21/28 December 2019 | New Scientist | 292019 through a lens
A Denisovan
masterpiece
Photographer
Francesco d’Errico
Agency Doyon
An ancient cousin to
humans may have made
the engravings in this
bone 100,000 years ago.
It was found in Lingjing in
central China, where it is
thought some Denisovans
lived. This and a second
bone discovered in the
area were engraved using
a sharp point, which
couldn’t have happened
while processing meat.
We know little about
the Denisovans, but these
abstract engravings hint
that they may have been
capable of symbolic
thought, which was once
regarded as something
only modern humans
could do.
Preview of 2020
The year aheadThe delights and
dangers to come
Next year, our eyes turn towards facial recognition, new
ancient relatives, protecting biodiversity and maybe even
the end of ageingOur distant relatives
This time next year, our understanding
of our origins will have been transformed.
Molecules in the fossils of our ancestors
are increasingly opening a new window
on the evolution of the first hominids.
Recently, the limits of this approach
have been pushed further, with analysis
of dental enamel proteins from a
2-million-year-old fossil of the extinct
giant ape Gigantopithecus. And DNA as
old as 400,000 years has been recovered
from hominin ancestors of Neanderthals.
So the ability to identify even older skeletal
remains looks promising.
Such techniques could shed light on
our extinct cousin Homo naledi. This
hominin, discovered in 2013 by Lee Berger,
lived around 250,000 years ago. It has a
strange mix of modern and archaic features,
so it is hard to work out where it should sit
on the evolutionary tree. Could it be the
mysterious Species X, which we only know
about from traces of its DNA in our genomes
that suggest we interbred with it some
200,000 years ago?
We could also confirm that skulls found
in China belong to the Denisovans, giving
us our first proper look at the face of these
ancient humans. Another game-changing
discovery is on the cards from Berger, too.
From the looks of yet-to-be excavated
hominin bones he has discovered in South
Africa, he thinks he may have found an
entirely new species. Alison GeorgeCrunch time for anti-ageing
It won’t go down in history as the year we
conquered ageing, but events in 2020 will tell
us whether or not we’re finally going to do it.
Two promising drugs are at the final stages
of the development process. One clears out
old “senescent” cells, which have been linked
to age-related diseases such as Alzheimer’sand arthritis. Another mimics the effects
of a transfusion of young blood, which has
been shown to increase cognition in animals
and reduce biomarkers for cancer and heart
disease. Both drugs are in clinical trials that,
if successful, will see them move into the
final phase 3 stage as early as next year.
Neither of these target ageing per se, but
they explicitly target diseases of old age, and
their inventors think they could eventually
be sold as all-purpose rejuvenation therapies.
That will take time, but it could start to happen
by the end of the 2020s. Graham LawtonA crucial year for our planet
Only time will tell if 2020 will join recent
years as the warmest on record, but the
temperature is guaranteed to rise at a pair
of crucial environmental talks next year.
The UN climate summit in Glasgow in
November should be the most important
on the issue since the Paris conference in- Ahead of the meeting, countries are
expected to submit tougher carbon-cutting
plans, to start closing the gap between the
3°C of warming we are on track for with
existing plans, and the 1.5°C Paris goal.
The other big moment will be the UN’s
biodiversity gathering, hosted by China in
October. The aim will be to agree on new
targets to stem the loss of biodiversity
across the planet. These could include a
mission to protect 30 per cent of land by
2030, up from 15 per cent now.
It is likely the climate and biodiversity
agendas will overlap next year, as the role
of forests and farming in both comes to
the fore. “I think it’s a critical year for the
planet, not just biodiversity,” says Cristiana
Pașca Palmer, the UN’s biodiversity chief.
Climate action will be a key issue in
the 2020 US election on 3 November, just
one day before the US is due to exit the
Paris accord. Adam Vaughan >