XPost: sci.bio.paleontology, sci.anthropology.paleo, sci.archaeology   
   XPost: sci.anthropology, alt.atheism   
   From: Dawn.Belle.Flood@gmail.com   
      
   On 9/30/2025 5:17 PM, erik simpson wrote:   
   > On 9/29/25 9:53 PM, 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   
   >>   
   > The very short answer is no, it doesn't "rewrite" human history, but it   
   > illuminates a critical period during which several genus homo people   
      
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