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Post by Trog on Sept 10, 2015 7:28:00 GMT
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Post by Trog on Sept 10, 2015 7:57:18 GMT
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Post by cjm on Sept 10, 2015 9:28:03 GMT
Politicians are close family of fossils |
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Post by Trog on Sept 10, 2015 9:56:27 GMT
Ok, so the main cause of excitement is that they apparently went to great trouble to bury their dead. This was previously only observed in the Neanderthals and us.
Anatomically, they are apparently close enough to humans so that the anthropologists classified them as Homo. Maybe that is even why they delayed the announcement for so long – should we call them Homo or not?
They’ve not yet been able to date the remains, which is curious and a problem.
I’d guess that they would go for placing them as the very first humans found to date – between Australopithecus and Homo habilis, replacing habilis as the earliest homo.
So far, I saw no info as to whether they used tools or fire.
Personally, I’m more interested in H. Sapiens – therefore I more into the stuff they do at the Blombos and Klasiesrivier caves.
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Post by Trog on Sept 10, 2015 9:58:23 GMT
Politicians are close family of fossils Maybe Cyril smells the possibility of an ancestral land claim. |
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Post by cjm on Sept 10, 2015 16:50:19 GMT
... They’ve not yet been able to date the remains, which is curious and a problem. ... Glad you mention that since I merely assumed that I was not searching well enough. I have become somewhat sceptical of the classifications and the forks. Seems every time a few bones are found, claims are made for a new type of human (ancestor). Most of these ancestors at best look like baboons to me. I seriously doubt whether I am related. On a more sober note, just when I think I have the sequence sorted out, a "new" discovery undoes all my knowledge. The claim for burial rites seems rather exaggerated as from a heap of of bones in a cave it is deduced that these people were buried there. I can think of many reasons, apart from burial, why one would have a collection of skeletons in a cave. At the very least, until all these bones have been sorted out, I would question any sort of cultural claim. On the other hand, even dogs bury bones. |
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Post by snoman on Sept 10, 2015 18:52:44 GMT
Ok, so the main cause of excitement is that they apparently went to great trouble to bury their dead. This was previously only observed in the Neanderthals and us. Anatomically, they are apparently close enough to humans so that the anthropologists classified them as Homo. Maybe that is even why they delayed the announcement for so long – should we call them Homo or not? They’ve not yet been able to date the remains, which is curious and a problem. I’d guess that they would go for placing them as the very first humans found to date – between Australopithecus and Homo habilis, replacing habilis as the earliest homo. So far, I saw no info as to whether they used tools or fire. Personally, I’m more interested in H. Sapiens – therefore I more into the stuff they do at the Blombos and Klasiesrivier caves. Did any of the fossils have dompasses? |
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Post by cjm on Sept 11, 2015 5:16:25 GMT
Did any of the fossils have dompasses?  |
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Post by Trog on Sept 11, 2015 7:47:41 GMT
I have become somewhat sceptical of the classifications and the forks. Seems every time a few bones are found, claims are made for a new type of human (ancestor). Most of these ancestors at best look like baboons to me. I seriously doubt whether I am related. On a more sober note, just when I think I have the sequence sorted out, a "new" discovery undoes all my knowledge. The claim for burial rites seems rather exaggerated as from a heap of of bones in a cave it is deduced that these people were buried there. I can think of many reasons, apart from burial, why one would have a collection of skeletons in a cave. At the very least, until all these bones have been sorted out, I would question any sort of cultural claim. On the other hand, even dogs bury bones. Because so many distinct individuals were found, I reckon they have an extremely accurate idea of what these things looked like. It’s not like trying to reconstruct an entire skull from 3 separate pieces of bone. For any given skeletal aspect, they have several representative samples to work from. I think the conclusion of deliberate burial is unassailable, and I’m convinced that all alternative explanations for this collection of bones in this location, in this manner, were considered and extensively debated. The issue really is, as you said, if any cultural meaning could be attached to this behaviour and I am also sceptical: From the very earliest findings of deliberate sapiens and Neanderthal burials, there is evidence of ceremony. Red ochre, grave-goods such as tools, weapons and ornaments, flowers. The graves were constructed and marked. It is clear that a significance was attached to burial and there is a suggestion of attempts to obscure the boundary between the living and the dead. There are also very practical reasons for burial, which has nothing to do with the above. For one thing, it is unpleasant to have corpses just lying around the place. It is also a health hazard and therefore removing and burying corpses away from general living spaces would’ve carried an evolutionary advantage. Decomposing corpses will also attract dangerous predators and scavengers. It is therefore very possible, and in my opinion also correct, to assume that no conscious significance was attached to the burials and that it was merely the result of a behaviour which had significant survival implications. After all, this creature was stupid, in human terms. It wasn't writing poetry by moonlight. |
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Post by diebottoebantoe on Sept 11, 2015 7:58:23 GMT
The Mandelas have sold off Mandela's body as a fossil.
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Post by cjm on Sept 16, 2015 8:28:33 GMT
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Post by Trog on May 10, 2017 7:37:15 GMT
They’ve not yet been able to date the remains, which is curious and a problem. Okay, so they established an age for these fossils - between 335 000 en 236 000 years old. This must be a bit of a blow for Lee Berger - I imagine he would've preferred them to be at least a million years older. Because this means that H. Naledi is extremely unlikely to be a human ancestor, since the much more advanced Homo Erectus already existed almost 2 million years ago. Whilst interesting and informative, studying fossils outside the direct human ancestral line does not carry nearly the same status. Probably also means less money for research. |
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Post by cjm on May 10, 2017 16:49:21 GMT
They’ve not yet been able to date the remains, which is curious and a problem. Okay, so they established an age for these fossils - between 335 000 en 236 000 years old. This must be a bit of a blow for Lee Berger - I imagine he would've preferred them to be at least a million years older. Because this means that H. Naledi is extremely unlikely to be a human ancestor, since the much more advanced Homo Erectus already existed almost 2 million years ago. Whilst interesting and informative, studying fossils outside the direct human ancestral line does not carry nearly the same status. Probably also means less money for research. Does this mean that around that time there were a number of "races"? I am thinking of the so-called modern man and the Neanderthals, for example. In China one also has a number of discoveries - of much older orgin though. Perhaps at the Naledi time those did not exist as such anymore? |
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Post by Trog on May 11, 2017 8:14:53 GMT
Does this mean that around that time there were a number of "races"? I am thinking of the so-called modern man and the Neanderthals, for example. In China one also has a number of discoveries - of much older orgin though. Perhaps at the Naledi time those did not exist as such anymore? Well, H. Naledi will not even be of the same species as H. Sapiens - so race does not come into it. (Members within a species can breed and produce fertile offspring. Race is differentiation within a species - i.e. a Chihuahua can breed with a Saint Bernard, they are of different races within the same species. Donkeys and horses are not of the same species - they can breed, but their offspring is infertile. As with lions and tigers, and so on). Seems like about 200000 years ago there were several species of hominin existing simultaneously. Some of them would be: Homo Erectus Homo heidelbergensis Homo neanderthalensis Denisovan man and now also H. Naledi Within each of those I imagine there would be many different races. Particularly for H. Erectus, which has been around for almost 2 million years and inhabited almost the entire planet - I imagine an H. Erectus of 1.9 million years ago in Spain would look profoundly different from one living 30000 years ago in Indonesia. (I firmly belief that Neanderthals and humans are of different species, and I don't buy the interbreeding theories of late. I'm pretty sure that whatever need they find to hypothesise interbreeding can be more elegantly and parsimoniously explained by other means). |
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Post by cjm on May 11, 2017 9:06:45 GMT
Thanks @ Trog
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