Newly unearthed fossils seem to indicate that inbreeding may have been going on with our nutty ancestors.
The creepy evidence is shown from fragments of an approximately 100,000-year-old human skull found at an archeological site in the Nihewan Basin of northern China. The guy appears to have had a now-rare congenital deformity common among offspring of inbreeders.
The fossil, known as Xujiayao 11, is just one of countless ancient human remains that demonstrate rare skull shapes consistent with inbreeeding. "These populations were probably relatively isolated, very small and, as a consequence, fairly inbred," said study leader Erik Trinkhaus, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis.
The skull has a hole at its top, a disorder known as an "enlarged parietal foramen," which is exactly the same as a modern human condition of the same name caused by a rare genetic mutation which stems from inbreeding i.e. sleeping with your sister. Today, these mutations are rare, occurring in only about one of every 25,000 human births. So apparently people are still sleeping with their sister?
The skulls of humans from the Pleistocene epoc, (which ran from millions of years ago to about 10,000 years ago) show an unusually high occurrence of genetic abnormalities like this skull-hole deformity.
Such a high frequency of genetic abnormalities in the fossil record "reinforces the idea that during much of this period of evolution, human populations were very small" and, consequently, likely inbred, Trinkhaus said.
In other words, our great, great, great, well you get the picture once must have said to himself, “there are no chicks around. Looks like my sister is the only game in town (cave) tonight…"
The problem is with one out of every 25,000 hook ups today they're still doin' it.
Yikes.
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