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Oldest Fossils of Homo Sapiens Found in Morocco

203 points by yonderboy 9y ago

matt_wulfeck 9y ago
The clock is "reset" on these types of things so frequently that I can help wondering why we speak so confidently about the origins of our species, and how long we've been here, and ultimately where we came from on this earth.
- nether 9y ago
  We live in a computer simulation.
  - jansho 9y ago
    No we got spaceship-wrecked.
    - reitanqild 9y ago
      Any remains found?
      - jansho 9y ago
        Shrugs, it was biodegradable.
  - sizzzzlerz 9y ago
    and it shall be called "The Earth"!
  - __jal 9y ago
    Then I want my quarter back. The pacing of this game sucks, over a third of the game-clock is mostly grinding, another third is spent on hallucinating nonsense, and the "plot" seems like it is made up as it goes along. And don't get me started on some of the NPCs...
- godzillabrennus 9y ago
  It's either set the narrative based on evidence available or go off thousands of years of fables. I'm fine with resetting the narrative as we learn vs making bad assumptions.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- b_emery 9y ago
  It's another data point, and must be assessed relative to other data points. Some details of the origin of our species are better known than others, and thus some are more or less likely to be 'reset'. The evidence for African origins, for example, are overwhelming and will not likely be 'reset'. The precise dating of the origin of homo sapiens - if that is even possible - is still in flux. This is the scientific process - science as error correction mechanism. Before the Dawn by Nicholas Wade is a great book reviewing the recent science on our species from about 100k year ago to about 10k years ago. It provides the overview and context that you dont get from a NYT article such as this.
- sizzzzlerz 9y ago
  Isn't science marvelous? That fact that it adapts as new evidence is revealed is critical. The confidence you mention is not confidence that a final answer has been reached but rather, based on the current evidence, an answer can be formulated that is consistent with that evidence available at that time.
- gnaritas 9y ago
  > The clock is "reset" on these types of things so frequently It really isn't; this doesn't change anything, we previously knew we were at least 200k years old, that fact is still true. We now know we're at least 300k years old, that fact will also always remain true. What's at fault is your understanding of what science is saying rather than what it's actually saying. > that I can help wondering why we speak so confidently about the origins of our species Because it's a given that we're always speaking about current best available knowledge. What is proven true remains true, it's just refined over time as new truths are discovered. What we know continually grows, it's not like we're changing what we know to be something else, we're just growing what we know continually.
  - djkrudy 9y ago
    But seriously, what the heck makes more current information better? We aren't talking about significant technological advancements in the last 30 years in dating. What about releasing the click bait news story when a date is corroborated by a new piece of evidence, instead of every time some new find is dated we change the scientifically accepted just to the new number. gnaritas, its hilarious how you ask a very legitimate question, and then the responses are all "Isn't it great how the scientific method allows us to blatantly...." Instead of a response like "Oh...why the heck did we say we had so much confidence before" Regardless of what commenters say, the truth is that yes, without corroboration or quantifiable changes in technology, there is NO VALIDITY in saying that the newest number is the best number. It's another data point, and more importantly its another data point to prove that its stupid to so quickly decide that once you find something in 1 hole in 1 location, that artifact MUST be the beginning of an era!
    - gnaritas 9y ago
      It's not about the newest number being the best number, it's simply an older number that changes our idea of the timeline. So yes, it there is validity in it because it's "new" data that differs from our existing data giving us a fuller understanding of the timeline. And I think you're confusing me with the OP, I didn't ask any question at all, nor do I think the OP's question is legitimate. The OP is assuming incorrectly that current science states definitively when homo sapiens began, but it doesn't, it merely says here's the oldest evidence we currently have so we're at least this old; science never said we're not older. As we cannot time travel, we can never definitively say when homo sapiens began, it will always be an estimate based on the oldest fossils found and as such that estimate can be changed anytime new fossils are found that pre-date the existing oldest fossil.
- omginternets 9y ago
  Not that long ago we thought the sun orbited around the Earth. Do we know better? Probably. Are we correct in our understanding of the natural world? Hell no. "All models are wrong; some models are very useful", as the adage goes. Science isn't so much about being right as it is about being less wrong.
- BurningFrog 9y ago
  My impression is that the experts don't speak with a ton of confidence. Popularized versions tend to present the latest "this seems kinda likely, but who knows..." as fact.
- skookumchuck 9y ago
  Fossils can only give a bound on the latest that a species appeared. The earliest bound is open to speculation and inference.
- Mbioguy 9y ago
  This is more a problem with science reporting than with the science itself. Saying 'modern humans' or 'homo sapiens' are X years old is a misleading statement. Evolution isn't some binary where all of a sudden you have modern humans. It's genetic change over time. Better reporting would be to compare this find with relatively modern features in Morocco at 300,00 years ago, to Homo Naledi with archaic features in South Africa at 335,000 to 236,000 years ago. As other users put it, compare this data point to other data points. This find implies that relatively modern humans had spread to multiple parts of Africa by 300,000 ya, while at the same time evolutionary cousins like H. naledi persisted in other parts. "And if that is true, Dr. Gunz and his colleagues argue, then our species may have been evolving as a network of groups spread across the continent." This IMO is the best sentence summarizing the impact of this find, and makes the most sense evolutionarily. Instead of having one group evolve all modern traits, and then 70,000 years ago explode across Africa and then the globe, you have several groups with limited interbreeding evolving 'modern' traits. The interbreeding allows the traits to cross into other groups, and modern humans are the result of a particularly successful combination of traits where some traits arose in one group or location and some in others. So sure, in evolutionary deep time (1-2 million years) East Africa remains the cradle of humanity. But this find updates the story that by 300,000 years ago, the groups that became human had left the cradle. That's a big story, and is a much better summation than the misleading "Humans are X years old, older than Y that we previously thought".
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Clubber 9y ago
  I believe the process goes something like this: 1. We find human remains we can date back 100,000 years. Press release that we know humans are at least 100,000 years old. 2. We find human remains we can date back 150,000 years. Press release that we know humans are at least 150,000 years old. We were wrong about #1 (sort of). 3. We find human remains we can date back 200,000 years. Press release that we know humans are at least 200,000 years old. We were wrong about #1 & #2 (sort of). This particular skull is apparently slightly elongated compared to than of modern humans, so that is spawning some debate, which is good. I don't know if some would consider this a parent species because of this, but probably. An interesting paragraph I read in one of these articles on this recent discovery is that fossils this old are difficult to find because it requires an dry, arid area to survive. Assuming that humanity started in Africa will probably never be disproven because we would need to find a fossil older than 300,000 years that's not in Africa. I assume we think this based on the only evidence we have: we've only found the oldest fossils in Africa.
  - tarsinge 9y ago
    > This particular skull is apparently slightly elongated compared to than of modern humans, so that is spawning some debate, which is good. I don't know if some would consider this a parent species because of this, but probably. Naive question, how do we draw the line between new species and variance of actual homo sapiens? I can imagine some interesting "specimens" of underlying skulls in some people I've encountered that could even fall in another extinct homo species from the images I've seen (sounds funny but it's real question).
    - Clubber 9y ago
      I would guess that's up to each researcher. When I was familiarizing myself about some of this on Wikipedia, I noticed that by the time homo erectus came around our predecessors already knew how to control fire and make clothing.
- Razengan 9y ago
  > and ultimately where we came from on this earth. I will always hope that we find some clue which suggests humans came from somewhere other than Earth. That would probably be the second best thing, after proof of extraterrestrial intelligence, to spur deep-space exploration. I'd love some good science fiction based on that idea at least. Mars seems like a plausible candidate; We ruined it/were forced to leave, fled to Earth, culled the dinosaurs, and made here home.
  - puranjay 9y ago
    I know there are probably some very good evolutionary explanations for human beings, but to a complete layman like me, the difference between human and ape intelligence are way too much to attribute to an accident of natural selection. Plus, I think an extraterrestrial source for human life just makes me think of all sorts of geeky fantasies.
    - qarioz 9y ago
      What about hybridization? There's a hypothesis that once a primate mate with a pig and the resulting hybrid become humanity ancestor. It can explain a leap in evolution and explain things like lack of hair.
camus2 9y ago
But that's what exciting about science. It doesn't claim to come with ready made answers about our surroundings, humans discover things on their own. Sometimes humans get things wrong, and there is no shame in being wrong with science, it's part of the process, unlike "other domains" where people can or will never admin they are wrong, while still using the product of science every day, in contradiction to their own "science".
- jansho 9y ago
  I don't know, the inability to admit being wrong is a human trait and can apply to anyone, including scientists and believers. Why does everyone think that there's only two "origin" stories and they're both mutually exclusive? I believe in evolution, and I'm a monotheist. I don't reach this conclusion very easily. Why not evolution as God's* way of creating things. *I hesitate to use this word because of the baggage it carries, but somehow Designer or Creator doesn't seem sufficient here...
  - davidw 9y ago
    Science is about stuff that is falsifiable.
  - nkrisc 9y ago
    Why not evolution as "God's" way of creating things? Well, why not anything? You can posit anything you want, can you test it? Is there evidence to support it? Why monotheist? How do you know for certain there aren't more gods? How did you arrive at that conclusion? Can you test it? Could you admit your belief in monotheism could possibly be mistaken? We can ask "why not anything?" all day and not get anywhere so it's more worthwhile to focus on the things for which evidence can actually be gathered. Evolution is testable and there exists much evidence of it occurring in the past. The other origin, not so much.
    - jansho 9y ago
      Well, "Why not" is one way to keep an open mind. Why not this world in a multiverse. Why not this world in a simulation. Why not a simulation within a simulation. Why not a programmer who wrote the code for this world - and how is this any stranger than our other what ifs. We're human, we don't just operate on facts - we rely on educated assumptions that we make, some of which may be strong enough to translate into belief. This may be driven by evidence, or just our humanly intuition and experiences. But this is also human: The beauty of science is that it adapts as new evidence is revealed - someone here said this earlier. [No final answer] but rather based on the current evidence, an answer can be formulated that is consistent with the evidence available at that time. It's human because it depends on our perspective; where we are in time, whether we find the truths (evidence) or not, and whether we are capable of perceiving all truths. Science is continually evolving in our minds - or more accurately, in the collective minds over time. Can the great jigsaw puzzle ever be solved? That's not the aim of science, as it is proud to point out, but it argues that whatever picture we come up with, it's justified as long as it's based on the current collection of evidence - this is a philosophy. And I'm personally not satisfied with this, as a way of life. Why don't I deserve the truth in its entirety, in my lifetime? You would ask, why do I even question whether I deserve or not? I guess it's a human thing. But for me, as a person, I intuit closest to monotheism. Monotheism provides a framework where anything is possible, but bound by the belief in the Great Programmer who can do whatever he wants. It can work for anyone, regardless of their time and place; and for me as a person fortunate to live in an advanced age, I can accept evolution, because I think it's pretty robust and who am I to question how he creates the world. This for me is more liberating than having to accept whatever picture current evidence is showing - actually, I look forward to witness more development. It's also quite a comfortable position to be in; if science does show that we live in a simulation, that's OK, if it shows that we live in a multiverse, that's cool too.
hasbroslasher 9y ago
Methodology question: why is there no mention of radiocarbon dating? It's one of our most reliable methods, it works on bones, and it doesn't have the same feel as "they used this other random technique and magically got 300,000 years old so lets go with that".
- tqkxzugoaupvwqr 9y ago
  As far as I know, the radiocarbon method is only reliable up to 50,000 years ago. Past that you need other dating methods.
  - genieyclo 9y ago
    Why?
    - hasbroslasher 9y ago
      Presumably because the amount of Carbon-14 in the sample passes below the error in the measurement equipment
    - exacube 9y ago
      from googling: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Nuclear/cardat.html http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Nuclear/cardat.ht... "The low activity of the carbon-14 limits age determinations to the order of 50,000 years by counting techniques."
    - simonebrunozzi 9y ago
      Physics.
    - yongjik 9y ago
      Carbon 14 has a half-life of 5,730 years. After 57,300 years, only 1/1024 of the original carbon 14 will remain. After 300,000 years, about 1.73 * 10^-16 of the original carbon will remain, which is obviously too little.
apeace 9y ago
> Since 2004, Dr. Hublin and his colleagues have been working through layers of rocks on a desert hillside at Jebel Irhoud. I have so much respect for archeologists. Spending over a decade in one spot, literally on hands and knees, digging and meticulously sifting through anything that is found, is to me the epitome of dedication to a craft. But another part of me thinks: there must be a better way! I know that expeditions often hire bands of locals to help them dig and sift. But does anybody know, have there ever been any advances in this field to make the process go faster, or require less human toiling?
- nerdponx 9y ago
  That might be an interesting project. Deep learning + a headset camera thing.
  - abakker 9y ago
    Small observation: I worked on a dinosaur dig in Montana for 2 summers as a teen. a major problem was not identification of the bones in our case, but the fragility of the bones we were digging. Maybe 50% of our time was flaking rock away slowly with a an icepick, sweeping up the crushed rock, putting it in a bucket, and moving the crushed rock to a tailings pile. Each dedicated quadrant of the dig had its own tailings pile (1x1x1M of rock had its own pile) in case a pice of fragment was lost. I know that low cost survey Lidar will really help, and that RTK GPS is also improving things. On larger digs, documentation with drones is also likely to produce better incremental tracking of progress. But, for this to be better, improving the actual digging is still a big unsolved problem. EDIT: the other 50% of our time was: 40% reassembling bones with superglue in an air conditioned room. (pleasant for the temperature, but maddeningly frustrating work) 10% dig notation, journaling, discussion, planning, survey, etc.
- Splendor 9y ago
  There's ground-penetrating_radar but that just helps you know where to toil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-penetrating_radar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-penetrating_radar
atroll 9y ago
Morocco is a great country with great resources, too bad its king takes most of them and sells them for his own benefit.
- freecodyx 9y ago
  why the down votes ? i can confirm he is right
  - prawn 9y ago
    Because it's not relevant to the story or discussion?
casefields 9y ago
Links to full papers: The age of the hominin fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and the origins of the Middle Stone Age: http://docdro.id/RMXnFTW http://docdro.id/RMXnFTW New fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the pan-African origin of Homo sapiens: http://docdro.id/gi2Gvzo http://docdro.id/gi2Gvzo
freecodyx 9y ago
i am just happy to see my country Morocco in hacker news. it means also that we are the origin of humanity haha
- gerdesj 9y ago
  Only for this week! Last week's New Scientist contained an article that had hom. sap. being of eastern european origin rather than african. There was quite a lot of controversy and conjecture though. (IANAA) The archaeological record is sketchy at best for our prehistory and huge amounts of conjecture is based on very fragmentary evidence. Entire (sub) species are known only from a single bone or a few teeth. Anyway - cheers to Morocco - cradle of humanity, for now 8)
  - flukus 9y ago
    It wasn't a homo sapien in Europe, it was a much earlier hominid, ~8 million years earlier.

203 points by yonderboy 9y ago

The clock is "reset" on these types of things so frequently that I can help wondering why we speak so confidently about the origins of our species, and how long we've been here, and ultimately where we came from on this earth.

nether 9y ago
We live in a computer simulation.
- jansho 9y ago
  No we got spaceship-wrecked.
  - reitanqild 9y ago
    Any remains found?
    - jansho 9y ago
      Shrugs, it was biodegradable.
- sizzzzlerz 9y ago
  and it shall be called "The Earth"!
- __jal 9y ago
  Then I want my quarter back. The pacing of this game sucks, over a third of the game-clock is mostly grinding, another third is spent on hallucinating nonsense, and the "plot" seems like it is made up as it goes along. And don't get me started on some of the NPCs...
godzillabrennus 9y ago
It's either set the narrative based on evidence available or go off thousands of years of fables. I'm fine with resetting the narrative as we learn vs making bad assumptions.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
b_emery 9y ago
It's another data point, and must be assessed relative to other data points. Some details of the origin of our species are better known than others, and thus some are more or less likely to be 'reset'. The evidence for African origins, for example, are overwhelming and will not likely be 'reset'. The precise dating of the origin of homo sapiens - if that is even possible - is still in flux. This is the scientific process - science as error correction mechanism. Before the Dawn by Nicholas Wade is a great book reviewing the recent science on our species from about 100k year ago to about 10k years ago. It provides the overview and context that you dont get from a NYT article such as this.
sizzzzlerz 9y ago
Isn't science marvelous? That fact that it adapts as new evidence is revealed is critical. The confidence you mention is not confidence that a final answer has been reached but rather, based on the current evidence, an answer can be formulated that is consistent with that evidence available at that time.
gnaritas 9y ago
> The clock is "reset" on these types of things so frequently It really isn't; this doesn't change anything, we previously knew we were at least 200k years old, that fact is still true. We now know we're at least 300k years old, that fact will also always remain true. What's at fault is your understanding of what science is saying rather than what it's actually saying. > that I can help wondering why we speak so confidently about the origins of our species Because it's a given that we're always speaking about current best available knowledge. What is proven true remains true, it's just refined over time as new truths are discovered. What we know continually grows, it's not like we're changing what we know to be something else, we're just growing what we know continually.
- djkrudy 9y ago
  But seriously, what the heck makes more current information better? We aren't talking about significant technological advancements in the last 30 years in dating. What about releasing the click bait news story when a date is corroborated by a new piece of evidence, instead of every time some new find is dated we change the scientifically accepted just to the new number. gnaritas, its hilarious how you ask a very legitimate question, and then the responses are all "Isn't it great how the scientific method allows us to blatantly...." Instead of a response like "Oh...why the heck did we say we had so much confidence before" Regardless of what commenters say, the truth is that yes, without corroboration or quantifiable changes in technology, there is NO VALIDITY in saying that the newest number is the best number. It's another data point, and more importantly its another data point to prove that its stupid to so quickly decide that once you find something in 1 hole in 1 location, that artifact MUST be the beginning of an era!
  - gnaritas 9y ago
    It's not about the newest number being the best number, it's simply an older number that changes our idea of the timeline. So yes, it there is validity in it because it's "new" data that differs from our existing data giving us a fuller understanding of the timeline. And I think you're confusing me with the OP, I didn't ask any question at all, nor do I think the OP's question is legitimate. The OP is assuming incorrectly that current science states definitively when homo sapiens began, but it doesn't, it merely says here's the oldest evidence we currently have so we're at least this old; science never said we're not older. As we cannot time travel, we can never definitively say when homo sapiens began, it will always be an estimate based on the oldest fossils found and as such that estimate can be changed anytime new fossils are found that pre-date the existing oldest fossil.
omginternets 9y ago
Not that long ago we thought the sun orbited around the Earth. Do we know better? Probably. Are we correct in our understanding of the natural world? Hell no. "All models are wrong; some models are very useful", as the adage goes. Science isn't so much about being right as it is about being less wrong.
BurningFrog 9y ago
My impression is that the experts don't speak with a ton of confidence. Popularized versions tend to present the latest "this seems kinda likely, but who knows..." as fact.
skookumchuck 9y ago
Fossils can only give a bound on the latest that a species appeared. The earliest bound is open to speculation and inference.
Mbioguy 9y ago
This is more a problem with science reporting than with the science itself. Saying 'modern humans' or 'homo sapiens' are X years old is a misleading statement. Evolution isn't some binary where all of a sudden you have modern humans. It's genetic change over time. Better reporting would be to compare this find with relatively modern features in Morocco at 300,00 years ago, to Homo Naledi with archaic features in South Africa at 335,000 to 236,000 years ago. As other users put it, compare this data point to other data points. This find implies that relatively modern humans had spread to multiple parts of Africa by 300,000 ya, while at the same time evolutionary cousins like H. naledi persisted in other parts. "And if that is true, Dr. Gunz and his colleagues argue, then our species may have been evolving as a network of groups spread across the continent." This IMO is the best sentence summarizing the impact of this find, and makes the most sense evolutionarily. Instead of having one group evolve all modern traits, and then 70,000 years ago explode across Africa and then the globe, you have several groups with limited interbreeding evolving 'modern' traits. The interbreeding allows the traits to cross into other groups, and modern humans are the result of a particularly successful combination of traits where some traits arose in one group or location and some in others. So sure, in evolutionary deep time (1-2 million years) East Africa remains the cradle of humanity. But this find updates the story that by 300,000 years ago, the groups that became human had left the cradle. That's a big story, and is a much better summation than the misleading "Humans are X years old, older than Y that we previously thought".
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Clubber 9y ago
I believe the process goes something like this: 1. We find human remains we can date back 100,000 years. Press release that we know humans are at least 100,000 years old. 2. We find human remains we can date back 150,000 years. Press release that we know humans are at least 150,000 years old. We were wrong about #1 (sort of). 3. We find human remains we can date back 200,000 years. Press release that we know humans are at least 200,000 years old. We were wrong about #1 & #2 (sort of). This particular skull is apparently slightly elongated compared to than of modern humans, so that is spawning some debate, which is good. I don't know if some would consider this a parent species because of this, but probably. An interesting paragraph I read in one of these articles on this recent discovery is that fossils this old are difficult to find because it requires an dry, arid area to survive. Assuming that humanity started in Africa will probably never be disproven because we would need to find a fossil older than 300,000 years that's not in Africa. I assume we think this based on the only evidence we have: we've only found the oldest fossils in Africa.
- tarsinge 9y ago
  > This particular skull is apparently slightly elongated compared to than of modern humans, so that is spawning some debate, which is good. I don't know if some would consider this a parent species because of this, but probably. Naive question, how do we draw the line between new species and variance of actual homo sapiens? I can imagine some interesting "specimens" of underlying skulls in some people I've encountered that could even fall in another extinct homo species from the images I've seen (sounds funny but it's real question).
  - Clubber 9y ago
    I would guess that's up to each researcher. When I was familiarizing myself about some of this on Wikipedia, I noticed that by the time homo erectus came around our predecessors already knew how to control fire and make clothing.
Razengan 9y ago
> and ultimately where we came from on this earth. I will always hope that we find some clue which suggests humans came from somewhere other than Earth. That would probably be the second best thing, after proof of extraterrestrial intelligence, to spur deep-space exploration. I'd love some good science fiction based on that idea at least. Mars seems like a plausible candidate; We ruined it/were forced to leave, fled to Earth, culled the dinosaurs, and made here home.
- puranjay 9y ago
  I know there are probably some very good evolutionary explanations for human beings, but to a complete layman like me, the difference between human and ape intelligence are way too much to attribute to an accident of natural selection. Plus, I think an extraterrestrial source for human life just makes me think of all sorts of geeky fantasies.
  - qarioz 9y ago
    What about hybridization? There's a hypothesis that once a primate mate with a pig and the resulting hybrid become humanity ancestor. It can explain a leap in evolution and explain things like lack of hair.

camus2 9y ago

But that's what exciting about science. It doesn't claim to come with ready made answers about our surroundings, humans discover things on their own. Sometimes humans get things wrong, and there is no shame in being wrong with science, it's part of the process, unlike "other domains" where people can or will never admin they are wrong, while still using the product of science every day, in contradiction to their own "science".

jansho 9y ago
I don't know, the inability to admit being wrong is a human trait and can apply to anyone, including scientists and believers. Why does everyone think that there's only two "origin" stories and they're both mutually exclusive? I believe in evolution, and I'm a monotheist. I don't reach this conclusion very easily. Why not evolution as God's* way of creating things. *I hesitate to use this word because of the baggage it carries, but somehow Designer or Creator doesn't seem sufficient here...
- davidw 9y ago
  Science is about stuff that is falsifiable.
- nkrisc 9y ago
  Why not evolution as "God's" way of creating things? Well, why not anything? You can posit anything you want, can you test it? Is there evidence to support it? Why monotheist? How do you know for certain there aren't more gods? How did you arrive at that conclusion? Can you test it? Could you admit your belief in monotheism could possibly be mistaken? We can ask "why not anything?" all day and not get anywhere so it's more worthwhile to focus on the things for which evidence can actually be gathered. Evolution is testable and there exists much evidence of it occurring in the past. The other origin, not so much.
  - jansho 9y ago
    Well, "Why not" is one way to keep an open mind. Why not this world in a multiverse. Why not this world in a simulation. Why not a simulation within a simulation. Why not a programmer who wrote the code for this world - and how is this any stranger than our other what ifs. We're human, we don't just operate on facts - we rely on educated assumptions that we make, some of which may be strong enough to translate into belief. This may be driven by evidence, or just our humanly intuition and experiences. But this is also human: The beauty of science is that it adapts as new evidence is revealed - someone here said this earlier. [No final answer] but rather based on the current evidence, an answer can be formulated that is consistent with the evidence available at that time. It's human because it depends on our perspective; where we are in time, whether we find the truths (evidence) or not, and whether we are capable of perceiving all truths. Science is continually evolving in our minds - or more accurately, in the collective minds over time. Can the great jigsaw puzzle ever be solved? That's not the aim of science, as it is proud to point out, but it argues that whatever picture we come up with, it's justified as long as it's based on the current collection of evidence - this is a philosophy. And I'm personally not satisfied with this, as a way of life. Why don't I deserve the truth in its entirety, in my lifetime? You would ask, why do I even question whether I deserve or not? I guess it's a human thing. But for me, as a person, I intuit closest to monotheism. Monotheism provides a framework where anything is possible, but bound by the belief in the Great Programmer who can do whatever he wants. It can work for anyone, regardless of their time and place; and for me as a person fortunate to live in an advanced age, I can accept evolution, because I think it's pretty robust and who am I to question how he creates the world. This for me is more liberating than having to accept whatever picture current evidence is showing - actually, I look forward to witness more development. It's also quite a comfortable position to be in; if science does show that we live in a simulation, that's OK, if it shows that we live in a multiverse, that's cool too.

hasbroslasher 9y ago

Methodology question: why is there no mention of radiocarbon dating? It's one of our most reliable methods, it works on bones, and it doesn't have the same feel as "they used this other random technique and magically got 300,000 years old so lets go with that".

tqkxzugoaupvwqr 9y ago
As far as I know, the radiocarbon method is only reliable up to 50,000 years ago. Past that you need other dating methods.
- genieyclo 9y ago
  Why?
  - hasbroslasher 9y ago
    Presumably because the amount of Carbon-14 in the sample passes below the error in the measurement equipment
  - exacube 9y ago
    from googling: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Nuclear/cardat.html http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Nuclear/cardat.ht... "The low activity of the carbon-14 limits age determinations to the order of 50,000 years by counting techniques."
  - simonebrunozzi 9y ago
    Physics.
  - yongjik 9y ago
    Carbon 14 has a half-life of 5,730 years. After 57,300 years, only 1/1024 of the original carbon 14 will remain. After 300,000 years, about 1.73 * 10^-16 of the original carbon will remain, which is obviously too little.

apeace 9y ago

> Since 2004, Dr. Hublin and his colleagues have been working through layers of rocks on a desert hillside at Jebel Irhoud. I have so much respect for archeologists. Spending over a decade in one spot, literally on hands and knees, digging and meticulously sifting through anything that is found, is to me the epitome of dedication to a craft. But another part of me thinks: there must be a better way! I know that expeditions often hire bands of locals to help them dig and sift. But does anybody know, have there ever been any advances in this field to make the process go faster, or require less human toiling?

nerdponx 9y ago
That might be an interesting project. Deep learning + a headset camera thing.
- abakker 9y ago
  Small observation: I worked on a dinosaur dig in Montana for 2 summers as a teen. a major problem was not identification of the bones in our case, but the fragility of the bones we were digging. Maybe 50% of our time was flaking rock away slowly with a an icepick, sweeping up the crushed rock, putting it in a bucket, and moving the crushed rock to a tailings pile. Each dedicated quadrant of the dig had its own tailings pile (1x1x1M of rock had its own pile) in case a pice of fragment was lost. I know that low cost survey Lidar will really help, and that RTK GPS is also improving things. On larger digs, documentation with drones is also likely to produce better incremental tracking of progress. But, for this to be better, improving the actual digging is still a big unsolved problem. EDIT: the other 50% of our time was: 40% reassembling bones with superglue in an air conditioned room. (pleasant for the temperature, but maddeningly frustrating work) 10% dig notation, journaling, discussion, planning, survey, etc.
Splendor 9y ago
There's ground-penetrating_radar but that just helps you know where to toil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-penetrating_radar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-penetrating_radar

atroll 9y ago

Morocco is a great country with great resources, too bad its king takes most of them and sells them for his own benefit.

freecodyx 9y ago
why the down votes ? i can confirm he is right
- prawn 9y ago
  Because it's not relevant to the story or discussion?

casefields 9y ago

Links to full papers: The age of the hominin fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and the origins of the Middle Stone Age: http://docdro.id/RMXnFTW http://docdro.id/RMXnFTW New fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the pan-African origin of Homo sapiens: http://docdro.id/gi2Gvzo http://docdro.id/gi2Gvzo

freecodyx 9y ago

i am just happy to see my country Morocco in hacker news. it means also that we are the origin of humanity haha

gerdesj 9y ago
Only for this week! Last week's New Scientist contained an article that had hom. sap. being of eastern european origin rather than african. There was quite a lot of controversy and conjecture though. (IANAA) The archaeological record is sketchy at best for our prehistory and huge amounts of conjecture is based on very fragmentary evidence. Entire (sub) species are known only from a single bone or a few teeth. Anyway - cheers to Morocco - cradle of humanity, for now 8)
- flukus 9y ago
  It wasn't a homo sapien in Europe, it was a much earlier hominid, ~8 million years earlier.