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Something I've never understood (since highschool some 30 years ago) is; when getting partial skeletons perhaps from only a single individual, how can they clai

Something I've never understood (since highschool some 30 years ago) is; when getting partial skeletons perhaps from only a single individual, how can they claim new species? I mean what's diff with that and some hypothetical future anthropoligist looking at siberian with roundish skull thicker brow ridges and that of six foot tall masai with long face and then a sub 5 foot native peruvian and declaring them all different species?

thaumasiotes 11y ago
What's stopping a future anthropologist from declaring siberians and pygmies to be different species? It's not done now for political reasons, but the future has no reason to be concerned with the past's special sensitivities. Consider that "spanish" and "italian" are officially separate languages, while the US and Scotland both officially speak "english". The terminology won't help you predict which pair has an easier time communicating. It's political.
- johnchristopher 11y ago
  > What's stopping a future anthropologist from declaring siberians and pygmies to be different species? The fact that they are capable of producing fertile offspring ?
  - kaffeemitsahne 11y ago
    I think the point was: how can you know that when you only have a few kg of bone fragments?
    - johnchristopher 11y ago
      I am more concerned with the scientific racism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism#United_State...) emanating from that post.
  - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
    Taking that as the metric how have the writers of the paper in the OP proved that the species that produced these bone fragments was not able to produce [fertile] offspring with any other species (of which they have a few bone fragments), or even with modern humans. Even with a full genome, or a full skeleton is it even possible? Surely the only way we currently have to determine mating compatibility is to have live subjects to mate/extract gametes from and means to incubate the zygote [and care for it to adulthood].
  - kamilner 11y ago
    Producing infertile offspring is not necessary for two things to be different species, though. Fertile offspring from two different species is not all that uncommon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_speciation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_speciation
  - simonh 11y ago
    But then you have ring species such as some seaguls. The gulls in Northern Europe can interbreed with the ones in Canada, which can interbreed with the ones in Alaska, which can interbreed with the ones in Siberia, which cannot interbreed with the ones is northern Europe. So is there one species or two, and if two where do you draw the line?
    - Dwolb 11y ago
      I would surmise the answer is N-1 where N is the number of separate gull groups. A species would then consist of two gull groups who can mate and this answer assumes there are no mini circles or triangles in the ring. No idea the academic answer though.
      - GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
        By that definition a particular individual could simultaneously be a member of two species.
    - johnchristopher 11y ago
      Fascinating ! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species
- javert 11y ago
  > Consider that "spanish" and "italian" are officially separate languages, while the US and Scotland both officially speak "english". The terminology won't help you predict which pair has an easier time communicating. I'm not certain, but that doesn't sound right to me. I'm pretty sure Americans and Scots have a far easier time communicating than someone who only speaks Italian and someone who only speaks Spanish. (Assuming Scottish accents that are reasonably mainstream, not an extreme outlier.) If I'm wrong, I'd like to be enlightened.
  - alistairSH 11y ago
    I'm Scottish by birth, but was raised in the US. I don't have a problem with any of the Scottish accents, but American friends consistently have trouble understanding Glasgow patter and certain highland accents. Heck, I add a roommate in college who needed captions for Trainspotting! That said, it tends to be as much a vocabulary problem as the accent itself. Lot's of colloquialisms to learn.
  - kfk 11y ago
    Correct. Italian and Spanish can understand each other, but with a lot of effort and keeping communication at a very basic level. This thing that we can speak to each other easily is a myth. That said, we can learn each other languages in a matter of weeks.
    - stefantalpalaru 11y ago
      > we can learn each other languages in a matter of weeks Not so fast. Even if you limit yourself to a vocabulary made of the most common 10000 words, you still need a lot more practice to differentiate between nouns that have a gender in Italian and another in Spanish, irregular verbs, idioms, etc. Understanding a language is one thing. Speaking and writing it is a whole new level.
      - douche 11y ago
        Gendering nouns that aren't actually gendered is one of the stupidest concepts humanity has inflicted on itself.
- simonh 11y ago
  As the saying goes, a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.
- sricciardi 11y ago
  Spanish and Italian are MUCH more different than American English and Scottish(?) English.
  - iso8859-1 11y ago
    He was probably thinking of Scots: A 2010 Scottish Government study of "public attitudes towards the Scots language" found that 64% of respondents (around 1,000 individuals being a representative sample of Scotland's adult population) "don't really think of Scots as a language" (Wikipedia)
- RogtamBar 11y ago
  It's a political thing. Species definition is messy, to the point of absurdity. Indeed, the differences between long-separated human populations are such that even non-racist scientists acknowledge subspecies.. http://dienekes.blogspot.sk/2009/09/is-homo-sapiens-polytypic.html http://dienekes.blogspot.sk/2009/09/is-homo-sapiens-polytypi...
  - wpankey 11y ago
    Thanks for posting this. It has always baffled me that we are led to believe that all of humanity springs from one common root. Absolutely ridiculous and goes against common sense -what other species (of anything) has just one single representative??? Who's been selling this and why???
    - lordnacho 11y ago
      Nobody is saying there was a single pair of people at some point. But something like a population bottleneck resulting from the Toba eruption would mean all future people were descended from a small group of survivors. And those types of events happen a lot.
      - RogtamBar 11y ago
        Small group? It went down to estimated 1500 worldwide. That is plenty. Note that last common ancestor of the most differing human ethnics is something like 180-200k years ago. Furthermore, with the advent of denser living and agriculture, evolution sped up quite a lot.
    - throwaway1967 11y ago
      > Who's been selling this and why??? The New York Intellectuals, who were connected to the Frankfurt School, who got the baton from Psychoanalysis. Read The Culture Of Critique by Kevin Macdonald and you will have precisely your answer.
    - rriepe 11y ago
      Ideas like Mitochondrial Eve are really popular, and also really popularly misinterpreted.
gregwtmtno 11y ago
I think the problem is the "species" construction itself. Remember, it's completely made up by people and has no obligation to reflect the sometimes messy reality on the ground. I'm more interested in what we can learn about these people (using the term for convenience) than what they are called. When did they live? How much genetic distance is there between us and them? Do modern humans carry some of their genes? Could they speak?
- elros 11y ago
  I do seem to remember being taught in school that the definition of species is "organisms that can reproduce and generate fertile offspring". Apparently, though, it's not that simple: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_problem
  - kenbellows 11y ago
    That's a problematic criterion when trying to classify long extinct species. We can hypothesize, and perhaps there is a point where we can confidently say "These two definitely couldn't mate" (e.g. Australopithecus afarensis and Homo neanderthalensis), but there's always going to be a large gray area. In fact, here's an interesting quote from the OP article: > A small group of Homo sapiens left Africa 60,000 years ago and settled the rest of the world, replacing the other human species they encountered (with a small amount of interbreeding). So actually, it seems we are confident that Homo sapiens was capable of reproduction with some of the other "species" we've identified.
  - gregwtmtno 11y ago
    Yeah, not that simple at all. To me though, the problem isn't the difficulty of defining the species. The problem is peoples' need to classify things (a problem that goes far beyond scientific classifications). But I recognize that I'm in the minority in that view.
  - ceejayoz 11y ago
    > I do seem to remember being taught in school that the definition of species is "organisms that can reproduce and generate fertile offspring". Which is problematic for extinct animals. We have no way of knowing if modern humans would be able to produce offspring with Neanderthals, for example.
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
If species were based on bone structure, how many species of dogs would there be?
- bpicolo 11y ago
  I still think it's super weird that they don't count as different species. There's the suggestion that breeding + fertile offspring is the main concern, but couldn't early humans and neanderthals reproduce, for example? But we definitely consider them separate species. Dividing lines are hard here I guess.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - eropple 11y ago
    > couldn't early humans and neanderthals reproduce, for example? Common misconception, but no, they couldn't.
    - mongol 11y ago
      I have the impression that current research by Svante Pääbo shows they likely did.
      - eropple 11y ago
        Huh, so it is. I took a few courses on prehistoric humanity and the evolution of mankind in college, but I guess I'm out of date. (Thanks for not being the sibling poster in your response, BTW. "You are wrong." Hurf.)
    - freshyill 11y ago
      You are wrong. http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/how-neanderthal-dna-changed-humans-140129.htm http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/how-neanderthal-dn...
nitrogen 11y ago
Geographic and chronological/geological isolation probably play a role. Populations separated by kiloyears and megameters are probably more likely to be considered species.

thaumasiotes 11y ago

What's stopping a future anthropologist from declaring siberians and pygmies to be different species? It's not done now for political reasons, but the future has no reason to be concerned with the past's special sensitivities. Consider that "spanish" and "italian" are officially separate languages, while the US and Scotland both officially speak "english". The terminology won't help you predict which pair has an easier time communicating. It's political.

johnchristopher 11y ago
> What's stopping a future anthropologist from declaring siberians and pygmies to be different species? The fact that they are capable of producing fertile offspring ?
- kaffeemitsahne 11y ago
  I think the point was: how can you know that when you only have a few kg of bone fragments?
  - johnchristopher 11y ago
    I am more concerned with the scientific racism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism#United_State...) emanating from that post.
- pbhjpbhj 11y ago
  Taking that as the metric how have the writers of the paper in the OP proved that the species that produced these bone fragments was not able to produce [fertile] offspring with any other species (of which they have a few bone fragments), or even with modern humans. Even with a full genome, or a full skeleton is it even possible? Surely the only way we currently have to determine mating compatibility is to have live subjects to mate/extract gametes from and means to incubate the zygote [and care for it to adulthood].
- kamilner 11y ago
  Producing infertile offspring is not necessary for two things to be different species, though. Fertile offspring from two different species is not all that uncommon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_speciation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_speciation
- simonh 11y ago
  But then you have ring species such as some seaguls. The gulls in Northern Europe can interbreed with the ones in Canada, which can interbreed with the ones in Alaska, which can interbreed with the ones in Siberia, which cannot interbreed with the ones is northern Europe. So is there one species or two, and if two where do you draw the line?
  - Dwolb 11y ago
    I would surmise the answer is N-1 where N is the number of separate gull groups. A species would then consist of two gull groups who can mate and this answer assumes there are no mini circles or triangles in the ring. No idea the academic answer though.
    - GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
      By that definition a particular individual could simultaneously be a member of two species.
  - johnchristopher 11y ago
    Fascinating ! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species
javert 11y ago
> Consider that "spanish" and "italian" are officially separate languages, while the US and Scotland both officially speak "english". The terminology won't help you predict which pair has an easier time communicating. I'm not certain, but that doesn't sound right to me. I'm pretty sure Americans and Scots have a far easier time communicating than someone who only speaks Italian and someone who only speaks Spanish. (Assuming Scottish accents that are reasonably mainstream, not an extreme outlier.) If I'm wrong, I'd like to be enlightened.
- alistairSH 11y ago
  I'm Scottish by birth, but was raised in the US. I don't have a problem with any of the Scottish accents, but American friends consistently have trouble understanding Glasgow patter and certain highland accents. Heck, I add a roommate in college who needed captions for Trainspotting! That said, it tends to be as much a vocabulary problem as the accent itself. Lot's of colloquialisms to learn.
- kfk 11y ago
  Correct. Italian and Spanish can understand each other, but with a lot of effort and keeping communication at a very basic level. This thing that we can speak to each other easily is a myth. That said, we can learn each other languages in a matter of weeks.
  - stefantalpalaru 11y ago
    > we can learn each other languages in a matter of weeks Not so fast. Even if you limit yourself to a vocabulary made of the most common 10000 words, you still need a lot more practice to differentiate between nouns that have a gender in Italian and another in Spanish, irregular verbs, idioms, etc. Understanding a language is one thing. Speaking and writing it is a whole new level.
    - douche 11y ago
      Gendering nouns that aren't actually gendered is one of the stupidest concepts humanity has inflicted on itself.
simonh 11y ago
As the saying goes, a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.
sricciardi 11y ago
Spanish and Italian are MUCH more different than American English and Scottish(?) English.
- iso8859-1 11y ago
  He was probably thinking of Scots: A 2010 Scottish Government study of "public attitudes towards the Scots language" found that 64% of respondents (around 1,000 individuals being a representative sample of Scotland's adult population) "don't really think of Scots as a language" (Wikipedia)
RogtamBar 11y ago
It's a political thing. Species definition is messy, to the point of absurdity. Indeed, the differences between long-separated human populations are such that even non-racist scientists acknowledge subspecies.. http://dienekes.blogspot.sk/2009/09/is-homo-sapiens-polytypic.html http://dienekes.blogspot.sk/2009/09/is-homo-sapiens-polytypi...
- wpankey 11y ago
  Thanks for posting this. It has always baffled me that we are led to believe that all of humanity springs from one common root. Absolutely ridiculous and goes against common sense -what other species (of anything) has just one single representative??? Who's been selling this and why???
  - lordnacho 11y ago
    Nobody is saying there was a single pair of people at some point. But something like a population bottleneck resulting from the Toba eruption would mean all future people were descended from a small group of survivors. And those types of events happen a lot.
    - RogtamBar 11y ago
      Small group? It went down to estimated 1500 worldwide. That is plenty. Note that last common ancestor of the most differing human ethnics is something like 180-200k years ago. Furthermore, with the advent of denser living and agriculture, evolution sped up quite a lot.
  - throwaway1967 11y ago
    > Who's been selling this and why??? The New York Intellectuals, who were connected to the Frankfurt School, who got the baton from Psychoanalysis. Read The Culture Of Critique by Kevin Macdonald and you will have precisely your answer.
  - rriepe 11y ago
    Ideas like Mitochondrial Eve are really popular, and also really popularly misinterpreted.

gregwtmtno 11y ago

I think the problem is the "species" construction itself. Remember, it's completely made up by people and has no obligation to reflect the sometimes messy reality on the ground. I'm more interested in what we can learn about these people (using the term for convenience) than what they are called. When did they live? How much genetic distance is there between us and them? Do modern humans carry some of their genes? Could they speak?

elros 11y ago
I do seem to remember being taught in school that the definition of species is "organisms that can reproduce and generate fertile offspring". Apparently, though, it's not that simple: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_problem
- kenbellows 11y ago
  That's a problematic criterion when trying to classify long extinct species. We can hypothesize, and perhaps there is a point where we can confidently say "These two definitely couldn't mate" (e.g. Australopithecus afarensis and Homo neanderthalensis), but there's always going to be a large gray area. In fact, here's an interesting quote from the OP article: > A small group of Homo sapiens left Africa 60,000 years ago and settled the rest of the world, replacing the other human species they encountered (with a small amount of interbreeding). So actually, it seems we are confident that Homo sapiens was capable of reproduction with some of the other "species" we've identified.
- gregwtmtno 11y ago
  Yeah, not that simple at all. To me though, the problem isn't the difficulty of defining the species. The problem is peoples' need to classify things (a problem that goes far beyond scientific classifications). But I recognize that I'm in the minority in that view.
- ceejayoz 11y ago
  > I do seem to remember being taught in school that the definition of species is "organisms that can reproduce and generate fertile offspring". Which is problematic for extinct animals. We have no way of knowing if modern humans would be able to produce offspring with Neanderthals, for example.

Lawtonfogle 11y ago

If species were based on bone structure, how many species of dogs would there be?

bpicolo 11y ago
I still think it's super weird that they don't count as different species. There's the suggestion that breeding + fertile offspring is the main concern, but couldn't early humans and neanderthals reproduce, for example? But we definitely consider them separate species. Dividing lines are hard here I guess.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- eropple 11y ago
  > couldn't early humans and neanderthals reproduce, for example? Common misconception, but no, they couldn't.
  - mongol 11y ago
    I have the impression that current research by Svante Pääbo shows they likely did.
    - eropple 11y ago
      Huh, so it is. I took a few courses on prehistoric humanity and the evolution of mankind in college, but I guess I'm out of date. (Thanks for not being the sibling poster in your response, BTW. "You are wrong." Hurf.)
  - freshyill 11y ago
    You are wrong. http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/how-neanderthal-dna-changed-humans-140129.htm http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/how-neanderthal-dn...

nitrogen 11y ago

Geographic and chronological/geological isolation probably play a role. Populations separated by kiloyears and megameters are probably more likely to be considered species.