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Oldest Human DNA Yet Found Raises New Mysteries

nytimes.com

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Re: Oldest Human DNA Yet Found Raises New Mysteries

#31

Post by VladRussian2 »

gizmo686 wrote: post #17
simonh wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agriculture. It's a several orders of magnitude improvement in the population density an area can support, which makes population centres possible, which makes specialisation viable, which makes everything else possible. If someone had developed agriculture 100,000 years ago, we'd currently be about 90,000 years more advanced than we are now. Agriculture appears to have been developed independently in the Middle East…

This seems to beg the question of what caused agriculture to appear. Although given that it did appear, your explanation seems like a plausible explanation of how it spread and led to the rapid progress we have seen since. A boring answer to this question is that it was simple incremental changes driven by random mutations and natural selection (eg. evolution). For example, we might have started to occasional plant t…

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/01/030120100451.ht...

"Fungus-growing ants practice agriculture and have been doing so for the past 50 million years according to research published in the Jan. 17 issue of Science. These ants not only grow fungus gardens underground for food but also have adapted to handling parasitic "weeds" that infect their crops."

Re: Oldest Human DNA Yet Found Raises New Mysteries

#32

Post by gus_massa »

terabytest wrote: post #6

It's so mind boggling to think that the "Homo Erectus" existed as far back as 1.8 million years ago, yet most of our recent (and known history) happened in the last 5000 years, and we see that as a huge evolution. What the heck happened between 1 million years ago and now? The human race changed a lot and matured very much, but it's so incredible that such a big evolution only happened in the last few thousand years…

Interesting technologies form ~1 million years ago (Homo erectus):

* stone hand-axe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acheulean

* fire: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_of_fire_by_early_humans

Re: Oldest Human DNA Yet Found Raises New Mysteries

#33

Post by arcadeparade »

adamors wrote: post #10
terabytest wrote: post #6

It's so mind boggling to think that the "Homo Erectus" existed as far back as 1.8 million years ago, yet most of our recent (and known history) happened in the last 5000 years, and we see that as a huge evolution. What the heck happened between 1 million years ago and now? The human race changed a lot and matured very much, but it's so incredible that such a big evolution only happened in the last few thousand years…

In the Chauvet Cave there are cave paintings that are 32,000 year old[1]. But what's even more interesting, is that some of these paintings are only 27,000 year old. Meaning, that these people knew about the place for almost 5000 years. Can you imagine that kind of continuity? The documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams[2] presents the cave in a breathtaking detail, definitely worth a watch. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/…

And carbon dating showed that some paintings were finished many hundreds of years after they began.

Re: Oldest Human DNA Yet Found Raises New Mysteries

#34

Post by cdr »

qubitsam wrote: post #11
tokenadult wrote: post #7

As another comment says, the author of this New York Times article, Carl Zimmer, is a very solid science writer who knows a lot about evolution. I have occasion to discuss human population genetics with psychologists who study behavior genetics, and when population genetics issues come up in those discussions, some of the new discoveries are surprising even to them. It's hard for reporters, us, and even the working r…

Ok, I have to ask this, and I apologize in advance for it being out of topic. How on earth are you well informed on so many topics spanning different fields of science and literature? Your comments are amazingly well informed, and I would like to know how you do it.

He knows how to sound informed, which is the important part. Large walls of text, big words, selective citation of valid sounding papers.

Re: Oldest Human DNA Yet Found Raises New Mysteries

#35

Post by tokenadult »

qubitsam wrote: post #11
tokenadult wrote: post #7

As another comment says, the author of this New York Times article, Carl Zimmer, is a very solid science writer who knows a lot about evolution. I have occasion to discuss human population genetics with psychologists who study behavior genetics, and when population genetics issues come up in those discussions, some of the new discoveries are surprising even to them. It's hard for reporters, us, and even the working r…

Ok, I have to ask this, and I apologize in advance for it being out of topic. How on earth are you well informed on so many topics spanning different fields of science and literature? Your comments are amazingly well informed, and I would like to know how you do it.

[Blush] Thanks for your kind question. Let me first of all say that there is a lot that is discussed here on HN that I know nothing about, and in threads on those topics, I am in lurk mode, learning from the rest of you. So thanks.

On some topics, I have a different perspective just because I am older than most people here, so I remember history that other participants have to read about. Genetics research to be a responsible popular author about that research is part of my work, so this topic was work-related. I got lucky over the weekend, because I had just looked up the human population research articles to get ready for some contentious editing on Wikipedia, and thus all of the sources were at hand. Some of the other topics I comment about are also work-related, or related to my former work or my higher education degrees (neither of which were in computer science).

Re: Oldest Human DNA Yet Found Raises New Mysteries

#36

Post by trentnix »

cdr wrote: post #34
qubitsam wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I have to ask this, and I apologize in advance for it being out of topic. How on earth are you well informed on so many topics spanning different fields of science and literature? Your comments are amazingly well informed, and I would like to know how you do it.

He knows how to sound informed, which is the important part. Large walls of text, big words, selective citation of valid sounding papers.

He's probably also disciplined enough not to sound off on topics that he doesn't know anything about.

I was consulting (software) at a client site and one of the employees at the client remarked that I seemed to know everything about everything. I just replied that it was a trick - I only talk about the things I'm informed on, and when a question came up on a topic I didn't know anything about, I just redirected the conversation back to my expertise. I had a hammer and worked hard to make everything a nail. :)

Re: Oldest Human DNA Yet Found Raises New Mysteries

#37

Post by ekianjo »

simonh wrote: post #13
terabytest wrote: post #6

It's so mind boggling to think that the "Homo Erectus" existed as far back as 1.8 million years ago, yet most of our recent (and known history) happened in the last 5000 years, and we see that as a huge evolution. What the heck happened between 1 million years ago and now? The human race changed a lot and matured very much, but it's so incredible that such a big evolution only happened in the last few thousand years…

Agriculture. It's a several orders of magnitude improvement in the population density an area can support, which makes population centres possible, which makes specialisation viable, which makes everything else possible. If someone had developed agriculture 100,000 years ago, we'd currently be about 90,000 years more advanced than we are now. Agriculture appears to have been developed independently in the Middle East…

I also believe in this explanation, but it would be better if we had hard evidence of certain types of human population thriving and other ones disappearing based on the presence or lack of agriculture.

Re: Oldest Human DNA Yet Found Raises New Mysteries

#38

Post by a8da6b0c91d »

tokenadult wrote: post #7

As another comment says, the author of this New York Times article, Carl Zimmer, is a very solid science writer who knows a lot about evolution. I have occasion to discuss human population genetics with psychologists who study behavior genetics, and when population genetics issues come up in those discussions, some of the new discoveries are surprising even to them. It's hard for reporters, us, and even the working r…

http://imgur.com/a/Ow9ab

It's funny how when you look at the faces you can probably see the genetic distance. Watson was a kinda weird looking dude.

Re: Oldest Human DNA Yet Found Raises New Mysteries

#39

Post by slurry »

simonh wrote: post #13
terabytest wrote: post #6

It's so mind boggling to think that the "Homo Erectus" existed as far back as 1.8 million years ago, yet most of our recent (and known history) happened in the last 5000 years, and we see that as a huge evolution. What the heck happened between 1 million years ago and now? The human race changed a lot and matured very much, but it's so incredible that such a big evolution only happened in the last few thousand years…

Agriculture. It's a several orders of magnitude improvement in the population density an area can support, which makes population centres possible, which makes specialisation viable, which makes everything else possible. If someone had developed agriculture 100,000 years ago, we'd currently be about 90,000 years more advanced than we are now. Agriculture appears to have been developed independently in the Middle East…

One problem with the conventional history is that it's very much oriented around agriculture on plains, using irrigation, with buildings made of stone or clay. This kind of agricultural culture is good for archaeologists because it leaves intact traces that are easy to dig for. But it's not the only kind of agriculture.

There have also been agricultural civilizations that grew rain-fed crops on forest sites and built houses of wood. Like the Maya, or ancient southeast Asian civilizations.

Luckily those peoples did help us out by building stone temples, but I would assume that probably several more civilizations have practiced slash-and-burn jungle agriculture and just not happened to have built monumental temples.

Supporting my hypothesis, one early layer of Jericho seems to reflect a forestal mode of production - something about acorn horticulture[0].

So, I think if we are to find the hidden backstory behind the sudden simultaneous 10,000 YE agricultural revolutions, the place to look would be in the trees. But what do I know.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natufian_culture#Settlements "Settlements occur in the woodland belt where oak and Pistacia species dominated...The superstructure was probably made of brushwood. No traces of mudbrick have been found."

Re: Oldest Human DNA Yet Found Raises New Mysteries

#40

Post by a8da6b0c91d »

terabytest wrote: post #6

It's so mind boggling to think that the "Homo Erectus" existed as far back as 1.8 million years ago, yet most of our recent (and known history) happened in the last 5000 years, and we see that as a huge evolution. What the heck happened between 1 million years ago and now? The human race changed a lot and matured very much, but it's so incredible that such a big evolution only happened in the last few thousand years…

I've seen the idea batted around that the hybridization of neanderthals and cromagnons set off something of an explosion in evolutionary terms. Art and technology only started getting anywhere in the areas where they had contact some 50,000 years ago. Modern humans are apparently something like 4% neanderthal.
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