Carl Linnaeus, the 18th-century botanist who laid the foundation for the modern system of taxonomic nomenclature, placed chimpanzees and humans in the same genus. Discuss the merits of this classification.

What lines of evidence support the hypothesis that modern humans evolved in Africa and then subsequently migrated throughout the globe?

Discuss how both gains and losses of regulatory elements may lead to human-specific traits.

How do copy-number variants arise? Do they account for more polymorphism than SNPs within the human population?

Consider possible societal and ethical dilemmas that might arise if we currently shared the planet with another hominin.

What must be assumed in order to validate the answers in Problem 7?

Describe how selection at a locus can result in a loss of polymorphism surrounding the locus.

How can ancient DNA provide insight into past migrations that analyses of extant human genomes fail to uncover?

Denisovans are known from bones found in Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains in Siberia, but traces of their DNA are found in Australians and Melanesians, whose ancestors likely migrated across Asia much farther to the south. How can these geographic differences be reconciled?