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Fragment of a human face aged over one million years discovered

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Re: Fragment of a human face aged over one million years discovered

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern humans did. Other human species left Africa and populated the rest of the old world much, much earlier. I'm not up-to-date on my research these days but it's only within the last 10K years or so (maybe even more recent) where there's been one extant human subspecies.

What if the literature of God Created men(mankind) in his image came to differentiate Homo sapiens from others. Or the history really began once the other Humans were no more ? Just passing thoughts

I've been thinking about this a lot, by coincidence, as I read Unsong by Scott Alexander (unsongbook.com). It's a beautifully written somewhat comic and somewhat tragic story about the kabbalic-turned-capitalist search for the powerful Names of God.

It occurred to me that, if the Abrahamic God exists, and the origin of Adam is anything more than a mere metaphor, God must have had to make a decision at some point. "There!", He/She/It said as the last vital chromosome fell into place in generation Aleph-1, "All this work is finally done. Whew! I could use some rest." Or something.

But maybe it's all metaphor (except for the God existing part). Maybe the Garden of Eden was Us (big-us, all the hominids) co-existing without technology, and the rise of flint-knapping/agriculture/representational art/whatever was the "eating of the fruit and gaining of knowledge".

Or any other variation you like, as long as you're not intentionally bound from thinking by a literalist view of the Torah's Book of Genesis. In which case, I have bad news: "Adam" wasn't even named that in the early writings, presumably closer to God's word. So, your translation is a bad start for you.

So, maybe the "Twelve Tribes of Israel" are themselves metaphoric for the whole set of hominin branches. Maybe "Ham" was Paranthropus. Accepting that "seven" in the bible sometimes implies "an important big number", maybe "seven" generations later (give or take a few 100) Paranthropus died out completely. Poor Ham. He was just checking to make sure Dad didn't oversleep.

Or maybe, there is no God, and it's just fun to play with myths, which are culturally powerful.

Re: Fragment of a human face aged over one million years discovered

#22
post #6

Institutional source with photos: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/mar/fragment-human-face-aged... Paper with many photos and figures: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08681-0

Oh, facial bones. Now Im less confused. I think the layman would call that a skull fragment.

Re: Fragment of a human face aged over one million years discovered

#24
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Article says this skull fragment is possibly Homo Erectus. This says they left Africa within in that time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_erectus This has further details on human evolution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human#Evolution This covers in more detail the time modern humans migrated from Africa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_African_origin_of_moder...

> Ah-ha! But no one has found the missing link between ape and this so called Homo habilis

Using the term "missing link" instantly flags you as not having a serious evolutionary background.

We don't find "missing links". Ever, really. They existed, but the fossil record is far too small a sampling to gift us like that.

Re: Fragment of a human face aged over one million years discovered

#26
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interbred is putting it mildly. More like killed the men and raped all the women. This was repeated again with the Yamnaya from the Caucasus a few millennia ago where they again killed all the men and raped all the women.

How certainly do we actually know that? If the evidence you claim is that there are no Y-chromosomes from other hominids, an alternative explanation could be that hybrids with Y-chromosomes from other hominids did exist, but disappeared gradually over the centuries/millenia either because they were less fit or through pure chance. Are there any now living people with mt-dna from other hominids? Having a minority non-…

The genetic evidence points into the other direction:

> There is considerably less Neanderthal ancestry on the X-chromosome compared to the autosomal chromosomes, which similarly suggests that admixture with modern humans was primarily the result of mating between modern human females and Neanderthal males.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_genetics#Parentage

Re: Fragment of a human face aged over one million years discovered

#27
post #3

Didn't humans first leave Africa 100,000 years ago by high estimates? To Western Europe 40,000 years ago? Doesn't this completely upend early humanity?

No the homo genus includes everything from something barely distinguishable from an gorilla all the way to modern humans.

Only if you can't tell a gorilla from a chimpanzee.

Neither are first-cousins to Homo, which is descended from genii since the split from the shoot that Bonobos came from.

Re: Fragment of a human face aged over one million years discovered

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern humans did. Other human species left Africa and populated the rest of the old world much, much earlier. I'm not up-to-date on my research these days but it's only within the last 10K years or so (maybe even more recent) where there's been one extant human subspecies.

The craziest thing for me is that there's a lot of evidence for claiming that Sapiens interbred with other Homos, such as the Neanderthal.

If you’ve seen Star Trek the Original Series it shows you precisely how much humans are into humanoid subspecies. They could be green for all a dude who hasn’t seen a woman in a week could care!

Re: Fragment of a human face aged over one million years discovered

#29
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ah-ha! But no one has found the missing link between ape and this so called Homo habilis

Using the term "missing link" instantly flags you as not having a serious evolutionary background. We don't find "missing links". Ever, really. They existed, but the fossil record is far too small a sampling to gift us like that.

[dead]

Re: Fragment of a human face aged over one million years discovered

#30
post #6

Institutional source with photos: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/mar/fragment-human-face-aged... Paper with many photos and figures: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08681-0

Oh, facial bones . Now Im less confused. I think the layman would call that a skull fragment.

Agreed. I was the same place: do they mean an imprint of a face? Or a partially preserved ancient artwork? No, they mean fossilised bone fragments comprising upper mouth and cheekbone areas of a human skull.
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