a9f3a050   
   From: {$to$}@meden.demon.co.uk   
      
   On 30/09/2025 05:49, 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,   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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