Slashdot Mirror
New Ancient Human Identified
krou writes "Working on a finger-bone that was discovered in the Denisova Cave of Siberia's Altai mountains in 2008, Johannes Krause from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and colleagues managed to extract mitochondrial DNA. They compared it to the genetic code of modern humans and other known Neanderthals and discovered a new type of hominin that lived in Central Asia between 48,000 and 30,000 years ago. Professor Chris Stringer, human origins researcher at London's Natural History Museum, said, 'This new DNA work provides an entirely new way of looking at the still poorly-understood evolution of humans in central and eastern Asia.' The last common ancestor of the hominid (dubbed 'X-Woman'), humans and Neanderthals seems to have been about one million years ago."
Yes, they definitely extracted mitochondrial DNA (that's DNA that isn't in the nucleus but is rather in the mitochondria and is only passed down by your mother). Yes, the DNA looks different enough that they're pretty sure this isn't any form of contamination from modern samples (always a worry when doing this sort of thing). However, it is far from clear that this DNA is belonged to another species. There are multiple possible other explanations which could make this not another species. The details are a bit technical, but anthropologist John Hawks has a piece on his blog laying out the basic issues- http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/neandertals/neandertal_dna/denisova-krause-2010.html. A slightly more lay-oriented piece by Carl Zimmer (the writer for Science Times and author of the very excellent book Parasite Rex) is also worth reading: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2010/03/24/the-x-womans-fingerbone/. The bottom line is that concluding that this is a new species is as of yet very premature.
From the linked article:
Most scientists believe there is insufficient data to resolve the contributions of heredity and environment.
Further, races are social constructs. As in "constructed by societies." As in "not based in actual biology." There are more genetic differences among members of any given ethnic group than there are between members of any two ethnic groups. If you ever actually acted on any interest in sociology, much less studied it, you would know this.
All this points to the argument that differences in mental aptitudes displayed in aggregate by various "races" in the U.S. are primarily a cause of each race's traditional socioeconomic status, i.e., how members of each "race" are treated and raised by agents of social control (esp. teachers) determines their evident mental prowess.
The sheer ignorance of modern anthropology I see on Slashdot is unnerving. So many people on here assume that their enculturated worldview equals science.
Race is a social construct. Phenotypical differences are one axis along which race is constructed, but it is not the only axis, and in some contexts it is not even the most important. As an example, you can also tell the "race" of a person if you talk to them on the phone. This obviously has nothing do with biology.
Although race as a system of scientific categorization started in European thought during the Enlightenment, it has seriously decreased in scientific merit because of genetics. Today, physical anthropologists think in terms of "clines." Unfortunately, because of the impact of European empires and their hegemony, race as a system of categorization persists in various incarnations throughout the world. This system is perpetuated by a wide variety of structural institutions and the uneducated public.
You can tell races apart because you are conditioned to detect certain characteristics which you associate with an arbitrary categorization of people. These arbitrary categorizations gradually accrued social and cultural capital in YOUR culture. This does not mean they are based in any kind of genetic reality.