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Human Origins Theory Tested By Recent Findings

Posted by samzenpus on from the ebony-and-ivory dept.

annamadrigal writes "The BBC news is reporting on findings presented in Nature which suggest that Homo Erectus and H. Habilis were in fact sister species which co-existed. This challenges the view that the upright humans evolved from the tool users."

3 of 272 comments (clear)

  1. BS by dynamo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It doesn't "challenge" that view at all. Evolution is mutation plus competition, you need the competition part. Of course they co-existed, as must have all consecutive evolution stages in every being's evolution.

  2. Homo Mormonus by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If erectus was very sexually dimorphic [sex size diff] it may have had multiple mates at a time. This differs from the more monogamous nature of modern humans, indicating that Homo erectus was not as human-like as once thought.

    Polygomy is and was fairly common in humans.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  3. The real story here... by Yusaku+Godai · · Score: 5, Insightful
    ...is not that H. habilis and H. erectus may have coexisted. It's been believed for some time that the direct lineage of H. habilis -> H. erectus may be naive. To quote the Scientific American article on the finding:

    "Many of us have already abandoned this simple scheme" of habilis begetting erectus, says paleoanthropologist Philip Rightmire of Binghamton University in New York State and Harvard University, who was not involved in the study. "For me, it seems increasingly reasonable to suppose that a habilislike creature managed to disperse from Africa into Eurasia, sometime prior to 1.8 [million] to 1.7 [million years ago]."

    Anyways, the real story here is the incredibly poor coverage of this finding by the mainstream press. The BBC article linked to here isn't so bad, but just go to Google News and look at some of the headlines, in what I would consider increasing order of ridiculousness:

    "Fossil find casts doubt on origins of man"
    "new theory on the dawn of humanity"
    "Fossils Paint Messy Picture of Evolution"
    "Fossil Discoveries Challenge Theory of Human Evolution"
    "Darwin's rolling over"

    They make it look like this is somehow a CHALLENGE to THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION ITSELF. In other words, "let's take some story we don't really understand, but it hey it has the word 'evolution' in it, so we can manipulate this to stir up that ol' hornet's nest and sell papers!"

    I think this is the most disappointing example in a while of the sorry state of science journalism.