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Human Origins Theory Tested By Recent Findings
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."
What's better...
Upright Things
Tool Users
Using my upright tool on a mare
This has been brought up ("challenged") before and some believe it, some don't. What's so different this time around?
Video Production Support
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/08/07 0806-humans-asia.html
Breathe a sigh of relief! Europeans aren't descended from filthy niggers but intelligent and cultured Asians who have no compunction about devaluing the dollar by liquidating their foreign assets 900 billion of which are USA money.
I know the truth.
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.
After glancing over the TFA it appears that it is shown that the two species simply existed together and one eventually out-competed the other. What isn't definitively shown as not being the case is that the Evolutionary chain didn't also occur with a net result of both species existing at once. An overlap could be caused because both species in different areas (even locals) were well suited for the environment. I guess I could just want to be argumentative after a long day of meetings with the subspecies PHB which is probably more akin to the chimpanzee than anything vaguely human ... in fact I'm sure of that last statement, PHBs are NOT human.
Everything has to be black and white -- nothing can be grey in science. The truth is that science is all grey and we want to see in black and white.
Information is not Knowledge.
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.
It talks about "their own distinct ecological niches". Given that we are omnivores, how different could their "ecological niche" have been and still support something that was almost human?
... that's dumb.
Humans and other primates have shared the same areas ever since there were humans. Yet we have only recently started wiping out other primates. And it isn't because we are competing with them for the food sources. We wipe out their environment, food sources and all.
So there thing about "Eventually, one would have out-competed the other." doesn't sound right. "Eventually", maybe. But to say that any conclusions can be derived simply because it had not happened in X years
Haven't you heard? It all happened in the last 5000 years!
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
"Early Sisters Had No Use For Tools"
First, the article makes it clear that the two hominids didn't compete. They operated in different environments and ate different food. Even when primates do operate in similar realms, they can coexist for millions of years - as humans have with chimps and gorillas. The relatively peaceful coexistence of humans and Neanderthals is also well documented. They simply ignored each other. It is also suspected - but unproven - in the case of Homo Florensis. Besides which, even when replacement occurs, it's going to occur slowly. Populations grow exponentially, but only over a vast timeframe. It isn't overnight. The multiple migration theory also suggests that multiple hominid types co-existed, or there wouldn't be distinct populations migrating. (In fact, the mere existence of the theory shows some paleontologists have always believed in multiple co-existing branches.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
my coworkers provide plenty of evidence to debunk evolution
That's from the guy who was offering the idea that later species still "could have" come from the earlier(and co-existent) species. Apparently the principle of the Razor made him admit that it was more likely that one didn't evolve from either, but rather that they both evolved from some common ancestral species. Please don't make me explain why the latter assumes less causes.
Science isn't about belief. It's about weighing the evidence. Now the evidence is very strong in one direction.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
What is with the obsession with tools? Plenty of animals use tools. Humans aren't unique in that respect.
There is a saying amongst psychologists that at some point, each must come up with a reason why humans are fundamentally different from the other animals, only for someone to eventually prove them wrong.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Next, both species walked very much erect. The primary difference between them is the skull and brain.
The BBC got it right. there's no reason the submitter, or Slashdot, should not have gotten it right, too.
As to the science, the wisest words in TFA come from Professor Spoor (snicker):
Of course, that assumes the new skull really is H. erectus, which is dubious. Maybe it was an H. erectus ancestor, small like H. habilis but with an H. erectus-like brain.
Why yes, I do have a degree in physical anthropology. Thank you for asking.
"Even for Slashdot, that was a very obscure reference!" - Anonymous Coward
So perhaps their eras crossed, so what? So some time in the past some human branch spawned off and 'evolved', while meanwhile the original branch kept going for a while... That fact wouldn't change anything as far as evolution and human origins goes.
...why monkeys aren't extinct. If it's survival of the fittest and we are clearly superior to monkeys, why are they still here? They should have died-out a long time ago!
The game.
from the creationism museum that they lived with Velociraptors.
"Thank you for using Stop-n-Drop, America's favorite suicide booth since 2008"
And fuck politicians who waste breath congratulating this bogus cheater instead of passing meaningful legislation. No wonder both Congress' and the President's approval ratings are in the crapper. Medicare is headed for over a trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities, and these jokers want to pack more people onto the Titanic, so to speak. But back to baseball... Barry Bonds is by far not the only cheater in baseball, but he is the poster-boy of the generation that shit all over our beloved American pastime. Fuck the media for even acknowledging this sorry event. If I were Hank Aaron I would choke Bonds and force-feed him his own severed, 'roid-shrunken weenie. It's no wonder that Bonds hails from a city that prides itself on wallowing in moral relativism.
I know you're joking, but let me reply seriously anyway.
In my theory of evolution, it's not so much that "the fittest survive," but that "those that fit survive." There's a feedback loop that occurs in the environment. Those that benefit themselves, others, and the environment as a whole tend to survive and evolve more readily than those that form an adversarial relationship to others and the environment.
Monkeys still exist because there have been - and remain - plenty of habitats that are beneficial to them, and they're very adaptable to new environments. Long after Humans have engineered all remaining environments into complete unsuitability, monkeys will likely still remain, because they manage to survive on just the detritus of our habitats. And being smaller, their energy needs are far less.
In the present case of "tool users" versus "upright walkers" other posts have been spot-on. They had little effect on one another and each adapted well to their given environment. And as the lined article points out just fine, tool use and upright walking were not mutually exclusive developments. It's hardly a big stretch for any being of a certain level of sentience to see the parallel between the hands at the ends of their arms and the tools in their hands. From the point of view of any being of reasonable sentience, they are both automatically objectified into things-to-be-used.
It has long been understood that evolution tends towards less specialization and more generalization as environments rapidly change and become more diverse and challenging, and as species range further. The necessity of mental abstraction and self-alienation will become more evident as we delve into our more recent evolution. (And from this will come insights into the need for our so-called "religious practices" that semi-moderate this alienation. But that's a topic for another day!)
-- thinkyhead software and media
or maybe +1 Pedantic
Therefore, the Book of Genesis is literally true!
THE HOMOS ARE ERECT
does that mean they don't work anymore?
NO, DAMNIT....
uhhh picalo....
JUST COME OVER HERE AND I'LL SHOW YOU WHAT IT MEANS, GOHAN!!!!
I don't see why co-existence would discount evolving from Homo Habilis. Since after all if we really did evolve from primates, there would be no primates today under this logic.
It' still possible that some Homo Habilis evolved into Homo erectus while others remained homo habilis. Just as monkeys evolved into whatever became the H. Habilis, yet monkeys still exist.
Damm you all !! I do not have an Ape Ancestor. I was created.
...we wouldn't have the Force!
the go0dwill
Since this IS Slashdot, and neither the "alien theory" nor the Bible have been referred to, I'll start off with the Bible's side of the story...
1 When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.
3 Then the Lord said, "My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years."
4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days--and also afterward--when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. 5 The Lord saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.
6 The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. 7 So the Lord said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth--men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air--for I am grieved that I have made them."
8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
PHBs are evidence that devolution occurs.
I'm in no way a biologist, but I have read a certain amount about attempts to simulate genetic evolutionary processes in order to produce artificial intelligence. I've also read Genesis, and tried to read the Origin of Species once. (Although most of that went over my head)
;-)
From the AI stuff I read, I got the impression that in order for the entire evolutionary process to occur at all, you need a pre-existing set of heuristics (the "genetic algorithm") that define what "evolutionary fitness" means for a given species.
Hence, a chicken-and-egg problem. Once you've got the GA, the whole process can go along just fine, working according to the rules of the GA. However, the burning question is, how did the GA itself get there? I've never heard of any scenario where a GA itself can evolve via an atheistic process, but if anyone knows of one, please share.
Thus, when I think about it at all, at least at the moment I'm inclined towards a hybrid theory of how we got here, which actually includes elements of both creationism and evolutionary thinking. My own perspective is that yes, evolution happens. We see the end products of it all the time, and yes, to a degree the process has been successfully simulated (with some interesting results) in the AI field.
However, where God steps into the picture for me in this context is as the provider of the initial GA, after which organisms can themselves take over the process from there. I'm not claiming (at least in this context) to have any definite idea of what God actually is or was, either...but I do think that there are at least a couple of areas, (such as the GA question) which atheistic evolutionary theory alone can't really account for.
The other thing I'd like to have an atheist tell me is how they believe water got here initially, and more specifically, why the water cycle starts on some planets and not on others. From what I was reading a while back, water actually initially gets produced in a closed-circuit chemical reaction, with the three elements, hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon. Once it gets started, the loop can keep going as long as those three elements are all present; my question is, how did those three elements become present here on Earth, especially when oxygen in particular seems to be rare almost to the point of being entirely unique in the universe, from what I've seen?
Oh, and to get back on topic...Yes, of course Erectus and Habilis could co-exist simultaneously. The simultaneous co-existence of different sub-species, (or breeds, if you like) is the entire way in which the natural selection process can work. You don't need to know much about biology to know that.
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.
Exactly my thoughts.
Think about this, archaeological and genetic evidence points to modern humans having left Africa 50000-100000 years ago. Modern humans are only about 200.000 years old as a species and yet, the Scanvinavians already have lighter skin full facial beards and some other biological features which make them distinct from those who didn't leave Africa.
We could say that the scandivavians "evolved" from the Africans to suit the cold climate, nonetheless the two are still co-habiting almost everywhere in the world.
The time period which the article states as a "proof" is 500.000 years long. Just imagine how the scandinavians, ot the inuits might look after 450.000 years if there was no communication between the two groups.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
is when did homo erectus, habilis and the neanderthals give way to homo sapiens. There are different kinds of gorillas and monkeys and fishies and doggies and snakes. Why did only one type of homo-whatever survive? Or is that even the case? Are the different homo-whatevers genetically divergent enuff to not be able to cross impregnate? I havent read up on all the current theories so in traditional /. action i will not read any articles and wait for people to post the answers to me!
Balderdash!
At least, scientist have some evidence that life emerged from simple chemical processes, but you, on the other side, have no frigging evidence at all for your point?
Just because theory A does not currently explain all phenomens, theory B (God did it) is automatically true. That is just ... nonsense.
This kind of thing always makes me wonder about the origin of tales that probably come to us from pre-history -- stuff like the Cain and Abel story. I can't help thinking that, at one time, these stories might have told of some much more important historical event than one brother killing another, and that, slowly, over time, they've been watered down into something that everyone understood in their current context -- one guy killing another.
Meaningful legislation... on baseball? Seriously, and I mean this in the nicest non-trolliest way possible: get a fucking life.
Why not demand meaningful legislation to prevent plot inconsistencies in comic books while we're at it... goddamned Spiderman and his thousand slightly different origins.
Anyway, steroids didn't make Barry Bonds any better at being able to see a 90 mph fast ball, or move his hands quickly and expertly enough to hit the ball once he does. Steroids don't help him maintain one of the most extreme diet and excercise regimens in professional sports. Steroids didn't get Barry Bonds his place in the Big Leagues or his record setting contract (the accusations of steroid use all begin well after both events).
You don't know that he couldn't have done this without steroids, and you don't know that Hank Aaron didn't use anything either; steroids were around back then, players were using, everyone knows this, and usually the explanation for why none looked quite so massive is the same explanation as why the pitching and running were slower, and why "steroids" referred only to a handful of expensive and difficult to acquire compounds... we've made massive advances in both training technique and in steroid technology. Baseball players have always used anything that would give them any sort of advantage over the competition, it's the nature of professional sports, where huge money is at stake and even the "worst" players are so good it could make your head spin. I'm not saying that Hank Aaron used steroids, or anything else for that matter, I'm just saying that we have no way of knowing either way, and that hating Barry Bonds for "stealing" his record by using unfair steroids is spurious and foolish at best.
[/ot response]
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
All they have found here is evidence of very early archaeology: an H. erectus unearthed the fascinating bones of a young H. habilis ancestor, but got caught off guard by the sabretooth and never got to report his shocking discovery. Archaeology was set back a million years by a sabretooth!
"You don't know that he couldn't have done this without steroids"
You're a fucking idiot.
He's a skinny little 30-30 guy for most of is career, suddenly bulks up for no obvious reason, and starts creaming the ball.
I do know he wouldn't have done it without juice. So do you, you're just too much of a nuthugger to admit it.
As far as I understand it, in order for one species to split into two distinct species the original group has to be split up into two distinct habitats with different selection pressures. If they all remained in the same place, they'd have the same selection pressures and would continue to interbreed so that you wouldn't end up with two distinct genetic groups. However, one species staying in the same place can slowly change into another if selection pressures shift somehow (climate change, arrival of new competition, etc.).
Anthropologists don't think that we evolved from any other currently existing primates. Rather, they think that we share a common ancestor, meaning humans and our closest primate relation (chimps?) both evolved from some other, now extinct, species. I think the idea is that that happened because our ancestors moved into a new habitat, like grasslands, while the other primates stayed in the old habitat, the forest. They continued to adapt to living in one condition and we adapted differently to living under different conditions.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
Evolutionary theo-ray has been proven ta be unree-liable! Praise Be! But... but what are all them thar antedelluvian dates doing in our new justification for willful ignorance?
This challenges the view that the upright humans evolved from the tool users.
Does not. Homo sapiens could have forked from erectus while the two coexisted for quite a while until erectus died out. This means nothing.
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.
Perhaps you should pull your head out of Bonds' asshole long enough to read the actual parent post, dumbass. "Meaningful legislation" referred specifically to healthcare reform, and generally to anything EXCEPT commenting on sports. Caring for the baby-boomer generation as they retire is going to bankrupt this country, our borders are a joke, Social Security is just a giant slush-fund that Congress regularly raids to fund their pork projects, Global Warming is being used as an excuse to take junkets around the world to exotic locations and $1200-per-night hotels to view the "damage", but these fuckers all have time to take a month-long vacation and congratulate a cheater. Well congratu-fucking-lations Congress and the President for fiddling while Rome burns.
"Anyway, steroids didn't make Barry Bonds any better at being able to see a 90 mph fast ball, or move his hands quickly and expertly enough to hit the ball once he does."
Wow, have you ever had an original thought in your entire worthless life? This mindless crap is being spouted all over the internet by all of Bonds' jock-sniffing apologists. It's such a stupid and easily-defeatable argument that I suspect it must have originated from some mindless commentator drone on Sports Center to justify their celebration of this asterisk-marked event. No, steroids didn't enhance Bonds' reflexes - but they DID enhance his ability to loft all those balls out of the yard. Maybe you should loft Barry's balls out of your mouth long enough to realize that everyone outside of San Fransisco hates his bitch-ass.
Not to mention that we see hundreds of cave drawings of bison and deer and other roaming mammals... yet does anyone find it strange that no caveman decided to draw a HUGE monstrous death machine roaming the lands? I mean, not ONE SINGLE MENTION anywhere in all of human culture until we discovered their bones?
Biblical references to dragons obvious mean sauropods, and the leviathan was clearly a reference to lipleurodon. Jeez, some people!
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
What is being tested is not a 'theory' but a hypothesis. "the upright humans evolved from the tool users" is not a theory but an explanation of certain phenoma using the conceptual framework of a theory (evolutionary theory, theories from paleontology and whatnot).
'Anyway, steroids didn't make Barry Bonds any better at being able to see a 90 mph fast ball, or move his hands quickly and expertly enough to hit the ball once he does.'
Actually they do. Steroids enhance his eye muscles and the muscles in his hands, making him better able to see and giving him precision control of his swing. They don't give him any expert knowledge but hitting or catching a ball is really an instinct not something you study up on.
For the rest of your post, I agree.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Evolution doeesn't work in the way, humans started using tools so we evolved to walk of two feet, the fact that we started walking on two feet was just down to chance and it happened to be really usefull for tool use then it won out due to survival of the fitest.
If there was no shortage of food and resources then there's no reason that the pre-humans that didn't walk on two feet would have died out at all so the two species could have quite happley lived together.
(Sory, the spell checker in firefox has stopped working!)
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
According to original article in Nature.
Anagenetic means one type of an organism is a direct descendant of the other type without splitting. Co-existance by definition eliminates that, meaning the individuals that lived at the same time are not descendants of one another but descendants of earlier generations. If you and I are of the same age, I cannot be your father and vice versa, but we still can share the same father, grandfather, etc...
This is is because of the mess with nomenclature which essentially stems from that we do not know if erectus and habilis were not able to mate producing successful progeny. Those guys might very well be Homo Bushus (no pun intended) and Homo Norwegius of that age - of the same human species and all the terminology around it is just Bullus Shitus.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I the infallible, omniscient, and omnipotent Belial6 made the universe 15 seconds ago. Being that I am infallible, my statement must be correct, which proves that it was I, and therefor not you who created the universe. Besides, if you can't even get the age of the universe right, how could you have possibly been the one who created it? See? More evidence to support my statement of fact.
Now where is my beer?
But I shall not post on this article anymore because inevitably the conversation will degrade into drivel of God fearing individuals vs people angry at God, pissing on each other then there will be a couple references to the great spaghetti monster and a few obscure misinterpretations of the Koran and Bible then some fear mongering and finally Godwin's Law takes effect...
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
Therefore, I am very interested in the lineage of hominids, fact is fact except when it isn't, but that is where faith comes in (Faith is being sure of what you hope for and certain of what you do not see Heb. 11:1). Without the use of one hell of a mirror and a couple wormholes we will never know exactly what happened in the beginning but we can come up with some great theories none of which can possibly preclude a creator be it an omnipotent deity or a clever scientific mind. I would like to think in another life I was an anthropologist.
I do however think it is interesting to see two lines co-existing and really look forward to the research that will come out of this exceptional find. I will have to read more, but what allows this kind of thing to occur, did one migrate away and follow a different evolutionary track and eventually come back? When they did come back did they mingle with the race they found, or did they war with them? Did they have children? Things like this are exciting in that they grant us more evidence to what the truth is. As long as people keep their minds open we will find the truth of our history, even if it is not what we hope for.
And to complete my prophecy in the last post therefore nullifying anything I say here I shall say one horrific statement to all "The Great Spaghetti monster was Hitler".
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
Coexistence in no solid way rules out one species evolving from another.
That's right, and it was stated in the article.
There are many instances in which dinosaurs are depicted in the artwork of early man. That dinosaurs and man existed at the same time is uncontestable. Their bones are found in the same layers, and their footprints side by side in the same mud. It's just the way it is.
r t.html
http://www.creationists.org/dinos_artifacts_and_a
I'm looking forward to the caveman TV series this autumn, although I heard the early reviews were mixed and the network has not yet ordered a full season of episodes yet. I vaguely remember some 1960s TV show about astronauts mixing with cavemen ("Its about Time").
Piltdown man
A tooth of a pig drawn into an apeman!
A lie and a fake 5 years by 1927.
Nebraska man
A lie and a fake for 40 years.
By then everyone in the world thought they were from apes.
How did it take 40 years for the scientific community to find it was a clumsy fake?
Javaman (homo erectus)
Discovered by Dr Dubois and he himself declared in 1938 that it was just a monkey (gibbon).
He had found human skulls in the same stratum did not tell anyone for 30 years!
A lie and a fake. He eventually renounced the javaman as a fraud himself.
Peking man
Dr. black discovered it, a tooth and some ashes.
Soon after human remains were found mixed with animal remains. The animal remains were the food of the humans.
Hey but they wanted an apeman! so they grabbed bits of both and made Peking Man!
1972
Richard Leaky
Found a skull that supposedly blew evolution out of the water by 2.5 million years. The only thing left was
Ramapithecus. Just some fragments of jaw bones and some teeth. The same size and shape as a babboon in Ethiopia.
It never has been found and it never will be found a creature that is more than brute and less than human.
Also there is such little evidence for apemen that the amount would not be accepted in any other field of science.
And there's plenty more scientific evidence for the non-existenance of evolution!
(I know this is not what you like to hear, so just score me nothing as usual. Thanks)
As a sibling poster said, we're different because we can send humans to space using only the tools we build. Now, building those tools - requires advanced planning skills; it won't work if the best thing you can do is pick up a stick and customize it.
Of course, you have to read the book, in order to find out what a 'prediction' is and so on. The book provides a high-level description of the brain's functions, the theory is called MDT - modelling device theory. It can explain many things, such as the point made above, or "what is love?". Well, I hope this was enough to 'touch' you and make you interested in reading the book.
The saddest poem