"History looks more and more like a science fiction novel in which mutants repeatedly arose and displaced normal humans." John Hawks is one of the authors of the study and has the abstract up.
Yeah, i don't know where to begin. i love this kind of broad statement.... "7 percent of human genes are undergoing rapid, recent evolution"... How can you not get a wide, hysterical grin at that?
There's a post about two million years old human fossils that were discovered over the past twenty years in Wushan County in Chongqing municipality in China over on Remote Central.
It'll be interesting to see just how far back this FOXP2 language gene version goes back in the hominid lineage. Neandertals and modern humans both had it. Obviously it probably came from a common ancestor, and did not evolve independently in both strains.
I ought to confess that i'm very sympathetic to the idea that Homo erectus had villages. Laugh at me. I promise not to cry. It's just that the jump from tool-using nomadic apes to agrarian villages seems like a big one. What Bednarik proposes does not seem that outrageous.
via Remote Central.
Update: This has been nagging me for the past day. Please let me clarify that "villages" should be just that... "villages" in quotes. I doubt whether they were villages as we understand the word now. It's just that a relentlessly nomadic model for the entire species doesn't sit well.
So it seems that Homo habilis might not be the direct ancestor of Homo erectus, but instead a slightly earlier cousin that did manage to survive to living contemporaneously. This is being based off a Homo habilis skull that is dated relatively recently for that species, 1.44 million years ago, and dwelled in the same territory of Africa as Homo erectus.
I'm kinda excited, as i'm sympathetic to this theory. I'm also hoping for dates pushing backthe first appearance of Homo erectus.
This could turn out to be worth remembering:
Islamabad, July 28 : Pakistani archaeologists have found two over one million years old human footprints preserved on sandstone in the Margalla Hills, which surround the capital.Homo erectus? It would be interesting to see more evidence outside Africa. Edit: I always want more evidence. even though it's false, that creationist trope about all evidence for human evolution would fit inside a single coffin drives me nuts.
World-renowned archaeologist and historian Dr Ahmad Hassan Dani of the Taxila Institute of Asian Civilisations, Quaid-i-Azam University, made the discovery.
A footprint of one foot is in complete and well-preserved form, while another is broken from the finger side, which is also of the same size in comparative manner, the Dawn reports.
The notable marks of the feet are the clear veins and opposite folded appearance, the report adds.
According to Dr. Azad, further research of the footmarks using anthropological and geophysical methods, might give more clues.
The recent discovery is the continuity of the Indusian Research Cell's earlier research about human evolution, which previously revealed a fossilised upper jaw from the site of Dhudhumber, foot, and handprints from Attock and Palaeolithic cave from the Margalla Hills.
Pakistan is said to have abundant fossilised evidences of Pre-Cambrian to Holocene epochs, the earliest evidences of the anthropoid existence, the earliest cultural centre at Mehargarh (contemporary of Jericho and Jarmo) and most advanced civilisation of the world (Indus Valley).
According to Dr. Azad the formation of the Margalla Hills goes back to the Miocene epoch. The dominant limestone of the Margalla is also mixed with the sand stone.
A tooth from 1 to 1.2 million years old that comes from what seems to be a human ancestor has been found in Spain. The immediate suggestion is that the tooth is from an ancestor of Homo antecessor.
Remember that recent story that implied that chimps were "more evolved" than humans?
It had me wondering if the ape ancestor to both humans and chimps was actually more humanlike in some respect, possibly bipedal. Again, i'm an ignorant bastard who loves to speculate, sometimes too wildly.
Today i read a John Hawks post that made me all giddy. In new research, the dates aren't matching up with the known genetic divergence of humans and chimps versus the age of these Miocene apes. It seems to suggest that the bipedal Miocene apes are not direct ancestors. the bit that made me happiest to read was this fragment of Hawks' post:
Is it possible that bipedal apes long preceded the divergence of humans and chimpanzees? Was the common ancestor of the two lineages a biped? Or was significant vertical posture a common feature of many Miocene apes -- making Sahelanthropus a possible homologue of Oreopithecus?Yeah! Well, at least on the first two questions.
