The curse of Toumaï: an ancient skull and a bitter feud over humanity's origins
1–10 of 40 posts
Re: The curse of Toumaï: an ancient skull and a bitter feud over humanity's origins
#2When humanity (including all the homo species) gained intelligence over 2-300000 years ago, I'm genuinely surprised that they were able to live so long together!
Although 'species' is term is bit extreme, which is why they reproduced with each other a lot!
I also wonder what kind of history they might have! It's interesting to think about. Most of the history that we have is already opinionated....
Re: The curse of Toumaï: an ancient skull and a bitter feud over humanity's origins
#3When humanity (including all the homo species) gained intelligence over 2-300000 years ago, I'm genuinely surprised that they were able to live so long together! Although 'species' is term is bit extreme, which is why they reproduced with each other a lot! I also wonder what kind of history they might have! It's interesting to think about. Most of the history that we have is already opinionated....
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Re: The curse of Toumaï: an ancient skull and a bitter feud over humanity's origins
#4[flagged]
Re: The curse of Toumaï: an ancient skull and a bitter feud over humanity's origins
#5This image of the femur, can anyone shed light on why there are notches carved on the side?
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/b6b6509049556deef91d0459df864...
Also, regarding "There is no technology, extant or imaginable, that could extract that marvellous secret from her bones",
I put those under the "famous last words" category.
We cannot predict today what we may discover about bones in the future. There could be something akin to DNA fingerprinting that lets people discover ancestry. Just because we've not discovered it yet, doesn't mean we will never discover it. Not saying we will, but I prefer to keep an open mind about science and human creativity.
Re: The curse of Toumaï: an ancient skull and a bitter feud over humanity's origins
#6I love the passion and bitchiness of the researchers.
Re: The curse of Toumaï: an ancient skull and a bitter feud over humanity's origins
#7[flagged]
Probably not. What I think you mean here is something called the "multiregional human origin" hypothesis, which isn't well supported. The current model is that the vast majority of human ancestry, including what makes us identifiably human, originated in Africa. When anatomically modern humans left Africa, they incorporated and replaced archaic humans in other parts of the world. Those archaic ancestors are largely invisible in modern populations and only become visible with genetic tools.
If you actually mean within Africa, we currently don't have a great model for archaic human population structure. However, I've never read a reputable paper drawing a line between archaic population structure and differences in modern populations. I suspect none exist.
Re: The curse of Toumaï: an ancient skull and a bitter feud over humanity's origins
#8[flagged]
Probably not. What I think you mean here is something called the "multiregional human origin" hypothesis, which isn't well supported. The current model is that the vast majority of human ancestry, including what makes us identifiably human, originated in Africa. When anatomically modern humans left Africa, they incorporated and replaced archaic humans in other parts of the world. Those archaic ancestors are largely i…
[flagged]
Re: The curse of Toumaï: an ancient skull and a bitter feud over humanity's origins
#9This image of the femur, can anyone shed light on why there are notches carved on the side? https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/b6b6509049556deef91d0459df864... Also, regarding "There is no technology, extant or imaginable, that could extract that marvellous secret from her bones", I put those under the "famous last words" category. We cannot predict today what we may discover about bones in the future. There could be som…
> "There is no technology, extant or imaginable, that could extract that marvellous secret from her bones"
It's because the inference depends on having data from a very large sample of other finds. It wouldn't matter if there were a single Eve and we found her entire skeleton and extracted the DNA perfectly. We couldn't prove it was Eve without all the other samples, and it's beyond unlikely they'll just show up.
I'm disgusted by the convention that findings are controlled by self-interested glory-seeking finders. These belong to the entirety of humanity and should be treated as such, with utmost care and complete openness and humility. We shouldn't tolerate grave robbers any more than bank robbers. Like banks, archeaologists are fiduciaries of the highest order, and should be selected and managed as such, not like salespeople on commission. If you want to seek abandoned treasure, go elsewhere.
Re: The curse of Toumaï: an ancient skull and a bitter feud over humanity's origins
#10[flagged]