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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."
There is only one extant species of Homo, and that's Homo sapiens. People like you are what give Anthropology a bad name. The pressures on the minds of those who lived in Europe have been the same as those on people who lived in Africa have been the same as those who lived in Asia -- outwitting other human beings, and struggling against a hostile universe.
There are plenty of trivial physical differences between the different 'races', and that's just what they are -- trivial. Superficial. Unimportant. My mind is the same as the mind of a child growing up in China is the same as the mind of a woman in Europe.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
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.
Is Professor Xavier being politically correct nowadays? Being 48,000 years old is a cool super power but she's dead so I fail to see how she could help fellow mutants.
<sound>Crikets.wav</sound>
No, that'll never work. You should have used the <audio> tag.
We aren't talking about modern day humans. The article, which I'll assume you have already read, is about a possible species separate and distinct from homo sapiens and homo neanderthalensis that may have existed in Eastern Europe a long long time ago. The article also discusses the "Hobbit" of Southeast Asia which lived alongside homo sapiens for thousands of years.
If, as the article suggests, there was interbreeding going on, then the genes would be passed along to offspring. Given that long range mobility has only recently become possible, these pockets of special genes would have remained in the same area for a long time, even after the original species disappeared.
But you read the article, so I'm just telling you what you already read and disagree with. Silly me.
You are correct that there's evidence for there being correlation between mental abilities and race. But that doesn't mean it is at all genetic. Much of it is almost certainly cultural and environmental. For example, if you get less nutrients growing up you likely aren't going to be as smart as someone else who does get enough nutrients. That's because early brain growth is determined in part by how much resources the brain has available. Similarly, certain cultures have games and habits with young children that may encourage certain forms of mental development or practicing certain skills. Moreover, some types of intelligent tests are very culturally based (there are some fascinating cross cultural studies about how people naturally organize things into groups. While in most Western societies we consider organization into functional categories to be ideal and consider people not as bright if they have trouble, in many other societies and even some Western societies, given a set of objects they will try categorize by which groups of objects can be used together. The classic example of this is giving a bunch of tools and a bunch of possible things that the tools can modify. The "correct" Western response is to group into tools and non-tools. But in some cultures they instead group into which are connected to relevant processes). So yes, such correlation does exist, but there's no strong evidence that such correlation actually means much at all.
Highly unlikely. More likely a case of convergent evolution if anything at all.
By the way, how do we know that Neanderthals had those features? They might have had based on the shape of their skulls, but that's all guesses and extrapolations, since no-one has seen a live one.
This is news for nerds. Science, including anthropology, is of interest to some of the nerds. Therefore, this story belongs here, even if you personally don't happen to find it interesting.
Since you have an UID, you could simply hide science stories in your settings rather than complain.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
That is very strange talk from a Pak Protector.
I saw a very interesting Ted Talk by Elaine Morgan and it seems to me that a single non mutation change in the apes could have fostered any number of branches in the early evolution. I agree that there is no great genetic difference across the planet.
It seems to me that a single change in the ability to control breathing consciously could have been the difference that makes us the human branch. There is no strong linear delimiter that I have seen which would cause speciation from the apes.
It seems that an ape that could escape from others by traveling through deep water to safety or isolation would allow a population to become isolated. It would allow a new dominance similar to the ability to escape predators in trees.
I believe that it might be proved or disproved by the genetic SNP distance of the change which defines the ability to control respiration. If it were the oldest conserved gene, then it would seem that it could be possible.
It also leads to the ability to communicate. Apes have intelligence and hands, but lack effective communication due to the inability to control vocalization ( like birds ).
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.
While 115173 is a Pak like the rest of us I doubt he is a Protector because we lack the nutrients. But back to the topic at hand.
Even today Africa has most of the diversity in the human species. I wonder what would happen today if a group of african people became isolated from the rest of us. Diverse genes can lead to powerful selection pressure. I expect that this would have to happen off earth now.
Also I also wonder what would happen to humans generally if we lost the genetic diversity currently banked in Africa. Nothing good I suspect.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Not much you can do with half a finger.
You have far too little imagination.
Uh... credentials mean nothing. Refuting a statement with facts means more.
It's kinda late and I'm a bit brain-dead at the moment. But the first thing that came to my mind was...... The Abominable Snow Man. What are the chances that this ends up being the smoking gun for that oh-so-elusive cryptoid that has had people arguing about hairy wild apemen since time forgotten? Personally, I think it'll realistically end up being a case of contamination or something else mondan. But with the odd chance that this turns out to be scientifically investigatable, we can hang on to the slim hope that there are other samples out there waiting to be found.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
There are more genetic differences among members of any given ethnic group than there are between members of any two ethnic groups
I'm really quite surprised to hear this. I would never have guessed that ethnically pure members of the Mbundu or San tribes of Africa were less different from the S.E. Asian Lahu tribe (or even Koreans, being as homogenous as they are) than the members of these groups were amongst themselves. Do you have any prrof of this?
Put identity in the browser.
Based on my extensive... erm... research in Internet porn, I have to wonder, if Johann Friedrich Blumenbach were alive today, would we end up calling it the Bohemian race? I mean, Silvia Saint, Angelina Crow, etc.
Pretty much because, yes, his opinion of races seems to have had mostly to do with how pretty he found their women. E.g., he started with the blacks being pretty much sub-human and justified it then by cherry-picking skulls and a good dose of phrenology (an opinion that would influence pseudo-scientific racism to this day.) Then he made an 180 degree turns when he met a black woman beautiful enough to fall in love with (in his own words.) He then proceeded to "prove" by the same anatomical analysis methods as before that verily they're every bit as smart and talented and everything as the Caucasians.
Could be worse, though. We could have a classification made by a gay dude with a foot fetish, for example :p
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
You may indeed have a valid point to make, but I have to agree this isn't it. Not only is this an appeal to authority, but the actual "authority" isn't even included.
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.--Mark Twain
Of course, this is not true.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewontin%27s_Fallacy
"Lewontin argued that because the overwhelming majority of human genetic variation (85%) is between individuals within the same population, and about 6–10% is between populations within the same continent, racial classification can only account for between 5–10% of human variation"
"As Edwards showed, even if the probability of misclassifying an individual based on a single locus is as high as 30% (as Lewontin reported in 1972), the misclassification probability based on 10 loci can drop to just a few percent."
What in realty is "-One locus is not enough to racially classify an individual" - as if someone really believed this - has destorted into the the lie of the grand parent.
When looking at a few hundred loci, misscalssification is in the tenth of percenteges.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/01/050128221025.htm
"The study is by far the largest, consisting of 3,636 people who all identified themselves as either white, African-American, East Asian or Hispanic. Of these, only five individuals had DNA that matched an ethnic group different than the box they checked at the beginning of the study. That's an error rate of 0.14 percent."
Your reply w.r.t. neanderthals apparently assumes that neanderthals had lower intelligence.
This is not true, or at least not proven. Just google "neanderthal intelligence" and you'll see many references that believe that neanderthals had higher or at least equal intelligence than homo sapiens. Also they interbred with homo sapience (google for "neanderthal interbreeding with humans" for many references to that claim), so "people like you" you were responding to do not have to give anthropology a bad name.
Apart from that, it is not proven that each current human race must have the same average intelligence. On the contrary, there are indications that this is not the case.
Ideologically motivated people can give anthrolopogy a bad name. This goes in both directions.
Apes have intelligence and hands, but lack effective communication due to the inability to control vocalization ( like birds ).
I would say that Apes have quite effective communication as do many creatures...it's just not (as) vocal. Vocal communication may be _more_ effective in many ways, but even a simple house cat does a hell of a lot more than meow if you know what to look for.
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.--Mark Twain
Wendy's would beg to differ.
Maybe God created Neanderthal Man in His image, and we went and wiped them all out. That would explain why he's pissed off all the time with all the wrath and stuff.
Did the cave have a stargate in it?
"For example, if you get less nutrients growing up you likely aren't going to be as smart as someone else who does get enough nutrients."
Whoooo boy let me show you my medical history, then let me show you what I do for a living, and you'll be retracting that statement pretty rapidly, I will guarantee it.
So according to you, a single anecdote (which you claimed you could -- but didn't actually -- provide) disproves a general statement that includes the word "likely"? Granted, I wouldn't have phrased it as GP did, but I generally agree with what GP was trying to say.
How about this: "All else being equal, someone who gets less nutrients growing up almost certainly isn't going to be as smart as that same person would have been if they had had enough nutrients at crucial points in their development." If you think you're smart now with very poor nutrition when you were young, I simply posit that it is highly likely you would have been smarter had your nutrition been significantly better.
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.
Does his head have an occipital bun? Do his ribs flare out at the waist? Are his hips set back further than yours? Do his legs bow outward? No? Then he doesn't look like a neanderthal, he just looks like a guy with lots of testosterone. Doesn't sound like someone I'd want to tease all the time.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Which one is the cause, and which one is the effect?
Forty years ago, millions of people starved to death every year in China too, but the Chinese have a higher average IQ than Europeans. Millions more were also starving to death in India within living memory.
I'm sure nutrition has a role to play in intelligence, but clearly it isn't the defining one.
American Third Position
Finally, a real choice!
You are confusing two separate points. First, no one here has made the claim that intelligence is not genetic. It is clearly partially genetic. The matter at issue is whether or not there's any substantial genetic component to measured differences between intelligence levels in racial groups or whether that is due primarily to cultural and environmental effects. Also, if you are going to cite sources, try not to cite ones which have been as widely discredited ok?
Assuming you're one of the parties this is of interest to, let me ask this: of what significance is this find, outside of anthropological circles? Unless it leads us to the missing link, what effect does this knowledge have on the world? What does it change? I suspect that may have been more of what GP's point was.
Okay, who forgot to shut the door? Looks like a bean counter looking for ROI found their way in.
When two Bedouin boys stumbled upon some old papers in a cave at Qumran, I will bet money that they no idea of the significance of their find either.
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
I'm not an anthropologist, but I'll take a swing.
This is significant, because they discovered a species of hominin that branched off before Neanderthal but may have co-existed. This can provide some more insight to our own development. How many other hominins branched off but co-existed with our ancestors? Why did they die out while our ancestors survived? Did we fight them, hunt them, cooperate with them, merge with them, out-compete with them, or some combination of the above? Does it have a major effect on normal people's lives? Probably not, but it is a pretty big discovery for science and genetics.
Also, there is no such thing as "the missing link". Evolution is always happening, all fossils are is a snapshot of that species at the time of it's death. Since not everything leaves a fossil when it dies, all of the gaps will never be truly filled. However, the gaps continue to shrink as more and more evidence is found, and that is the best we can hope for, to keep expanding on our knowledge.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"