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7k-year-old skeletons from the green Sahara reveal a mysterious human lineage

smithsonianmag.com

11–20 of 36 posts

Re: 7k-year-old skeletons from the green Sahara reveal a mysterious human lineage

#12

Curious how this post says '5 Hours ago' but if you search or click 'smithsonianmag.com' up there, you see this as a post that says 3 days ago?

The moderators keep an eye out for interesting content that is ignored on submission, and put the posts back into a queue to be published again.

Re: 7k-year-old skeletons from the green Sahara reveal a mysterious human lineage

#13

Curious how this post says '5 Hours ago' but if you search or click 'smithsonianmag.com' up there, you see this as a post that says 3 days ago?

The admins do this sometimes, it's called the "second-chance pool" or something like that. They'll look at stories from the past few days that deserved more attention than they got, and essentially re-submit them.

Re: 7k-year-old skeletons from the green Sahara reveal a mysterious human lineage

#14

Curious how this post says '5 Hours ago' but if you search or click 'smithsonianmag.com' up there, you see this as a post that says 3 days ago?

The moderators keep an eye out for interesting content that is ignored on submission, and put the posts back into a queue to be published again.

Thanks to both of you!

Re: 7k-year-old skeletons from the green Sahara reveal a mysterious human lineage

#15

> "despite practicing animal husbandry—a cultural innovation that originated outside Africa" Animal husbandry was a response to unproductive hunting. And since desertification - hence unproductive hunting- started long time ago in Africa, it makes sense that animal husbandry started there too before it appeared elsewhere.

Animal husbandry did not start in Africa, though. It started in the fertile crescent and spread into Africa. This is very well attested in archaeological finds, and in the fact that the relevant animals were domesticated first there.

The surprising news is that the spread of animal husbandry didn't seem to accompany the spread of human genes -- the subsistence strategy was adopted by learning, not by people moving.

I don't think this is very shocking because the same thing seems to have happened elsewhere. While agriculture mostly spread by people moving, the culture that developed into all the pastoral cultures of the Eurasian steppe seem to have been hunter-gatherers living in close proximity to farmers.

Re: 7k-year-old skeletons from the green Sahara reveal a mysterious human lineage

#16
Please accept my critique to Smithsonian Mag made in good faith: never use the word 'mysterious' [a nod to the magical thinking] in a science context. Really looks like CNN-ish dark pattern. The URL slug has a better word choice:

7000-year-old-skeletons-from-the-green-sahara-reveal-a-previously-unknown-human-lineage-

Re: 7k-year-old skeletons from the green Sahara reveal a mysterious human lineage

#17

> "despite practicing animal husbandry—a cultural innovation that originated outside Africa" Animal husbandry was a response to unproductive hunting. And since desertification - hence unproductive hunting- started long time ago in Africa, it makes sense that animal husbandry started there too before it appeared elsewhere.

Animal husbandry did not start in Africa, though. It started in the fertile crescent and spread into Africa. This is very well attested in archaeological finds, and in the fact that the relevant animals were domesticated first there. The surprising news is that the spread of animal husbandry didn't seem to accompany the spread of human genes -- the subsistence strategy was adopted by learning, not by people moving. I…

But how does that prove there was no animal husbandry in Africa in the prior hundreds of thousands of years?

Re: 7k-year-old skeletons from the green Sahara reveal a mysterious human lineage

#18

Please accept my critique to Smithsonian Mag made in good faith: never use the word 'mysterious' [a nod to the magical thinking] in a science context. Really looks like CNN-ish dark pattern. The URL slug has a better word choice: 7000-year-old-skeletons-from-the-green-sahara-reveal-a-previously-unknown-human-lineage-

I don't see the connection between mysterious and magical thinking. It just means it is a mystery and I don't see anything that implies magic about a mystery.

Re: 7k-year-old skeletons from the green Sahara reveal a mysterious human lineage

#19

Please accept my critique to Smithsonian Mag made in good faith: never use the word 'mysterious' [a nod to the magical thinking] in a science context. Really looks like CNN-ish dark pattern. The URL slug has a better word choice: 7000-year-old-skeletons-from-the-green-sahara-reveal-a-previously-unknown-human-lineage-

mysterious: adj. difficult or impossible to understand, explain, or identify.

While magic requires mystery, mystery does not require magic and they are not synonyms. It is perfectly valid to state something is a scientific mystery without implying magic is involved in some way.

Re: 7k-year-old skeletons from the green Sahara reveal a mysterious human lineage

#20

Please accept my critique to Smithsonian Mag made in good faith: never use the word 'mysterious' [a nod to the magical thinking] in a science context. Really looks like CNN-ish dark pattern. The URL slug has a better word choice: 7000-year-old-skeletons-from-the-green-sahara-reveal-a-previously-unknown-human-lineage-

Would you be able to explain the mystery = magic thinking connection? I've not heard it before. I've obviously heard magic being described as mysterious, but not that mysterious stuff implies magic.
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