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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.

6 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 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".

    2. 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 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.

  4. 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.