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A 160k-year-old jaw in a Tibetan cave might explain high altitude living
- RenRav 7y ago>The bone turned out to be the very first Denisovan fossil ever found because the specimens found in the Denisova Cave in Siberia's Altai Mountains were unearthed 28 years after the monk's discovery. But researchers didn't know that at the time. Interesting, so the Denisovans might have been called something else if they had only looked at this?
- sanxiyn 7y agoYes. This is actually common situation. If you look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Neanderthal_fossils https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Neanderthal_fossils, the first Neanderthal fossil found was Engis 2 in 1829. The namesake fossil Neanderthal 1 was found in the Neandertal valley in 1856. It is just that Engis 2 was found but not recognized as Neanderthal fossil until 1936.
- danans 7y ago> the Denisovans might have been called something else You have to admit that Denisovan has a nicer ring than more descriptive "Late Pleistocene Pan Asian Hominid"!
- jacobolus 7y agoTo be fair, those are only descriptive through our familiarity. If you look just at etymology that combination could be plenty ambiguous: Pleistocene = “most new” in Greek. pan- = “all” in Greek. Asia = “northwest Anatolia” in Hittite. Hominid = “human-looking” in Latin/Greek mashup.
- danans 7y agoYes but the immediate meaning of those terms is the totality of their definition in normal communication. I love - or am practically obsessed with - etymologies, but an etymology is the linguistic equivalent of of a fossil. Much as evolution reused terrestrial therapod dinosaur feathers for flight in their bird descendants, language creates new meanings and concepts by reusing older ones. And thankfully we don't communicate in etymologies.
- jacobolus 7y agoI think we are making compatible claims. Naming this sketchily understood category of ancient people after some cave in Russia (itself named after one Denis, an 18th century religious separatist hermit who lived there by himself) is only obscure at the start. As we become familiar with the name “Denisovan” it becomes a fine description, whether or not we know or care about Denis or his cave.
- JohnJamesRambo 7y agoWe’d call them the Tibetans but then China would deny they exist too.
- hosh 7y agoI heard of a Tibetan legend, of the founding of the Tibetan people came when a monkey met an ogress. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/teaching-evolution-to-tibetan-monks/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/teaching-e... Perhaps there is a seed of truth to that after all.
- ip26 7y agoHow long can legend persist, though? Denisovans are speculated to have existed no more recently than 15,000 years ago- in New Guinea, at that. That's at minimum 700 generations ago. This jaw find is 8,000 or more generations ago.
- DrBazza 7y agoThe Australian Aboriginal oral histories are believed to be potentially accurate to 7000 years or so. There are a lot of links. This is the one I'm referencing: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-16/research-gives-merit-to-accuracy-of-aboriginal-storytelling/6861614 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-16/research-gives-merit-...
- davidw 7y agoHere in Oregon, there are native legends that reference the eruption of Mt Mazama (which is now Crater Lake), some 7500 years ago.
- WalterBright 7y agoSuppose a group has 1000 random legends. What are the odds that one of them might sort of match a distant event? It could be like those headlines "Psychic Predicted The Last 3 Elections".
- hosh 7y agoThe Tibetan origin legend is not random, has been around for a long time, and is an important part of the Buddhist and Bon traditions within Tibet. The “monkey” is referencing the same race of hominid as the legendary Hanuman in Hindu myths. The idea here passed down in the Tibetan tradition is that the wild race of “ogres” have been civilized by noble influences. So while random legends might be that, there may be other characteristics of legends that are not being accounted for with a purely random selection.
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- whlr 7y ago(paywalled) article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1139-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1139-x
- anthk 7y agolynx open it just fine. EDIT: ok, no.
- imvetri 7y agoHow does finding something from the past amount to building knowledge? How can we use that information? Is it an information or a knowledge? There is no use of information. It doesn't help us move any step forward.
- modmans2nd 7y agoLook Kant...
- polynomial 7y agoSounds more like Clifford Stoll…
- overkalix 7y ago"To understand yourself, Study your childhood."
- knolax 7y agoJunior year ToK?
- proc0 7y agoMany people from Peru and Bolivia (edit: I guess also Mexico) also inherited some genes like these in Tibet that let you breathe at high altitudes. I'm wondering if it could be the same explanation since natives of the Americas allegedly crossed that land bridge from Asia. These people's chests and lungs are quite large compared to a normal person and you can see it in the body type.
- sanxiyn 7y agoWe know genetic basis of high-altitude adaptation for Tibetans and Andeans is different. So probably not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_adaptation_in_humans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_adaptation_in_hu...
- hinkley 7y agoEthiopians have a third adaptation that’s a bit like one of the others but still distinct. I have a theory that early Martians will see some gene input from all three of these groups and I’m curious what the results will look like.
- WalterBright 7y agoInteresting that you said that. I've concluded long ago that the only way we can successfully live off earth is to adapt our bodies to live with different gravity, air pressures, etc.
- hinkley 7y agoBe it space or submarine habitats, at some point it has to make sense to have some workers who are adapted to hypoxic situations, if only for emergency work. You go to work, you have kids, the kids fall in love, you have grandkids that might have one, both, or neither of the genes. A few more mingled generations and a little selective pressure here and there and soon you have specialists with two copies of the genes. I think it's plausible for things to play out something like this, a bit different from Kim Stanley Robinson's predictions in a few critical ways: You have a group of people on Mars who can survive and reproduce in cheaper habitats than everyone else, eventually they'd realize they could sod off and do their own thing. Lower barrier to entry maybe overcomes economic and political pressure, and pretty soon they outnumber everybody else. Your first group that refer to themselves as ethnic 'Martians': Tall, dark skinned, barrel chested (because of the air) individuals who speak a pidgin of English, Amharic, Quechua, and a handful of Tibetan words, and don't answer to Earth. They are the first people who can walk the terraformed surface without equipment, and they explode out onto the surface. A fresh wave of earthlings from above 10,000 feet arrive and bolster the numbers and gene pool. As terraforming continues, a second wave inundates the First Peoples with many immigrants who swarm to the lowlands. There is a comedian who does an entire monologue on the crazy customs of the New Coloradans, and how they never seem to get along with the New New Mexicans (which leads to 3 full minutes of material on why the hell they called it New New Mexico). For her second tour, she asks why so many Mormons are there. This trickle never really slows down, and Albuquerque and El Paso become a kind of continuous concierge service where people come to live for a year, and then either go home or to the space port to fly to Mars (people who go through Albuquerque have better outcomes, but El Paso competes on price). Eventually a third wave brings people from everywhere, and the 'Old Ways' find themselves in the highlands at first, and on the slopes of Olympus Mons later, where no amount of terraforming will ever create a popular destination for lowlanders or Earthers.
- WalterBright 7y ago> is more than 1,400 miles from there. I don't know why paleontologists think this is a large distance to humans. Modern individuals often walk that distance.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]