Ice Age
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21-07-2011 10:37amJoin Date:Posts: 4959
Forgive me and correct me if I get these facts and figures wrong.
10,000 years ago, global temperatures rose by an average of 7 degrees over a period of 15 years. It was enough to bring about the extinction of a humanoid form (Neanderthal man).
Our times have seen a long period of relative climate stability - how would we cope with such a temperature change and the consequent rise in sea levels?0
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I'm fairly sure that the Neanderthal 'Extinction event' is put at about 25000BC
the rising sea level issue may be an interesting angle on the disaperarance of the Neanderthals, From What I understand we Modern Humans are a LOT less hairy than the Neanderthals were, this apprently had something to do with us developing and maintaining the ability to swim, now the Neanderthals were hairy cos they lived in the Ice, so no great need for swimming in their evolution.
So of all the differences between the Modern human and the Neanderthal, in a world flooded by temperate waters the Modern human suddenly has a massive advantage over its bigger stronger cousin, meaning that we win all the food whilst they either starve or drown.0 -
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Isn't there a theory that modern man's brain developed more rapidly (but not in size/volume) because he began to eat fish? This could tie in with your theory on hairlessness.
Must say I wouldn't have fancied going for a dip back then.0 -
Sounds plausible, Fish is a high source of Protien, I Was thinkin about this, all the Ice in the Iceage had been water previously, probably on the savanahs of our ancestors, the Iceage meant that both groups of humans could now move a lot further, Our lot not havin to swim as much and the Neanderthals having a Much larger IceSheet to roam about on, this would suit the Neanderthals initially as we werent as well adapted to the cold, however making a Coat from a Wolly mammoth requires a lot less evolution than learning to swim. So when the Ice melted We were better prepared for it.
that and As i said the ability to swim meant that We could outcompete the Neanderthals for diminishing food resoursces
I wonder which Group invented Boats??0 -
slowburner wrote: »Forgive me and correct me if I get these facts and figures wrong.
10,000 years ago, global temperatures rose by an average of 7 degrees over a period of 15 years. It was enough to bring about the extinction of a humanoid form (Neanderthal man).
Our times have seen a long period of relative climate stability - how would we cope with such a temperature change and the consequent rise in sea levels?
Im not sure that neanderthal man who had survived 500,000 years in europe under varying conditions would have been wiped out by a 7 degree rise in heat but who knows, good theory!0 -
I know it jars a bit iitially, but you have to consider this as a theoretical exercise
Something caused the Neandertrhal Extinction, that much we know, owing to the lack of Neanderthals kickin about today ( lets leave the Jokes about GAA lovin farmers for another thread;))
Current 'Climatoligists' are warning Doom and Gloom for everyone based on a projected rise of only 4 Degrees over a century , so Seven Degrees over a decade or two would really really F*ck thiungs up
Unfortunatley we know little about the lives of either group, we do know that the Neanderthals lived in smaller communities, we hypothesise based on evidence that they were Hunter Gatherers and that they were territorial.
whatever the diferences between the two groups there must have been at least one Decisive factor that enabled one group (Us) to prosper whilst the other Faced an extinction event0 -
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steddyeddy wrote: »Im not sure that neanderthal man who had survived 500,000 years in europe under varying conditions would have been wiped out by a 7 degree rise in heat but who knows, good theory!
I think it is a fairly well accepted view as to what happened to the hairy fellas.
Sea levels at the moment, are rising by about 2mm per year around the world due to global warming and the consequent melting of the polar ice sheets. To see evidence of the effect, you only need to take a trip along the Irish East coast - the sea has already claimed many houses and many more are on the edge. I helped to push the remains of a chalet over the edge around twenty years ago and I can remember when that chalet was about 20 metres in from the shoreline. And that is over a relatively long period - I can't say how long for sure.
The sea level rise must have been catastrophic. It was enough to completely submerge an entire land mass between the UK and Denmark (Doggerland).
A little info about the last surviving Neanderthals (so far discovered) can be found here0 -
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Mahatma coat wrote: »I'm fairly sure that the Neanderthal 'Extinction event' is put at about 25000BCthe rising sea level issue may be an interesting angle on the disaperarance of the Neanderthals, From What I understand we Modern Humans are a LOT less hairy than the Neanderthals were,So of all the differences between the Modern human and the Neanderthal, in a world flooded by temperate waters the Modern human suddenly has a massive advantage over its bigger stronger cousin, meaning that we win all the food whilst they either starve or drown.Mahatma coat wrote: »I wonder which Group invented Boats??Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.
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......I'd give a year off my life to sit face to face and be able to talk to a Neandertal. A well fed one just to be safe and Id want to be armed to the effin teeth with some big bore handgun or better yet a taser. Just in case like.0 -
Haven't they been trying to document neanderthal genome these last few years? Wonder if we interbred with them?0
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Jeremiah 16:1 wrote: »Haven't they been trying to document neanderthal genome these last few years? Wonder if we interbred with them?0 -
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European and asian peoples did interbreed with them of that were fairly certain.0
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Up to 4% Neandertal DNA in non African populations and more in Europe and the near east. In the far east another archaic Human left it's DNA with them.Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.
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heres something I posted beforeMahatma coat wrote: »And some different Species in Asia and the Pacific Islands.
In the news recently it has been announced that Scientists can track 2 Separate intebreeding/divergences in Human evolution
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=10575837
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/neandertal-genetics-study-shows-theres-a-caveman-in-us-all/story-e6frg6n6-1225863446398
still not sure about the cutoff for Neanderthals tho0 -
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From what I gather that 2% figure is out of date. It's more like 4% and as the article points out they've only got 60 odd% of Neandertal DNA sequenced so far and from just three individuals. That's a tiny sample size. There may be even more of their DNA knocking about in modern Europeans and near Eastern peoples. I would suspect there is. IIRC they've retrieved some DNA from Spanish samples. I wonder if they show any links outside of the middle east Neandertal/Sapiens jiggerypokery? Africans(and therefore the rest of humanity) probably has even older sequences, but finding ancient DNA in the African environment is going to be tough I'd imagine.Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.
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Up to 4% Neandertal DNA in non African populations and more in Europe and the near east. In the far east another archaic Human left it's DNA with them.
- I thought that humans shared 98% of our dna with chimpanzees though so I don't understand the 3% / 4% of Neanderthal admixture.
- Is it a terminology issue is it the case that humans share 98% of our DNA with chimps and 3% of the remaining 2% of DNA is Neanderthal?
- Couldn't there also be Neanderthal DNA in African populations but because it is also in European, South Asian and East Asian populations it is 'invisible'.
- Could there be other fairly recent additions of DNA from Archaics before we left Africa but AFTER the Great Leap Forward.
Let's allow the Great Leap Forward idea as being true for a second. Doesn't that mean that early Fully Modern Humans were interbreeding with archaics who were incredibly primitive, couldn't speak, didn't transmit knowledge etc.
Isn't that a bit weird?0 -
swordofislam wrote: »I don't understand this. I was listening to an audio book called 'The Rise of Humans' (€90 The Great Courses) and the author Professor John Hawks makes a similar point though he says 3%. John Hawks comes from a multiregionalist background (he was a student of Wolpoff's) but I don't think that this admixture is evidence of Multiregionalism/
- I thought that humans shared 98% of our dna with chimpanzees though so I don't understand the 3% / 4% of Neanderthal admixture.
- Is it a terminology issue is it the case that humans share 98% of our DNA with chimps and 3% of the remaining 2% of DNA is Neanderthal?
- Couldn't there also be Neanderthal DNA in African populations but because it is also in European, South Asian and East Asian populations it is 'invisible'.
- Could there be other fairly recent additions of DNA from Archaics before we left Africa but AFTER the Great Leap Forward.
Let's allow the Great Leap Forward idea as being true for a second. Doesn't that mean that early Fully Modern Humans were interbreeding with archaics who were incredibly primitive, couldn't speak, didn't transmit knowledge etc.
Isn't that a bit weird?
When people talk about sharing DNA they dont mean 90% of our dna is from a chimp, 5% is from neanderthal and 5% is relatively new. They usually mean that we have dna in common with a chimp as we do with every other living thing on this planet to an extent.
Regarding the mating with our more archaic cousins some scientists beleived human rape by neanderthals could have been involved.0 -
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swordofislam wrote: »I don't understand this. I was listening to an audio book called 'The Rise of Humans' (€90 The Great Courses) and the author Professor John Hawks makes a similar point though he says 3%. John Hawks comes from a multiregionalist background (he was a student of Wolpoff's) but I don't think that this admixture is evidence of Multiregionalism/- I thought that humans shared 98% of our dna with chimpanzees though so I don't understand the 3% / 4% of Neanderthal admixture.
- Is it a terminology issue is it the case that humans share 98% of our DNA with chimps and 3% of the remaining 2% of DNA is Neanderthal?
- Couldn't there also be Neanderthal DNA in African populations but because it is also in European, South Asian and East Asian populations it is 'invisible'.
Let's allow the Great Leap Forward idea as being true for a second. Doesn't that mean that early Fully Modern Humans were interbreeding with archaics who were incredibly primitive, couldn't speak, didn't transmit knowledge etc.
Isn't that a bit weird?
Plus I don't buy that archaics were incredibly primitive. People forget that when we left Africa for the first time we borrowed the tool technology of the Neandertals we met(Mousterian). They invented it and it was better than our African toolkit at the time. It's also not easy to do. Trust me I've tried and it takes some skill. I'd be stuck in the back of the cave with the crosseyed slow kid. I've collected Neandertal tools over the years and some show serious skill and forethought. Some don't, which shows like us some were more talented than others.
There is some evidence of Neandertal symbolic culture in Europe before they met us. They buried their dead, cared for the sick and disabled, sometimes for decades and invented the first "synthetic" substance in the form of birch pitch anerobically heated in quite a complex process needing very narrow temperatures until it formed a very strong glue. Earlier Neandertals also buried their dead in mass graves after preparing the bodies in some way. And while they were at it purposely deposited a very fine and unused handaxe into said pit. This was 300,000 years ago. Handaxes appear to have sometimes been cultural items. Among the vast number found the odd one shows far more attention than required as a tool. Some appear to have symbolic power. I have a mousterian one that may show this. They also have the first wooden spears we know of, again at 300,000 years ago and they were throwing spears. Long distance killing long before we came along. Primitive they were not, or not as primitive or distant from us when we first met. And they spoke. They had the same hyoid bone as us and the same FOX gene for speech. They may not have had the full range of sounds we can use, but dumb they weren't.
Further back? Erectus undertook sea voyages beyond sight of land, sometimes across treacherous currents(it's how they got to Flores and Crete).
While Erectus would appear very primitive to a modern urban human, I suspect he probably wouldn't appear that primitive to a modern hunter gatherer. A neandertal certainly wouldn't. EG modern native Australians have an incredibly dense and complex mental/spiritual culture, but their stone tools were often not as complex compared to those of Neandertals. Fully modern Andaman islanders when first encountered didn't know how to make fire. They collected it(lightning strikes etc) and stored it as embers, but make it they could not. Neandertals could.steddyeddy wrote:Regarding the mating with our more archaic cousins some scientists beleived human rape by neanderthals could have been involved.Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.
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swordofislam wrote: »I don't think that this admixture is evidence of MultiregionalismNo but it is evidence against the pure out of africa replacement model.I suppose it could be like blonde hair. Africans don't have that gene, it's a local European adaptation/mutation.Michael Hofreiter wrote:Thus Neandertals and Homo sapiens in Europe followed independent evolutionary paths to a similar phenotype
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:yvjCaxe2IvEJ:www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1917675/posts
Also what is meant by this quantification of the amount of Neanderthal DNA? And how do we know that Africans don't have Neandrthal genes that flowed down from North Africa?
Well for a start I don't believe in the "great leap forward" idea anyway. It's way too simplistic IMHO. It's not as if one day, out of the blue we are somehow "blessed" and bang we have complex culture.
Plus I don't buy that archaics were incredibly primitive. People forget that when we left Africa for the first time we borrowed the tool technology of the Neandertals we met(Mousterian). They invented it and it was better than our African toolkit at the time. It's also not easy to do. Trust me I've tried and it takes some skill. I'd be stuck in the back of the cave with the crosseyed slow kid. I've collected Neandertal tools over the years and some show serious skill and forethought. Some don't, which shows like us some were more talented than others.
A couple of questions.
Were we US when we borrowed the Mousterian toolkit. Or were some sort of archaic (maybe the idea of archaics isn't all that helpful):D
I don't doubt that the Mousterian tools are hard to make but they were the same for 270,000 years. That isn't human. Humans aren't that static. (What am I missing here?)
Also even Olduvan tools are hard to make if you can't work stone.
I amn't arguing against the capability of Neanderthals but against their actuality. Even though they could speak perhaps they didn't speak until we taught them and perhaps in speaking they became us (look at someone like Chabal the rugby player he has browridges for God's sake and he is from the French Neanderthal heartland.
Under the influence of homo sapiens sapiens they changed their style of toolmaking from Mousterian to Chatelperronian.
Could it be that we taught them speech?
Does this change indicate assimilation?Further back? Erectus undertook sea voyages beyond sight of land, sometimes across treacherous currents(it's how they got to Flores and Crete).While Erectus would appear very primitive to a modern urban human, I suspect he probably wouldn't appear that primitive to a modern hunter gatherer.
Do you think that homo erectus had manhood rites, taboos, religion or art?
If a modern hunter gatherer met homo erectus he would either venerate him as the wise man of the woods or kill him and eat him.
The bonds of species are broken homo erectus was not human.A neandertal certainly wouldn't.
But that I think is the main question about Neanderthals and why they were so interesting. Their humanity is not at issue. Neanderthals were human but what does that mean?
You see if they were human in an unvarnished way so that the Cro Magnons who met would have said 'Who are these people, let's communicate' then terms like Pleistocene Holocaust have alot of resonance and relevance.
I am not sure it would have been so clear to a hunter gatherer.
EG modern native Australians have an incredibly dense and complex mental/spiritual culture, but their stone tools were often not as complex compared to those of Neandertals.
They also produced stone tools more complex than any Neandethal tools including Chatelperronian.
They also worked stone as art objects.
(of course all this was done after 50,000 years ago long after the great leap forward :P)Fully modern Andaman islanders when first encountered didn't know how to make fire. They collected it(lightning strikes etc) and stored it as embers, but make it they could not. Neandertals could.
I think we come back now to what makes the Neanderthals so interesting.
What is it to be human.
These people were human (for much of their existence MORE HUMAN than the main trunk of our ancestors) but were they us?
Two practical questions after all these musings.
I have read that the maximum Neanderthal population of Europe was 10,000.
I have also read that the maximum total Neanderthal population was 70,000.
Were European Neanderthals such a small part of the total or am I misunderstanding something?
Is it possible that the culturally modern hunter gatherer peoples were so large in number and could take so much more from the land that they could have swamped the Neanderthals without the Pleistocene holocaust being true.
Say that 10,000 Neanderthals lived in Europe but 250,000 homo sapiens sapiens so wouldn't homo sapiens sapiens just overwhelm homo sapiens neanderthalensis?
But why?
Why us and not them?0 -
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swordofislam wrote: »It is definitely proof unvarnished proof I would say rather than just evidence that there is some non homo sapiens sapiens blood in Europeans. I am not sure that it invalidates the Out of Africa hypothesis (cards on the table Out of Africa makes intuitive sense to me and no doubt that creates a bias). Out of Africa merely says that we evolved in Africa; I don't think it rules out some gene flow back from the archaic populations.I have thought about white skin and red/blonde hair but apparentlyAlso what is meant by this quantification of the amount of Neanderthal DNA? And how do we know that Africans don't have Neandrthal genes that flowed down from North Africa?That's basically what I believe. A light goes on and you have abstraction and imagination and from that your capacity to speak and remember skyrockets people develope symbologies and taboos and 100 years later you're 'the people'.A couple of questions.
Were we US when we borrowed the Mousterian toolkit. Or were some sort of archaic (maybe the idea of archaics isn't all that helpful):DI don't doubt that the Mousterian tools are hard to make but they were the same for 270,000 years. That isn't human. Humans aren't that static. (What am I missing here?)Also even Olduvan tools are hard to make if you can't work stone.I amn't arguing against the capability of Neanderthals but against their actuality. Even though they could speak perhaps they didn't speak until we taught them and perhaps in speaking they became us(look at someone like Chabal the rugby player he has browridges for God's sake and he is from the French Neanderthal heartland.Under the influence of homo sapiens sapiens they changed their style of toolmaking from Mousterian to Chatelperronian.Could it be that we taught them speech?
Does this change indicate assimilation?Or they could have floated on mats of vegetation.Come on primitive is in the eye of the beholder.Do you think that homo erectus had manhood rites, taboos, religion or art?
Further evidence of this votive meaning comes in the form of the bone pit I mentioned earlier that Heidelbergensis(precursor to Neandertal) used. One single large handaxe was found among the remains of their dead. Of very fine red quartzite, expertly knapped and unused. The researchers nicknamed it excalibur. The remains in the pit were all defleshed. Possibly cannibalism(which some moderns made a part of funerary rites) or some form of sky burial like the Tibetans practice today. They were doing something and doing it repeatedly and consistently and threw in a valuable item into the midst of all this. That suggests, strongly suggests ritual to me. Which suggests spiritual thought.
I'd be of the very personal opinion that this may explain the so called Movius mystery line http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movius_Line Basically handaxes are all over the place but seem to peter out the further east one goes. Many explanations have been given, my mad theory is that the reason the handaxe isn't found or found very rarely is not because of leaving a useful tool behind, but leaving a religion/spiritual artifact behind. A religious reformation writ in stone or lack of it. Indeed as a tool, handaxes are pretty limited. Quite a few researchers think they're not actually tools, but cores left over from striking blades from a core. Maybe, but some, many are too precisely knapped. I have a couple of stone cores and they're pretty distinctive and nothing like handaxes and look like cast off items(though one I have was used afterwards as a hammer stone).If a modern hunter gatherer met homo erectus he would either venerate him as the wise man of the woods or kill him and eat him.The bonds of species are broken homo erectus was not human.That's begging the question a bit though. If you believe that Neanderthals are US and that there are lots of US that have been through time and that we are US all the way back to Zhoukoudian then obviously you won't think that a Neanderthal would have been unreconisable as human.But that I think is the main question about Neanderthals and why they were so interesting. Their humanity is not at issue. Neanderthals were human but what does that mean?
You see if they were human in an unvarnished way so that the Cro Magnons who met would have said 'Who are these people, let's communicate' then terms like Pleistocene Holocaust have alot of resonance and relevance.I am not sure it would have been so clear to a hunter gatherer.Maybe but they had art, rituals and stories. They also extracted much more from the land than the Neanderthals did.Just read this bit again and I see that it question begging. But Australian aboriginals lived at much higher density than Neanderthals implying that they got more from the land.
They also produced stone tools more complex than any Neandethal tools including Chatelperronian.
They also worked stone as art objects.
(of course all this was done after 50,000 years ago long after the great leap forward :P)I wasn't aware of that. Very interesting.
Two practical questions after all these musings.Is it possible that the culturally modern hunter gatherer peoples were so large in number and could take so much more from the land that they could have swamped the Neanderthals without the Pleistocene holocaust being true.
Say that 10,000 Neanderthals lived in Europe but 250,000 homo sapiens sapiens so wouldn't homo sapiens sapiens just overwhelm homo sapiens neanderthalensis?
But why?
Why us and not them?Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.
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Hey Wibbs sorry I dont have any links to the rape idea, its not even a theory its just something I read in a few articles thats thrown about when people ask "why would anyone sleep with a neanderthal woman"!0
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To much to quote Wibbs. I think that my cognitive biases are really pandered to by this idea of the 'archaic' and 'fully modern' human. Not to mention 'cultural modernity'. It seems like a bit of a cheat when you look a bit harder.
Advocates for thinking Neanderthals have to prove that art objects are art.
Call someone fully modern and the assumption is that they are making art.
I need to change my perspective and do some more reading without the blinkers (or new blinkers anyway).
I also have the problem of anachronism (even though I am aware of that problem) Neanderthal tools are the same for 270,000 years (is that even true?) but of course archaic homo sapiens didn't change his toolkit much for 200,000 years either. I need to get all the dates straight in my head.
I really think that you've nailed down the nub of the problem when you ask why we might have been able to live in larger numbers. But the Neanderthals needed twice as much food as us not ten times as much.
Humans have a comparatively short period between births (for great apes) if the Neanderthals had a longer period between births that could account for the overwhelming by HSS. Perhaps it was just a fluke.
Any books you'd recommend on the Denisovians?
Is there anywhere that I can download a matrix showing what everyone was doing at the same time.
Just going back to DNA for a second. We are 99.7% the same DNA as a Neanderthal. So again what does the 4% of Neanderthal DNA mean.0 -
steddyeddy wrote: »Hey Wibbs sorry I dont have any links to the rape idea, its not even a theory its just something I read in a few articles thats thrown about when people ask "why would anyone sleep with a neanderthal woman"!
Maybe if you were young men/ adolescents away hunting for a a couple of months the question is "Why wouldn't anyone sleep with a Neanderthal woman!"0 -
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swordofislam wrote: »To much to quote Wibbs.I think that my cognitive biases are really pandered to by this idea of the 'archaic' and 'fully modern' human. Not to mention 'cultural modernity'. It seems like a bit of a cheat when you look a bit harder.
Advocates for thinking Neanderthals have to prove that art objects are art.
Call someone fully modern and the assumption is that they are making art.I also have the problem of anachronism (even though I am aware of that problem) Neanderthal tools are the same for 270,000 years (is that even true?) but of course archaic homo sapiens didn't change his toolkit much for 200,000 years either.I really think that you've nailed down the nub of the problem when you ask why we might have been able to live in larger numbers. But the Neanderthals needed twice as much food as us not ten times as much.Humans have a comparatively short period between births (for great apes) if the Neanderthals had a longer period between births that could account for the overwhelming by HSS.Any books you'd recommend on the Denisovians?
Is there anywhere that I can download a matrix showing what everyone was doing at the same time.Just going back to DNA for a second. We are 99.7% the same DNA as a Neanderthal. So again what does the 4% of Neanderthal DNA mean.Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.
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steddyeddy wrote: »"why would anyone sleep with a neanderthal woman"!
Never been to Copperface Jacks then?
This is a great thread - quite cheered me up to see such informed discussion. One theme I keep coming back is the artificiality of the notion of species, especially within so short and close a genus as homo (or even the hominina, but brother do I hate that term). As Gould argued in more general terms, we make up these names and divisions, then we argue about them - the reality proceeds unaffected.
I like to borrow the familiar mental image from discussions of mitochondrial DNA, the picture of an unbroken chain of hand-holding mothers and daughters stretching back across maybe 50,000 women (a line maybe only 50km long) until we find our common ancestor with the Neanderthals. The question has to be asked of 'our' ancestor, one of the three (minimum) women holding hands at position 50,000: how do you get to be called 'human', but your mother and your sister don't?
It's a question that can only be asked in retrospect, because it's only from the other end of that chain of hands that we can know which lady is our manytimes grandmother, and which is not - at the time, 800,000 years ago, the question means nothing. The notion of species is applied within the homo genus by looking at what 'lines' survived, and for how long - a teleological argument from the perspective of the individuals involved.
Earning the badge of being 'us' looks like a happy accident of descendants - perhaps it's better to think of 'humanity' as not being restricted to a group that only includes our verifiable ancestors. Perhaps seeing homo as a mixing milling weave of strands of culture and genome that touch and part and touch again seems more apt - without denying the essential truth of an geographically African origin.
Obviously I'm pushing things a long way back from the OP's question here, but it keeps me busy.0 -
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Tordelback wrote: »Never been to Copperface Jacks then?
This is a great thread - quite cheered me up to see such informed discussion. One theme I keep coming back is the artificiality of the notion of species, especially within so short and close a genus as homo (or even the hominina, but brother do I hate that term). As Gould argued in more general terms, we make up these names and divisions, then we argue about them - the reality proceeds unaffected.
I like to borrow the familiar mental image from discussions of mitochondrial DNA, the picture of an unbroken chain of hand-holding mothers and daughters stretching back across maybe 50,000 women (a line maybe only 50km long) until we find our common ancestor with the Neanderthals. The question has to be asked of 'our' ancestor, one of the three (minimum) women holding hands at position 50,000: how do you get to be called 'human', but your mother and your sister don't?
It's a question that can only be asked in retrospect, because it's only from the other end of that chain of hands that we can know which lady is our manytimes grandmother, and which is not - at the time, 800,000 years ago, the question means nothing. The notion of species is applied within the homo genus by looking at what 'lines' survived, and for how long - a teleological argument from the perspective of the individuals involved.
Earning the badge of being 'us' looks like a happy accident of descendants - perhaps it's better to think of 'humanity' as not being restricted to a group that only includes our verifiable ancestors. Perhaps seeing homo as a mixing milling weave of strands of culture and genome that touch and part and touch again seems more apt - without denying the essential truth of an geographically African origin.
Obviously I'm pushing things a long way back from the OP's question here, but it keeps me busy.0 -
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Tordelback wrote: »Earning the badge of being 'us' looks like a happy accident of descendants - perhaps it's better to think of 'humanity' as not being restricted to a group that only includes our verifiable ancestors. Perhaps seeing homo as a mixing milling weave of strands of culture and genome that touch and part and touch again seems more apt - without denying the essential truth of an geographically African origin.Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.
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