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Too many species have been lumped together into Homo sapiens
- mabub24 5y agoThis was an interesting article, but I found this editorial warning a little odd: > Please note that this article includes images of human remains. I don't think I've ever seen a warning like this before in any anthropological publication, or even in a museum or exhibit. I can't say I've ever found looking at skulls to be particularly weird or shocking, especially if they are extremely old. But, is this a warning that people or the general populace are requesting or feel is necessary? Or, is it purely an editorial decision?
- nerdponx 5y agoOn the contrary, you never knew who might be reading. Maybe there's a kid who gets really freaked out by skeletons? It's not hurting you to have the warning there.
- Ar-Curunir 5y agoIt doesn't hurt anybody, and could potentially help some folks that might have some trauma, so I don't see the problem at all?
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y agoAccording to their about us page, the warning fulfills some commitments they apparently have (clarity of reporting and empathy for example). So it might very well be a decision by the editorial team. https://www.sapiens.org/about-us/ https://www.sapiens.org/about-us/
- kop316 5y ago> I don't think I've ever seen a warning like this before in any anthropological publication, or even in a museum or exhibit I went to the Carnegie Museums in Pittsburgh a couple of weeks ago, and they had warnings for if an exhibit had human remains in them (even if they were not visible, I.e. in a mummy). They also had a short blurb on the ethics of displaying human remains, especially if the remains on exhibit didn't/couldn't give consent. I found it very thought provoking honestly. To extend it, I found it interesting that there was a lot of discussion on the ethics of showing human remains (taxidermy, in alcohol solution, bones, etc.), but then they showed a lot of animal remains and there was no discussion on that, especially when I would assume that many of the animals shown in the museum were killed for the specific reason of having them on a museum or for study.
- yaacov 5y agoSome people avoid human remains for religious reasons too. Religious Jews who are Kohanim for example.
- inglor_cz 5y agoThis religious ban does not include pictures of human remains, does it? And the warning mentioned in the root comment of this thread is located on a website. Edit: I wonder what is downvoteable about my original comment. My Jewish colleagues do not eat pork, but they do not avoid depictions of it, such as photos in a menu. I guess it should be similar in the case of Kohanim being forbidden to come in contact with human remains. Direct contact is very different from a painting or description.
- errcorrectcode 5y ago> I wonder what is downvoteable about my original comment. Lazy randoms who disagree also often feel entitled that they don't have to explain their displeasure or engage in meaningful discourse. Instead, they will try to silence you for having an opinion different than theirs. Also, sometimes I think it's passive aggressive social win-lose mentality or maybe even gaslighting. Best to not care about popularity and move on seeking discussions of valuable insight rather than dwelling on being clobbered for no apparent reason.
- yaacov 5y agoThat’s correct, pictures of human remains are allowed. I was referring to the museum situation. Many religious Kohanim would avoid going to a mummy exhibit.
- Jensson 5y agoSkeletons are taboo in Chinese culture. All sorts of companies and organizations has gotten much more aware of Chinese things the past few years, so maybe that is why.
- actually_a_dog 5y agoI'm not sure exactly why, but it may have to do with certain cultural taboos. For instance, skeletons are considered bad luck in Chinese culture: https://magicuntapped.com/index.php/features/item/66-no-skeletons-in-china-why-magic-had-to-have-alternate-card-art-in-china-for-over-a-decade https://magicuntapped.com/index.php/features/item/66-no-skel...
- annetipasto 5y agoOther people bringing up cultural differences is appreciated, because to me that warning implied pictures of cadavers. Upon assessment, don't think I've ever looked at a skull (or any other decontextualized bone) and considered it "human remains." An entire skeleton, sure, but even then...faux skeletons are such common imagery throughout America, I've become 90% desensitized to what they're a representation of.
- errcorrectcode 5y agoIt seems like an unnecessary accommodation for the easily offended. This sort of pandering cedes more and more control to the whims of sheltered, infantile crybullies.
- pessimizer 5y agoIt's not too odd that some people don't want to look at gore. For most of us corpses sterilize, become like objects the older they get, but I don't why that's anything but arbitrary. Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders get warnings that what they're about to view may contain depictions of people that have died. Not depictions of dead people, but depictions of people who have died since they were filmed or had their picture taken. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Aboriginal_avoidance_practices#Naming_the_dead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Aboriginal_avoidanc...
- Victerius 5y agoA slight tangent, but I sometimes wonder how 'humanoid' any potential intelligent alien species must be, if they exist. Some science fiction writers depict alien species as quite morphologically similar to humans – Romulans and Klingons in Star Trek – or radically different – Hutts in Star Wars, Hanars and Krogans in Mass Effect. If you take a quick look at "Star Wars alien species" or "Mass Effect alien species", most of the differences imagined by writers are around the head shape, and the overall distribution of muscle mass around the rest of the body. So most alien species you meet in pop sci fi is 90% identical to humans, with a different head. Human heads in this sense are pretty basic. We don't have a leku like Twi'leks, ridged foreheads like Klingons, long necks and slender frames like Kaminoans, a small ring of horns and skin patterns like Zabraks, or scalp-crests like Asari. But if we did, would these traits ever go away? Would human evolution eventually "revert" us back to our present form? Because something tells me that we wouldn't, and the selection process would basically say "good enough". In other words, the reason we don't look like Asari or Twi'leks is probably pure luck, and the reason alien species may look the way they do (again, if they exist) is also pure luck. But they probably share some of the general characteristics of humanoids, such as limbs not necessary for motion and with opposable fingers, a head separate from the rest of the body, etc.
- mikepurvis 5y ago> 90% identical to humans I mean, we share 90% of our DNA with mice, and 70% with worms.
- Victerius 5y agoI mean, physiologically. But, yes.
- mikepurvis 5y agoI know we're both just being trite, but it is an interesting point that nearly all of our genetics are concerned with the "inside bits" of our proteins, organs, and so on. Whereas when we talk about a hypothetical extra-terrestrial being that has the basic external configuration of a human, that could well be a sulfur or graphite-based life form, or something else entirely. Basically it could look like a smooth, slender, big-headed human but under the hood have much less in common with us than an earthworm does.
- Swizec 5y agoThe part that blows my mind is that according to this article, the idea that we evolved in a straight line was an attempt at fighting nazi propaganda about inferior races. Before ww2, the scientific consensus was that we evolved in a branching species rich manner, same as any other animal. By 1963 it was again okay to talk about multiple hominid species, so the scientific consensus started moving back in that direction. I find this fascinating because I never realized science could be so political. More interestingly still, when the author talks about species being mis-identified as homo sapiens despite stark morphological differences and that they probably represent an extinct close relative, that gave me a funny gut feeling. Felt like dangerous territory to talk about … Fascinating
- tomrod 5y agoThe history of taboo thought in science is indeed fascinating. What seems sort of funny is that now that the existence for potential taboo censoring has been recognized, in recent decades there are several charlatans, conspiracy-mongers, or other ideologues who paint themselves as subject to scientific taboo despite "being accurate" in their own minds. The pendulum has swung towards over-acceptance of claims.
- avgcorrection 5y ago> I find this fascinating because I never realized science could be so political. Surely we already know that there was research (whatever its quality or rigor) back pre-WWII that was supposed to defend racist theories. And that’s political. So I don’t understand why we would be surprised that there was a (political) backlash once millions ended up dying in part because of that kind of research.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rosmax_1337 5y agoThis is very dangerous territory indeed. Arguably the most taboo field in science right now. Sadly.
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- bambax 5y ago> People sometimes forget to ask the question: If humans and Neanderthals actually crossed paths as often as molecular anthropologists claim—which is not supported by archaeological or paleontological evidence—would they have recognized each other as potential mates? I don’t think so: They looked too different. Even present-day hunter-gatherer groups have been observed to engage in violence when they encounter each other. Ok for the "looks" part, but violence is really not counter-evidence of interbreeding. Systematic rape is an ordinary part of war, and it would of course produce offsprings (biology permitting).
- Ozzie_osman 5y agoYea I also found this really surprising. Like you said, rape is one option, but you could still expect some mixing even if 90 or 99% of encounters were violent.
- ceejayoz 5y agoEven on the looks front, we’re a species with diverse tastes. Some humans like metal rods stuck up their urethra. The idea that a Neanderthal would universally be prohibitively ugly is a bit silly.
- shadowgovt 5y agoAgreed, and given circumstances, it doesn't take more than a few successful pairings to propagate a new hybrid species if the environment is favorable to their survival. I don't know how much we can extrapolate from modern humans to present-day, but modern psychology research suggests that what people find attractive or repulsive is extremely early-experience-dependent. I suspect a homo sapiens society living near a Neanderthal society may not grow to find them as repulsive as, say, a homo sapiens society that has rare contact with Neanderthal. And if a child was raised by Neanderthal / homo sapien parents, or adopted from one tribe to the other, I have no particular reason to assume they'd find either species repulsive.
- actually_a_dog 5y agoEven regarding looks, when I look at images of Neanderthals such as this guy on the Smithsonian's web site (https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-neanderthalensis https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/h...), I see a human, and nothing more. Leaving aside the idea that Neanderthals probably lived in groups with other Neanderthals, and modern humans with modern humans, I don't have a problem believing they may have intermated.
- tomrod 5y agoSide question for designers: [1] What is the design behind this article called? [2] No matter what I do in my browser settings, it seems like text is small without zooming in individual websites. I need to zoom in to 200% to be able to read it. Is this just a recent trend? https://imgur.com/a/6C2xJkG https://imgur.com/a/6C2xJkG
- bambax 5y agoI use reader view everywhere and it helps tremendously.
- fnord77 5y agohas the author never heard of "furries" ??
- errcorrectcode 5y agoThe core problem of taxonomic classification of species is that they're semi-arbitrary, constantly-drifting centroids of similarity, not static, walled-off groups with definitive boundaries. For those who aren't scientists, we are sometimes referred to as H. sapiens sapiens. Neanderthals / Neandertals are sometimes grouped as a subspecies of H. sapiens as H. sapiens neanderthalensis.
- bobthechef 5y agoPhilogenetic taxonomies may suffer from this, yes. Ontological classification is a different ball game. Any "rational animal" in the universe qualifies as "human".
- jeremyjh 5y agoI think the term "people" is better. Neanderthals were clearly people, even if they were a different species.
- errcorrectcode 5y agoThey're (i.e., H. habilis) already classified as "Archaic humans." To call every H. "human" or "people" is ridiculous.
- coldacid 5y agoAny entity of genus Homo is (or was) human. Just not necessarily culturally or physiologically modern.
- errcorrectcode 5y agoThat's not what the word means. Trying to redefine language for political correctness reasons is absurd. Smh.
- coldacid 5y agoI'm usually the first person to complain about political correctness. I've just always considered humanity to be at the genus level, not the species level.
- FundementalBrit 5y agoThis is a very very very dangerous subject for your career. I'll be honest I'm not sure any legitimate journal would publish anything further along in this line even if it was replicable, which scientist would risk peer reviewing something that could lose them their job. A domestic dog, wolf and coyote can all breed together and all produce fertile offspring. Then you look at genetic variation between the three species.
- raven105x 5y agoI often wonder how many decades of progress political correctness (different from ethics) has cost us when it comes to science (when it's sound, provable, and replicable).
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- carapace 5y agoProbably not as many decades of progress as racism and sexism have cost us, eh?
- cowuser666 5y agoThis would be clever if political correctness and racism/sexism were necessarily opposed to each other. Alas...
- Jensson 5y agoRacism and sexism were political correctness.
- Causality1 5y agoSometimes I feel bad for the people whose legacy was tainted by scientific racism, especially if they lived to see its end and changed their opinions accordingly. Lovecraft is an example of this.
- jl2718 5y agoThis seems like an argument over semantics. Just just show the DNA in a phylogenetic tree: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Fixation_index_in_humans#/media/File:9_Cluster_Tree.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Fixation_index_i...
- technobabbler 5y agoWhat if you can't extract DNA from the fossils?
- ImaCake 5y agoBut we can and do. So this question is moot. It becomes important the further back in time you go, but it’s not like we don’t have Neanderthal DNA sequences.
- jeremyjh 5y agoAs the article notes, DNA doesn't survive more than around 100,000 years in the fossil record.
- ImaCake 5y agoPlenty of archaic homo genus groups were around more recently and we have at least some genetic evidence of them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denisovan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denisovan
- jjk166 5y ago> And there are circular arguments: DNA is identified as, say, Neanderthal because the fossil was identified as such, and then it is used to identify other fossils as Neanderthal, even if they don’t look Neanderthal-like. This is the opposite of a circular argument, this is the foundation of inductive reasoning. A = B and B = C thus A = C. If something has unambiguous neanderthal DNA but doesn't look neanderthal-like, then your idea of what is neanderthal-like is discredited.
- AnthonyMouse 5y agoThe issue is that humans share ~99% of their DNA with chimpanzees. Pick any of that, say "this is chimpanzee DNA," and you're now identifying billions of humans as chimpanzees (or vice versa).
- jjk166 5y agoAnd 60% of our DNA is shared with a banana, but that's not the dna used to classify species. The overwhelming majority of both our and chimps DNA comes from our common ancestor, and all of that is neither human nor chimp DNA. But there are specific genes which Chimps evolved after our lineages diverged, and any animal containing those genes must be in the chimp lineage. In the case of hominid interbreeding, we can see genes that are common in neanderthals appearing in non-african modern humans. Had these genes existed in our common ancestor, they would be present in african populations as well. The opposite being the case, the only way for those genes to get there is if only some people descend from neanderthals, which in turn requires successful interbreeding.
- AnthonyMouse 5y agoYou still have the question of directionality. Suppose humans migrate to Europe from Africa, then have some local divergence from their ancestors. Then those humans interbreed with neanderthals, so that those divergent genes spread within the neanderthal population as well. Putting aside the question of whether the existence of interbreeding makes neanderthals not a separate species, it's going to be difficult to tell where those genes originated. Suppose the first person to have those genes was a human who bred with both humans and neanderthals, but it so happens we have fossils of some of the earliest neanderthals with those genes and not the earliest humans with them. Then you could have the result that some "neanderthals" descended from humans but not vice versa, and be unable to distinguish that from the other way around.
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- renewiltord 5y agoInteresting. A deep seated cognitive flaw of a positively-directed evolution (more evolved vs less evolved) places us in the situation where we are forced to characterize all humans and predecessors that are close enough into Homo sapiens. But that is only because we have this innate cognitive error. In some sense, intelligence past a certain point should be sufficient to classify as “one of us” but such trans-species sentiment is generally limited to those who believe memetic reproduction is somewhat more important than genetic reproduction. The one thing the article does not help me understand is the purpose of the classification. The utility of models to me is in the ability to make falsifiable predictions about the real world. Is it perhaps the history of our species and the way speciation works that is being contributed to? That seems reasonable and makes the taxonomic classification have some utility. But perhaps categorization is not a useful tool here, and tagging is superior, i.e. “neanderthal-like in feeding habits” and “sapiens-sapiens-like in communication habits” and so on.
- vmception 5y agoarcheologist will find a person with scoliosis and think its a significant branch in evolution when it’s the same species/whatever with a birth defect that offers no advantage or disadvantage to reproduction
- tsimionescu 5y agoWhile this is not impossible, the argument usually goes that there are so few specimens that get fossilized that it's extremely unlikely for a particularly unique specimen to have been the one getting fossilized. Basically fossilization is "pick a random individual", and the odds of picking an individual with a rare condition are going to be very small.
- itqwertz 5y agoThere may be some truth to the political argument: http://stonetoss.com/comic/wagging-the-dog/ http://stonetoss.com/comic/wagging-the-dog/
- random314 5y ago> And there are circular arguments: DNA is identified as, say, Neanderthal because the fossil was identified as such, and then it is used to identify other fossils as Neanderthal, even if they don’t look Neanderthal-like. > While certain similarities between our DNA and Neanderthal DNA have been interpreted as evidence of the two species interbreeding, these similarities could just be run-of-the-mill features of the genome, common to many species. These and other arguments by the author to try and dismiss DNA evidence seems really suspect. The "circular reasoning" argument doesn't even make any sense. Neither does the scientists being too stupid to understand that DNA overlap between Neanderthals and humans is meaningless. As a non expert, this makes me have doubts about the veracity of any of these arguments made in this essay
- tgbugs 5y agoCriteria for being classified as human are diverse, most of the criteria we use for classifying living people (some of which are actively being used to commit genocide) cannot be applied to our ancestral lineages, we give our genes too much credit relative to our memes, and cladists will use whatever evidence they can find to support their cladism. If the splitters in the lumper splitter debate are using splitting as an excuse to murder and disenfranchise people then it is hard in good conscience to openly articulate the truth and ethically is probably better to attempt to slow the splitters' efforts by confusing the whole field with alternate hypotheses. On the whole lineage does not imply capability, skeletal anatomy is not predict cultural level, etc. but because the great chain of being continues to drag our civilization down to its lowest basest form we belittle anything and everything that looks even slightly different than us. The fact that the null hypothesis in life sciences is that other species do not feel pain, do not have emotions, do not have cognitive process, etc. is derived from the abhorrent idea that only human beings have souls, or that the abhramic god gave man dominion over the animals. Is it a surprise then that some scientists have fooled the bigots by classifying everything as human? They know that by some criteria the lineages are sufficiently different to be classified as such, but there is no reason to give bigots ammunition for public policy.
- mcguire 5y agoI'd really, really, like to see a statistical comparison of the differences between and within (fossil) species. "And the more specimens I study, the more I realize that most of the species designations don’t make sense. If hominin fossils were treated the same way as nonhuman primates, specimens currently lumped into the same group would be allocated to different ones." Is this because the differences between purported groups is much greater than the differences within groups? Or because there's significant incentives to split groups in order to name more species/families/orders/etc? The "traditional", extremely simplistic, definition of "species" is a group of critters who do not (normally) (fertilely) interbreed with another group (in the wild). Where there is evidence, Neanderthals and Denisovans, H. sapiens seems to have interbred rather frequently.
- Jensson 5y ago> Or because there's significant incentives to split groups in order to name more species/families/orders/etc? You can ask yourself why such an incentive wouldn't exist for finding new human species etc. The interesting part here is that humans are treated differently, not whether one is better than the other.
- mcguire 5y agoAccording to the article, before the 1940s, it did. Judging by the list of species in the image with spell-check underlines, anyway. Something weird happened in the 1940s.
- catlikesshrimp 5y agoI appreciate you mentioning it. To be more clear, the nazis happened then WWII happened then United Nations and Human Rights.
- robbedpeter 5y agoTo expand on this, a lot of intellectual energy was spent on expanding and properly defining what was meant by "Human" in order to preclude any perverse interpretations, such as what the nazis did, and to shut down a lot of eugenics nonsense. Reading natural sciences and eugenics books written prior to the 40s is fascinating - there's all sorts of casual racism and talk of different cultures of people as if they were completely different species. Global communications improved after the 40s, and it became progressively more difficult to pretend to be a scholar or intellectual in public if you had racist or supremacist biases. The current state of liberal acceptance and human rights in the modern world is part of a trend that was an incredibly radical departure from almost all human culture prior to wwii.
- jonnycomputer 5y agoThere's always been a push and pull between the splitters and the lumpers. Discovering a new species can seem more exciting than finding another member of an existing study. But the concept of a species (genera, etc.) is very slippery anyway; sometimes its said that inability to breed viable offspring is a necessary condition, but we have examples of that happening ... without subsequent revision of the taxonomy. Life (and the physical world), slips past the edges of our ontologies all the time (one reason that I laugh when people justify the object model in programming in terms of them somehow mapping onto real world objects.
- danschumann 5y agoSpecies like the elusive computer programmer, often avoiding sunlight at all costs, are one of the many species included, lol. I know HN hates satire but I can't stop humor.
- marcus_holmes 5y agoI have problems with this: 1. speciation (as I understand it) has a clear definition: if two populations can mate, then they're the same species. I don't think preferences come into this - for lots of reasons (the vast number of possible interactions between populations, consent isn't required to produce offspring, etc). Saying "I don't think these people would fancy each other" isn't enough to define a new species. 2. the clear differences between specimens recovered does not reflect any clear difference between populations over time. The population of homo-ish living beings over the last 100,000 years is enormous, and we've recovered a tiny, miniscule, fraction of that. Classifying specimens is fine, but we shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that those specimens represent actual populations of humans. The sample size is too small to draw any meaningful conclusions. I think the effort to minimise the differences between early humans is admirable, and should be continued. We have a tiny, farcically small sample size of evidence to base any conjectures about early humans on. Being inclusive about Homo Sapiens because it stops nazis being dicks about race is a good thing.
- pishpash 5y agoThe ability to mate is just one among numerous phenotypical characteristics. Whether to elevate it to anything special of course depends on the fuzzy boundary of whether or how much it is actioned on.
- tete 5y ago> if two populations can mate, then they're the same species Wouldn't that mean homo sapiens and neanderthals are the same species, given that many people have neanderthal genes and interbreeding is even a hypothesis for the extinction of the neanderthals?
- rp1 5y agoCanis latrans can mate with canis lupus and they are not considered the same species, just fyi.
- neaden 5y agoFor 1. No, it is a lot more complicated than that. For instance, Dogs, Wolves, and Coyotes can all interbreed with each other. But even if you treat all dogs as one species, they can't actually all interbreed with eachother without human intervention due to size differences. Then there are ring species, which can breed with two separate species that cannot breed with each other. That isn't even getting into species that can asexually reproduce.
- throwaway879080 5y agoI agree, some liberals seem to belong to different branch of primate taxonomy
- dghughes 5y ago>far too many species have been lumped into one category Technically aren't we all just fish if you go back far enough on the evolutionary timeline?
- tete 5y agoThat's a bit of a human trait, categorizing things. It's not like evolution decides to suddenly have a new species, it's by definition liquid, generation for generation. The fact that there are many more clearly defined species is because "fitness" (which sometimes includes very random events happening) results in many "species" (or sub-species or variants or groups of mutants) to die out eventually and one lucky/fit group to survive. With homo sapiens, like with many other only recently established species that didn't really happen. Or well, it did and that's why we have that taxonomy problem. But you can draw all sorts of lines. Of course the whole race topic comes in there too and what about people who are able to drink milk after a certain age and those who don't. Species are sometimes distinct by very minor traits like that and not always by being able to have offspring. So decisions are either made by people who establish species or by a majority of scientists agreeing, so more or less through a political rather than a scientific process. Of course that means it comes to a lot of bike shedding on these topics. It's more a discussion about what the definition of the word species is than anything else.