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A human being with the ability to hunt and gather their calories could easily walk across the planet. That endurance is practically our species' special sauce.

A human being with the ability to hunt and gather their calories could easily walk across the planet. That endurance is practically our species' special sauce. Without a clear reason why that couldn't happen, we should be open to much more complex narratives of human history than existing dogma asserts. This is probably true for neanderthals, denisovans, and H. erectus too. They were outside of Africa for much longer than 200kya. These were by all measures humans, albeit very strange ones to our eyes. They almost certainly used language and tools. A basic premise of the posted article is that even monkeys use tools... As for language, it seems more of a religious than scientific question that any primates lack high information content vocal communication.

moloch-hai 4y ago
It is, also, hard to see how tool use in capuchins could be anything other than cultural transmission. I know how biologists are subjected to years of withering abuse for ever mentioning cultural transmission outside Homo, but the excuses have worn thin. Cultural transmission outside Homo is everyday fact now.
svnt 4y ago
> A human being with the ability to hunt and gather their calories could easily walk across the planet. What evidence is this based on? This is fantasy, particularly 200kya. > neanderthals, denisovans, and H. erectus … were by all measures humans This is untrue. We have no evidence that any of them used language or even symbolic thought.
- moloch-hai 4y ago
  Burials with grave goods are reliable proof of symbolic thought. Beads are reliable proof. Denisovans used rotary drills 70,000 years ago. Nothing about H. sap. was different 200kya except culture. Physical remains are so thin, and so little even looked for, that lack of it anywhere tells you practically nothing.
  - svnt 4y ago
    Ok but this does not match what you said above. There is a long timeline here and interbreeding is a factor. Denisovans are certainly possibly just small H sapiens but H erectus did not exist 200 kya and Neandertals had a substantially different brain case. My guess is if they got language they got it via interbreeding with H sapiens. The lack of evidence does create a lot of space for suggesting pretty much anything.
    - moloch-hai 4y ago
      "The last known occurrence of Homo erectus is 117,000–108,000 years ago in Ngandong, Java." Denisovans' rotary drilling predates known H. sap. rotary tech by tens of millennia.

moloch-hai 4y ago

It is, also, hard to see how tool use in capuchins could be anything other than cultural transmission. I know how biologists are subjected to years of withering abuse for ever mentioning cultural transmission outside Homo, but the excuses have worn thin. Cultural transmission outside Homo is everyday fact now.

svnt 4y ago

> A human being with the ability to hunt and gather their calories could easily walk across the planet. What evidence is this based on? This is fantasy, particularly 200kya. > neanderthals, denisovans, and H. erectus … were by all measures humans This is untrue. We have no evidence that any of them used language or even symbolic thought.

moloch-hai 4y ago
Burials with grave goods are reliable proof of symbolic thought. Beads are reliable proof. Denisovans used rotary drills 70,000 years ago. Nothing about H. sap. was different 200kya except culture. Physical remains are so thin, and so little even looked for, that lack of it anywhere tells you practically nothing.
- svnt 4y ago
  Ok but this does not match what you said above. There is a long timeline here and interbreeding is a factor. Denisovans are certainly possibly just small H sapiens but H erectus did not exist 200 kya and Neandertals had a substantially different brain case. My guess is if they got language they got it via interbreeding with H sapiens. The lack of evidence does create a lot of space for suggesting pretty much anything.
  - moloch-hai 4y ago
    "The last known occurrence of Homo erectus is 117,000–108,000 years ago in Ngandong, Java." Denisovans' rotary drilling predates known H. sap. rotary tech by tens of millennia.