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Study of 1M-year-old skull points to earlier origins of modern humans

theguardian.com

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Re: Study of 1M-year-old skull points to earlier origins of modern humans

#131

Post by whimsicalism »

yongjik wrote: post #42
nn3 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans evolved intelligence too. They are smarter than most other critters in the jungle. Just all not as much as the lineage that leads to humans. It's actually quite difficult to define human intelligence. Every time we think we find something unique by humans eventually some animal turns up that can do it too. It may be all just a question of degree and how it's used.

From what I've heard, language is unambiguously unique to humans, if you consider grammar an integral part of languages. You can teach chimpanzees hand signs, but they could never make the leap to stringing them together under a coherent rule: something like the difference between "Mom give me cookies" vs "I give mom cookies." (I'm no expert, so take that with a grain of salt.)

Unique to modern humans, maybe. But that's only because we outcompeted/killed all of our sibling species that also spoke language. Denisovans likely had language as well.

Re: Study of 1M-year-old skull points to earlier origins of modern humans

#132

Post by whimsicalism »

thrdbndndn wrote: post #14
acchow wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Why humans evolved intelligence but orangutans did not". There's a different way to think about this that is closer to how evolution actually works and will make the answer clear. Our common ancestor (common to orangutans and humans) did evolve intelligence (concurrently with harnessing fire, clothing etc.). Not all of them, but some of them. And they broke off from the group. We now call them humans.

I think their question is not about why humans evolved intelligence, but why one and only one single species did.

> why humans evolved intelligence, but why one and only one single species did

Well, that's false. But we killed off/interbred with all of the peer/near-peer species.

Re: Study of 1M-year-old skull points to earlier origins of modern humans

#133

Post by whimsicalism »

vintermann wrote: post #98
kakacik wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I don't think less of China for containing a, shall we say, "patriotic" paleoanthropology community. Not any more than I think less of the US for the Book of Mormon being a thing. God knows we have these subcultures in Europe too. But it is a thing and you need to be aware of it. A result from China which seems to support an out of China theory rather than an out of Africa theory, I am immediately suspicious of. And…

Given what we now know about backmigration and intermixing (particularly with Denisovans), it's really not coherent to say any "out of" theory is the Truth.

Sure, modern homo sapiens outside of Africa are all descendants of a founding group that left Africa, but they are also descendants of hominids who returned to Africa from elsewhere as well as local hominid populations that had left Africa far earlier (like Neanderthals and Denisovans).

Re: Study of 1M-year-old skull points to earlier origins of modern humans

#134

Post by whimsicalism »

_petronius wrote: post #90
KurSix wrote: post #70

Always worth asking how much these reconstructions reflect reality vs the assumptions built into the models

If a thought like this has occurred to you, a dilettante, after reading a headline and/or cursorily glancing over the article, then you should assume that a study conducted by people with substantial academic training and deep expertise in the field have also had this thought and incorporated it into how they perform their analysis. Drive-by anti-intellectualism like this is the death of interesting conversation, tru…

welcome to hacker news :)

Re: Study of 1M-year-old skull points to earlier origins of modern humans

#135

Post by whimsicalism »

luxuryballs wrote: post #122
andsoitis wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then come with proof or some shred of evidence, rather than asking an unsubstantiated question that undermines the scientific process unnecessarily by trying to insert doubt from a place of zero expertise in the field.

I think they call this the appeal to authority fallacy, it’s the people without expertise in a field that often see the holes in something first, then the holes start glowing after they get hand waved away by smug narrow-minded experts.

and what are you engaged in, appeal to nothingness? appeal to authority isn't a fallacy outside of formal logic, it is just everyday knowledgemaking.

Re: Study of 1M-year-old skull points to earlier origins of modern humans

#136

Post by whimsicalism »

matt_kantor wrote: post #129
slightwinder wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the analytics were not made in China or by a Chinese researcher. So unless they tampered with the skull's age somehow, they would have little influence here.

Twelve of the paper's thirteen authors (all except Chris Stringer) are shown as working in China according to https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ado9202 (click "Authors Info & Affiliations" near the top), and the research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

someone call Joe McCarthy

Re: Study of 1M-year-old skull points to earlier origins of modern humans

#137

Post by m0llusk »

usrnm wrote: post #95
Mitochondriac wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Semi-aquatic environments make sense if you look at our brains dependency on DHA (seafood is a rich source) and the hypothesis that our fingers get wrinkly in water after a while to improve grip.

Aren't we a lot more evolved for hunting animals on foot? The whole thing with us losing our fur and sweating with the whole body, adaptations to running and throwing stuff, all of this makes us better hunters, but not necessarilly fushermen.

The two go together. Living with water requires control of breathing. Hunting animals on land requires strong endurance and probably also an ability to carry water.

Re: Study of 1M-year-old skull points to earlier origins of modern humans

#138

Post by whimsicalism »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #3
mikert89 wrote: post #2

Out of africa is basically false, there were decently advanced walking hominids in asia a long time ago. Then they migrated west, africa was the origination, but that origination was not the ~50k years ago like was frequently claimed

All the evidence we have points to the vast, vast majority (>90%) of non-african human ancestry originating from hominin populations that were in Africa around 60-80k years ago, and were anatomically modern about 300k years ago. This article is about an ancestral clade of archaic hominins that contributed around 2% of modern non-african ancestry globally, that we've known about for years. OOA (with minor admixture) i…

there were multiple out of africa migrations and backmigration into Africa, 60-80k is just the most recent and the prominent founder population for modern humans outside of Africa.

Re: Study of 1M-year-old skull points to earlier origins of modern humans

#139

Post by Retric »

whimsicalism wrote: post #133
vintermann wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think less of China for containing a, shall we say, "patriotic" paleoanthropology community. Not any more than I think less of the US for the Book of Mormon being a thing. God knows we have these subcultures in Europe too. But it is a thing and you need to be aware of it. A result from China which seems to support an out of China theory rather than an out of Africa theory, I am immediately suspicious of. And…

Given what we now know about backmigration and intermixing (particularly with Denisovans), it's really not coherent to say any "out of" theory is the Truth. Sure, modern homo sapiens outside of Africa are all descendants of a founding group that left Africa, but they are also descendants of hominids who returned to Africa from elsewhere as well as local hominid populations that had left Africa far earlier (like Neand…

Out of Africa has meaningful consequences even if people mixed back in. For example our closest evolutionary cousins should barring evidence to the contrary also tend to hail from Africa as well.

It’s that kind of reasoning that makes it important to try and be accurate here. Not a fact in isolation but everything else that it implies.

Re: Study of 1M-year-old skull points to earlier origins of modern humans

#140

Post by gus_massa »

curseofcasandra wrote: post #101
bradley13 wrote: post #85

[flagged]

> I'm not convinced that this is any sort of neutral analysis Did you actually read the article? Nowhere does it suggest that anyone is claiming that China is the origin of Homo Sapiens. This million old skull discovered in China is not Homo Sapien, but related to Denisoven. It’s scientifically interesting since it suggests two things 1. Homo sapiens have existed longer than we previously thought. 2. Homo Sapiens may…

I mostly agree. Direct link to the paper https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ado9202

I'm not an anthropologist and not even close, so a lot of uninformed opinions:

It has a few nice photos of the skull. It looks quite complete. 90%? And the reconstruction look accurate for my untrained eye, because there are few parts to guess, specially if you assume the skull is (almost) symmetrical.

I'm not sure if it's possible to cheat and give it an additional 1% or 2% of brain volume, but I guess it's not possible to give it a 10% more brain volume. Anyway, the volume is quite small compared to modern humans, that is not surprising because it's quite old.

IIUC figure 4 shows 3 big branches: Neanderthal (Europe???), Longi (Asia???) and Sapiens (Africa???). (Add a fee "???" here if necessary.) And the new fossil is in the "Longi" branch.

So as you say it may be an older than expected side chain, or something like that.

[Happy to get any corrections or more details.]

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