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New ancient ape from Türkiye challenges the story of human origins
- Glawen 3y agooff topic, but is Türkiye the new english spelling for Turkey ?
- lucretian 3y agohttps://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61671913 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61671913 possibly a populist move by erdogan, depending on who you ask.
- kevinstubbs 3y agoAt least in the UN (and the spelling is pushed by Turkish tourism too). Not sure about adoption beyond that, especially outside of Turkey. Personally don't see myself adopting the new spelling for a while. https://www.npr.org/2022/06/02/1102596510/turkey-changes-name-turkiye-united-nations https://www.npr.org/2022/06/02/1102596510/turkey-changes-nam...
- CameronNemo 3y agoThe US embassy also uses the spelling. https://tr.usembassy.gov/ https://tr.usembassy.gov/
- readbeard 3y agoThe US State Department website has a note about that here: https://www.state.gov/countries-areas/turkey/ https://www.state.gov/countries-areas/turkey/
- Glawen 3y agoI don't see it adopting it myself, because that would also means pronouncing it differently. Anyway, good luck with qwerty keyboard. I'm using azerty, so it is not so painful.
- BitwiseFool 3y agoMy understanding was that the name would be pronounced the same way, but as a native English speaker I don't even know what the umlaut does to the sound of the u. So I'm not even sure how the pronunciation would actually change. In any event, if the Turkish government wants me to stop using "Turkey" I'm more than happy to call it Anatolia instead.
- asimovfan 3y agoNot all of Turkey is Anatolia though
- catlover76 3y agoBut Turks aren't originally from Anatolia anyways, and basically the only thing "Turkish" about the country/people is the language. :T
- Thrymr 3y agoIs anyone "originally" from anywhere they live now, really, except maybe East Africa (at some point in time)? Anglo-Saxons came from the continent, "Americans" from Europe, Africa and elsewhere, Native Americans from Asia, etc.
- aiilns 3y agoGreeks.
- Tagbert 3y agoDorian Greeks migrated into Mycenae in the early Bronze Age.
- catlover76 3y agoYes, very true (and something I like to remind people who like to display ethnic and/or racial pride and talk about "heritage" etc)
- cossatot 3y agoYes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Turkey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Turkey
- psychphysic 3y agoThere is a vague movement to adopt countries preferred names and pronunciation. It's fairly patchy ultimately. Beijing/Peking, Mumbai/Bombay, Kyiv/Kiev, Czechia/Czech Republic. Foods seem unaffected funnily enough Peking Duck, Bombay Mix, Chicken Kiev.
- ch4s3 3y agoNot that it's a big deal, but Türkiye uses the ü, and autocorrect and spell checkers don't seem to have made the switch yet so it does require some extra effort to type or copy paste. It seem like the use of Mumbai hasn't even been universally adopted in India, so I'd expect Türkiye to take some time.
- readthenotes1 3y agoIirc, Mumbai,Bangalaru, etc. were changes to decolonize, not to change the name foreigners called it as much as to change the name resonance called it.
- ChatGTP 3y agoyes
- calderknight 3y agoI don't think English has letters with multiple dots above them.
- retrac 3y agoIt does. The English I was taught in school, includes the diaeresis as part of the writing system. Words like coördinate, reëngage, Boötes, are spelled as I just spelled them. I don't adhere to it. It is old-fashioned, even a bit archaic. But it is still the preferred spelling in some style guides, and it is still used in some publications.
- lovich 3y agoIt’s used to signal when you have a pair of the same letters but the second has a different pronunciation. So “deer” has two e’s but no umlaut because they make the same sound but “coördinate” has the umlaut since the second o is a new sound. I personally like them and wish they would come back if only as a small push back against the horrific ambiguity that is the English language
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- meepmorp 3y ago> It’s used to signal when you have a pair of the same letters but the second has a different pronunciation. That's a somewhat naïve take.
- simiones 3y agoAs far as I understand, it's actually used to indicate a hiatus instead of a diphtong. E.g. naïvety is meant to indicate that aï are part of different syllables and shouldn't be pronounced in the same syllable, just like the oö in coördinate.
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- throwaway0208 3y agoIt's the new official spelling, but with an umlaut it doesn't qualify as an english spelling.
- dizhn 3y agoTürkiye is Turkey in Turkish. The country isn't saying this word is now English but rather call us by our Turkish name because sharing a name with a bird is worse than being run by an islamist dictator. (While calling India 'Hindistan' and calling the bird 'hindi')
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- baggy_trough 3y agoOf course not, but some people would like it to be so.
- causi 3y agoIt might be the new globally-used spelling but I don't think you can call anything with an umlaut the "English spelling". You have to use an alt+ code to even get the character from an English keyboard.
- mabbo 3y agoThe country has officially asked that it be referred to and spelled that way. If a friend asked me to refer to them with a different name, I'd sure look like a jerk if I made a point to not do so, even though I know it's their preference. Just the same, I try to remember that the country formerly spelled Turkey is now spelled Türkiye. Perhaps someday they'll say it doesn't matter, or they prefer the old way. Today isn't that day yet.
- tgv 3y agoOTOH, a country is not a conscious, communicating being that's sensitive about its name. The name change follows a decision by a few civil servants and politicians.
- TheRealPomax 3y agoYes, that's what "the country" means, it's shorthand for "the government of the country".
- readthenotes1 3y agoSo what do you call that big country just west of France? Exonyms have been a thing for longer than I can remember....
- ayhanfuat 3y agoMeanwhile, that friend is calling everyone whatever he likes. England: İngiltere, Germany: Almanya, London: Londra, Munich: Münih.
- readbeard 3y agoNo. Erdoğan started advocating for a switch to Türkiye a couple of years ago, and the UN recently adopted the Turkish spelling. The US State Department uses both spellings, while asserting (sensibly) that Türkiye should be used in "formal and diplomatic contexts." [0] English Wikipedia still uses the established English spelling. [1] Some Turks I know seem to think this whole thing was mostly cooked up as a distraction from other issues that have come up or worsened under Erdoğan's leadership. [0] https://www.state.gov/countries-areas/turkey/ https://www.state.gov/countries-areas/turkey/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey
- jmclnx 3y agoI do not know why this keeps coming up :) If apes did evolve outside of Africa, why did they not radiate across Asia ? Getting over to East Asia would have been far more easier than migrating into Africa and continue evolving there after disappearing from Europe. Yes I know about orangutans, but I would think after 7 million years there would be more diversity of Apes in Asia than Africa. So I really find this hard to believe. All I can think is more fossils in the now dry environment of Türkiye probably survived than the humid areas of Africa.
- HelloNurse 3y agoThere are very, very few ape species to begin with, and a large portion of them (from gibbons to Gigantopithecus) are Asian, extinct, or both.
- tgv 3y agoTo be fair, all of it is hard to believe, or rather, unlikely when seen without further context. Climate may be a factor that influences fossil survival, but also one that influences migration. Especially if the rest (rhinos migrating from Turkey to Africa?) is also true. I guess we'll just have to wait for more information connecting the dots, if it's ever discovered. It does however show that all these popular ideas about the origin of man are not rock solid.
- hutzlibu 3y ago"All I can think is more fossils in the now dry environment of Türkiye probably survived than the humid areas of Africa. " Lots of african land was humid before, but became arid or a desert as well.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoOlduvai Gorge is pretty dry.
- andrewflnr 3y agoThere's any number of reasons animals might migrate south rather than radiating in all directions. Lots of factors affect migration. It's certainly a question that needs answering, but far from a reason to dismiss the whole hypothesis.
- pasoevi 3y agoOK, now that everyone is done discussing spelling, what do you think about the story?
- CameronNemo 3y agoMy initial reaction was one of suspicion, but the story as it was laid out seemed pretty persuasive. One detail that swayed me was the reported lack of fossils in Africa of early hominin species: While the remains of early hominines are abundant in Europe and Anatolia, they are completely absent from Africa until the first hominin appeared there about seven million years ago. Is there another explanation for why these fossils might have been missing despite early hominines inhabiting Africa?
- mabbo 3y agoLots of possible reasons. Türkiye may have an environment that is very suitable for the preservation of fossil, and one where said fossils remain near the surface. Africa is huge, but may lack areas that both has those hominids and preserved their fossils well. Fire example, there are very few footprints on sidewalks, but lots in the mud beside them - should we conclude people must prefer to walk in the mud?
- andrewflnr 3y agoExcept that eventually we do get hominin fossils there later. And I for one haven't heard of a lack of other fossils from the same time period.
- mrguyorama 3y ago>Is there another explanation for why these fossils might have been missing despite early hominines inhabiting Africa? Most biological and organic things decompose quickly. Every time we find a fossil, we are winning an insanely rigged lottery. We barely have significant remains from 10k year old towns, so you can't really take any info from a supposed lack of fossils
- lemper 3y ago
- VincentEvans 3y agoWhat is the english name and spelling of the new name Turkey goes by? Turkiye?
- Dragonai 3y agoYes. The Republic of Türkiye. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/member-states/turkiye https://www.un.org/en/about-us/member-states/turkiye
- VincentEvans 3y agoCool, ty!
- mensetmanusman 3y agoThe English alphabet does not have ü, so this is incorrect. Turkey insisting on using a name like is analogous to calling Germany Deutschland or China 中國. However, that doesn’t mean it’s not an interesting case of an authoritarian trolling the west.
- kingofpandora 3y agoWell ... I don't know why non-English speaking countries get to decide how English speakers should pronounce/spell their names. Different languages have different names for each other. It's ok. And yes, I would have the same opinion if the UK somehow forced Turks to drop "Birleşik Krallık" in favour of its English name.
- VincentEvans 3y agoMy questions was actually precisely about this - what is now the name of what used to be Turkey in english and how is it spelled in english alphabet. I wasn’t asking (though I am not opposed to hearing about it, it just wasn’t my point) who came up with it, what the underlying agenda is, etc - but what is now the correct and acceptable way to call it. Just like there were other countries that have changed their names over time for this or that reason, I figured same thing could have happened to Turkey while I was not paying attention. Or hasn’t. Hence the question. I admit to still calling it Turkey.
- nologic01 3y agoWhy is the location so important? Does pinning down an origin help to fill-in gaps and reinterpret the (scarce) findings? I.e. use spatial proximity to infer biological relations? Given the enormous timescales and the fact one can walk across eurasia/africa many times over in a lifetime it feels a bit odd that territory seems to be treated as a defining factor.
- contingencies 3y agoPrecisely, it's ridiculous.
- jfengel 3y agoYou can walk across the continent in a lifetime, but you probably don't. You have no reason to. They probably spent their entire lives within a few tens of miles of their birthplace, possibly within mere miles. And the same applied to generations around them. It's not perfect, but that's how paleontology has to work. They make their best guesses based on the data they are able to (literally) dig up. That means sometimes making substantial revisions based on one new, tiny piece of data.
- ramblenode 3y ago> They probably spent their entire lives within a few tens of miles of their birthplace, possibly within mere miles. While the land area required to support a single human or human ancestor might have been as little as a square mile in ideal conditions [0] that is very different from the range of a human or human ancestor over a lifetime. For simplicity we can consider hunter-gatherer humans who at least would have had similar caloric needs. For one, humans come in groups, which during most of our hunter-gatherer past would have been 150-300. If one is strictly gathering, this means all the resources around base camp would eventually be harvested and the group would need to migrate their base camp to another location. The group's foraging strategy could form a circuit where they return to their original base camp, but it's unlikely that every foraging location is as good as every other one, so the circuit will likely change over time, extending the lifetime range of a single individual. Secondly, there is a huge variation in hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Fishing communities are more sedentary while hunting communities are more nomadic and might travel hundreds of miles over a year. This is what one would expect from a generalist species like ourselves. [0] [David Pimentel and Marcia H. Pimentel, ‘Food, Energy, and Society’, third edition, (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2008), p. 45-46.]
- freedude 3y agoIf the evidence doesn't exist where it "aught" to be found it is also likely Darwin's theory is incorrect. It is a theory and not a law. Right?
- nradov 3y agoThat is illogical. Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection doesn't contain any specifics on how or where hominids evolved. There is nothing in this article which is inconsistent with Darwin's theory.
- jl6 3y agoDarwin’s theory is “just a theory” in the sense that all scientific theories are just theories, and could potentially be revised if new evidence comes to light. We think the sun will rise tomorrow but that’s just a theory too. Darwin’s theory happens to be the kind of theory that is very well evidenced and consistent with all observations to date, so it would take a truly remarkable discovery to overturn - and this ape ain’t it.
- diego_moita 3y ago"New ancient", today's funniest oxymoron.