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New type of ancient human discovered in Israel

bbc.com

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Re: New type of ancient human discovered in Israel

#61

Post by nir »

stormdennis wrote: post #60
nir wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess having lived all my life in the Middle East means I'm "indoctrinated" and thus unable to understand the situation here as well as someone who lives in, say, Iowa and read a few posts on Reddit. But Wikipedia is open to us all: Previous to the Arab armies invasion of Israel, it was a civil war between Jews and Arabs, with no clear. Jews lost %1 of their entire population in the 1948 war. Ultimately, the area t…

Jewish communities lived in what are now Arab countries for thousands of years. The fact that they either left or were forced out only after the zionist settler-colonisation of Palestine commenced does not seem to be related in your mind?

So let's say you're right and Zionists are all colonizers (of which nation?), does it justify deporting Jews who as you say lived in these parts of the Mideast for thousands of years?

Re: New type of ancient human discovered in Israel

#62

Post by JoeAltmaier »

throwawaygal7 wrote: post #36
torginus wrote: post #17

I've read that there are "genetic bottlenecks" in human DNA that imply that one point in time, the population of homo sapiens consisted of only a couple thousand individuals. It stands to reason that there are tons of human subspecies that didn't make it.

The numbers I've seen are something like as low as a few thousand for European population, but more like 5k for African populations Of course, these are model populations based on idealized breeding right- I believe the way these estimates work is that they represent the idealized minimum bound for a real population that was likely magnitudes greater but had lots of deaths. And as others have pointed out I believe th…

Then there is "Mitochondrial Eve", a single individual from whom entire sections of humanity descend!

Re: New type of ancient human discovered in Israel

#63

Post by oldandboring »

nir wrote: post #61
stormdennis wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jewish communities lived in what are now Arab countries for thousands of years. The fact that they either left or were forced out only after the zionist settler-colonisation of Palestine commenced does not seem to be related in your mind?

So let's say you're right and Zionists are all colonizers (of which nation?), does it justify deporting Jews who as you say lived in these parts of the Mideast for thousands of years?

The answer, of course, is yes because the world has always applied different rules to Jews. Antisemitism is pervasive, structural, global, and insidious. Notice, the people you're arguing with here keep saying "Zionist" instead of "Jewish" because they don't want to perceive themselves (or be perceived) as racist, even as they say racist things.

Re: New type of ancient human discovered in Israel

#64

Post by stormdennis »

nir wrote: post #61
stormdennis wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jewish communities lived in what are now Arab countries for thousands of years. The fact that they either left or were forced out only after the zionist settler-colonisation of Palestine commenced does not seem to be related in your mind?

So let's say you're right and Zionists are all colonizers (of which nation?), does it justify deporting Jews who as you say lived in these parts of the Mideast for thousands of years?

No of course not. Do you agree that the Palestinians who were expelled from what is now Israel should have a right to return?

Re: New type of ancient human discovered in Israel

#65

Post by rsj_hn »

InfiniteRand wrote: post #57
eloff wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the same logic applies. Instead of innocent until proven guilty it's "not a new species" until there's sufficient evidence to establish that. I'm dubious that they have that evidence, especially given their further unsubstantiated claims that they're ancestors of the neanderthals. The linked article discussed 0 evidence for why it's a new species. Presumably there's a published paper that goes into details.

It's a new discovery in science, which means it will be about 10 years before we know if it's 90% correct or not. Probably need to wait a year to rule out simple measurement errors. To some degree if a scientific discovery is news, it isn't firmly established, because if the entire field hasn't heard about it, it hasn't been properly vetted.

Indeed, the worst place to learn about scientific breakthroughs is in the news media, as there is an inherent interest to emphasize the newsworthiness of the result rather than letting the scientific community digest, reproduce, and integrate the finding into the overall state of the art, which is a slow process that doesn't show up in headlines.

Re: New type of ancient human discovered in Israel

#66

Post by HelloNurse »

kingsuper20 wrote: post #50
someperson wrote: post #5

We'll see if the inflation in ancient human species stands up to scrutiny. Here's a great TED Talk about dinosaur species being mistakenly identified because 'scientists have egos': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQa11RMCeSI&t=102s (well worth a watch, it's a great story)

> We'll see if the inflation in ancient human species stands up to scrutiny. Not in that business, but could it be simply that a new way of measuring taxonomy is needed? From the outside, it appears that the whole business inherits from a Victorian need for orderly tree structures.

While not a tree, there is an indisputable orderly structure: the directed acyclic graph of individuals descending from other individuals.

Then we can collapse nodes to obtain species that evolved from one another or more realistic arrangements, respecting some constraints (for example, if A is an ancestor of B and B is an ancestor of C, putting A and C in the same species should imply that B belongs to that species too).

Re: New type of ancient human discovered in Israel

#67

Post by rsj_hn »

stormdennis wrote: post #29
gelert wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reply is meant to be a critique of the above comment. They assumed that the first commentator was American, so said that given America entirely consists of land inhabited by displaced peoples (American Indians) that it's hypocritical to criticise Israel, which partially consists of that kind of land, for the same injustice.

To be accurate, Israel also entirely consists of that kind of land.

Every nation is inhabited by people who displaced someone else, who in turn displaced someone else, who in turn displaced someone else, etc.

Re: New type of ancient human discovered in Israel

#68

Post by SonicScrub »

koheripbal wrote: post #34
torginus wrote: post #17

I've read that there are "genetic bottlenecks" in human DNA that imply that one point in time, the population of homo sapiens consisted of only a couple thousand individuals. It stands to reason that there are tons of human subspecies that didn't make it.

This isn't accurate.

Wiki article on the Toba Catastrophe theory.

Sparks Notes:

  - It is thought that the Toba Super-Volcano eruption is linked to a severe drop in human populations due to it's influence on global climate

  - Some genetic evidence supports today's humans are descended from a very small population of between 1,000 and 10,000 breeding pairs that existed about 70,000 years ago

  - This hypothesis isn't yet solid, and there is some evidence to the contrary. Nevertheless it's discussion is an important topic in the history of mankind.
Now I understand your comment might be referring to that third point. If so, it would be excellent if your comment made some sort of reference to your reasoning. Simply saying "this isn't accurate" aren't the kinds of comments that make Hacker News the site it is. Instead let's make comments that further discussion and increase learning of the topics at hand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory#:~:tex....

Re: New type of ancient human discovered in Israel

#69

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

dsr_ wrote: post #48
Arnt wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a criminal trial, with failsafe rules about doubt. There are very few generic outliers. They do exist, but at the same time, the chance that the next person you meet will be 2.40m tall is insignificant. The argument is stronger for the past, because generic outliers tend to have worse health than the average and have worse chances of reaching adulthood, so if you find a part of the skeleton of a single adu…

Humans being less than 1.2m tall is extremely common, and I will bet there was a significant period of your own life in which that criterion applied to you. (edit: and you should not be surprised at the number of "new species" which are just juveniles of a known species.)

>> Humans being less than 1.2m tall is extremely common, and I will bet there was a significant period of your own life in which that criterion applied to you.

And how where their teeth at the time?

Re: New type of ancient human discovered in Israel

#70

Post by rpmisms »

stormdennis wrote: post #49
nir wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize discussing politics here is pointless, but this is just so comically ignorant I have to reply. 1. Israel won its independence after barely managing to fend off the joint armies of seven Arab nations who invaded the Jewish area following UN partition decision, openly declaring they intend to wipe all Jewish presence. Almost all nations, US included, predicted Arabs will succeed and decided to sit it out. Com…

Unfortunately, as an Israeli, you were indoctrinated in both school and most likely, the IDF. The ethnic of cleansing of the Palestinians was already 50%. completed by the time any outside Arab forces arrived on the scene. The seven armies you speak of never numbered as many as the zionists/Israelis were able to put in the field. The only one that the zionists (who were British trained via the armed police forces) ha…

This feels like mansplaining. I'm not sure what the correct term is, but watching a Brit tell an Israeli that they don't know their own country's history is surreal.
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