China's Earliest Modern Human Found

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.

Comments

More evidence...

[Anonymous Coward]

fabricated by the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Such gullible people.

Re:More evidence...

[webdoodle]

This isn't the article I submitted to Slashdot. You editors are complete assholes, its a wonder people use your site at all. Thanks you hypocrites for sending people to a worthless BBC article, and not my site.

Other things interest me besides...

[CrackedButter]

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?

Re:Other things interest me besides...

[Somewhat Delirious]

Evolutionary adaptions to different environments combined with random mutations in isolated communities perhaps?

Re:Other things interest me besides...

[grahamlee]

AIUI (I'm not an evolutionary biologist, although my girlfriend is) the environmental pressures which gave rise to homo sapiens in Africa also occurred among simian populations elsewhere, so that human-like characteristics arose independently among multiple populations (h. neanderthalis in Europe, for example). Through interbreeding and competition, there's now a single species, h. sapiens sapiens. Although some of the characteristics of our species are apparently or allegedly tracable to interbreeding events, for instance I've heard that red/ginger hair among Europeans can be linked to Neanderthalis genes.

Re:Other things interest me besides...

[Scarletdown]

I thought this Human origins question was answered back in the late 70s...

There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe. With tribes of Humans, who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. That they may have been the architects of the great pyramids, or the lost civilizations of Lemuria or Atlantis. Some believe that there may yet be brothers of Man, who even now fight to survive...somewhere beyond the heavens.

(Cue one of the most kick-ass scifi theme songs ever composed...)

Re:Other things interest me besides...

[dajak]

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".

Re:Other things interest me besides...

[MichaelSmith]

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.

Re:Other things interest me besides...

[dajak]

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.

Re:Other things interest me besides...

[radtea]

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.

Evidence suggests that early hominids migrated out of Africa in waves. Homo erectus, for example, is believed to have evolved in Africa and spread over much of Asia one or two million years ago. The general pattern of hominid evolution is one of evolution of new species in Africa followed by general dispersion over those parts of the globe accessible by foot. This pattern appears to have been repeated several times: H. erectus, H. heidelbergensis/neanderthalensis[1] and H. sapiens.

The reality of hominid evolution is that we don't know a lot. The number of fossils is small and the weight of inference they bear is heavy. As Mark Twain said, in science one gets such a huge return in speculation from such a trifling investment of fact. However, the DNA evidence points quite strongly to the evolution of modern humans in Africa about two hundred thousand years ago, and the migration across the rest of the Old World about 70,000 years ago, with the settling of Australia by perfectly ordinary H. sapiens who are just like all the rest of us about 40,000 years ago. North America was colonized somewhat later, but probably not that much.

Humans are much bigger on exogamy than any other primate: we have a strong tendency to breed outside our kin group. We'll have sex with just about anything, and actually show a marked preference for those who are not perceived to be close kin. This is why the differences between races are so tiny, and restricted entirely to rapidly evolved and quite trivial enzymic variations that have high survival value in different climates. We are all multi-racial under the skin, and all have ancestors of different races far more recently in our family tree than most people appreciate (Icelanders may be exempt from this rule.)

So on the face of it, if there were multiple waves of near-modern humans migrating across the Old World, it is very likely that the members of the most recent group would have interbred with previous groups.

[1] For the racists in the audience, it might be worth contemplating that Neanderthals are the only hominid species that appears to have evolved in Europe (from H. heidelbergensis that left Africa earlier) and of all the hominids they are amongst the least successful.

Re:Who are you talking about?

[Yst]

Don't be so sure.

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

Modern?

[FredDC]

Researchers found 34 bone fragments belonging to a single individual at the Tianyuan Cave, near Beijing.

If he's living in a cave, he can't be very "modern"...

Actually it is that old.

[MarkByers]

> I dispute this nonsense, since as we all know, the Earth is only a few thousand years old, not the 42,000 years old that this skellington is supposed to be!

It really is that old. On the 8th day, god created a 40,000 year old skeleton and then buried it somewhere he knew we would find it. he does this to test our faith. god can do anything. Even impossible things or things that make no logical sense.

Re:Actually it is that old.

[CRCulver]

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.

Re:Actually it is that old.

[mapkinase]

Dawkins is an arrogant media-hungry loser of science. I have seen similar figures in my field: computational biology. It has nothing to do with religion or anything else. Some people just want to flamebait on- and off-line.

Re:Actually it is that old.

[Lord Ender]

Richard Swinburne, the foremost living philosopher of religion

No - the foremost living philosopher of religion is Richard Dawkins

Actually, Daniel Dennett is probably the best mind in the field today.
He proposes many scientific tests for analyzing the propagation, benefits, and costs of religious ideas. He thinks memetics and evolutionary psychology provide the best way of understanding the state of religions.

He is also an atheist, and believes religion is in its death-throes in modern society.

Re:Actually it is that old.

[v01d]

But still, my point above stands, it's not for anyone on Slashdot (unless they hold a Ph.D and a university position in the subject) to say anything negative about a field.

Your point is just an inversion of the burden of proof fallacy. If I have a phd in the field of "teapots orbitting the sun", every one is more than welcome to question the value of my field. If your point was valid, any quack could create all sorts of completely pointless fields of study and no one would be able to say they were pointless.

The fact is if you are making a positive statement the burden of proof is on you. Almost by definition skepticism doesn't need proof, just reason.

Re:Could be fake

[djupedal]

"has a very high likelihood of being a forgery"

Don't be an idiot - that would mean being found for sale on a dirty blanket laid out on a sidewalk outside the Lohou train station in Shenzhen. The Tianyuan Cave is a carefully protected area, listed on UNESCO's World Heritage List, and monitored specifically to prohibit such funny business.

Re:Philosophers have value?

[c_forq]

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.

Re:Statistics Canada.

[guidryp]

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.