Origin of Our Species Pushed Back 100,000 Years!

[DavidFirth]

I'm beginning to less and lessunderstand what we mean by 'Our Species'.
I always thought species division was based on ability to reproduce and produce viable offspring. But on the other hand, Neanderthals, Denisovans (and whatever may be found next) apparently interbred with our species and produced viable offspring.

I wish the article provided a family tree diagram to better understand how this new Moroccan find and everything else comes together in current theory.

Well, that's the current theory. Be patient, they'll change it eventually.

 

[DavidFirth]

No. Evolutionary theory remains the same. The only thing that's changed is the estimated time for when the first H. sapiens appeared.

Well, that kind of affects the whole theory. Man's supposed ancestor will have had to have been around longer. Monkey and ape supposed evolution will have to be revisited, too.

They'll make a ton of money off of this selling books to you.

 

[sayak83]

I'm beginning to less and lessunderstand what we mean by 'Our Species'.
I always thought species division was based on ability to reproduce and produce viable offspring. But on the other hand, Neanderthals, Denisovans (and whatever may be found next) apparently interbred with our species and produced viable offspring.

I wish the article provided a family tree diagram to better understand how this new Moroccan find and everything else comes together in current theory.

Actually 10-15% of biologically recognized species interbreed successfully in the wild. In genetics there is a critical thresh_hold above which genetic mixing between two populations inexorably fuses them into one distribution. If the rate of genetic mixing through interbreeding is several times lower than this threshold value, they are called separate species even if hybridization occurs and zones of hybridization exist. I have forgotten the quantitative threshold, but if I find it, I will put it in.

 

[siti]

I'm beginning to less and less understand what we mean by 'Our Species'.
I always thought species division was based on ability to reproduce and produce viable offspring. But on the other hand, Neanderthals, Denisovans (and whatever may be found next) apparently interbred with our species and produced viable offspring.

Our species is homo sapiens but anatomically modern humans might be thought of as a sub-species homo sapiens sapiens with homo sapiens neanderthalensis and homo sapiens denisova having been other sub species. These classifications are the subject of research and debate that has raged on for a hundred years already (especially in regard to Neandethals) but, as you say, it does seem clear that they interbred with anatomically modern humans so it may be correct, after all, to consider Neanderthals and Denisovans (and other archaic sub-species of homo sapiens) as "our species" as well as modern humans. If we are of European or Asian descent, we probably carry 1-2% Neanderthal DNA and Melanesian people in Papua New Guinea (at least) apparently carry some Denisovan DNA. Two of my children carry both European and Melanesian (Fijian) genes so perhaps they may have DNA from both of these sub-species of the archaic human family tree which is a fascinating thought. Of course it may also be that the origin of this apparently "Neanderthal" and "Denisovan" DNA might have been a more ancient common ancestor rather than interbreeding - the jury is still out on that I think but I'm not completely up-to-date.

 

[DavidFirth]

Actually 10-15% of biologically recognized species interbreed successfully in the wild. In genetics there is a critical thresh_hold above which genetic mixing between two populations inexorably fuses them into one distribution. If the rate of genetic mixing through interbreed ingredients is several times lower than this threshold value, they are called separate species even if hybridization occurs and zones of hybridization exist. I have forgotten the quantitative threshold, but if I find it, I will put it in.

Speciation is in the eye of the beholder, anyway. It is based on how one chooses to categorize when he chooses which species are another species or sub-species, genus, class, order, etc.

 

[shunyadragon]

But where are the transitional fossils?

This is actually transitional because the features of the skull are closer to human than other transitional remains found, but still has feature of our older ancestors.

 

[siti]

Well, that kind of affects the whole theory. Man's supposed ancestor will have had to have been around longer. Monkey and ape supposed evolution will have to be revisited, too.

They'll make a ton of money off of this selling books to you.

You should buy one - you might understand what evolution actually means and avoid making an *** of yourself with such silly remarks.

The homo genus (humans) last shared a common ancestor with the pan genus (chimpanzees - our closest evolutionary relative among the other apes) more than 6 million years ago. How does finding that anatomically modern humans have been around for 300,000 years rather than just 200,000 as previously thought, change anything about "monkey and ape supposed evolution"?

 

[The Emperor of Mankind]

[Source]

Please discuss!

Could it be a cross between Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens idaltu or perhaps a cross between Sapiens and an even older breed of hominin like Denisovan man?

 

[Terese]

Fantastic news! I wonder what else is left to uncover

 

[Kapalika]

Hmm... well, if it is always going to change, it doesn't make much sense to put one's faith in it in the first place. Whatev. Knock yourself out.

It isn't faith if there is physical proof or evidence.

Science isn't the problem. Scientists, on the other hand, speculate and speculate. It sells books, so why not?

They also build airplanes and computers and go to the moon, invent cars and atomic bombs. All of these things were consequences of proven theories from much earlier than they were ever created. The math used to go to the moon was from Newton's work, hundreds of years prior.

Science doesn't disprove past theories so much as finds ways to improve them. It's a lot like solving a crime mystery. Maybe you were able to prove how and when someone was murdered, and thought the butler was the murderer. But then you have a breakthrough and discover it was the owner, but you don't yet know the motive. That doesn't disprove how or when the person was murdered, and without some speculation on who it might of been, and TRYING TO FIND OUT through evidence and reason, you wouldn't ever find out it was the owner. Of course yes there will still be mysteries, like why did he do it? That sort of thing, but the best part about science just like this detective work analogy is that there is a method, a process, to figuring it out>

It really seems odd to me that you expect science to just right away know 100% what the truth is from day one. That would be like trying to learn a new language and because your understanding grows over time, and you don't know all aspects of it instantly, that you don't know the language at all. I might know how to spell words and write in a language but misunderstand how to pronounce certain things or proper grammar. Correcting my mistakes doesn't mean my ability to spell or write is invalidated. Just that it was improved.

 

[Deeje]

This is what they actually found......

This is what they reconstructed from that jawbone....

Amazing...isn't it?

No doubt it's human and because its older than all the other human fossils ever found anywhere in the world, what about all those ape fossils that were supposed to be older ancestors, who now turn out to be younger? Doesn't that mean that the dating on all the other fossils in existence is now in question?

Compare a human skull with ape skulls.....can you tell the difference?

Below is a bonobo and a chimp....
These are supposedly our closest living relatives....but why did the evolution boat
leave then behind? Why did they remain apes?

At what point did apes decide that they were no longer apes, but humans?

What proof do you have that this image is not a figment of evolutionary imagination like all the other drawings and diagrams they present?

 

[Sunstone]

This is what they actually found......

This is what they reconstructed from that jawbone....

You are either mistaken or you are lying, sir. The article explicitly states that they found much, much more than a single jawbone.

 

[Altfish]

At what point did apes decide that they were no longer apes, but humans?

It was at 03:15 on 13th March 120,006 BC.
The apes were all sat around in a bar having a banana flavoured gin when one said, "I've had enough of being an ape, I'm going to become a human, anyone fancy joining me?"
It has become known as The Tree-Top Arms Accord.

Ken Ham still denies it to this day

 

[Kapalika]

You are either mistaken or you are lying, sir. The article explicitly states that they found much, much more than a single jawbone.

Christians are encouraged to lie and distort the truth to maintain the status quo. To them, proving something isn't about being correct, it's about being "right".

Unfortunately for me I can't for the life of me remember where I read it, some years ago but I remember reading an article or study or something and I don't have the patience or google-fu to find out (didn't find it on first try so gave up), that stated that often in social groups we make decisions based not on who's correct but on who's "right" through social privilege and the like. Basically, an entire group can know that the leader is wrong, but side with them as a matter of intelligence and maintaining the status quo, of group unity. A lot of that is why there is "herd mentality".

Now the funny thing is Christians will turn around and accuse science of that, not realizing that a bunch of people who want to make a name for themselves finding a good discovery and do this as a profession, who use methods to avoid bias and think of things in new ways, is somehow equal to chit-chating with a local church where bias towards what you were brought up to believe is the norm.

 

[Kapalika]

Below is a bonobo and a chimp....
These are supposedly our closest living relatives....but why did the evolution boat
leave then behind? Why did they remain apes?

Sunstone already addressed that you are mistaken about them finding 'just a jawbone' when they actually found very complete sets.

But I want to address that we didn't evolve from Chimps or any other currently living ape. No, rather, us, Chimps and bonobos all evolved from the same ape species about 6? million years ago (don't exactly recall).

So they are our cousins, if you consider species to be like single family members. That ape species we share in common, is more like a great grandparent, if we are to follow this analogy.

Evolution isn't like an upgrade or everything changes at once. It's like a mosaic of shifting genes that go in different directions depending on different environmental pressures, which will vary in different regions. If this wasn't true there would only be very few species as opposed to countless ones we are always discovering. Go back far enough and all life we know are related in someway. That's why we all have DNA or at least strands of RNA, of which DNA is made of. Or at least, maybe, if not virtually all DNA was right-handed helixes: Right handed and left handed helices

 

[Deeje]

You are either mistaken or you are lying, sir. The article explicitly states that they found much, much more than a single jawbone.

Under the picture of the jawbone in your link was this...

"An almost complete adult mandible discovered at the Jebel Irhoud site in Morocco."

Then under that is the reconstruction. Under that picture is this....

"A composite reconstruction of the earliest known Homo sapiens fossils from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco based on micro computed tomographic scans of multiple original fossils."

The article went on to say....

"In 1961, miners in Morocco dug up a few pieces of a skull at a site called Jebel Irhoud. Later digs revealed a few more bones, along with flint blades.
Using crude techniques, researchers estimated the remains to be 40,000 years old. In the 1980s, however, a paleoanthropologist named Jean-Jacques Hublin took a closer look at one jawbone.....
Since 2004, Dr. Hublin and his colleagues have been working through layers of rocks on a desert hillside at Jebel Irhoud. They have found a wealth of fossils, including skull bones from five individuals who all died around the same time."

I am not mistaken about that.....nor am I lying. I said it was clearly human, which it is. I think it is safe to say that no bones found in that dig were intact, but in fragments, like most fossils.

e.g. Lucy

The brown bits I believe are the actual bone fragments....the rest is fabricated.

I have to ask the same question as this illustration.....

Its a fair question......isn't it?

I am female BTW.....

Not a sir.....

 

[Kapalika]

Under the picture of the jawbone in your link was this...

"An almost complete adult mandible discovered at the Jebel Irhoud site in Morocco."

Then under that is the reconstruction. Under that picture is this....

"A composite reconstruction of the earliest known Homo sapiens fossils from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco based on micro computed tomographic scans of multiple original fossils."

The article went on to say....

"In 1961, miners in Morocco dug up a few pieces of a skull at a site called Jebel Irhoud. Later digs revealed a few more bones, along with flint blades.
Using crude techniques, researchers estimated the remains to be 40,000 years old. In the 1980s, however, a paleoanthropologist named Jean-Jacques Hublin took a closer look at one jawbone.....
Since 2004, Dr. Hublin and his colleagues have been working through layers of rocks on a desert hillside at Jebel Irhoud. They have found a wealth of fossils, including skull bones from five individuals who all died around the same time."

I am not mistaken about that.....nor am I lying. I said it was clearly human, which it is. I think it is safe to say that no bones found in that dig were intact, but in fragments, like most fossils.

e.g. Lucy

The brown bits I believe are the actual bone fragments....the rest is fabricated.

I have to ask the same question as this illustration.....

Its a fair question......isn't it?

I am female BTW.....

Not a sir.....

This isn't Lucy though, and as stated "multiple original fossils." they were just showing one lol.

Plus with Lucy they had 40% of the skeleton. There is this amazing thing called symmetry. If I have a right arm bone, I know the left arm bone will be mirrored just like it.

And no it isn't a fair question becuase you didn't seem to read my explanation literally just before your post, was explained here.

I thought this went without saying but everything between the common ancestor that we and other apes share, and us and those other extant (alive apes) all died out. We didn't evolve from Chimps. Chimps are our cousins... as I explained in my previous post... we are different branches on the same tree. Also fossils don't usually form when something dies, so you are not going to always find millions of fossils of one type.

Besides the evidence is so overwhelming now. Once, I forget who, but Dawkins recounted him wittnessing it... but one time an evolutionary biologist was asked what would disprove evolution... and his response was "rabbit fossils in the pre-Cambrian era"... if you are not familiar with that, that's before macroscopic life (mostly single celled organisms) so he was pointing out that fossils of any particular species ONLY occur in their strata and do not appear in others. It would be like finding a modern human and dinosaur fossil at the same layer together. It just doesn't happen. Same as you won't find rabbits in the lower levels before mammals even existed.

Could you say anything would ever convince you that creationism is wrong? Famously when Bill Nye debated Ken Ham on evolution and creationism, both were asked what would change their mind. Nye said compelling evidence would change his mind. Ham said nothing ever would.

Are you more like Nye, or Ham?

 

[Deeje]

Christians are encouraged to lie and distort the truth to maintain the status quo. To them, proving something isn't about being correct, it's about being "right".

You mean there's a difference?
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-correct-and-right

Unfortunately for me I can't for the life of me remember where I read it, some years ago but I remember reading an article or study or something and I don't have the patience or google-fu to find out (didn't find it on first try so gave up), that stated that often in social groups we make decisions based not on who's correct but on who's "right" through social privilege and the like. Basically, an entire group can know that the leader is wrong, but side with them as a matter of intelligence and maintaining the status quo, of group unity. A lot of that is why there is "herd mentality".

Hmmm "herd mentality".....? But of course scientists would never be guilty of such behavior...?

Now the funny thing is Christians will turn around and accuse science of that, not realizing that a bunch of people who want to make a name for themselves finding a good discovery and do this as a profession, who use methods to avoid bias and think of things in new ways, is somehow equal to chit-chating with a local church where bias towards what you were brought up to believe is the norm.

Bias is not the sole possession of those who believe in an Intelligent Creator. It seems to me that science bases all its claims on unsubstantiated suggestion. They interpret "evidence" in a biased way to convince their fellow 'club' members that evolution must be true even though they cannot prove that it ever happened. The "overwhelming" evidence that I have seen has turned out to be "underwhelming" to say the least.

You guys have a belief system based on what men say. (you accuse us of that, but you are guilty of it yourselves) You cannot prove that evolution ever took place the way scientists claim it did. I think we Bible believers are capable of doing our own research....unless of course you think we are brainwashed morons sitting around 'chit chatting' about our well indoctrinated biases? That is the picture I have of evolutionary scientists, strangely enough.

Go figure......

 

[Deeje]

And no it isn't a fair question becuase you didn't seem to read my explanation literally just before your post, which perfectly explained it. I thought this went without saying but everything between the common ancestor that we and other apes share, and us and those other extant (alive apes) all died out. We didn't evolve from Chimps. Chimps are our cousins... as I explained in my previous post... we are different branches on the same tree.

I disagree...I think it is a very fair question. Where are all those intermediate species? Not just the humans but all living life forms? How do you tell an ape bone fragment from a human's if we share so much DNA? If we have loads of ape fossils an loads of modern human fossils why are there not loads of all the in between fossils? "They all died out" is a pretty lame explanation IMO. And who said "we are all just different branches on the same tree"?

You might be related to apes but I'm not. The gulf between humans and apes is unbridgeable. What apes do you know of that are in the process of evolving at present? What half/half creatures can you show me?

I don't believe that these guys ever existed....There are primitive people in the world even today, so what makes you think we all had to have such a beginning? That is an assumption, backed up by what?

 

[Kapalika]

You mean there's a difference?
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-correct-and-right



Hmmm "herd mentality".....? But of course scientists would never be guilty of such behavior...?

Bias is not the sole possession of those who believe in an Intelligent Creator. It seems to me that science bases all its claims on unsubstantiated suggestion. They interpret "evidence" in a biased way to convince their fellow 'club' members that evolution must be true even though they cannot prove that it ever happened. The "overwhelming" evidence that I have seen has turned out to be "underwhelming" to say the least.

You guys have a belief system based on what men say. (you accuse us of that, but you are guilty of it yourselves) You cannot prove that evolution ever took place the way scientists claim it did. I think we Bible believers are capable of doing our own research....unless of course you think we are brainwashed morons sitting around 'chit chatting' about our well indoctrinated biases? That is the picture I have of evolutionary scientists, strangely enough.

Go figure......

Blah blah blah. Okay I guess you didn't actually take my point to heart. I also want to point out that I editted my post a bit after you submitted yours apparently, if you could address it (its numbered #37 and it looks like you still have yet to address #35)

The point is people want to be "right" in a social context, not factually correct just declared the "winner" so to speak.

And no, science isn't built around people just making stuff up. Again, look at Newton's equations. They were made hundreds of years prior and were then used to get humans to the moon... are you telling me that is just faith based? Just a matter of a "belief system based on what men say?"

Do you really think that? You are using a freaking computer... that uses a scientific understanding of physics, math, and chemistry to operate... is that all just a "belief system"?

Also I think I can speak on this. I used to be involved in a church that taught creationism. It isn't evidence based, and it's dismissal of evolution is based on misunderstandings and misconceptions many of which you have repeated. Go back and read post #35 and #37 and then maybe we can move forward.