Ape-Human Split Moved Back By Millions Of Years

E++99 writes in to let us know about a development in paleo-anthropology. It seems that up until now, scientific consensus has placed the divergence of man from the ape line five to six million years ago (based on "genetic distances"). But newly discovered fossils in Ethiopia place the divergence at least twice as far back, and perhaps as long ago as 20 million years. They also largely put to rest any doubts that man and modern apes both emerged from Africa. From the article: "The trail in the hunt for physical evidence of our human ancestors goes cold some six or seven million years ago... Beyond that... fossils of early humans from the Miocene period, 23 to five million years ago, disappear. Fossils of early apes especially during the critical period of 14 to eight million years ago were virtually non-existent — until now... [T]he new fossils, dubbed 'Chororapithecus abyssinicus' by the team of Japanese and Ethiopian paleo-anthropologists who found them, place the early ancestors of the modern day gorilla 10 to 10.5 million years in the past, suggesting that the human-ape split occurred before that."

Comments

Splt?!?! What split?

[gad_zuki!]

My chimp and I are still happily married.

Re:simpsons quote

[E 99]

Yep, I expected this would provoke the inevitable attacks on religious people by that predictable band of /.ers who apparently never think about anything else.

Re:simpsons quote

[kestasjk]

The forbidden fruit is not making people smarter but telling good from evil (that is being capable of reflecting thought upon oneself, as in realizing one is naked). Before eating the fruit, whatever that means, man answers to istinct and/or is incapable of sinning because he can't tell. After, he is able to sin. That means getting out of the condition symbolized by eden automatically. I stand corrected. God came down from heaven to get his shit ruined by us, so he could forgive us for the sin of eating a fruit that gave us morality.
But we couldn't sin until after we ate the fruit though, so I guess the first bite was sinless, because we couldn't tell that we were sinning until we had eaten at least some. It's a problem if the fruit was eaten in one bite though, that'd get us off the hook completely (unless just chewing the fruit is enough, and the apple was swallowed after at least two munches).

Is this an explanation or is it just a rationalization of a myth randomly transmitted in a religious book? Impossible to say and irrelevant for my thesis. An explanation of morality? I don't think it's impossible to say whether or not the ancient forbidden fruit myth is a reasonable theory of morality.

My thesis is: you can easily make fun of a thing you didn't bother to analyze. My thesis is: you can find meaning in anything if you analyze for long enough.

I have read as much of the Bible as I could stomach though. I got a little further than the part where the donkey of a messenger of a something-ite (who's tribe was getting invaded by Moses, iirc) saw an invisible angel on the road ahead, and when the donkey tried to turn the messenger beat it, and God made the donkey talk, and the donkey said "Am I not your faithful donkey? Why do you beat me?", but the messenger was confused because the angel was invisible, and less so because his donkey was talking, but then the angel showed himself, and the messenger repented and apologized to the donkey.

And I never got out of a "logical mindset". Well then I hope you'll at least be consistent and analyze Alice in Wonderland thoroughly for messages from God.