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Scientists find 7.2M-year-old pre-human remains in the Balkans

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Re: Scientists find 7.2M-year-old pre-human remains in the Balkans

#81

Post by LoSboccacc »

rosser wrote: post #20

TL;DR: They found some fossils in Greece and Bulgaria, the jaws and teeth of which suggest they belonged to an evolutionary ancestor of Homo sapiens sapiens , and which seem to be older than any other such fossil records. "If this status is confirmed by additional fossil evidence, Graecopithecus would be the oldest known hominin..." where hominin is defined in the paper to mean "humans and their non-ape ancestors". E…

it's weird to find just one fossil, with all the excavations going on and around in Europe.

Re: Scientists find 7.2M-year-old pre-human remains in the Balkans

#82

Post by chx »

gatlinnewhouse wrote: post #12

This is #1 on the front page right now. 41 people have voted for it. Please, someone explain this article; I like others have noted, have no idea what is going on and the title is a fairly large claim (at least from my understanding which is that of a high schooler's).

While there's little doubt of a "recent" spread of humanity out of Africa, 100 000 years ago or so and also development of earlier humans there. This is perhaps what you've learned. But this article talks about an earlier period of time, it discusses some fossils in Greece / Bulgaria that are some 7 million year old and are more human than ape. It's possible that the well known and documented development of humanity in Africa was preceded by a migration of these into Africa perhaps seeking warmer places during a cooler period millions of years ago. We simple do not know much about the transition from ape to human and this might be an important step. An emphasis on might. We know little.

Re: Scientists find 7.2M-year-old pre-human remains in the Balkans

#83

Post by mirimir »

landon32 wrote: post #42
rubyn00bie wrote: post #13

The title is misleading (as written on HN) because the meaning of "hominim" is more to do with what we, humans, and other hominim (like neanderthals etc) evolved from. See linked chart: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yEUEavwMSCE/ULtMp3e_cVI/AAAAAAAAAD... This isn't our specific species but rather whatever we and similar species evolved from. I'm absolutely no expert on the subject. I actually find the title offensive if I…

Adding on to this: The human ancestors before this single instance were all from Africa. This title picks one particular definition of human and uses that as the basis for its claim. The ancestors of this species were certainly from Africa, and many later human descendants were also from Africa. Africa has much stronger ties to Human kind's birth than Europe does. Also, it's very possible that this species died out a…

Maybe it's silly to say that either Africa or the Mediterranean (or wherever) is "the birthplace of mankind". That is, maybe there was considerable migration and interbreeding throughout the process. We know now that both Neanderthals and Denisovans contributed to the modern human genome. So why not more backcrossing, going back further?

Re: Scientists find 7.2M-year-old pre-human remains in the Balkans

#84

Post by metafunctor »

insulanian wrote: post #26
pjreddie wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They found two really old skeletons in Europe that are older than other skeletons. They are skeletons of a "modern"-ish human. They know because the teeth of the skeletons have a specific thing that the teeth of humans have but not the teeth of other primates. The older skeleton is 1 million years older than old skeletons found in Africa. So now the oldest skeletons that we know about come from Europe not Africa, rai…

> They know because the teeth of the skeletons have a specific thing that the teeth of humans have but not the teeth of other primates. What is the "specific thing"?

I don't care to explain like to a five year old, but the authors of the paper propose that only the modern human lineage have a total of four premolars in the lower jaw with a single root each. They claim these were never present in other hominid species.

Re: Scientists find 7.2M-year-old pre-human remains in the Balkans

#85

Post by nandemo »

davewasthere wrote: post #19
dgellow wrote: post #5

Could someone "explain like I'm five" the article?

We have chimps, and we have humans. But both of us share a common ancestor. At some point, we split into two different evolutionary lines. And it's _where_, geographically, we split that is under some investigation. Current school of thought, we think that man originated in Africa. But this recent finding (based off of a partial skull fragment) shows that non-chimp pre-humans existed in Europe, possibly hundreds of t…

How do they know it's an ancestor instead of just a node that has a common ancestor with Homo sapiens?

Re: Scientists find 7.2M-year-old pre-human remains in the Balkans

#86

Post by cm2187 »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #81
rosser wrote: post #20

TL;DR: They found some fossils in Greece and Bulgaria, the jaws and teeth of which suggest they belonged to an evolutionary ancestor of Homo sapiens sapiens , and which seem to be older than any other such fossil records. "If this status is confirmed by additional fossil evidence, Graecopithecus would be the oldest known hominin..." where hominin is defined in the paper to mean "humans and their non-ape ancestors". E…

it's weird to find just one fossil, with all the excavations going on and around in Europe.

You could argue the contrary. When some construction is going on in Europe, if something is found in the ground, there is a high chance it will result in a scientific excavation. When construction goes on in Africa (when it even does) I doubt the project will be interrupted often to call scientists. So there should be a selection bias toward developped countries in finding remains in the ground.

Re: Scientists find 7.2M-year-old pre-human remains in the Balkans

#87

Post by MisterBastahrd »

flukus wrote: post #71
rosser wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pointing out the uncontroversial fact that the average black man faces challenges which the average white man doesn't diminishes the white man's accomplishment's ... how , again?

Because it gets used to paint a picture where white people are only successful because they were somehow privileged, which isn't always true. It's really quite racist actually, you are using skin color as the defining characteristic when socioeconomic status is far more relevant.

Your entire line of reasoning is borderline moronic.

You don't like talking about white privilege because some white people feel like they don't get enough credit because they're white. Meanwhile people of color suffer from real racism, both colloquial and institutional. Sure, it's socioeconomic too, but that's because for many, they're 3 generations from having the right to representation and 5 from having any human rights at all. And states are STILL racially gerrymandering congressional districts to minimize minority impact while doing everything they can to reduce the number of minority voters at the polls, both through voter ID laws and closing voting locations to make it harder for minorities to get to the polls.

Every single black man who has "made it" in America still sits his child down before they get behind the wheel of his car to go over how they should deal with the traffic stop he is bound to get for being black. And I guarantee you when that kid goes into a convenience store, the clerk is watching him over the white kids in the store. Those same white kids never have to worry about getting told to go back where they came from, whether they're first generation or 10th.

No, it's not just socioeconomic.

Re: Scientists find 7.2M-year-old pre-human remains in the Balkans

#88

Post by ryanx435 »

tacomonstrous wrote: post #68
flukus wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it hinders a lot more because it pre-supposes that race is the root cause for a lot of social ills when it's really things like lack of access to education, which hurts poor white, black and end everything in between people. It also get's used to diminish the accomplishments of many white people that did not have privileged backgrounds.

I must have missed the part where the white man's ancestors were enslaved for generations, and then, even after being ostensibly freed, were segregated, oppressed and prevented from participating in the greatest economic boom the country has known by overtly racist policies that prevented them from accumulating generational wealth.

You should read up in the history of England and their oppression of the irish, scotts, and welsh. Also the history of the germanic states and their opression under the french. Oh, and the entire history of Poland and their oppression under everyone. Oh, and the entirety of Europe and their enslavement under first the Romans than later the vikings and eachother.

History didn't start with America and it won't end with it either.

Re: Scientists find 7.2M-year-old pre-human remains in the Balkans

#89

Post by bd3vani »

tacomonstrous wrote: post #44
ryanx435 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's push back against the toxic strands of SJW culture that have gone from "diversity is good" to "white culure is bad". It's a small but very vocal branch of SJWs against a small and very vocal branch of counter SJWs, but both sides of it are in a meme war (using the scientific definition of meme: a mechanism to transfer ideas and culture) and the effects of their culture clashes are large enough for you and I to n…

Is it really so toxic to point out that the average white male in American society enjoys certain privileges that are unavailable to the average member of any other class? Or that the average black male is subject to multiple dis advantages that members of other classes don't usually experience? Also, the use of the term SJW might appear 'edgy' but its overuse has turned it into a marker of nothing but intellectual v…

Amen.

Re: Scientists find 7.2M-year-old pre-human remains in the Balkans

#90

Post by pandaman »

tacomonstrous wrote: post #68
flukus wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it hinders a lot more because it pre-supposes that race is the root cause for a lot of social ills when it's really things like lack of access to education, which hurts poor white, black and end everything in between people. It also get's used to diminish the accomplishments of many white people that did not have privileged backgrounds.

I must have missed the part where the white man's ancestors were enslaved for generations, and then, even after being ostensibly freed, were segregated, oppressed and prevented from participating in the greatest economic boom the country has known by overtly racist policies that prevented them from accumulating generational wealth.

I am a white man (pale skin, gray eyes, brown hair, penis). My ancestors were Slavs. They had been enslaved for millennia. My particular Slavic ancestors, Russians, had been freed a year before the Emancipation Proclamation, in 1861. They still had been oppressed all the way to 1991 or thereabouts as far as generational wealth goes. Please tell me more about my privilege.
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