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The curse of Toumaï: an ancient skull and a bitter feud over humanity's origins

theguardian.com

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Re: The curse of Toumaï: an ancient skull and a bitter feud over humanity's origins

#11

Post by AlotOfReading »

ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #8
AlotOfReading wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

All modern humans are descended from archaic humans. That's how evolution works.

Re: The curse of Toumaï: an ancient skull and a bitter feud over humanity's origins

#15

Post by ggm »

anonymousDan wrote: post #6

I love the passion and bitchiness of the researchers.

As a story arc for a forthcoming film? Sure. But I'm reminded of the comp sci aphorism: physics advanced by standing on the shoulders of giants.. CS by standing on each other's toes.

Re: The curse of Toumaï: an ancient skull and a bitter feud over humanity's origins

#16

Post by mr_toad »

dd_xplore wrote: post #2

When 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....

Do you mean why didn’t they fight? Probably they did. Chimpanzee tribes are highly aggressive, early hominid tribes probably were as well. Human level intelligence didn’t suddenly evolve, it was a gradual transition.

Re: The curse of Toumaï: an ancient skull and a bitter feud over humanity's origins

#17

Post by theoreticalmal »

w10-1 wrote: post #9
profsummergig wrote: post #5

This 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…

“It belongs in a museum!” -Indy

Re: The curse of Toumaï: an ancient skull and a bitter feud over humanity's origins

#18

Post by defrost »

ggm wrote: post #15
anonymousDan wrote: post #6

I love the passion and bitchiness of the researchers.

As a story arc for a forthcoming film? Sure. But I'm reminded of the comp sci aphorism: physics advanced by standing on the shoulders of giants.. CS by standing on each other's toes.

Albeit that standing on the shoulders of giants was a primo bitchy jab that likened Robert Hooke to a dwarf who rode on the shoulders of true giants.

https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/02/16/newton-standing-on...

https://www.amazon.com/Shoulders-Giants-Shandean-Postscript/...

Re: The curse of Toumaï: an ancient skull and a bitter feud over humanity's origins

#20

Post by tomrod »

profsummergig wrote: post #5

This 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…

Look like teeth marks.
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