Homo Sapiens

• Saw the NatGeo article on this. It is just fascinating to me how much we are learning about our origins. Wait until we find out more about the little understood Denisovans. Just a note, we are all on earth today, in fact, the same species as confirmed by our genome. Also interesting, however numerous our immediate homo-sapien ancestors may have been in Africa, we apparently are all the offspring of a relatively small group of individuals. We have very little genetic variabilty when compared to other mammals. A great deal yet to learn.

There was a recent discovery too that before homosapiens ... something like 7,000,000 years ago ... the upright apes "we" are descended from may have been in Europe before Africa.

Clay Bingham posted:

• Saw the NatGeo article on this. It is just fascinating to me how much we are learning about our origins. Wait until we find out more about the little understood Denisovans. Just a note, we are all on earth today, in fact, the same species as confirmed by our genome. Also interesting, however numerous our immediate homo-sapien ancestors may have been in Africa, we apparently are all the offspring of a relatively small group of individuals. We have very little genetic variabilty when compared to other mammals. A great deal yet to learn.

Don Atkinson posted:

Clay Bingham posted:

• Saw the NatGeo article on this. It is just fascinating to me how much we are learning about our origins. Wait until we find out more about the little understood Denisovans. Just a note, we are all on earth today, in fact, the same species as confirmed by our genome. Also interesting, however numerous our immediate homo-sapien ancestors may have been in Africa, we apparently are all the offspring of a relatively small group of individuals. We have very little genetic variabilty when compared to other mammals. A great deal yet to learn.

 

Yes, my understanding is we are all descended from no more than seven women. Not sure if I read that, or just imagined it !

Eloise posted:

There was a recent discovery too that before homosapiens ... something like 7,000,000 years ago ... the upright apes "we" are descended from may have been in Europe before Africa.

Looked this up. This idea is controversial and the evidence, I believe, is just a jaw bone and a tooth ( from Greece?) but it is noted in legitimate news sources and scientific journals so certainly interesting and worth a look if like me you enjoy this sort of thing. Thanks Eloise. You learn something new everyday.

I have also always been fascinated by this stuff.

Great interview on Radio this am clarified a few things to me. Multiple hominid species co- existing from maybe 3 million years ago likely at various sites. Early sapiens that we would recognise as such appears now to be identifiable not just in E Africa but other African sites, and earlier than thought. Emerged as dominant with others becoming extinct such as Neanderthals by 40,000 yrs ago. 

We are a single species, genetically very homogenous despite plumage differences. Unusual in the animal kingdom for a successful creature I think. I think the evidence suggests some but not a huge amount mixing with other early hominids that became extinct.

I think I have finally got away from those drawings in old biology textbooks of a nice linear family tree of ape>early man>us.

If anyone has the chance to visit the Lascaux cave reconstruction I would really advise it. I have been twice but not yet to the newly refreshed version or to the similar new one at Le Chauvet . Next best is the Werner Herzog film Cave Of Forgotten Dreams. Fascinating and beautiful.

Bruce

I'm quite keen on those ideas that we are descendants from a single species that are far from being homogeneous.  That miniature and giant precursors had lived once that we might have grown from, but perhaps had not due to limits of evolution gaining a foothold.  The missing links could be those Pygmy elves and yetis.

Don Atkinson posted:

Scientists now consider that the human fossil remains in Morocco, dated at 300,000 years are most probably Homo Sapiens ie "us"

This pushes back the clock of our emergence as a species by about 100,000 years.

 

...and I expect there were still roadworks on the M6 around Birmingham.

Also keen on the idea that those rough outlines of what was basically a primitive but sentient creature was given capabilities by some " other" intervention.   Not a big black Naim box stood on its end, but something else.

I love this stuff too. Radio 4 Inside Science did a good piece on this subject earlier in the week.