b311b18f   
   XPost: sci.bio.paleontology, sci.anthropology.paleo, sci.archaeology   
   XPost: sci.anthropology, alt.atheism   
   From: dalton@nfld.com   
      
   Here is a post by Julian on alt.buddha.short.fat.guy   
   of a text by Mike Pitts.   
   --------------------------------------   
   A new report from the field of human origins had sub-editors reaching   
   for their hyperboles. A million-year-old skull, we have learnt, has   
   rewritten humanity’s story. The finality of this is misleading, but   
   there is nonetheless something going on here.   
      
   For decades, Chinese archaeologists have been investigating a site known   
   as Yunxian, beside a tributary of the Yangtze river. The researchers   
   have been rewarded with human fossils – to date, three skulls around a   
   million years old. These bones have been preserved well but the skulls   
   have been crushed. As a result, comparing them with other fossils, and   
   therefore finding exactly which species they might represent, has been a   
   challenge.   
      
   The skulls are broken, but not distorted: most of the right bits are in   
   the right shape, just not in the right places. In a new study, published   
   in the journal Science, a dozen Chinese archaeologists and scientists   
   joined by Chris Stringer of London’s Natural History Museum, claim to   
   have overcome this difficulty using cutting edge digital imaging and   
   computer modelling to put them back together again. After doing so, they   
   have revealed that a nearly complete skull found in 1990 is something no   
   one had predicted: a creature that suggests our own family tree, made up   
   of Homo Sapiens, is twice as old as previously thought. What’s more,   
   this early ancestor of ours was walking around Asia, but apparently not   
   Africa. How did we get here? And what does it tell us about ourselves?   
      
   It has long been agreed that humanity’s deep origins lie in Africa. A   
   major genetic study released earlier this year found that humans and our   
   chimpanzee ancestors separated from each other a little over five or six   
   million years ago. What happened next on our side has become complex, if   
   not downright confusing. The number of apparent species, and which parts   
   of Africa, Europe or Asia they occupied and when, has come under   
   constant scrutiny.   
      
   The first close human lookalike appeared in Africa around two million   
   years ago in the form of Homo erectus. Humans soon spread into – or   
   appeared as related species in – parts of Europe and much of Asia.   
   Making sense of the rare and fragmentary fossil evidence has been helped   
   by genetic studies, which have confirmed the later and simultaneous   
   presence of three species across Eurasia by around half a million years   
   ago: Neanderthals – Homo neanderthalensis – in the west, Denisovans in   
   the east, and the more widespread Homo sapiens occasionally breeding   
   with the others. Ancient DNA and proteins recently identified a Chinese   
   skull known as Dragon man as the first known Denisovan face, and   
   Denisovans have been described, somewhat controversially, as a species   
   known as Homo longi.   
      
   The new study extends this picture with further complexities and a   
   longer history. The Yunxian skull, say the scientists, has a mix of   
   ancient and newly acquired features. Parts recall erectus fossils, while   
   its brain is larger, and the cranium’s face and lower back instead   
   compare favourably to Dragon man – or even, says Stringer, Homo sapiens.   
   The skull’s age, however, independently shown by geology and the   
   particular ecosystem of mammals in the site’s well-preserved remains,   
   suggests it comes from the erectus era.   
      
   The team resolves these apparent contradictions by rethinking the   
   historic human landscape. In this new view, ancestral Neanderthals,   
   Denisovans and sapiens separated a little over a million years ago,   
   rather than around 500,000 years ago.The theory posits that   
   Neanderthals, Denisovans and sapiens were alive at the same time as Homo   
   heidelbergensis (traditionally thought of as the common ancestor of   
   Neanderthals and sapiens) and later Asian Homo erectus. In other words,   
   for hundreds of thousands of years our planet hosted five highly   
   intelligent, large-brained types of human. In the long run, only one   
   survived: us.   
      
   What does this mean for other human fossils we have found? Homo   
   antecessor, for example, a species identified from remains in a Spanish   
   cave at Atapuerca, has been proposed as an ancestor to heidelbergensis;   
   this would put it at the root of the group that includes us and   
   Neanderthals. That has always been controversial (it’s the excavators’   
   idea), and in the new analysis, the antecessor species is said to belong   
   to the Denisovan group – and so, ultimately, doomed to extinction.   
   Genetic studies have suggested different relationships, separating   
   Dragon man from its African ancestors a relatively recent 700,000 years ago.   
      
   And then there are the fossils we don’t have. If Neanderthals,   
   Denisovans and sapiens evolved away from each other a million years ago,   
   there must have been earlier human forms not yet seen. The placing of   
   their common ancestor among the intertwined branches of early human   
   trees is unknown. It all opens up a quest for previously unsuspected   
   types of fossils.   
      
   It’s the bigger picture here which is particularly exciting. Only   
   archaeology can help us understand the nature of all these creatures:   
   how they behaved and thought. Thirty years ago, archaeologists talked of   
   a revolution marked by the sudden appearance of sophisticated art in   
   Europe – indication, it was said, of the arrival of the modern human   
   mind a mere 30 or 40,000 years ago. Evidence from the ground has since   
   shown such developments also occurred far beyond Europe, and over a   
   longer time span.   
      
   If early Homo sapiens evolved a million years ago, as this study   
   suggets, when did individuals start to make art? At what point did they   
   become ‘modern’ – and why? Could this have happened first in Asia,   
   rather than Europe or Africa, and again, if so, why? Sooner or later   
   we’ll get to answer such questions. Doing so will take us into a new,   
   deeper understanding of who we really are.   
      
   Mike Pitts   
      
   --   
   https://www.nfld.com/~dalton/dtales.html Salmon on the Thorns (mystic page)   
   “And now the angry morning/Gives the early signs of warning/You must   
   face alone the plans you make/Decisions they will try to break" (S.McL.)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)