Did Chinamen Predate Modern Man?

From Dinekes' Blog: Incipient Mongoloids (or elusive Denisovans) 105-125 kya in China?

The authors claim that these archaic humans from China show parallels to both modern eastern Eurasians (Mongoloids) and to Neandertals. The relationship with the Neandertals makes them prime candidates for the elusive Denisovans who were a sister group to Neandertals but are morphologically unknown (since all we've got is a genome, teeth, and a pinky). The relationship with Mongoloids suggest an appearance of Mongoloid morphology pre-dating the transition to sapiens, and brings to mind past claims about incipient Caucasoid morphology in Neandertals. Did aspects of modern Eurasian morphology originate in pre-sapiens archaic Eurasians? Hopefully someone's studying DNA from these crania as we speak.

Until proven other wise, I will assume that Denisovan women were hot, and smelled good.

The original abstract:

Late Pleistocene archaic human crania from Xuchang, China
Zhan-Yang Li et al.

Two early Late Pleistocene (~105,000- to 125,000-year-old) crania from Lingjing, Xuchang, China, exhibit a morphological mosaic with differences from and similarities to their western contemporaries. They share pan–Old World trends in encephalization and in supraorbital, neurocranial vault, and nuchal gracilization. They reflect eastern Eurasian ancestry in having low, sagittally flat, and inferiorly broad neurocrania. They share occipital (suprainiac and nuchal torus) and temporal labyrinthine (semicircular canal) morphology with the Neandertals. This morphological combination reflects Pleistocene human evolutionary patterns in general biology, as well as both regional continuity and interregional population dynamics.

The idea that's new here is that the mongolian or eastern Eurasian features first emerged in hominids prior to the emergence of modern man. Seems possible, but a single skull, or even two, seems a slim reed.

Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Whitewashing The Cyborg" ready for your viewing pleasure.