b311b18f   
   XPost: sci.bio.paleontology, sci.anthropology.paleo, sci.anthropology   
   From: x@x.org   
      
   On 9/29/25 21:53, David Dalton wrote:   
    > 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   
    >   
      
   Where does one species end and another one begin?  Where   
   does one genus end and another one begin?   
      
   Even though humans may not have regularly circumnavigated   
      
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