Slashdot Mirror
Oldest Modern Humans Found
DrLudicrous writes "Anthropologists have reconstructed and dated three skulls from Ethiopia that they believe to be the oldest anatomically modern human skulls in existance. They date to 160,000 years ago, in agreement with genetic studies that pin the arrival of modern humans to at least 150,000 years ago. The skulls also demonstrate evidence of ritual burial." UC Berkeley has the original release as well.
Not that hominids, though, arrived considerably earlier than this... what's the latest figure? somewhere in the 4 million range? Some of them wren't exactly dumb either; neanderthals, in fact, are supposed to have had more brain mass than humans did/do.
I mean, our ancestors were not stupid, they posessed the same intuition and logic that we do today. Whay did it take so long to get where we are now though?
I believe it had to do with climate. Prior to say 8,000BCE, it was too cold (ice age ending). They couldn't grow crops and survived through hunting/gathering. This environment could not support more advanced civilizations. Small groups of people could follow herds around for food, but a big city couldn't sustain itself.
Uhh, Homo erectus was not the first hominid. Not by a long shot. Try Ardipithecus ramadis at 5 to 8 million years ago, or arguably something earlier. A. ramadis is most likely bipedal however, which is typically the criteria for early hominids.
If you were refering to the first in the Homo genus, that would be (in my opinion) Homo habilis or possibly Homo heidelburgensis. These were characterized by the earliest confirmed tool use (Homo habilis means "handy man"). These fellas were around for several hundred thousand years before H. erectus and H. ergaster.
Sorry about the lack of italicised names, I'm lazy.
Jeremy
IANA geneticist, but I wonder whether some rapid evolution occurred amongst these small subgroups that gave modern humans the advantage over the Neanderthals?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Hell, most of North America was populated with hunter/gatherers until Europeans came, and it's not like they weren't 'smart' enough or anything.
Thats not true. Specific cases in North America include the Mississippians, the Anasazi and the Calusa. These were sophisticated societies. They had relatively complex economies, large cities consisting of thousands of people, organized religion, art and centralized government. What is true, is that we know very little else about these societies, as the Europeans brought diseases which essentially wiped out these people.
Not necessarly strange; it has been common in human cultures to associate eating something with assimilating the attributes of the eaten, or desirables attributes associated to the eaten. Examples of this are present in basically all cultures, modern day included-- look into why tigers are hunted to extinction in asia or why eating oysters is still associated with erotism and sexual potency.
It's not much of a stretch to guess that a culture that has figured out that the head/brain is the where intelligence/personality/memory lives (if only by looking at the effect of a bad bonk on the head) might want to preserve/steal the attributes of the recently dead.
The point of the research team is just that they have no way of knowing-- wether the brain was eaten or just discarded as a side effect of the ritual is undeterminable. The only thing they do know is how they did it, not why.
-- MG
Whoops. Good call. You are absolutely correct. I wasn't thinking. Homo rudolfensis is around then too. I wouldn't consider Homo heidelburgensis to be the first hominid, only because it came about so close to the evolutionary division which eventually resulted in Homo neandethalensis on one end, and Homo sapiens on the other. This subject is somewhat debatable, but the point is that they were after Austrolopithecus Garhi.
The first such major project to act on this took several years and thousands of DNA samples. They determined that Eve was from the Phillippines, and this was announced with quite a bit of publicity, articles in Time magazine, etc. Unfortunately, it was soon found that the analysis had been done with a faulty understanding of how the analysis software worked. Or something like that. Can't remember anymore. Anyway, for whatever reason, the results were not meaningful, and the data they had gathered couldn't be re-used. It was quite a disappointment for all involved. But you still hear references to Eve having lived in the Phillippines because of this.
A witty saying is worth nothing - Voltaire
"Homo sapiens (archaic) Discovered by villagers at Petralona in Greece in 1960. Estimated age is 250,000-500,000 years. It could alternatively be considered to be a late Homo erectus, and also has some Neandertal characteristics. The brain size is 1220 cc, high for erectus but low for sapiens, and the face is large with particularly wide jaws." Actually, the age was originally determined to be much older, 700,000-800,000 years, but there seems to be an organised program to discredit those findings, presumeably because it turns all the established theories on the origins of man on their head. However, even the most conservative estimates are still much older than the ethiopian finds.
Actually, the term hominid has become somewhat broader in recent years. Hominid is a derivative of Hominidae, the family once used to describe humans and their extinct relatives but now inclusive to the non-human great apes as well--both gorilla species, both orang-utan species, chimpanzees, and bonobos.
Humans and their relatives tend to be grouped in the subfamily Homininae these days. Thats where the term "hominin" comes in to play.
Saw a show on something related to this, "The Journey of Man", difference was using mutations on X chromosomes, which are passed unchanged from father to son, aside from random mutations. Anyways, a researcher (Spencer Wells) analysed the mutations in the X chromosomes from people all over the world, and came up with a map of sorts on the way people branched out.
. html
In summary, we're all descendant of a man who lived in Africa about 50,00 years ago (~2000 generations), with genes basically the same as bushmen.
The researcher laid it out quite clearly and convincingly, so it's worth a watch/read:
http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/7442
It really made me realize how related we all are, and silences the idiots who think blacks are closer to the apes, and whites are more advanced, etc.
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
Just a small nit-pick: I believe you mean Y chromosome, not X. All men get their X chromosome from their mother, and can only pass it on to their daughters. Y chromosome inheritance works as you described, though.
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
--Henry David Thoreau
No, early humans used no coercive violence prior to massive climate shifts in 4500bc which caused the drying up of the Sahara and central Asia. This lead to widespread famine and the birth of violent, dominator type cultures. For a very thorough analysis of this idea, see an article titled "The Origins and Diffusion of Patrism in Saharasia, c.4000 BCE"
Your times are off, as well: humans evolved "modern" behavior 25,000 years before the atlatl, and agriculture 10,000 to 20,000 years before the bow.
Organized coercive violence caused human development. Bah. Just what the world needs, another apologist for violence.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Most certainly.
You can most vividly see the changes and omissions made by comparing several translations of the bible. Some will have extra verses and some verses will be missing. Some are obvious and reasonable, others are disputable. But certainly there have been made other changes over the course of history, for which you will have to do some deeper research. If you'd like, I can dig it up.
And don't get me started on the inconsistencies that are evident in the bible, neither. They are numerous as are the various explanations possible to harmonize these discrepancies.
> What struck me was that the dating was done using layers of volcanic minerals. These folk may well have been ritually killed or buried, my question: How deep were they buried?
Competent archaeologists can see where holes have been dug, and report them regularly in their reports. When you dig a hole, put something in it, and fill it back up, the dirt doesn't go back in the same way it came out. So the lowest undisturbed layer above a grave gives a terminus ante quem for the date of the grave.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Well, or you could read the bible.
Gen 5:3 And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat [a son] in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth:
Gen 5:4 And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters:
Gen 5:5 And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.
Now In answer to the GP question, what about genetic diseases and mutations
Given:
God Created Adam and Eve.
God Created them Perfect
Minor Conclusion
Mutations came later.
Conclusion:
Interbreeding wasn't harmful until mutations came along.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
> As I understood it at least one of the skulls was found on the surface, so they could only verify the layer underneath and that it was not above the next dateable layer.
Yes, some of the material was exposed or partly exposed. However, as best I can tell from the press release, not all of it was completely exposed. For the stuff that's still completely or partially buried you can look to see whether the matrix is part of the natural layering or part of a backfill such as a burial pit. Hopefully the Nature article will have drawings or photos that give more details for the current find.
AFAIK you cannot use the layers to date something that is completely exposed.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
When the Bible is shown to be wrong, people hold to it doggedly, making excuse after excuse until they're left in exile on the lunatic fringe defending the utterly laughable (Fundamentalists), or they must dilute the "facts" in the Bible so much that what they're left with is practically useless as a religious text describing an almighty Creator(Catholics).
For those who take the Bible literally, believing that all words of the Bible are true and perfect:
- No, a rabbit does not chew its cud.
- Jesus lies quite egregiously to try to save his own skin in the Bible when questioned by the Pharisies.
- The Earth is not flat with four corners.
- No evidence exists for a worldwide flood between 4,000 and 6,000 years ago, and even less evidence exists that we and all land/air animals came from creatures that rode an ark during that time.
- The Egyptians, who were meticulous record keepers, made no mention of massive Jewish slave use that was ripped away from them by the coming of Moses. Further, if the Nile had been turned to blood, it would have caused untold destruction upon the entire region that depended upon it for their very survival. We would have learned about it by now, most likely.
- Jesus describes his "kingdom" in some detail then goes on to say how not even all of his Apostles would be dead by the time he returned to his glory for all to see... I think it's safe to say that prophecy was full of crap.
- Christians are completely unable to do any of the things that Jesus claimed they could with even a little faith: They can't move mountains, they can't whither trees or tell them to jump into the ocean (well, they can, but nothing happens), they can't walk on water, they can't provably cure the sick, they can't do shit. Furthermore, all followers of Christ are supposed to be able to prove the divinity of their cause. Jesus said they would prove it by drinking deadly poison, handling deadly snakes, and speaking in tongues (in a way such that all people of all languages can understand what they say).
- To believe that Jonah spent days inside a whale is an utter joke. Do you believe all of the ridiculous claims made by Islam and Hindu texts? Hmm, I wonder why not? Can we say special pleading?
- Hey, from your perfect Bible, name me the exact ten commandments.
Face facts. The Bible is so obviously wrong, you'd have to be heavily deluded or bribed to believe otherwise. I guess the elusive promise of everlasting life is quite a bribe. I'd go for it too, but my sense of intellectual honesty just can't stomach all of the bullshit.Just because Christians are so simple as to believe in an obviously wrong religious text doesn't mean that Science is inferior when it admits its mistakes and moves on.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Try this website for starters. It contains a lot of honest information. Google is your friend, too.
I would like to see some credible evidence before I'll believe that contradictions exist in the Bible. I would agree that apparent contradictions exist, but I haven't seen a legitimate one yet in any accurate translation (ASV, NASB, or NKJV are a few accurate ones that come to mind; New World Translation is an example of an purposefully mistranslated text.)
Refutations to many apparent contradictions can be read here:
Bible Difficulties
The original Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible are preserved well. No translation is or can be perfect, and all translations are an additional step away from the autograph. Often, the English does not carry the full meaning of a verse. That is why it is good to examine several translations of the verse to try to get a better understanding.
It is easy to misuse or not interpret scripture accurately and come to the conclusion that it's all false. Jesus recognized that the best way to address Satan's lies and misuse of the truth was to respond with the truth of the scriptures. (Matthew 4)
In my experience, many folks pretend to know that the Bible is false, when in reality they never investigate it first. I hope that you will investigate it. The truths in the Bible have changed my life in many positive ways.
There is also a good deal of information on using mitochondrial DNA to track this information, which comes down through the women only (the men pass mitochondria along with sperm, but it gets left behind with the "shell" and only the regular DNA is used for fertilization). This mitochondrial DNA is very stable and you can track human spread over very long periods of time. The Y-chromosome, which isn't quite as stable and mutates, can be used to track migrations over a shorter span of time.
I would like to see some credible evidence before I'll believe that contradictions exist in the Bible.
Perhaps you haven't investigated this too deeply. I would suggest taking a look at this enumeration of "apparent" contradictions.
I am not attempting to discredit the Bible or the religion it supports. I am simply pointing out there's a lot to analyse and contemplate on this particular subject.
Go read for yourself.
Join Tor today!
Genetic profiling shows that there is only one species of man, no sub races. Two puppies born of the same Bitch and Dog have more genetic differences than two humans selected anywhere on the planet. One troup of Chimps has more genetic diversity than all of Humanity.
We have so little genetic variation that it is amazing that we have survived. The only animal that I'm aware of that has less genetic variation than us are Cheeta's, and they are on the verge of going extinct because of it.
For those interested in seeing how uninsightful, superstitious, and self-contradicting the works of one of the dozens of ancient civilizations can be, feel free to check The Skeptic's Annotated Bible
Especially if you are a woman, just, or tolerant.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
> I would like to see some credible evidence before I'll believe that contradictions exist in the Bible. I would agree that apparent contradictions exist, but I haven't seen a legitimate one yet in any accurate translation
That's because the interpretation is underconstrained. Theologians can cough up any "explanation" at all, so long as they preserve the claim that the Bible is true.
For example, the New Testament variously reports that Judas hanged himself or that he threw himself down a stairway and burst open. In Sunday School I was taught that he hung himself at the top of a stairway, the rope broken, and he tumbled down the stairway.
Fairy tales and the fairy-tale logic used to explain away the obvious contradictions in them simply aren't falsifiable. You could give Homer or Raiders of the Lost Ark the same treatment.
Meanwhile, if you try to evaluate the Bible objectively by comparing it to what we know from history, archaeology, geology, etc., it is found often to be very, very wrong. Once you grok that fact you suddenly lose interest in adding extra-biblical epicycles to reconcile the contradictions, because you see the book for what it is: a centuries-long accumulation and repeated re-editing of traditional stories, all done at the hands of superstitious and falible men.
Though there's still some wisdom mixed in with the fiction and nonsense, for those who care to look for it.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The Dead Sea Scrolls are not scripture and are not, and never were, part of the accepted canon. The apocrypha contained in those scrolls were never cited by Christian church fathers or Jewish rabbis as inspired. If they conflict, it is irrelevant and not even surprising as they were placed there by divergent sects.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
This is the result of a misunderstanding of creationism.
And I wouldn't worry about you being marked as a troll. Evolutionists are almost never marked troll. I find however, no matter how rational or kind/non confrontational I make my pro-creationist posts they get modded troll. But I don't mind, people like my other posts enough that my karma will be impervious to their attacks!
Here is what happened. Adam and Eve were created man and woman, the first two humans. They had many children, sons and daughters. These sons and daughters married each other (if there was an official ceremony) and had children. These children were safe from the dangers of mutations since they were the offspring of flawless parents. That means there were no common recessive harmful mutations to share amongst each other. Incest was only outlawed much later (around 2000 years later I think) when mutations had become rife and the dangers were stronger. Then it wasn't restricted to cousins - in fact, amongst cousins I believe the danger is ~2% or something, but that could be wrong.
As for going over the hill, that is a load of crock - and the result of a misreading of the Bible (or perhaps imagining verses that aren't there), and a misunderstanding of genetics.
This is just an urban myth. The truth is that part of a rib can be taken off and it will grow back if done right. Surgeons do this sometimes when they need some bone for an operation.
It is not expected for men to be missing a rib. Besides, it's rubbish anyway - just because Adam was missing a rib that didn't change his DNA, so his children should have still had the same number as he originally had. That's like saying if I lose my arm my children will also have only one arm.
Which is why it took over fifty years to recognize Piltdown was a fraud? Or why an extinct pig's tooth was ballooned into an entire human population before exposed as wrong? Or why DuBois hid the skulls that exposed his "Java man" to be bogus for decades beneath the floorboards in his house? Science is no more honorable than the individuals in it, and there are shysters and hucksters in all branches of humanity. Sadly, that means there are frauds in science, and will be for as long as there are people in the field.
I thank you for making a distinction between Christians and Roman Catholics, that discernment is rare. However you are incorrect that fundamentalists are on the lunatic fringe. There are many respected scientists in the mainstream who are fundamentalists. Many have to hide that however due to persecution and other attitudes of closed-minded individuals.
The rest of your claims are just plain wrong:
Rabbits do chew their cud, in that they eat again what has passed through their system, by practicing refection. They do eat their food again. Note the claim was not that they have multichambered stomachs, merely that they eat again what they have already eaten. I don't know about you, but a caprophagic animal is a pretty good definition of an unclean animal that I would certainly not find appealing to consume.
Accusations such as this without detail are not worth answering. Provide detail and you will be answered.
Who said it was flat with four corners? That's your misinterpretation, ignoring literary constructions. The phrase "to the corners of the earth" is still in use today as an expression.
Mitochondrial Eve has been shown in secular literature (ever heard of the magazine "Science") to have lived ~6000 years ago. Evidence of the flood here.
Of course the Egyptians removed records of the slave Hebrew population, they are well documented revisionists. Note they don't mention losing battles either; no wonder they wiped out references to the crushing defeat they were handed. Same with the Nile, that large a defeat they would wipe out. And it was not blood for ages as you seem to imply.
Got Wisdom?
Your page amounts to a huge number of attempts at apologia for some pretty glaring "contradictions." It doesn't do much of a job with the first item on its list: the different order of the creation accounts in Genesis 1 and 2. I've seen better tries at that one -- involving the tenses of the verbs, for example.
I guess it's pretty obvious you're reading it all in the original Hebrew and Greek, though, because otherwise, as you say, it'd get to being a total muddle. Good luck with that -- I'm sure it's all perfectly clear with no contradictions at all then...
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
But specifically, in reference to your listing of Piltdown, Nebraska man, and Java man, read the extensive talk.origins FAQs on these very items: (emphasis added by me)
Nor is it true, as is often claimed, that Dubois kept the existence of the Wadjak skulls secret because knowledge of them would have discredited Java Man. Dubois briefly reported the Wadjak skulls in three separate publications in 1890 and 1892. Despite being corrected on this in a debate in 1982 and in print (Brace 1986), Gish has continued to make this claim, even stating, despite not having apparently read Dubois' reports, that they did not mention the Wadjak skulls (Fezer 1993)."
In the 90 years since then have we developed better and more rigorous testing methods? Yes. But even during those 40 years it took for the full hoax to be revealed, faults with Piltdown were found, long before testing showed that they were recent skulls: "...It should be remembered that, at the time of Piltdown finds, there were very few early hominid fossils; Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens were clearly fairly late. It was expected that there was a "missing link" between ape and man ... Piltdown man had the expected mix of features, which lent it plausibility as a human precursor.
This plausibility did not hold up. During the next two decades there were a number of finds of ancient hominids and near hominids, e.g. Dart's discovery of Australopith
"Mitochondrial Eve has been shown in secular literature (ever heard of the magazine "Science") to have lived ~6000 years ago. Evidence of the flood here."
.
What's going on?! I used the exact same message (below) already once this week for the exact same argument. Fortunately somebody else already took care of the rest of your message so I don't have to.
One nit to pick. Going back to the original "Research News" article in Science (vol 279 issue 5347 pg 28-29), we see that instead of this being evidence for a ~6000 year old mitochondrial eve, we have to reconsider some of our beliefs about mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), or more specifically a region of mtDNA called the D-loop, which comprises only 7% of mtDNA and which most mtDNA studies have used. One of the biggies is that most mtDNA studies use "so-called "noncoding" sequences of the control region of mtDNA, which do not code for gene products and therefore are thought to be free from natural selection." to quote the article. Another is to check and see if we are instead hitting "hotspots," regions with above-average mutation rates; hotspots will have more back- and parallel-mutations which will cloud the picture. A third is that the mutation rate may vary over time. A fourth is to investigate the issue of heteroplasmy--having multiple mtDNA sequences, even though for a given region there should be only one. For a while it was thought to be rare, now 10-20% of the population could be heteroplasmic. All of these issues would need to be addressed by the creationists before it could be considered evidence of a ~6,000 year old mitochondrial eve rather than a problem with the underlying assumptions of the technique. Indeed, with the advancement of our ability to manipulate and sequence DNA, we no longer have to utilize only 7% of the mtDNA--we can sequence the whole thing--all 16,000 or so base pairs of it. A recent study published in Nature (vol 408 pg 708-713, Dec. 2000) using mtDNA--all of it--found that the D-loop (used in most mtDNA studies) does not have a constant mutation rate. The study goes on to show (again using the whole mtDNA sequence) that the date of "mitochondrial eve" is about 170,000 years ago. A more reader-friendly report by the author of the Nature paper can be found here
Say, you ever get a chance to actually read that Dalrymple article you so badly mangled? Here's a refresher. Just go up the thread.