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Gigantopithecus as well as many hominins besides Homo sapiens, did evolve and radiate across Asia? Homo Erectus/Heidelburgensis/Neanderthals/Denisovans were al
by opportune 3y ago
Gigantopithecus as well as many hominins besides Homo sapiens, did evolve and radiate across Asia?
Homo Erectus/Heidelburgensis/Neanderthals/Denisovans were all widely distributed outside of Africa. Neanderthals and Denisovans in particular have no records of ever having their range include Africa (Neaderthals may have lived in parts of North Africa but they’re firmly Eurasian). Homo Floresensis only ever lived in Flores.
Gigantopithecus, a giant non-hominin Ape, only has evidence of living in China. It’s thought to be related to Orangutans. You probably are dismissive of Orangutans because they are only a single ape (actually multiple species) outside of Africa in the present day but the Ponginae subfamily including Orangutans and Gigantopithecus had many other species, they are just now all extinct, but all were Asian: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponginae https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponginae
That said, I do think there is no evidence that Homo Sapiens “evolved outside of Africa” and I suspect most people who do push this are doing so for either nationalistic reasons (we found early hominin fossils in our country, we must be where humans evolved and are the “original” humans!) or racism (not wanting to be descended from “Africans”). But it’s definitely possible there was gene flow from Homo Erectus outside of Africa back into Africa in a way that made it into the human genome, and many people have non-African human ancestry from Neanderthals and Denisovans
- civilitty 3y agoExactly. The oldest evidence of archaic human tool use in Java, Indonesia is over 1.5 million years old with Homo erectus fossils going back 700 kYa [1], long before the earliest evidence of Homo sapiens. In Europe the oldest fossil remains date to 800 kYa at Atapuerca [2] (with cannibalism!). It's just cultural egotism. It's especially meaningless if it goes as far back as 8 million years because even half a million is enough for hominids to spread across several continents and come back as different species. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_Indonesia#Homo_erectus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_Indonesia#Homo_ere... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeological_site_of_Atapuerca https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeological_site_of_Atapuer...
- opportune 3y agoYeah, the fact it’s an 8 million year old fossil really makes the tie to homo sapiens’ origins ludicrous. The earliest evidence for Australopithecus (where humans started to diverge from other apes like Chimps) was 4 million years old. And there are already 12.5 million year old Ponginae (Orangutan relatives) fossils from India. Since all Ponginae are Asian but none are in human ancestry, that’d imply even earlier radiation of early African apes - which have just as much a claim to possibly being early human ancestors if they were pre-Ponginae - into Asia than this would.
- therein 3y ago> The oldest evidence of archaic human tool in use is Java I misread that. :)