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.

Comments

Hominids

[xtrucial]

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.

Re:Hominids

[$alex_n42]

Just though I should fire up the old google and check it out for myself, here's what I found:

"While the largest Homo erectus brains were about 1250 ml (2 imperial pints) and modern brains average about 1200 - 1500 ml in volume, female Neanderthal brains were about 1300 ml and those of males about 1600 ml, extending to 1740 ml in the Amud man." --Stringer, Christopher & Gamble, Clive. In Search of the Neanderthals. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1993. link

"The Neanderthals were fully bipedal and had a slightly larger average brain capacity than that of a typical modern human (though the brain structure was organised somewhat differently)." --link

A good discussion and some comparisons here: link

Of course by the time I've read it all and wrote this, someone might have posted some relevant information already. Just though I'd share anyway.

Re:Hominids

[pajamacore]

The Broca's area in H. neanderthalensis was as fully developed as it is in H. sapiens. Also, the basicrania of Neanderthals were just as flexed as anatomically modern humans. Neanderthals also possessed an enlarged canal in the thoracic vertebrae allowing for fine control over phonetically significant movements of the rib cage.

The extent to which Neanderthals could speak was determined by their anatomy. The larynx was located high in the vocal tract and the oral cavity was significantly longer than in H. sapiens. This differently arranged vocal tract could not form the 'i', as in tea; 'u', as in too; and 'a', as in tall. Nor could it pronounce 'k' as in kite and 'g' as in god.

However, as Steven Pinker put it: "In any case, e lengeege weth e smell nember ef vewels cen remeen quete expresseve, so we cannot conclude that a [hominin] with a restricted vowel space had little language."

Re:What I don't understand

[Frostalicious]

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.

Re:How come there are modern and non modern Human?

[JebusIsLord]

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.

In other paleontological news...

[Goonie]

It seems we were almost wiped out 70,000 years ago, according to this BBC News article.

IANA geneticist, but I wonder whether some rapid evolution occurred amongst these small subgroups that gave modern humans the advantage over the Neanderthals?

Re:What I don't understand

[Jareeedo]

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.

Re:Brain Food?

[Montreal Geek]

I was rather surprised by the possibility of ritualistic brain-eating amongst the earliest ancestors of our species. Maybe they were extracting the brains not for appetizers, but for the same reasons Egyptians removed the brains prior to mummification: so that dead would not be encumbered by the useless grey gunk inside their head on the journey to the afterlife.

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

Re:Wait a minute...

[boomgopher]

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.

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. html

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.

Re:Wait a minute...

[msaavedra]

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.

Re:Call the editor!

[osgeek]

The difference is that when Science learns that it's wrong, it admits it and moves on to try to learn more about the universe.

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.

Re: Call the editor!

[Black Parrot]

> 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.