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New type of ancient human discovered in Israel

bbc.com

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Re: New type of ancient human discovered in Israel

#71

Post by stormdennis »

rpmisms wrote: post #70
stormdennis wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, as an Israeli, you were indoctrinated in both school and most likely, the IDF. The ethnic of cleansing of the Palestinians was already 50%. completed by the time any outside Arab forces arrived on the scene. The seven armies you speak of never numbered as many as the zionists/Israelis were able to put in the field. The only one that the zionists (who were British trained via the armed police forces) ha…

This feels like mansplaining. I'm not sure what the correct term is, but watching a Brit tell an Israeli that they don't know their own country's history is surreal.

Not a "brit"

Re: New type of ancient human discovered in Israel

#72

Post by rpmisms »

stormdennis wrote: post #71
rpmisms wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like mansplaining. I'm not sure what the correct term is, but watching a Brit tell an Israeli that they don't know their own country's history is surreal.

Not a "brit"

Immaterial. You're telling a person what to think about their home country.

Re: New type of ancient human discovered in Israel

#73

Post by grawprog »

kypro wrote: post #13
someperson wrote: post #5

We'll see if the inflation in ancient human species stands up to scrutiny. Here's a great TED Talk about dinosaur species being mistakenly identified because 'scientists have egos': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQa11RMCeSI&t=102s (well worth a watch, it's a great story)

How is it possible to indentify a new species from just a skull fragment and jawbone? Would there need to be multiple similar bones to rule out the possiblity of a genetic outlier? And even then it's not like there isn't fairly significant variance in bone structure between different populations of human today. Can we really say from two bits of bone that it's a different species? I have no knowledge of anthropology…

When I was in school, one of our midterms for wildlife biology was to take a tooth or some bone fragments and describe as much as we could about the animal's habitat, food sources, overall health before death, roughly how old the animal was and a bunch of other things.

It's actually surprising how much information a single tooth or piece of bone can actually give you.

Re: New type of ancient human discovered in Israel

#74

Post by gonnano »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #62
throwawaygal7 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The numbers I've seen are something like as low as a few thousand for European population, but more like 5k for African populations Of course, these are model populations based on idealized breeding right- I believe the way these estimates work is that they represent the idealized minimum bound for a real population that was likely magnitudes greater but had lots of deaths. And as others have pointed out I believe th…

Then there is "Mitochondrial Eve", a single individual from whom entire sections of humanity descend!

Bryan Sykesan, An Oxford geneticist claimed all Europeans came from 7 females he called the 7 daughters of Eve, although he wasn't always right in his assumption's

Re: New type of ancient human discovered in Israel

#75

Post by shaunregenbaum »

eloff wrote: post #44
kypro wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it possible to indentify a new species from just a skull fragment and jawbone? Would there need to be multiple similar bones to rule out the possiblity of a genetic outlier? And even then it's not like there isn't fairly significant variance in bone structure between different populations of human today. Can we really say from two bits of bone that it's a different species? I have no knowledge of anthropology…

The teeth and jaw are actually one of the most distinctive parts of a skeleton - so it's not totally crazy. The shape of the teeth and size of the jaw muscles could easily identify something as being not modern human. But the article gave 0 evidence for why they believe it to be a new species, so I'm not convinced either.

The research was published in Science. If you want their evidence, look at where they actually published it.

Re: New type of ancient human discovered in Israel

#76

Post by stormdennis »

rpmisms wrote: post #72
stormdennis wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a "brit"

Immaterial. You're telling a person what to think about their home country.

They made a plea (which you support), that simply because they are from there, that they therefore know the history better than someone from outside. That does not follow.

Re: New type of ancient human discovered in Israel

#77

Post by southeastern »

yreg wrote: post #14
nextstep wrote: post #2

Since these people’s activity in the area predates any other known settlement, I guess the Israeli government has no choice but to grant citizenship to any descendants of the pre-Neanderthal diaspora automatically.

This is not the place for political/culture wars.

Eh given it's a current issue there's no surprise that someone might connect the two. It's not gonna be productive of course, but at this point it's just about expected in a area with free speech

Re: New type of ancient human discovered in Israel

#79

Post by Udik »

rsj_hn wrote: post #67
stormdennis wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be accurate, Israel also entirely consists of that kind of land.

Every nation is inhabited by people who displaced someone else, who in turn displaced someone else, who in turn displaced someone else, etc.

We're also all the product of several rapes down the line of our ancestors. That doesn't justify rape when it happens now, does it?

Re: New type of ancient human discovered in Israel

#80

Post by jeffrwells »

buran77 wrote: post #59
specialist wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is it possible to indentify a new species... I'd love that ELI5. If it's just morphology and traits, given the amazing variety of people alive today, I wonder how many different species future archaeologists would identify. I've seen the array of skulls at the natural history museum. Clear progression, sure. But when does one thing become another thing. I know, I know, dividing lines are arbitrary. But I'd stil…

Some scientists also like to generate buzz because that's sometimes the only way to get financing. But having this apparently unique piece of evidence and calling it "one of the last survivors" of the new species (as opposed to one of the first, or squarely in the middle) gives away that for now it's just a flashy assumption.

Not to mention that the word "survivor" is completely meaningless for this dead ancient humanoid
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