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China's Earliest Modern Human Found

Posted by samzenpus on from the what-is-old-is-new dept.

The remains of one of the earliest modern humans to inhabit eastern Asia have been unearthed in China. The find could shed light on how our ancestors colonized the East. Researchers found 34 bone fragments belonging to a single individual at the Tianyuan Cave, near Beijing.

13 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. Other things interest me besides... by CrackedButter · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'd be more interested as to how people in the region developed different facial features, such as smaller eyes and differing skin tones. If we all have supposedly come out of Africa as the Article suggests, what is the reason for our physical differences? Even as a child, our differences amazed me, now that I'm older and the current theory is that we all came from Africa, I'm left asking myself again, how did we get them?

    --
    Jonathanjk.com
    1. Re:Other things interest me besides... by CmdrGravy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What puzzles me is that the article goes on about "archaic" groups of humans who the humans coming from out of Africa met up with and made love to without ever explaining who or what these archaic groups were and how they had got where they were.

    2. Re:Other things interest me besides... by miscz · · Score: 2, Interesting

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_pigment#Origins_ of_light_skin_in_humans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicanthal_fold#Inher ited

    3. Re:Other things interest me besides... by dajak · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The archaic groups of humans they are speaking of are obviously the previous wave of humans coming out of Africa. Coming "out of Africa" does not by the way suggest a relation with the Niger-Congo ("black") peoples who currently dominate that continent: the Bantu expansion is of much more recent date. The Wikipedia Khoisan article maybe sheds some light on where the brown and yellow skin and epicanthic eye folds typical of most Eurasian populations may come from. The Papua and Australian Aboriginals are for instance also interesting leftovers of previous peoples coming "out of Africa".

    4. Re:Other things interest me besides... by MichaelSmith · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The Papua and Australian Aboriginals are for instance also interesting leftovers of previous peoples coming "out of Africa".

      I read somewhere that even now human African populations have much more diversity than humans outside Africa. Perhaps the different racial characteristics represent groups who left Africa at various times because they were less suited to the environment there.

      --
      http://michaelsmith.id.au
    5. Re:Other things interest me besides... by dajak · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Indeed. Nearly all diversity in appearance of human beings outside of Africa is also found in Africa, even today. But there seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding about what this means, because many people seem to be under the impression that a) Africa is inhabited by black people of the Niger-Congo type, and b) that these people and their ancestors where always all over that continent and all people less black than them are somehow less "African".

      In reality the expansion of the Niger-Congo people from a fairly small area in western Africa is a very recent phenomenon, and a large part of Africa was, and in the north still is, inhabited by people with lighter skins and a variety of physical features. The African sun does not select specifically for being of the Niger-Congo type: the expansion has to do with agricultural and military advantages these people had over their competitors. Compare tropical regions in Asia and South America before the Spanish arrived: no blacks there. There is however a limit on how light-skinned a baby can be in the African sun and still survive, so some mutations will only happen once a group has left Africa.

  2. Re:Who are you talking about? by Yst · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Don't be so sure.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_recent_common_an cestor

    --
    Karma: Chameleon (comes and goes)
  3. Re:Actually it is that old. by oliverthered · · Score: 1, Interesting

    and there is currently no logical reason for believing in a god or gods at all.

    In the past with so many things unexplained believing in a God would probably make more sense than some of the explanations we have today.

    God has no place in a modern world.

    --
    thank God the internet isn't a human right.
  4. Re:Actually it is that old. by CRCulver · · Score: 5, Interesting

    No - the foremost living philosopher of religion is Richard Dawkins

    No, he is not a philosopher of religion. In the last twenty years, he has tried to present himself as one, but the academy, both theist or non-theist, is getting a little worried about him. Anthony Flew, instead of joining with Dawkins in any way, went the entirely opposite direction.

    There is no logical reason for believing in a god or gods at all.

    Theist philosophers of religion propose arguments, and their non-theist colleagues, though they critically examine them, nonetheless believe that the whole enterprise has value.

    To try to apply logic and reason to myths is just not valid.

    Theist philosophers don't necessarily work from any existing world religion, so "myths" don't often come into play here.

    Please get some training in the field before you try to dispute its work. K thx bye.

  5. Philosophers have value? by guidryp · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "Theist philosophers of religion propose arguments, and their non-theist colleagues, though they critically examine them, nonetheless believe that the whole enterprise has value."

    First you have to convince someone that modern academic philosophers have value, for this statement to matter.

    Religion is interesting in the abstract, but theists tend to believe because that is what their parents believed and they simply indoctrinated the children. If not fairly heavily indoctrinated, most people would not be that religious.

    1. Re:Philosophers have value? by c_forq · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If not fairly heavily indoctrinated, most people would not be that religious.

      I hear this argument a lot, but I have never seen anyone back it up with evidence. I know it is anecdotal so close to meaningless, but my reason to doubt is the largest church in my hometown has a congregation of over 1,600 people, and a vast majority of them were not raised in Christian homes. Now the catholic church and school, in which children are heavily indoctrinated and I don't think a single member wasn't raised in a catholic home, has seen steady and fairly rapid decline.

      --
      Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
  6. Re:Actually it is that old. by Mjlner · · Score: 2, Interesting

    No, he is not a philosopher of religion. In the last twenty years, he has tried to present himself as one, but the academy, both theist or non-theist, is getting a little worried about him.
    He has hardly tried to present himself as a "philosopher of religion". He has quite clearly presented himself as an atheist and a scientist. He does, of course, philosophize against religion. Which academy are you talking about, by the way, and of what importance is this academy to Richard Dawkins?

    Theist philosophers of religion propose arguments, and their non-theist colleagues, though they critically examine them, nonetheless believe that the whole enterprise has value.
    That statement is quite non-informative. You already said that Dawkins is not a philosopher of religion, which indicates that you automatically exclude atheists from being philosophers of religion, which I'm prepared to agree with. In other words, the only non-theists you speak of are deists. Why should a deist philosopher of religion not find value in such an enterprise?
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    Lemon curry???
  7. Re:Statistics Canada. by guidryp · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Just recently I ran across this at statscan: Page 7-9 of pdf. There is an interesting table on "Religiosity", part of it compared religiosity to parental religion Look at the low religiosity category. If both parent have the same religion (more consistent message) only 32% have low religiosity, if both parents just have different religions (less consistent message) low religiosity jumps to %50. If neither parent is religious, it jumps to %85. This has always made sense, but this is pretty clear statistical evidence that it is more a learned trait.

    http://www.statcan.ca/cgi-bin/downpub/listpub.cgi? catno=11-008-XIE2006001

    Religion of parents (vs outcome Lo Med Hi religiosity )
    Both parents same religion 32 34 33
    Parents from different religions 50 28 22
    Neither parent religious 85 6 10

    I like to think I was just born very skeptical and would have been a non believer no matter what circumstance I was born into, but it may just be that neither of my parents was religious and I was left to form my own ideas without being indoctrinated. Naturally many people will buck the trend but I think the correlation is clear.

    Religion is just the brains legacy OS many people got stuck with.