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Skull of Homo erectus throws story of human evolution into disarray
- jcromartie 13y agoDoesn't this potentially simplify the story?
- wintersFright 13y agoAgree, the title is link bait for creationists
- sambeau 13y agoOf course, this is a British publication and so this wouldn't have occurred to the headline editor. It certainly didn't occur to me until you mentioned it. Most Brits would read that as disarray about the timeline of human evolution, not a challenge to the 'story'.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- bitwize 13y agoRecently I picked up a video game called El-Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron. The game itself is good, and a little weird, but not terribly remarkable; picture playing Devil May Cry while on acid. Its most striking feature, to me, was the disclaimer at the beginning: something like "This game was based on ancient religious texts and was developed by a multicultural, multiethnic team." I found it a bit of a queer commentary on our culture that video games marketed in North America needed a disclaimer that they weren't preaching or taking a religious stance.
- riffraff 13y agoI think I have seen the same disclaimer in other games. Assassin's creed possibly?
- Karunamon 13y agoIndeed. A number of Ubisoft titles including all of the AC games that I'm aware of have such a disclaimer before the title screen.
- qwerta 13y agoI watched documentary about Egyptian monuments. It was very good, it even included village where workers lived. But for some reason authors added Mount Sinai.
- sambeau 13y ago@jcromartie — Put it this way: my ten year old would laugh at anyone who thought the universe was only a few thousand years old as would his 8-year-old brother.
- sambeau 13y ago@jcromartie Why did you delete your comment? I thought it was insightful. I don't live in a world where we worry about such things. Just knowing that you do is interesting.
- jcromartie 13y agoI didn't want it to get too political.
- jcromartie 13y ago[previously-deleted comment]: I wonder what it's like to live in a country where you don't have to give a second thought to statements based on potentially massive differences in beliefs about the age of the universe.
- petegrif 13y agoTurn that question around - "I wonder what it's like to live in a country where you don't have to give a second thought to statements derived from scientific investigation rather than religious dogma then move to the US?' I can answer that one for you. It's shocking. I had no idea, nor do I believe that most Europeans have any idea, just what a strong hold primitive interpretations of religion still holds over a huge percentage of a developed first world society.
- rafcavallaro 13y agoThe US is economically first world but cognitively third world :)
- berntb 13y agoI live[d] in Sweden. There has been lots of immigration. You can describe the present situation like that the Social democrat party is actively courting the religious muslim vote and pushing homophobia and anti semitism under the carpet. The press isn't so interested in looking at this, either. This has been coming slowly for 5-10 years. It wouldn't surprise me if tolerance for denial of evolution of humans comes in a few more years.
- cabalamat 13y agoSadly we do have creationists in the UK, as this recent story demonstrates: http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/oct/11/jewish-school-censored-gcses-evolution http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/oct/11/jewish-scho...
- TsiCClawOfLight 13y agoThat's too simple of a statement, though. This finding doesn't actually exclude creationism - the common view among creationists has always been that all these "species", including Homo Erectus, are simply humans. *edit: clarity, grammar.
- dragonwriter 13y agoSince Creationism is an interpretive framework rather than a hypothesis with falsifiable predictions, it cannot be excluded. Any observation can be rationalized within Creationism.
- TsiCClawOfLight 13y agoI'm less certain than you are about that... The axiom that God doesn't exist is exactly on the same level as the one that he does. Both of them require the same type of assumption. As for being falsifiable, there still isn't any evidence for macro-evolution, so it isn't beyond the state of hypothesis (yet?). Evidence of that kind would certainly falsify the predictions of creationism. However, there is no evidence for the "natural" origin of new species at this point, only for adaptation.
- scott_s 13y agoThe entire concept of the phylogenetic tree (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylogenetic_tree http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylogenetic_tree) is based on the idea of speciation. That species evolve into new species is well accepted in evolutionary theory, and well supported.
- JDDunn9 13y agoThe burden of proof always lies on the person making the claim. The null hypothesis would be that god (or the tooth fairy) doesn't exist until we have sufficient evidence to prove it does exist. As for macro-evolution, there is a mountain of evidence including the genetic similarity, the geographic distribution of animals, the fossil record, etc. "The Greatest Show on Earth" would be a good read as it details many of the proofs of evolution and dismantles the Creationist's pseudo-science.
- sambeau 13y agoThis is an interesting problem: should you err on the side of creating new species every time you find a bone fragment or should you assume it is more of the same? I think I come down on the side of those who create new species until sufficient evidence can be found to merge them. It strikes me as better science — a connection is, to my mind, more significant than a lack of a connection.
- jcromartie 13y agoI've seen it suggested, by paleontologists, that some people just like to put their stamp on things. It makes for a bigger story when you discover a new species, vs. just finding more bones that look more-or-less like other things in the same geo/temporal region.
- qwerta 13y agoThe problem is as always money. Finding new species gives better chances to start new excavation at some forgotten place.
- VladRussian2 13y agowell, whatever moves the science forward i'm all for it.
- bambax 13y agoTaxonomy is the art of thinking!
- masklinn 13y ago> This is an interesting problem: should you err on the side of creating new species every time you find a bone fragment or should you assume it is more of the same? That is an extant fight in taxonomy, and one which has been going on for more than a century and a half: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpers_and_splitters http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpers_and_splitters > splitters make very small units – their critics say that if they can tell two animals apart, they place them in different genera … and if they cannot tell them apart, they place them in different species. … Lumpers make large units – their critics say that if a carnivore is neither a dog nor a bear, they call it a cat.
- baddox 13y agoIs this anything other than the species problem [0]? Based on this quote: > "If you found the Dmanisi skulls at isolated sites in Africa, some people would give them different species names. But one population can have all this variation. We are using five or six names, but they could all be from one lineage." it sounds like it's just a semantic question of how exactly the "species" are divided up logically. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_problem
- lisper 13y agoNot quite. If skulls are segregated by morphology AND time and/or distance that is evidence that there are two distinct species, i.e. if the big skulls are always over here and the little ones are always over there (or the big ones are always in this layer and the little ones always in that). But if you find different morphologies together in the same time and place that is evidence that they were all members of the same species because it is rare to have two different species occupying the same ecological niche.
- netcan 13y agoWell, inevitably its partly that. But it seems there are is a real finding here even if we avoid the word species entirely. Basically it's evidence of morphological diversity within even a very narrow definition of the word species. If you know that bulldogs and Yorkshire terriers are the same species it's a lot easier to argue that your fossil of a great Dane is too, even though it looks very different. That means you don't need millions of years to evolve it. If the diversity is there in the species, selective pressures can make a different looking variety/subspecies quickly. Modern humans are not that diverse in size. An adult males weigh 50-85kgs. If you find a population of individuals weiging 120ks, you will conclude that these are probably a different species.
- tjr 13y agoModern humans are not that diverse in size. An adult males weigh 50-85kgs. If you find a population of individuals weiging 120ks, you will conclude that these are probably a different species. Haven't been in the U.S. much, have you? :-(
- lkrubner 13y agoThis is a very strange sentence: "Homo is the genus of great apes that emerged around 2.4m years ago and includes modern humans." That is not a normal way to describe the ancestry of humans. In between apes and humans were the Australopithecus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus The genus homo is usually said to have started with homo habilis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_habilis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_habilis Normally one doesn't refer to one genus as being part of another genus. Also the date "2.4m years ago" is controversial. If homo habilis is reclassified as australopithecus, then the genus homo emerges much more recently than 2.4 million years ago.
- pygy_ 13y ago> "Homo is the genus of great apes that emerged around 2.4m years ago and includes modern humans." This implies that we are apes. Quoting Wikipedia: The composition of a genus is determined by a taxonomist. The standards for genus classification are not strictly codified, so different authorities often produce different classifications for genera.
- jswhitten 13y agoIt is correct. Homo is a genus of great apes. It emerged around 2.4 million years ago. And it does include modern humans (Homo Sapiens). I'm not sure which part you're taking issue with? > Normally one doesn't refer to one genus as being part of another genus. That's right. Australopithecus and Homo are different genera. > between apes and humans Not sure what you're saying here. Humans and Australopithecines are both apes.
- tokenadult 13y agoThe reporting in this story left untouched some details I wanted to see follow-up on, so I decided to look at some other journalistic and blogger accounts on the same newly published research report. Brian Switek's story on National Geographic http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/10/131017-skull-human-origins-dmanisi-georgia-erectus/ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/10/131017-skull... is quite helpful and has interesting graphics. The BBC story http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24564375 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24564375 looks to be more helpful than the story kindly submitted here, the CNN story http://edition.cnn.com/2013/10/17/world/europe/ancient-skull-human-evolution/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2013/10/17/world/europe/ancient-skull... quotes other experts who don't reach the same conclusions, while the Wall Street Journal story http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304384104579141600675336982 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230438410... largely quotes scholars who agree with the new announcement from Georgia. The Bloomberg story http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-blm-news-bc-skulls17-20131017,0,1615390.story http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-blm-news-bc-skulls... quotes an expert who sums up what the real issue is here: "The finding likely won't change expert's views on species diversity, where two groups are heavily entrenched said William Harcourt-Smith, an assistant professor at Lehman College and a research associate in the American Museum of Natural History's Division of Paleontology. "Some, nicknamed 'splitters,' see the tree of evolution as having many species. Others, called 'lumpers,' see wider species categories and fewer limbs on the tree. "'To be honest it just adds some important fuel to the debate,' Harcourt-Smith wrote in an e-mail. 'The lumpers, of course, will love this new paper, but I can see splitters saying that there is too much variation in both the African early Homo and Dmanisi sample for them to all be Homo erectus.'"
- masklinn 13y agoI love this quotes on splitters v lumpers: > splitters make very small units – their critics say that if they can tell two animals apart, they place them in different genera … and if they cannot tell them apart, they place them in different species. … Lumpers make large units – their critics say that if a carnivore is neither a dog nor a bear, they call it a cat.
- vanderZwan 13y ago
- pbhjpbhj 13y agoTBH I've always thought that variations in skulls unearthed and labelled as different genus seemed not to be that varied next to the variation in modern people. About a year ago I tried to unearth a visual comparison that would show the variation of "modern" skulls so it could be compared - anyone know of such a work? It's the same mistake made with the dinosaurs (see eg http://www.ted.com/talks/jack_horner_shape_shifting_dinosaurs.html http://www.ted.com/talks/jack_horner_shape_shifting_dinosaur...) assuming that one can tell how an animal grew by analogy and that heterogeneity necessarily shows speciation. Is this really the first time that differently formed skulls have been found together in an archaeological dig. That's surprising isn't it? Equally well, just because 5 skulls were found together why does one then have to declare them all to be H.Erectus, presumably there are other methods of categorisation relied on to establish that point?
- waps 13y agoBecause if they died together, they're part of the same group. If some are small skulls (ie. children) and some adults (a family that died in a natural disaster, landslide, ... say), then they obviously interbreeded, at which point they would be re-classified as only one species, and maybe something other than genetical differences account for the differences in skulls.
- haberman 13y agoI'm amazed that we are still finding new fossils all the time. What is the story usually like of how this happens? Farmer digs a hole for a fencepost, finds a weird skull, calls 1-800-ANTHROPOLOGIST? I'm being flippant but I'm genuinely curious how fossils like this continue to be discovered.
- StavrosK 13y agoThis is entirely unrelated, but a cool story nonetheless (too bad the details elude me, I will make them up): There was a big archaeological site discovered in an island in Africa, and archaeologists needed to search a large area for findings. They asked locals to help, and paid them for every piece of ancient artifact they would find and bring back. The locals started smashing large ancient vases and statues they found into small pieces to get paid more.
- mikeash 13y agoYou always have to be careful about what you incentivize. There are similar classic stories about bounties on cobras and rats which resulted in breeding more cobras and snakes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect
- Nick_C 13y agoMy father was a paleontologist, albeit 30 years ago. I think what is happening with human fossils is that we have/are reaching a critical mass of knowledge that allows us to pinpoint with greater accuracy where to look. The thing starts to become self-perpetuating. For fossils in general, there are more of us physically wandering on the surface of the planet, and we collectively are more familiar with what is a fossil, which leads to more discoveries. As well, due to machinery such as excavators and tunnel diggers, we are digging in places we haven't dug before, either deeper or in hard-to-access rocks. The big unexplored areas is (1) beneath the deserts, especially the Sahara, and (2) under the shallow seas.
- scottmagdalein 13y agoScientists, if carbon dating is limited to ~50,000 years or so, how do archeologists date things into the millions of years with accuracy?
- phansch 13y agoCarbon dating is just a subset of radiometric dating. You can leverage the decay rates of (almost) any element to estimate the age of an object. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating#Fundamentals_of_radiometric_dating http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating#Fundamentals...)
- madaxe 13y agoAlso stratification and artefact context.