This is an interesting discovery

Post by **Minimalist** » Tue May 26, 2009 3:42 pm

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009- ... 434511.htm

A Moroccan-French archaeology team has discovered the rear part of a human mandible that dates back to the prehistoric Acheulian phase, local MAP news agency reported on Monday.

The mandible, which belongs to a young human, holds a premolar and a molar, the report said.

The fossil was uncovered on May 14 in the Thomas I quarry site in Casablanca, along with stone tools "that characterize the Acheulian civilization" and remnants of gazelles, antelopes, warthogs, bears, monkeys, said the report.

A French-Moroccan team last year, uncovered a complete mandible of Homo erectus at the Thomas I quarry. The mandible was found in a layer below one where the team had previously found four human teeth (three premolars and one incisor) from Homo erectus, one of which was dated to 500,000 B.C.

Rokcet Scientist · Post by **Rokcet Scientist** » Wed May 27, 2009 9:02 am

What do you mean "interesting", Min? Afaik this find doesn't change or complete what we know about HE, or does it?

Post by **Minimalist** » Wed May 27, 2009 9:16 am

Any find from half a million years ago is "interesting."

So HE is still in Africa at this time, presumably getting ready to suddenly evolve into HSS? Meanwhile, Heidelbergensis was hanging out in Germany already...presumably getting ready to evolve in Neandertal.

All of the above just seems a little too pat for my taste.

Rokcet Scientist · Post by **Rokcet Scientist** » Wed May 27, 2009 10:47 am

Minimalist wrote:So HE is still in Africa at this time,

Whoaa! Stop right there! His cousins were already in the Caucasus, Java, and Peking. Therefore this one must be 'one of those left behind'.

presumably getting ready to suddenly evolve into HSS?

Why not? Evolution is a process of fits and starts. Happening in a number of places at roughly the same, but far from closely coordinated, moments in time.

Besides, define "suddenly"! How long did those mutations/morphings take? Is that 500 years? 5,000 years? More? Less? Wannabet it is different in each ocurrence? Never the same.

Meanwhile, Heidelbergensis was hanging out in Germany already...presumably getting ready to evolve in Neandertal.

Perhaps.

All of the above just seems a little too pat for my taste.

LOL! You're displaying the same symptoms towards those hypotheses as I do towards the current political/economic situation: extreme distrust.

Maybe we need to go into therapy for PTSS?
At least is fashionable!
LOL!

Post by **Minimalist** » Wed May 27, 2009 12:45 pm

Why not?

Because at this point, I'm not remotely convinced that HE EVER evolved into different species.

In the course of a million and a half years, HE may have "evolved" into different racial types but those types are not separate species.

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Sat May 30, 2009 12:24 pm

In the course of a million and a half years, HE may have "evolved" into different racial types but those types are not separate species.

Which neatly explains the similarities in DNA of course.

Roy.

Post by **Minimalist** » Sat May 30, 2009 5:04 pm

I hear you, Dig.

Every explanation I've heard for the different "racial types" of HSS sounds like little more than wishful thinking. But HE and multiregionalism allows so much more time for these distinctions to develop.

Rokcet Scientist · Post by **Rokcet Scientist** » Tue Jun 02, 2009 7:35 am

Minimalist wrote:Because at this point, I'm not remotely convinced that HE EVER evolved into different species.

In the course of a million and a half years, HE may have "evolved" into different racial types but those types are not separate species.

If HE never evolved into different species, 1) where did he go, and 2) where did HS(S) come from?

That HE evolved into different (probably many sub) types and races in the course of a million and a half years seems a given, imo. And if they did that it seems a logical assumption that they also evolved one step further, into a different species. Imo that's the likely scenario. Unless there is evidence, that I'm not aware of, that HE went extinct without leaving a trace.

Post by **Minimalist** » Tue Jun 02, 2009 8:20 am

Have we even established that "HE" went extinct at all or are all of these designations nothing but arbitrary constructs of various researchers?

IOW, we may be HE.

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Tue Jun 02, 2009 8:39 am

Yep! Every so often 'those who know everything' get together and decide that half the 'species' are probably females of the same species as one already identified.
By definition a 'species' is one that can only breed with it's own kind, as all non HSS 'species' are so defined on morphological basis they may be entirely wrong, we should maintain an open mind on this I feel.

Roy.

Post by **Minimalist** » Tue Jun 02, 2009 9:40 am

Which brings us full-circle back to the Club mentality which seems fixated on the idea that it must produce a Theory of EVERYTHING in order to perpetuate itself, Dig.

I've long since accepted that religious-types cannot say "I don't know" but scientists should be less doctrinaire.

Rokcet Scientist · Post by **Rokcet Scientist** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 4:36 pm

Minimalist wrote:Which brings us full-circle back to the Club mentality which seems fixated on the idea that it must produce a Theory of EVERYTHING in order to perpetuate itself, Dig.

I've long since accepted that religious-types cannot say "I don't know" but scientists should be less doctrinaire.

Alas, evolutionary they are quite similar. And it shows in their attitudes.

Archaeologica.org

This is an interesting discovery

This is an interesting discovery

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