Hawks 2008 Predictions

[Beagle]

http://johnhawks.net/weblog/site/new_ye ... _2008.html

10. A dramatic development in the Sahelanthropus story.
9. Both major-party candidates for the 2008 U.S. Presidential election will accept evolution.
8. This year's featured piece of anatomy: the femur.
7. No new hobbits, at least, not from Flores.
6. An incisive example of introgression in East Asia.
5. A viral insertion in the human genome will tell us about a disease of the australopithecines.
4. Another language gene joins FoxP2. No word on whether Neandertals have the human version.
3. Homo habilis: an endangered species?
2. This year, something new from three A's: A. afarensis. A. africanus. Atapuerca.
1. Oh, and one more A. Ardipithecus.
BONUS: A big, big year for Neandertals. I mean, besides the election.
There you have it. I'm not sure which of these is the riskiest, but I'm sure they're more out on a limb than last year!

Hawks' predictions. The article contains the ones he made previously.

[Minimalist]

Better than Pat Robertson's predictions.

[Beagle]

Not knowing what you meant, I googled

Pat Robertson's predictions.

Why are crazy people allowed to have a TV show?

[Minimalist]

Ratings.

[Minimalist]

"God" gave him this prediction for 2007.

VIRGINIA BEACH, Virginia — Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson predicted Tuesday a horrific terrorist act on the United States that will result in "mass killing" late in 2007.

"I'm not necessarily saying it's going to be nuclear," he said during his news-and-talk television show "The 700 Club" on the Christian Broadcasting Network. "The Lord didn't say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that."

Robertson said God told him during a recent prayer retreat that major cities and possibly millions of people will be affected by the attack, which should take place sometime after September.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,240841,00.html


Either the papers missed it because they were covering Britney Spears or God's credibility took an enormous hit!

[FreeThinker]

3. Homo habilis: an endangered species?

Yes! I am telling you, orang pendek!



Still stirring the pot folks (see cryptozoology thread)....

[Beagle]

Yeah, Thinker, they've been arguing about Habilis for a while now, and Hawks thinks he'll be booted out of the human family this year. I guess they'll call him something like Habilopithecus.

I never heard of the orang pendek before. Interesting.

[FreeThinker]

Hi Beagle, I think Hawks might be right about habilis. The family tree is pretty bushy and tangled (not to mention thorny from the many missing pieces we don't even know about) at that point in time. I guess at some point a line has to be drawn between Homo and Australopithecus, even though if you think about it from an evolutionary point of veiw it probably was more of a gradual process. Unless some Australopithecus mother had a mutant baby that was a Homo (a condition most parents would hope against...sorry, I couldn't let the moronic humor potential pass there) it probably was a steady drift towards humaness with no clean break. The question then becomes what criteria do you apply when drawing the line? Bipedalism? Brain size? Tool manufacturing? Something else? I am content to let better minds than mine parse out the finer points of where the line should be drawn. What is exciting to me is all the new finds being made in recent years are not clarifying the picture but actually complicating it. Who ever knew that human evolution would be such a messy picture. Let's hope 2008 brings even more exciting discoveries.

[Beagle]

Whew!! I've had every kind of bad weather this afternoon. Tornadoes, lightening, and flood warnings. I had to get offline for a while.

Free Thinker, I'm just guessing here, but Habilis was not able to make and control fire, at least as far as we know. His tools were very crude. He just doesn't make the cut anymore.

[Minimalist]

I've had every kind of bad weather this afternoon. Tornadoes, lightening, and flood warnings.

Habilis would have been inventing gods left and right!

[Beagle]

Maybe. I would sure like to know when early man had thoughts like that, if he did.

[Ishtar]

Maybe. I would sure like to know when early man had thoughts like that, if he did.

Earliest attested (which means f*** all), 3,000 BC.

[Beagle]

That's very recent. I even believe the Rig Veda is older than that, and they had a lot of gods. I've never given it that much thought, but I think it might be pre-HSS.

[Rokcet Scientist]

Think about it: the concept of gods requires a system, a story. About who they are, where they are, what they do (to you), and what they want you to do. I.o.w.: The Word... Gods require detailed, nuanced, communication between individuals. They gotta tell eachother The Story. They need to spread The Word.

So, imo, the concept of gods arose in hominids together with the development of speech. They probably started out as innocent bedtime stories, fairy tales, that ran out of control. And, hey presto, you have a religion.

With our current knowledge that leaves only HSS as a candidate.

But HSS arose 200,000 years ago! I'm guessing God walked with him for at least half that time.
So God could turn out to be a really old geezer . . .
(Beats Methusalem's measly 964 years!)

[Minimalist]

But animism doesn't require that same sort of bureaucracy as the DMV.

Spirits, ancestor worship, etc.