dr. Fu, then a graduate student at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, and her colleagues found DNA in the fossil that told a different story. The bone had belonged to a girl who was part of a third human lineage never seen before. They named her people the Denisovans.
In the years since, Dr. Fu has helped to discover more Denisovan DNA: in teeth and bone fragments from the Denisova cave, in the sediment of a cave floor in Tibet and even in people living today in Asia and the Pacific — evidence of interbreeding tens of thousands of years ago.
But without clues from a skeleton or a skull, the physical appearance of these humans remained a mystery, said Dr. Fu, now a geneticist at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing. 'After 15 years, people want to know, who are the Denisovans?'
Now she can put a face to the name.
Dr. Fu and her colleagues announced Wednesday that a skull found in China contains both Denisovan DNA and Denisovan protein. 'This moment is special to me,' Dr. Fu said.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
6 hours ago
- Forbes
Dyeing for change: Why microbes could clean up fashion's toxic mess
Three different microbial pigments Colorifix What comes to mind first when you think about the environmental cost of what we wear every day? Fossil-fuel fabrics, overflowing landfills and underpaid labour are often front and centre of the conversation, and rightly so. But what rarely makes it into the headlines - is dye - the stuff that makes our clothes colourful. Textile dyeing is actually one of the most chemically intensive and polluting elements of garment production, accounting for roughly 20% of global industrial water pollution. The vast majority of dyes in use today are made from petrochemicals, derived from crude oil. And the amount of water required in the process is staggering. A single pair of blue denim jeans can take up to 7,000 litres of water to produce. Plus, the indigo hue is synthetic and involves toxic chemicals and heavy metals in its manufacturing. In factories all over the world, from China to Bangladesh, these pollutants are dumped untreated into rivers, poisoning ecosystems and endangering communities. It's a problem that sits in plain sight, literally on our backs, yet remains largely missing from the sustainable fashion discourse. Synthetic dyes are cheap, efficient and industrially embedded. They provide a wide colour spectrum, which brands like, and deliver predictable results - perhaps why no viable solution has been able to compete. Natural dyes made out of plants have been used for centuries, but their problem? The colours tend to be earthy and dull and, crucially, don't stick to the fabric and eventually fade. One British breakthrough may have solved the problem, by inventing a 'green' dye (not literally) that meets the industry's rigorous expectations. It's scaleable - and that means there is potential to disrupt the status quo. Instead of mining oil or boiling vats of chemicals, Colorifix uses engineered microorganisms, (essentially programmable microbes) to grow colours in the lab. Fed with sugar and salt to create a specific pigment, these microbes act like miniature factories, brewing vibrant dyes that are transferred directly onto fabric using a fraction of the water and none of the toxic additives. Fed with sugar and salt to create a specific pigment, the microbes act like miniature factories, brewing vibrant dyes. The idea first emerged from a very different kind of lab, out in nature. In 2012, two University of Cambridge researchers were studying polluted drinking water in rural Nepal. They used bacteria to detect contaminants in water, which had been engineered to change colour in the presence of specific chemicals - a simple, visual indicator for unsafe water. But as they spoke with local communities about the root causes, the answer kept circling back to the same culprit: textile dye. So instead of building tools to detect pollution, they pivoted to tackling the source of it directly, by using DNA sequencing found in our natural world. Say, the genetic code for blue in a butterfly wing, or the pink of a flower petal. By using DNA sequencing, they can copy the genetic code for a blue butterfly wing. 'Synthetic dyes are very well studied and substantiated in the textiles industry - but we're doing our own analysis from scratch,' explains co-founder Jim Ajioka. 'Growing the microorganism is a natural process, but we have modified it, to make the colours of other living organisms.' 'We get inspiration from nature - rather than extracting from nature,' says the other co-founder Orr Yarkoni. Their approach is so radical that it has been recognised royally in the UK. Colorifix became a finalist for the Earthshot Prize in 2023, a yearly contest led by Prince William to find the world's most promising environmental solutions. The Prize is often said to have been inspired by JFK's 'Moonshot' and was designed to incentivise tipping-point innovations. It has five categories, nature protection, clean air, oceans, climate and the one Colorifix competed in, waste-free solutions. Finalists receive mentorship and access to a network of global businesses, investors, and environmental organisations ready to help scale their ideas. The Prince visited the lab this week to praise founders Yarkoni and Ajioka on their science-led approach. 'It's really exciting and I know you're going to push into the industry very quickly,' he told the team. 'It's really exciting and I know you're going to push into the industry very quickly.' The microbial dye solution is already moving beyond the lab. In the last few years, it has received significant funding from highstreet brand H&M (here's a t-shirt dyed by Colorifix). H&M's innovation arm has invested in pilot dyeing projects in Portugal, where the startup's biologically grown pigments were used on items produced for both H&M and Pangaia. This marked one of the first real-world commercial applications of the technology. Today, Colorifix has just closed a $18 million Series B2 round, led by Inter IKEA Group, to fuel global commercial expansion. 'This investment marks a critical milestone as we shift from proving our technology to delivering it at industrial scale,' Yarkoni tells me. Colorifix has just closed a $18 million investment from IKEA to fuel global commercial expansion. Linn Clabburn from IKEA's innovation arm agrees. 'Colorifix is addressing one of the toughest sustainability challenges in textiles,' she says. Their progress in scaling this tech and entering new markets 'aligns well' with IKEA's ambitions to improve sustainability in the value chain, she adds. It's a vote of confidence not just in the science, but in the market's readiness for a pioneering solution. Unlike other sustainable alternatives that require entire factories to be revamped, Colorifix's process is essentially plug-and-play and compatible with existing industrial dyeing equipment. That means factories don't need to overhaul infrastructure to adopt it, which removes one of the biggest barriers to sustainable innovation: cost and complexity. The potential ripple effect is huge. If Colorifix can roll out its microbial dyeing process across fashion and homeware with some of the biggest household names, it could help detoxify one of the most water and chemical-intensive elements of garment production. Transforming a $2 trillion-dollar supply chain does not come without its challenges. Colorifix's technology may be simple to implement, but scaling it globally means convincing the big names this is the right idea for them, never mind navigating strict regulatory frameworks. Textile manufacturers, often operating on razor-thin margins, can be slow to adopt new methods - especially in regions where environmental protocols are lax and synthetic dyes remain cheap and abundant. Yet, momentum is building. Colorifix is already working with mills in Portugal, India and Brazil, with plans to expand into Southeast Asia, one of the largest dyeing hubs in the world. 'We are sure to make a difference.' And the prospects don't stop at fabric. The founders say their microbial process could one day be adapted for other industries like cosmetics and hair dye. When Prince William comes to visit a project like this, he isn't just there to tick a box. The Earthshot Prize was clearly designed to elevate this kind of bold, science-based solution with the power to transform entire systems. In fashion, that means anywhere we use colour, microbes could one day replace petrochemicals. 'Over the last few years, we have gone from grammes to tonnes of fabric per week,' says Yarkoni. 'We are sure to make a difference.'
The Verge
6 hours ago
- The Verge
You sound like ChatGPT
Join any Zoom call, walk into any lecture hall, or watch any YouTube video, and listen carefully. Past the content and inside the linguistic patterns, you'll find the creeping uniformity of AI voice. Words like 'prowess' and 'tapestry,' which are favored by ChatGPT, are creeping into our vocabulary, while words like 'bolster,' 'unearth,' and 'nuance,' words less favored by ChatGPT, have declined in use. Researchers are already documenting shifts in the way we speak and communicate as a result of ChatGPT — and they see this linguistic influence accelerating into something much larger. In the 18 months after ChatGPT was released, speakers used words like 'meticulous,' 'delve,' 'realm,' and 'adept' up to 51 percent more frequently than in the three years prior, according to researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, who analyzed close to 280,000 YouTube videos from academic channels. The researchers ruled out other possible change points before ChatGPT's release and confirmed these words align with those the model favors, as established in an earlier study comparing 10,000 human- and AI-edited texts. The speakers don't realize their language is changing. That's exactly the point. One word, in particular, stood out to researchers as a kind of linguistic watermark. 'Delve' has become an academic shibboleth, a neon sign in the middle of every conversation flashing ChatGPT was here. 'We internalize this virtual vocabulary into daily communication,' says Hiromu Yakura, the study's lead author and a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Human Development. ''Delve' is only the tip of the iceberg.' But it's not just that we're adopting AI language — it's about how we're starting to sound. Even though current studies mostly focus on vocabulary, researchers suspect that AI influence is starting to show up in tone, too — in the form of longer, more structured speech and muted emotional expression. As Levin Brinkmann, a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute of Human Development and a coauthor of the study, puts it, ''Delve' is only the tip of the iceberg.' AI shows up most obviously in functions like smart replies, autocorrect, and spellcheck. Research out of Cornell looks at our use of smart replies in chats, finding that use of smart replies increases overall cooperation and feelings of closeness between participants, since users end up selecting more positive emotional language. But if people believed their partner was using AI in the interaction, they rated their partner as less collaborative and more demanding. Crucially, it wasn't actual AI usage that turned them off — it was the suspicion of it. We form perceptions based on language cues, and it's really the language properties that drive those impressions, says Malte Jung, Associate Professor of Information Science at Cornell University and a co-author of the study. This paradox — AI improving communication while fostering suspicion — points to a deeper loss of trust, according to Mor Naaman, professor of Information Science at Cornell Tech. He has identified three levels of human signals that we've lost in adopting AI into our communication. The first level is that of basic humanity signals, cues that speak to our authenticity as a human being like moments of vulnerability or personal rituals, which say to others, 'This is me, I'm human.' The second level consists of attention and effort signals that prove 'I cared enough to write this myself.' And the third level is ability signals which show our sense of humor, our competence, and our real selves to others. It's the difference between texting someone, 'I'm sorry you're upset' versus 'Hey sorry I freaked at dinner, I probably shouldn't have skipped therapy this week.' One sounds flat; the other sounds human. For Naaman, figuring out how to bring back and elevate these signals is the path forward in AI-mediated communication, because AI is not only changing language — but what we think. 'Even on dating sites, what does it mean to be funny on your profile or in chat anymore where we know that AI can be funny for you?' Naaman asks. The loss of agency starting in our speech and moving into our thinking, in particular, is what he is worried about. 'Instead of articulating our own thoughts, we articulate whatever AI helps us to articulate…we become more persuaded.' Without these signals, Naaman warns, we'll only trust face-to-face communication — not even video calls. We lose the verbal stumbles, regional idioms, and off-kilter phrases that signal vulnerability, authenticity, and personhood The trust problem compounds when you consider that AI is quietly establishing who gets to sound 'legitimate' in the first place. University of California, Berkeley research found that AI responses often contained stereotypes or inaccurate approximations when prompted to use dialects other than Standard American English. Examples of this include ChatGPT repeating the prompt back to the non-Standard-American-English user due to lack of comprehension and exaggerating the input dialect significantly. One Singaporean English respondent commented, 'the super exaggerated Singlish in one of the responses was slightly cringeworthy.' The study revealed that AI doesn't just prefer Standard American English, it actively flattens other dialects in ways that can demean their speakers. This system perpetuates inaccuracies not only about communities but also about what 'correct' English is. So the stakes aren't just about preserving linguistic diversity — they're about protecting the imperfections that actually build trust. When everyone around us starts to sound 'correct,' we lose the verbal stumbles, regional idioms, and off-kilter phrases that signal vulnerability, authenticity, and personhood. We're approaching a splitting point, where AI's impacts on how we speak and write move between the poles of standardization, like templating professional emails or formal presentations, and authentic expression in personal and emotional spaces. Between those poles, there are three core tensions at play. Early backlash signals, like academics avoiding 'delve' and people actively trying not to sound like AI, suggests we may self-regulate against homogenization. AI systems themselves will likely become more expressive and personalized over time, potentially reducing the current AI voice problem. And the deepest risk of all, as Naaman pointed to, is not linguistic uniformity but losing conscious control over our own thinking and expression. The future isn't predetermined between homogenization and hyperpersonalization: it depends on whether we'll be conscious participants in that change. We're seeing early signs that people will push back when AI influence becomes too obvious, while technology may evolve to better mirror human diversity rather than flatten it. This isn't a question about whether AI will continue shaping how we speak — because it will — but whether we'll actively choose to preserve space for the verbal quirks and emotional messiness that make communication recognizably, irreplaceably human.
Yahoo
13 hours ago
- Yahoo
New Zealand PM Luxon meets China's Xi Jinping
(Reuters) -New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said on Friday he and China's President Xi Jinping discussed the role of business, education and science to help boost relations between the two countries. "I raised the importance to New Zealand of the international rules-based system, as well as the key role that China can play in helping to resolve global challenges," Luxon said in a statement after meeting Xi Jinping in Beijing.
