Oldest Modern Humans Found 861
DrLudicrous writes "Anthropologists have reconstructed and dated three skulls from Ethiopia that they believe to be the oldest anatomically modern human skulls in existance. They date to 160,000 years ago, in agreement with genetic studies that pin the arrival of modern humans to at least 150,000 years ago. The skulls also demonstrate evidence of ritual burial." UC Berkeley has the original release as well.
Call the editor! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Call the editor! (Score:2)
Re:Call the editor! (Score:2)
I assume you don't even have time to go to a job then, what with all the woman wooing you do.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:God part of the brain (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:God part of the brain (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Call the editor! (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, and btw, the dead sea scrolls arnt written in english....
-Bill
Re:Call the editor! (Score:3, Interesting)
The only really popular Bible translation out there that is radically different in content from the rest is the New World Translation by the Jehovah's Witnesses.
And so what if the Dead Sea Scrolls are in Hebrew and Aramaic? You can certanly translate them!
Translating the bible (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes and no... there are some ambiguities about translation of the bible. Some words only appear a few times, or even once, making their meaning impossible to know for sure. The meanings of words also change over time, so a word that meant something when the bible was translated into greek, say, might have been given a different meaning than when it was first written down.
This is not to say that translation is impossible or a useless effort. It's just to say that the exact meaning of a given word is often ambigous. Often, these (in my view, somewhat silly) arguments about what the bible says center around individual words.
For example, does "four corners" mean four geometric corners? Does it mean "prominent places", or was it a colloquial expression?
(My favorite one is when the Israelites were building the Tabernacle in the desert, and they used "Dolphin Skins". Where did they get Dolphin skins from? It's a funny little thing, and you wonder if the text is really refering to the skins of animals we call dolphins, or something else. But dolphin skins? From Egypt?)
The whole topic of translating ancient texts (not just the bible) is a facinating one. If you're interested in an alternate english translation of the bible, the Jewish Publication society put one out under the name "Tanakh" (the Jewish word for the bible). Every page there are footnotes with the comment "meaning of original hebrew uncertain" , or providing an alternate translation.
DISCLAIMER - I am not a linguist or biblical scholar. (IANALOBS)
Re:Call the editor! (Score:3, Insightful)
The bible has most certainly changed over the last few thousand years, especially in the first few centuries after Jesus' supposed crucifixion. The Dead Sea Scrolls pose some interesting contradictions to the bible, as well-- many pertaining to the Nephilim described in the old testament. Over the years those who had the power (kings and churches) sought to enhance and secure their position by keeping the people dumb and manipulating them by altering passages from the bible i
Re:Self contradictory (Score:3, Informative)
You can most vividly see the changes and omissions made by comparing several translations of the bible. Some will have extra verses and some verses will be missing. Some are obvious and reasonable, others are disputable. But certainly there have been made other changes over the course of history, for which you will have to do some deeper research. If you'd like, I can dig it up.
And don't get me started on the inconsistencies that are evident in the bible, neither. They are numerous as are t
Re:Self contradictory (Score:4, Insightful)
Or is this more of the overly simplistic logic that starts by assuming the Bible is false and then proceeds to construct some alternative scenario?
How do we know anything is true, we must and do on a daily basis make assumptions about the world around us from what we observe. I see a table, i walk up to it, touch it, i know it's a table. We use simple logic to assume things are right or wrong, true or false. If i am told something is true i do not believe it unless i can verify it for myself.
As such, i believe there is a book called the bible with many secular variations. Having read some of it, I know it contains some fascinating insights into human nature and accounts of historic events. But my wider knowledge allows me to put it in picture with the history of the roman occupation of the area, simultaneous Chinese philosophy, Mayan empires, etc. And my knowledge of human nature, culture, behaviour; to come to the simple logical conclusion that it is most likely that Jesus existed and was immensely insightful into human nature and further evolved a system of living by which humanity and all it's individuals could prosper. However i see no good evidence for divine intervention.
What your parents tell you to believe in ... isn't always right
Re: Self contradictory (Score:3, Insightful)
> If they "don't even know anymore what parts were actually in the original scripture" they how do they know they have changed?
History [wikipedia.org].
> Do you have any proof of your assertion that people changed the Scriptures to fit their needs, and those changes have not been caught and reversed?
How about the fact that even today not all sects agree on the same canon, let alone on the translation and interpretation of its contents?
Re: Self contradictory (Score:3, Insightful)
> We seem to be referring to do different things.
Yes, to a big extent we are talking past each other.
> There's no question that the arrangement of the Bible has changed. It's well documented and most certainly admitted by any reputable biblical scholar. In fact, anyone suggesting otherwise is flat wrong, without question, and should be removed from your list of critical thinkers.
> However, the contents of the scripture, the individual lines of scripture and the message that the scripture conv
Re: Call the editor! (Score:5, Insightful)
> Sixth, the idea that the rulers wanted to "keep the people dumb" is just propaganda.
When you have a bit of idle time, visit the talk.origins newsgroup and ask about the role of religion in the Neocon "wedge document". As one guy puts it in his
IIRC their philosophy goes at least back to Plato, who (IIRC) suggested a model state where the "guardians" knew religion was a hoax, but espoused it anyway in order to control the masses.
Notice in passing how convenient it is for a government to send soldiers to their deaths and then assure the public that they have a secure spot in Heaven (as if the politicians would know!), or to shrug off "collateral damage" when everyone 'knows' that God won't let the innocent suffer in the afterlife.
Re: Call the editor! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Call the editor! (Score:3, Interesting)
> The fact is that people in the Middle Ages believed in Christianity. Thousands of people devoted their lives to it, including rulers, which according to your theory should have known better.
Yes, just as these [google.com] and these [google.com] should have known better.
You can't justify religion by appeals to human rationality
Re: Call the editor! (Score:3, Insightful)
> It is true that religion can be used to manipulate masses of people - however this speaks nothing as to whether any particular religion is "true" or not.
I don't offer it as an argument about religious truth. As I understand this thread, someone claimed that the Bible had been manipulated in order to manipulate people, someone else replied that such a claim was preposterous on the face of it, and I tried to show that such a claim was not preposterous.
What I find preposterous and somewhat irksome is
Re:Call the editor! (Score:3, Informative)
Re: Call the editor! (Score:5, Insightful)
> Don't you mean revise science, the Bible hasnt changed in thousands of years (note the dead sea scrolls which are the same as the current versions of the Bible). It is science that changes its mind everytime something new is discovered, cant they stick with one story.
And there's the difference between science in religion. Religion wants to preserve a tradition, so its adherents stick to their story regardless of what the evidence says. Science wants to understand the universe, so it goes whereever the evidence demands.
Of course... it only takes a casual familiarity with history to see that religion slowly changes its views over the generations as well, however much the practitioners want to pretend otherwise.
Re: Call the editor! (Score:5, Insightful)
> > And there's the difference between science in religion. Religion wants to preserve a tradition, so its adherents stick to their story regardless of what the evidence says. Science wants to understand the universe, so it goes whereever the evidence demands.
> While it's true that religions tend to stick to their stories regardless of the evidence, the same tendency has been observed among scientists as well. If you had asked Einstein about non-local effects in quantum physics, I imagine you'd have gotten the same kind of response you'd get by asking Jerry Falwell about evolution.
Yes, science is practiced by humans and therefore all the usual human follies can be observed among scientists.
However, scientists are well aware of that fact, so science as a "field" or "institution" is based on the notion of sanity checks and second opinions. The bad stuff like Piltdown Man and Cold Nuclear Fusion eventually get weeded out, because although they appeal strongly to individual's follies they can't stand up to the checks.
I.e., ultimately Einstein's personal opinion doesn't matter.
Re:Call the editor! (Score:5, Informative)
When the Bible is shown to be wrong, people hold to it doggedly, making excuse after excuse until they're left in exile on the lunatic fringe defending the utterly laughable (Fundamentalists), or they must dilute the "facts" in the Bible so much that what they're left with is practically useless as a religious text describing an almighty Creator(Catholics).
For those who take the Bible literally, believing that all words of the Bible are true and perfect:
- No, a rabbit does not chew its cud.
- Jesus lies quite egregiously to try to save his own skin in the Bible when questioned by the Pharisies.
- The Earth is not flat with four corners.
- No evidence exists for a worldwide flood between 4,000 and 6,000 years ago, and even less evidence exists that we and all land/air animals came from creatures that rode an ark during that time.
- The Egyptians, who were meticulous record keepers, made no mention of massive Jewish slave use that was ripped away from them by the coming of Moses. Further, if the Nile had been turned to blood, it would have caused untold destruction upon the entire region that depended upon it for their very survival. We would have learned about it by now, most likely.
- Jesus describes his "kingdom" in some detail then goes on to say how not even all of his Apostles would be dead by the time he returned to his glory for all to see... I think it's safe to say that prophecy was full of crap.
- Christians are completely unable to do any of the things that Jesus claimed they could with even a little faith: They can't move mountains, they can't whither trees or tell them to jump into the ocean (well, they can, but nothing happens), they can't walk on water, they can't provably cure the sick, they can't do shit. Furthermore, all followers of Christ are supposed to be able to prove the divinity of their cause. Jesus said they would prove it by drinking deadly poison, handling deadly snakes, and speaking in tongues (in a way such that all people of all languages can understand what they say).
- To believe that Jonah spent days inside a whale is an utter joke. Do you believe all of the ridiculous claims made by Islam and Hindu texts? Hmm, I wonder why not? Can we say special pleading?
- Hey, from your perfect Bible, name me the exact ten commandments.
Face facts. The Bible is so obviously wrong, you'd have to be heavily deluded or bribed to believe otherwise. I guess the elusive promise of everlasting life is quite a bribe. I'd go for it too, but my sense of intellectual honesty just can't stomach all of the bullshit.Just because Christians are so simple as to believe in an obviously wrong religious text doesn't mean that Science is inferior when it admits its mistakes and moves on.
Re:Call the editor! (Score:3, Informative)
Which is why it took over fifty years to recognize Piltdown was a fraud? Or why an extinct pig's tooth was ballooned into an entire human population before exposed as wrong? Or why DuBois hid the skulls that exposed his "Java man" to be bogus for decades beneath the floorboards in his house? Science is no more honorable than the individuals in it, and there are shysters and huckst
Arguments creationists should not use (Score:4, Informative)
But specifically, in reference to your listing of Piltdown, Nebraska man, and Java man, read the extensive talk.origins FAQs [talkorigins.org] on these very items: (emphasis added by me)
Nor is it true, as is often claimed, that Dubois kept the existence of the Wadjak skulls secret because knowledge of them would have discredited Java Man. Dubois briefly reported the Wadjak skulls in three separate publications in 1890 and 1892. Despite being corrected on this in a debate in 1982 and in print (Brace 1986), Gish has continued to make this claim, even stating, despite not having apparently read Dubois' reports, that they did not mention the Wadjak skulls (Fezer 1993)."
In the 90 years since then have we developed better and more rigorous testing methods? Yes. But even during those 40 years it took for the full hoax to be revealed, faults with Piltdown were found, long before testing showed that they were recent skulls: "...It should be remembered that, at the time of Piltdown finds, there were very few early hominid fossils; Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens were clearly fairly late. It was expected that there was a "missing link" between ape and man ... Piltdown man had the expected mix of features, which lent it plausibility as a human precursor.
This plausibility did not hold up. During the next two decades there were a number of finds of ancient hominids and near hominids, e.g. Dart's discovery of Australopith
Using the exact same post twice in a week. (Score:3, Informative)
What's going on?! I used the exact same message (below) already once this week for the exact same argument. Fortunately somebody else already took care of the rest of your message so I don't have to.
One nit to pick. Going back to the original "Research News" article in Science (vol 279 issue 5347 pg 28-29), we see that instead of this being evidence f
Re:Call the editor! (Score:3)
Re:Call the editor! (Score:3, Insightful)
No, you don't. But, you do need to understand it in order to realize that the nut cases who commited that act of terror were about as "mainstream" as the Christian nut cases who blow up abortion clinics.
GHAGLUAGNALGUHG (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps you haven't investigated this too deeply. I would suggest taking a look at this enumeration [skepticsan...dbible.com] of "apparent" contradictions.
I am not attempting to discredit the Bible or the religion it supports. I am simply pointing out there's a lot to analyse and contemplate on this particular subject.
Go read for yourself.
Re: Call the editor! (Score:5, Informative)
> I would like to see some credible evidence before I'll believe that contradictions exist in the Bible. I would agree that apparent contradictions exist, but I haven't seen a legitimate one yet in any accurate translation
That's because the interpretation is underconstrained. Theologians can cough up any "explanation" at all, so long as they preserve the claim that the Bible is true.
For example, the New Testament variously reports that Judas hanged himself or that he threw himself down a stairway and burst open. In Sunday School I was taught that he hung himself at the top of a stairway, the rope broken, and he tumbled down the stairway.
Fairy tales and the fairy-tale logic used to explain away the obvious contradictions in them simply aren't falsifiable. You could give Homer or Raiders of the Lost Ark the same treatment.
Meanwhile, if you try to evaluate the Bible objectively by comparing it to what we know from history, archaeology, geology, etc., it is found often to be very, very wrong. Once you grok that fact you suddenly lose interest in adding extra-biblical epicycles to reconcile the contradictions, because you see the book for what it is: a centuries-long accumulation and repeated re-editing of traditional stories, all done at the hands of superstitious and falible men.
Though there's still some wisdom mixed in with the fiction and nonsense, for those who care to look for it.
Re: Call the editor! (Score:4, Insightful)
> I don't know what Bible you are reading, but mine says nothing about any staircase or rope breaking.
Whoops - spank me for the staircase; that's what I get for relying on memory rather than looking it up. But if you delete the staircase and procede from there, my post should still make sense.
And yes, the broken rope is an extra-biblical fiction. That was part of my point. (I suspect the staircase was also an extra-biblical fiction that I was taught as a child, with some Sunday School teacher thinking he needed somewhere to "fall headlong".)
> As for the Bible contradicting archeology, this is simply not true. For example, just recently, the a city was unearthed that fits perfectly with the Bible's description of Jericho, and even the walls were still intact, with one section of them broken down. What they found in the structures fit with the Jews taking over the city.
Ah, Jericho has long been excavated; even as a child I was fed nonsense about the archaeologists finding that "the walls had fallen outward, rather than inward as would have happened in an ordinary seige".
And BTW, the oldest walls a Jericho are older than the universe, at least according to the dates derived from the Bible.
But more to the point, finding archaeological sites that correspond to Bible stories does nothing to validate the bigger claims of the Bible. I mentioned elsewhere in this thread earlier that The Illiad guided an archaeologist to historical Troy, but no one concludes from that fact that The Illiad is a true story.
> The scientific community is just as guilty of trying to disprove the Bible as the so-called "Christian scientists"
There may be some scientists pursuing such a grudge, but by and large that's not what's going on at all. Scientists (by and large) are just trying to find out about the universe. That endeavor fell afoul of the Bible over two centuries ago, even though the scientists of the day were (by and large) religious men.
The Bible no longer falls within the goals of science in general, although recent political pushes to have it substituted for a real science curriculum are causing more and more scientists to speak out on that topic.
"Christian scientists", OTOH, correctly understand that over the last couple of centuries the facts have refuted their religious beliefs over and over again, so they busy themselves with discrediting mainstream science, or at least forcing open a small gap that they can hide their God in, because they perceive that their religion would be falsified otherwise. (Notice that most Christians outside Fundamentalist sects simply take the findings of science in stride. It's only those who take biblical literalism as an article of faith who have problems with science.)
> There will always be people who believe in God because when you see REAL miracles in response to prayer, speculation over a skull in Africa seems irrelevant.
"REAL miricales in response to prayer" suffer the same problem that unconstrained biblical interpretations do. People pray for rain and they get it, so they credit God with it; other people pray for rain and don't, and they conclude that God is trying to teach them patience. I.e., people think they get "REAL miricales in response to prayer" whether anything actually happens or not. Substitute peace, health, etc. for rain, and the same observation still holds.
Re:Call the editor! (Score:3, Informative)
Your page amounts to a huge number of attempts at apologia for some pretty glaring "contradictions." It doesn't do much of a job with the first item on its list: the different order of the creation accounts in Genesis 1 and 2. I've seen better tries at that one -- involving the tenses of the verbs, for example.
I guess it's pretty obvious you're reading it all in the original Hebrew and Greek, though, be
What? Hasn't anyone bothered to examine (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What? Hasn't anyone bothered to examine (Score:3, Funny)
Hominids (Score:5, Informative)
Not that hominids, though, arrived considerably earlier than this... what's the latest figure? somewhere in the 4 million range? Some of them wren't exactly dumb either; neanderthals, in fact, are supposed to have had more brain mass than humans did/do.
Re:Hominids (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hominids (Score:5, Informative)
The extent to which Neanderthals could speak was determined by their anatomy. The larynx was located high in the vocal tract and the oral cavity was significantly longer than in H. sapiens. This differently arranged vocal tract could not form the 'i', as in tea; 'u', as in too; and 'a', as in tall. Nor could it pronounce 'k' as in kite and 'g' as in god.
However, as Steven Pinker put it: "In any case, e lengeege weth e smell nember ef vewels cen remeen quete expresseve, so we cannot conclude that a [hominin] with a restricted vowel space had little language."
Re: Hominids (Score:4, Informative)
> The extent to which Neanderthals could speak was determined by their anatomy. The larynx was located high in the vocal tract and the oral cavity was significantly longer than in H. sapiens. This differently arranged vocal tract could not form the 'i', as in tea; 'u', as in too; and 'a', as in tall. Nor could it pronounce 'k' as in kite and 'g' as in god.
> However, as Steven Pinker put it: "In any case, e lengeege weth e smell nember ef vewels cen remeen quete expresseve, so we cannot conclude that a [hominin] with a restricted vowel space had little language."
Notice that the modern Tashlhiyt Berber [google.com] language is so stingy with vowels that stop consonants can serve as the nucleus of its syllables. There simply isn't any theory that tells us a minimum number of phonemes required for oral communication. Moreover, some linguists think sign language may have preceded oral language anyway.
There have been way too many dogmatic claims of an absence of language in early hominids without any good supporting evidence. The very rudimentary linguistic skills of chimps and even gorillas suggests that linguistic ability has deep evolutionary roots.
Re:Hominids (Score:2)
Re:Hominids (Score:5, Informative)
"While the largest Homo erectus brains were about 1250 ml (2 imperial pints) and modern brains average about 1200 - 1500 ml in volume, female Neanderthal brains were about 1300 ml and those of males about 1600 ml, extending to 1740 ml in the Amud man." --Stringer, Christopher & Gamble, Clive. In Search of the Neanderthals. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1993. link [hypertextbook.com]
"The Neanderthals were fully bipedal and had a slightly larger average brain capacity than that of a typical modern human (though the brain structure was organised somewhat differently)." --link [wikipedia.org]
A good discussion and some comparisons here: link [icr.org]
Of course by the time I've read it all and wrote this, someone might have posted some relevant information already. Just though I'd share anyway.
Does that mean... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hominids (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, they can never be sure. After all, sexual dimorphism almost always leads to larger males, and all the femur, hip-bones and other skeletal remains with good sexual indicators have been accompanied by skull casings which are consistent with larger brains.
It's quite possible that men had birthing hips and would bear children. Of course they would need vaginas and breasts, and women would need penises, but that doesn't make the men less manly or the women less womanly.
The bottom line is that the sku
Re:Hominids (Score:5, Funny)
they're quite intelligent (already) (Score:5, Interesting)
are we going to discover even earlier "modern" human remains in order to find out how we really came from??
Oh if you only knew the real 'truth'.... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Oh if you only knew the real 'truth'.... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:they're quite intelligent (already) (Score:2)
Being small, skinny and sickly can be useful trait. It gives you opportunity to draw pictures of men hunting hippos and men-hunting hippos for your children.
Brain Food? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Herto skulls were not found with other bones from the rest of the bodies, which is unusual, White said, leading the researchers to infer that the people "were moving the heads around on the landscape. They probably cut the muscles and broke the skull bases of some skulls to extract the brain, but why, whether as part of a cannibalistic ritual, we have no way of knowing."
I was rather surprised by the possibility of ritualistic brain-eating amongst the earliest ancestors of our species. Maybe they were extracting the brains not for appetizers, but for the same reasons Egyptians removed the brains prior to mummification: so that dead would not be encumbered by the useless grey gunk inside their head on the journey to the afterlife.
Re:Brain Food? (Score:5, Informative)
Not necessarly strange; it has been common in human cultures to associate eating something with assimilating the attributes of the eaten, or desirables attributes associated to the eaten. Examples of this are present in basically all cultures, modern day included-- look into why tigers are hunted to extinction in asia or why eating oysters is still associated with erotism and sexual potency.
It's not much of a stretch to guess that a culture that has figured out that the head/brain is the where intelligence/personality/memory lives (if only by looking at the effect of a bad bonk on the head) might want to preserve/steal the attributes of the recently dead.
The point of the research team is just that they have no way of knowing-- wether the brain was eaten or just discarded as a side effect of the ritual is undeterminable. The only thing they do know is how they did it, not why.
-- MG
Re:Brain Food? (Score:3, Funny)
This meme still exists in our culture today, albeit in a sanitised form - just look at NetHack.
Re:Brain Food? (Score:2)
Re:Brain Food? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Brain Food? (Score:2)
We have evidence that H. neanderthalensis buried their dead ritualistically from a few sites. At one location they found the burial hole contained pollen grains suggesting flowers were laid out under the body. If this was done for the smell, why would they have buried the body in the back of the same cave in which they lived?
Re:Brain Food? (Score:2)
Re:Brain Food? (Score:3, Insightful)
When a child is born with a deformed head, it will most likely exhibit less intelligence.
When a man is hit in the head, he may become disoriented.
Extreme head injury can lead to long-term brain damage.
You don't think we just sat around and banged rocks together all day, do you?
Anyway, humans could not help but have a basic understanding of how a system like the digestive tract works. They slaughtered animals to live, they must have observed the system as a whole and in parts.
Th
Modern humans resemble gorillas... (Score:2, Funny)
Evidence of evolution is also seen in the computing industry. 30 years ago, smart humans sat in front of dumb terminals. These days dumb bimbos operate smart PCs.
At Slashdot, a few ninja monkeys....
as a christian (Score:3, Funny)
you know
"black"
Euthenasia ... Now! (Score:2)
Come on Grandpa, you've been living off the state long enough now
What I don't understand (Score:5, Interesting)
Yet Civilization only 'started 6-10,000 years ago.
Why does this just not quite add up to me. I mean, our ancestors were not stupid, they posessed the same intuition and logic that we do today. Whay did it take so long to get where we are now though?
Just food for thought.
Re:What I don't understand (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What I don't understand (Score:2)
Lots of nonexistant ruins made of materials assumed to be completely unavailable, for the most part. After that, bodies wearing clothing consisting of materials assumed to be unknown at the time. After that, vehicles far too complex for the period. After that, mysterious geographical anomalies revealed by satellite, on a global scale...I doubt there's any mystery or conspiracy here. Just a whole lot of nothing at all.
Re:What I don't understand (Score:5, Informative)
I believe it had to do with climate. Prior to say 8,000BCE, it was too cold (ice age ending). They couldn't grow crops and survived through hunting/gathering. This environment could not support more advanced civilizations. Small groups of people could follow herds around for food, but a big city couldn't sustain itself.
Re:What I don't understand (Score:3, Insightful)
Hell, most of North America was populated with hunter/gatherers until E
Re:What I don't understand (Score:5, Informative)
Thats not true. Specific cases in North America include the Mississippians, the Anasazi and the Calusa. These were sophisticated societies. They had relatively complex economies, large cities consisting of thousands of people, organized religion, art and centralized government. What is true, is that we know very little else about these societies, as the Europeans brought diseases which essentially wiped out these people.
Re: What I don't understand (Score:4, Insightful)
In the classical "Cradle of Civilization", the Tigris-Euphrates valley, there were few animals to eat, and plants didn't grow regularly. So, the people needed to learn how to make the plants grow regularly. Irrigation developed. Wait, we grew too much, we need something to store all this food in! I found this clay over here, let's make some pottery.
Many native american tribes didn't go any higher than stone age in some technologies, because they didn't need to.
Re:What I don't understand (Score:4, Interesting)
(Dates are fairly approximate)
~2 m.y.a. - development of elite throwing: We could throw accurately, and fast enough to kill. This is precisely when the first Homo evolved.
~50,000 yrs ago - the Atlatl: a spear-like device enabled us to kill at farther distances. Behaviorally modern revolution occurred soon after.
~10,000 yrs ago - the bow: a long distance precision weapon (relative to what was before). The agricultural revolution occurred soon after. This might be what you're referring to as "civilization" in your post.
~5,500 yrs ago - Body armor & "Shock weapons" such as swords coincides with the rise of the archaic state.
~600 yrs ago - gunpowder/artillery: with gunpowder came the rise of the modern state. Things started to change rapidly after this. Body armor was no longer effective in stopping gunpowder, so we could threaten coercive violence on a larger scale.
~400 yrs ago - handguns: different from artillery in the sense that it allowed mostly anyone to possess an accurate, small deadly weapon. The democratization of the modern state occurred. See: The United States of America
~50 yrs ago - aircraft and missles: this enables us to effectively coerce non-cooperating persons on the other side of the planet. We are in the midst right now of a formation of a pan-global coalition.
note: There're a few game-theory terms used in the aforementioned explanation.
Re:What I don't understand (Score:4, Informative)
No, early humans used no coercive violence prior to massive climate shifts in 4500bc which caused the drying up of the Sahara and central Asia. This lead to widespread famine and the birth of violent, dominator type cultures. For a very thorough analysis of this idea, see an article [orgonelab.org] titled "The Origins and Diffusion of Patrism in Saharasia, c.4000 BCE"
Your times are off, as well: humans evolved "modern" behavior 25,000 years before the atlatl, and agriculture 10,000 to 20,000 years before the bow.
Organized coercive violence caused human development. Bah. Just what the world needs, another apologist for violence.
Re:What I don't understand (Score:3, Funny)
Wait a minute - I thought homos throw like a girl.
[Easy, it's just a joke.]
Re:What I don't understand (Score:5, Insightful)
How many times in your life have you changed the world? The concept to stop chasing wildlife, and to settle down and grow crops is revolutionary, and would be a scary step (since you're betting on crops coming in right until you can build up enough storage) even for those who have plenty of knowledge in the subject. The combination of knowledge, wisdom and courage to take that step is not commonly found, and even when the step was take, the society might easily disappear if there were a short drought. I have a harder time imagining why someone would do this, then why they wouldn't.
Revolutionary and stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
What's worse, there seems to be evidence that growing crops put individuals at a short-term disadvantage over hunter-gatherers, giving them a poorer diet for more work! The primary advantage of crop growing, though, is that it supports a higher population density, so even if your hunter-gatherer tribe may be living better than the nearby village growing crops, the village can feed ten times
Re:What I don't understand (Score:2)
Stone tools DID evolve quite a bit during the 300,000 - 500,000 years prior. Not much else is preserved of course, but we can assume other advancements took place as well.
Re:What I don't understand (Score:4, Funny)
Re: What I don't understand (Score:3, Insightful)
> Is that, Okay, Great^n Grandpawas around 160,000 years ago, complete with stone tools and burial practices. Yet Civilization only 'started 6-10,000 years ago.
Depends on what you mean by "civilization", of course.
> Why does this just not quite add up to me. I mean, our ancestors were not stupid, they posessed the same intuition and logic that we do today. Whay did it take so long to get where we are now though?
Because technology and social structures are cumulative inventions. I don't know how
Re:What I don't understand (Score:3, Interesting)
In it, Prof. Bronowski posited that civilisation begins with the invention of agriculture approximately 15,000 years ago. It is at that time that the modern grain came into existence. (How, why or when no one knows.) This allowed people to accumulate food surpluses which could be stored. The importance of this is that it allows humans to settle i
Very important discovery... (Score:4, Interesting)
Still, I think that more interesting discoveries would be from 5 million years ogo. In particular, I would like to see remains of the ancestors of Australopithecenes and Ardopithecenes which would support the evolution of modern chimpanzees and modern humans from a common ancestor.
But do they predate Lawyers? (Score:2, Funny)
In other paleontological news... (Score:5, Informative)
IANA geneticist, but I wonder whether some rapid evolution occurred amongst these small subgroups that gave modern humans the advantage over the Neanderthals?
Tough on Kansas (Score:2)
That's really going to irritate everyone in Kansas that fought to have evolutionary theories suppressed...
Re:Tough on Kansas (Score:3, Interesting)
That's really going to irritate everyone in Kansas that fought to have evolutionary theories suppressed...
The case for evolution is already overwhelming to anyone who cares about evidence. The others consider it a virtue to believe what they believe in spite of the evidence. These discoveries probably won't change anybody's mind.Er... this is beginning to become a moral issue (Score:3, Interesting)
But imagine a few years into the future, and someone digs up your corpse, and people there think it's ok.
Hmmm.
Re:Er... this is beginning to become a moral issue (Score:3, Funny)
So what about Petralona? (Score:3, Informative)
This find has 'flawed' written all over it. (Score:4, Interesting)
There's too many conclusions drived from too little facts. How can a conclusion be derived about wether they used plants if only the Volcanic Layers and fossils were tested for age? There's no mention of testing or even finding any sort of plant material. Geology researchers (about 98% of them anyways) are not going to know or care about testing for this sort of thing.
Furthermore, there's no mention of attempting to re-create the environment that the fossils were found in based on geological tests, it seems that theories were based only on the fossils found. (At least that's what I get from the wording of the article). For all we know these fossils were moved from a different area/region/continent. The fossils were found bashed in. Was the bashing the result of being prey for a different, un-discovered predator?
Also, did anyone catch, near the end of the article, the following quote:
In this single study area, the team has found fossils dating from the present to more than 6 million years ago, painting a clear picture of human evolution from ape-like ancestors to present-day humans.
Is it me or is there something REALLY wrong in the fact that such a wide age range of fossils were found IN ONE STUDY AREA? I refuse to accept the fact that ALL of the fossils came from ONE area without some sort of assistance in reaching their final destination.
I did my U-Grad work in Archaeology and didn't pursue it because of these 'play in my sandbox or else' reserchers and their theories that never hold water.
Archeaologists/anthropologists seem to make their fame on either discoveries and their theories with the connection to human evolution or disproving said theories in research journals.
Dolemite
________________________
Re: This find has 'flawed' written all over it. (Score:4, Informative)
> What struck me was that the dating was done using layers of volcanic minerals. These folk may well have been ritually killed or buried, my question: How deep were they buried?
Competent archaeologists can see where holes have been dug, and report them regularly in their reports. When you dig a hole, put something in it, and fill it back up, the dirt doesn't go back in the same way it came out. So the lowest undisturbed layer above a grave gives a terminus ante quem for the date of the grave.
Re: This find has 'flawed' written all over it. (Score:3, Informative)
> As I understood it at least one of the skulls was found on the surface, so they could only verify the layer underneath and that it was not above the next dateable layer.
Yes, some of the material was exposed or partly exposed. However, as best I can tell from the press release, not all of it was completely exposed. For the stuff that's still completely or partially buried you can look to see whether the matrix is part of the natural layering or part of a backfill such as a burial pit. Hopefully the N
Artist's Illustration is Misleading (Score:5, Interesting)
The artist's illustration in the Berkeley article (also used on the cover of the current edition of Nature) is misleading, in as much as it gives the figure kinky hair and thick lips, making for a more "African" look than is likely to have been the case.
The truth of the matter is that the earliest men almost certainly would have had straight hair, not curly or kinky but straight, and thin lips, just like most Europeans and Asians today. The wild-type for hair in primates is straight, and all of the great apes conform to that type. Similarly, no ape has thick lips, and our closest living relatives are pretty much lipless. Given these facts, why would any reasonable person expect the "first" men to look like modern day Africans?
Of course, it is logically impossible to rule out that our species evolved to gain the features of modern-day Africans only to lose them once again, but this flies in the face of both probability and Occam's razor - it is extremely unlikely that a feature, once lost, can then be regained down the line, simultaneously around all of the world outside Africa.
One mistake people tend to make is to assume that because our species originated in Africa, modern day Africans are somehow "closer" to what we must have originally been like, but this is nonsense. Africans are just as far removed from the original homo sapiens populations as any other population groups, so they've had just as much time to diverge from the original type. Africans, like any other populations, haven't stood still in evolutionary terms, contrary to the misleading notion that this article illustration propagates.
Re:How come there are modern and non modern Human? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How come there are modern and non modern Human? (Score:2)
Damn scientists!
p/s: Long time no see sebol... Remember me?
Re:How come there are modern and non modern Human? (Score:2, Funny)
obviously missed a few presidential debates.
Re:How come there are modern and non modern Human? (Score:5, Informative)
If you were refering to the first in the Homo genus, that would be (in my opinion) Homo habilis or possibly Homo heidelburgensis. These were characterized by the earliest confirmed tool use (Homo habilis means "handy man"). These fellas were around for several hundred thousand years before H. erectus and H. ergaster.
Sorry about the lack of italicised names, I'm lazy.
Re:How come there are modern and non modern Human? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:How come there are modern and non modern Human? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why did I misread this as... (Score:2)
Mod me down-- I'm an idiot :) (Score:2)
Re:Wait a minute... (Score:3, Informative)
The first such major project to act on this took several years and thousands of DNA samples. They determined that Eve was from the Phillippines, and this was announced with quite a bit of publicity, articles in Time magazine, etc. Unfortunately, it
Re:Wait a minute... (Score:5, Informative)
In summary, we're all descendant of a man who lived in Africa about 50,00 years ago (~2000 generations), with genes basically the same as bushmen.
The researcher laid it out quite clearly and convincingly, so it's worth a watch/read:
http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/7442
It really made me realize how related we all are, and silences the idiots who think blacks are closer to the apes, and whites are more advanced, etc.
Re:Wait a minute... (Score:5, Informative)
Reality and the Bible (Score:3, Informative)
Especially if you are a woman [skepticsan...dbible.com], just [skepticsan...dbible.com], or tolerant [skepticsan...dbible.com].
Re:Yay Creationism! (Score:4, Informative)
And I wouldn't worry about you being marked as a troll. Evolutionists are almost never marked troll. I find however, no matter how rational or kind/non confrontational I make my pro-creationist posts they get modded troll. But I don't mind, people like my other posts enough that my karma will be impervious to their attacks!
Here is what happened. Adam and Eve were created man and woman, the first two humans. They had many children, sons and daughters. These sons and daughters married each other (if there was an official ceremony) and had children. These children were safe from the dangers of mutations since they were the offspring of flawless parents. That means there were no common recessive harmful mutations to share amongst each other. Incest was only outlawed much later (around 2000 years later I think) when mutations had become rife and the dangers were stronger. Then it wasn't restricted to cousins - in fact, amongst cousins I believe the danger is ~2% or something, but that could be wrong.
As for going over the hill, that is a load of crock - and the result of a misreading of the Bible (or perhaps imagining verses that aren't there), and a misunderstanding of genetics.
Re:Here's one for the creationists. (Score:3, Informative)
It is not expected for men to be missing a rib. Besides, it's rubbish anyway - just because Adam was missing a rib that didn't change his DNA, so his children should have still had the same number as he originally had. That's like saying if I lose my arm my children will also have only one arm.