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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

#161

Post by timschmidt »

andsoitis wrote: post #123
timschmidt wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cetacean communication obeys Zipf's law: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11797547/ As does house finches: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.202... Sperm whale codas exhibit contextual and combinatorial structure: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-47221-8 Ants have developed symbolic language: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10093743/ Everywhere we look close enough, w…

Those are interesting examples. Do you know of a species where ALL of those properties (and more) exist?

Likely all of the ones named, and more. These are just a sampling of papers and not at all exhaustive.

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

#163

Post by shermantanktop »

Razengan wrote: post #110
shermantanktop wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that the future human is different than you are today, they could ask you the same questions. How does it FEEL for you to communicate worldwide with an HN post, but not yet have the ability to (insert advanced capability here). Every one of our evolutionary ancestors was the best human yet, just like we are.

> Given that the future human is different than you are today, they could ask you the same questions. How does it FEEL for you to communicate worldwide.. No no no, I don't mean going from already intelligent/sentient/sapient to MORE intelligent…. I mean, going from the levels of intelligence/awareness we see in insects → fish → chickens and cattle → monkeys/apes → what we consider "actual" intelligence as seen in hum…

I guess I see it as a continuum. My cats are clearly not as smart as a human, but they remember and they have independent thoughts. Presumably they wouldn’t feel inadequate compared to a human, since they get everything they could possibly want and we do the work. But it’s highly unlikely that they are smart enough to have that self-reflective thought.

Humans have the gift of understanding, but our lives are filled with things we either don’t really understand or that we have an illusion of understanding. Of course, we wonder “why does evil exist?” whereas cats wonder “when is dinnertime?”

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

#164

Post by throwaway173738 »

hmm37 wrote: post #127
Razengan wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He has made several phonemes that aren’t in the language we speak at home. No I mean absolutely zero contact with or help from modern (say since the last 10,000 years) human civilization. I mean literally giving birth in a forest and then raising the baby there without ever speaking a word around it or showing it any tools etc. (this assumes that it will survive to 1-2 years old without any fatal sickness etc. but…

I'm pretty sure there were children where the parents basically locked them in cages or chained them to a post in the basement, where they had almost no social contact, etc. And in these cases they were considered effectively mentally disabled by the time they were rescued.

That’s different. He’s not saying to totally isolate the child, but that the child is born to modern humans without any language or culture or knowledge but who live in a wilderness. So not a place of deprivation but a place of danger and exploration. I would argue that kids are wired to explore, and that the parents would do their best to protect the child. It’s kind of a useless thought experiment because our lineages stretch back unbroken to the beginning of life, and that includes culture and transmitted knowledge.

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

#167

Post by mouse_8b »

WalterBright wrote: post #45
dyauspitr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That question is analogous to asking why did some fish grow legs and become mammals. The answer is mutations sometimes specific members of a group will gain a mutation that will overtime cause that group to split off away from the ancestor group. It’s all a matter of chance evolution doesn’t have a direction.

Multiple lines of mammals have independently evolved back into being marine life. Whales, seals and manatees do not have a common ancestor, for example.

They do have a common ancestor, it's just not a marine mammal.

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

#168

Post by mouse_8b »

WalterBright wrote: post #5

I'm curious why humans evolved intelligence and chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans did not.

Why did birds evolve flight and people didn't?

The other apes are intelligent enough for their niche. At some point in humanity's past, the environment was harsh enough that the less intelligent ones died.

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

#169

Post by rirze »

andrewflnr wrote: post #52
AlotOfReading wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't know. All of the great apes are incredibly intelligent in comparison to most other animals. The basic roots of our intelligence are probably a common feature to the whole family, but there's no consensus on why it's so advanced in humans. Any paleoanthropologist can rattle off about half a dozen possible explanations, but we honestly don't have enough evidence to really distinguish if, when, and how these we…

I hadn't heard the term "spandrel" before, especially not in this context. Makes sense, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandrel_(biology)

I personally dislike the definitions here-- traits and genetic changes are, by default, unattributed to external pressures. They don't "arise" from the environment, rather the environment selects for traits through survival/reproduction, if applicable.

That means, if a trait is unaffected by the environment, then there's no attribution of why it developed; this is the default state.

I feel often in biology, there's a mindset of figuring out why features developed and that's great for pushing the field but it runs into a limit. Not every trait developed from a environmental pressure.

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

#170

Post by andrewflnr »

rirze wrote: post #169
andrewflnr wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hadn't heard the term "spandrel" before, especially not in this context. Makes sense, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandrel_(biology)

I personally dislike the definitions here-- traits and genetic changes are, by default, unattributed to external pressures. They don't "arise" from the environment, rather the environment selects for traits through survival/reproduction, if applicable. That means, if a trait is unaffected by the environment, then there's no attribution of why it developed; this is the default state. I feel often in biology, there's a…

Technically yes, kind of, but if a feature is truly unaffected by the environment, then there's no particular reason it would get fixed, and you have to make the rather shaky assumption that it became widespread purely by chance. Most features have some cost, and the simplest explanation for that feature being widespread is that it has some counteracting benefit that leads to it being selected for. That's a reasonable first hypothesis, to say the least, which means the "spandrel" hypothesis makes sense as the less common special case.
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