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>Labeled Homo floresiensis and dating to the late Pleistocene Australian Aborigines allegedly migrated to Australia in late Pleistocene time. Taken together wi
by twofornone 5y ago
>Labeled Homo floresiensis and dating to the late Pleistocene
Australian Aborigines allegedly migrated to Australia in late Pleistocene time. Taken together with their unique genotype and physiology, why aren't they classified as a separate hominid subspecies?
- ldjkfkdsjnv 5y agoYou could ask this question about many human populations
- flir 5y agoBasically, this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis#/media/File:Homo_lineage_2017update.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis#/media/File:... "Survived until the late Pleistocene" and "Have been separated since the late Pleistocene" are very different things.
- ilaksh 5y agoWhat's so unique about it?
- colechristensen 5y agoA lot of it probably comes down to politics and the terrible history of labeling groups of people as less than human. What is and is not a subspecies is already fairly vague and not necessarily of particularly high value (so you've labeled two individuals as different subspecies instead of the same species, so what?)
- bayesian_horse 5y agoWhat use is the term "subspecies" with Humans? No beneficial use has been established, so we don't use it, end of discussion.
- colechristensen 5y agoYes, it case it wasn't clear, this is exactly my point.
- bayesian_horse 5y agoAustralian Aborigines descend from modern Humans just as Europeans and Asians do. Genetically that is trivial to show. Also we interbreed easily. So there is no benefit for any use of the term "speciation". Their "genotype and physiology" isn't that unique by the way. Genotypically there are tribes in Africa that diverge more from each other than Europeans diverge from Aborigines. People who think otherwise tend to overvalue skin color...
- sgt 5y agoLet's imagine if Australian Aborigines were in fact extinct and we found fossils, DNA, bones, etc. Would science have considered them a separate species? It's an interesting thought, although it's not very meaningful to take further due to a variety of reasons.