Europe was the birthplace of mankind, not Africa, scientists find

[Zeek Daniels]

Funny thing about evolution is you cant prove it. You cant link anything by bones. Theres tons of animals out there and you cant prove they came from anything other than what they currently are. You can theorize about it but you cant prove it. This isnt a math question. Good job scientists you found more bones and believe it proves your theory. Or you just found more dead bones of a species that was wiped off the planet like tons of others. Doesnt prove we came from anything.

[Deleted]

We talked about the findings at university last tuesday. Our professor was not excited. :x

First: The dating is probably not correct or atleast accurate. People tend to make stuff older to gain more fame and or media attention in archaeology.

Second: This has nothing to do with us Homo Sapiens, just one of probably several dozen, if not hundred, homini.

Third: This is nothing new. We already know apes existed in southern europe in this time. We just didnt know if they actually evolved here into a new branch.

Its probably going to get some attention, like Homo Naledi. Afterwards it will fade into obscurity or atleast vanish out of the mainstream media.
Still cool to see this stuff turn up and being discussed!

[hrugner]

Interesting, but there isn't enough here to see a new origin for humanity. This new jaw makes the race just a spur off the tree without a bone record tying them into the progression toward hominid. We'll have a clearer picture of what this means in a few decades.

[purebalance]

I highly doubt this is going to be accepted. Right now those findings stand as outliers to the current information we have regarding where humans "began". It would take more findings in the general region to even make a ripple on the current model. Interesting none the less, I love hearing about these things given my love for anthropology.

Or more than likely you'll just have people outright deny it because it invalidates claims about certain people. Just like the Baja skulls show that the current Native Americans not only more than likely were not the first people in North America, but also that they killed off the people from the Pacific Islands that were there first and meanwhile the tribes in the US are demanding the skulls be given to them because the scientists who analyzed them and show conclusively that they are not of the same origin are going to invalidate a lot of the claims people make about Native Americans and their rights.

[I Push Buttons]

This sounds more like an anomaly than blanket truth than humanity evolved in Europe instead of Africa. If their claims are not erroneous, I would think this is more of a rare anomaly.

They haven't said humanity evolved in Europe, simply posited that the graecopithecus specimens, found in Greece and Bulgaria, are hominin. These remains are upwards of 7.2 million years old, so assuming their position is true, it would make this the oldest known last common ancestor between apes and man discovered thus far.

[purebalance]

Interesting, but there isn't enough here to see a new origin for humanity. This new jaw makes the race just a spur off the tree without a bone record tying them into the progression toward hominid. We'll have a clearer picture of what this means in a few decades.

I would be more of the mindset that evolution could have happened simultaneously in multiple places. Then again racists like Yusra Koghali in Canada will use this information to say her usual "See white people are genetically inferior and black people evolved from white people!"(she's the head of BLM in Canada and constantly spews this shit on the internet and in person even though Canada has hate speech laws and should have her arrested years ago).

[Deleted]

It doesn't matter if people are upset or not, facts are facts. I long suspected this. The "fertile crescent" can be a little unforgiving weather wise, it didn't make sense to me that mankind would have been born there (unless we lost adaptions through evolution we previously had). I also think that this latest evidence is not the end of the story either.

I do not actually think we will ever find enough scientific evidence to know exactly were we originated, but each piece is a little closer to solving the puzzle.

The fertile crescent has absolutely nothing to do with the birth of Homo Sapiens Sapiens...The fertile crescent is situated in the middle east. Homo sapiens sapiens originated in southern/middle africa.

[Puupi]

Neanderthals are generally regarded as a distinct species of hominin (though that's not to say there isn't significant debate over that), but in either case, whether you have their DNA or not, you'd still be Homo sapiens sapiens, the only extant subspecies of Homo sapiens today.

People with neanderthal genes and those without are clearly two different subspecies.

[Vanyali]

Interesting!


We don't know that. It's just an assumption based on findings of homo sapiens remains. It's also quite a mess really. There are homo sapiens sapiens (supposedly what we are right now), and homo sapiens neanderthalensis. So what are those people today who have neanderthal genes in them?

subspecies are a strange thing, and directly a result of our cataloguing history of "it looks like this so it must be different!" when it comes to taxidermy. Neanderthalensis, for all that it's touted as this massively different species, is really not all that different from us, and given that we were able to breed successfully with them as sapiens, suggests that the problem lies more in that baggage of history. When you add in the fact that you could pass a "full-blood" neanderthalensis on the streets and not know they were a different "species" further highlights the strangeness of the system, given the fact that you'd know habilis or erector wasn't a normal sapiens from first-look (and you can insert just about any hominid in there that's not neanderthalensis, in fact).

the chain to sapiens is fairly clear, and neanderthalensis can be seen as one of the (many) waves of sapien that went out from africa, as we're fairly certain that it wasn't just one as some early models suggested.

[Puupi]

the chain to sapiens is fairly clear, and neanderthalensis can be seen as one of the (many) waves of sapien that went out from africa, as we're fairly certain that it wasn't just one as some early models suggested.

Yeah the chain to sapiens from 1 million years ago to sapiens is quite clear, but before that it is quite hazy. Especially with the missing link between the first homo-no homo. :O

[Vanyali]

Yeah the chain to sapiens from 1 million years ago to sapiens is quite clear, but before that it is quite hazy. Especially with the missing link between the first homo-no homo. :O

If you're talking about mankind (which, for most people, is sapiens), the chain is clear.

And there is no "missing link". That term... I hate it, so, so much. We know the lineage. There might be another species that is between A and B, but said species will have very few (in most cases) differences, and is interesting only in a very mechanical way. Which is basically all this would be if it's even true - there's a species, that lived in europe, that was on the transition from ape to hominid. It did not walk upright (we've already found where that developed.. in africa), it did not have any signatures for the homo line save the very, very old (that are still shared with apes), and in the scheme of things is fairly insignificant, with zero impact on hominid development.

[Puupi]

Anthropologists obviously broadly disagree, given that we already know who has neanderthal DNA and roughly how much and they haven't bothered reclassifying living humans.

I think there are more social, legal, political and moral reasons to "not bother" reclassifying living humans than there are scientific reasons. If someone suggested it publicly you'd see Godwin faster than ever before in any debate.

[Azadina]

So misleading title :/ Even if more evidence is found, it doesn't overwrite all the evidence from Africa already. At best we'd then have 2 different starting places, not just one.

[Deleted]

Anthropologists obviously broadly disagree, given that we already know who has neanderthal DNA and roughly how much and they haven't bothered reclassifying living humans.

you dont think this is because of being careful about this things in human to make sure it is not used as political leverage to discriminate?

[Puupi]

If you're talking about mankind (which, for most people, is sapiens), the chain is clear.

And there is no "missing link". That term... I hate it, so, so much. We know the lineage. There might be another species that is between A and B, but said species will have very few (in most cases) differences, and is interesting only in a very mechanical way. Which is basically all this would be if it's even true - there's a species, that lived in europe, that was on the transition from ape to hominid. It did not walk upright (we've already found where that developed.. in africa), it did not have any signatures for the homo line save the very, very old (that are still shared with apes), and in the scheme of things is fairly insignificant, with zero impact on hominid development.

There is a missing link between australopithecus and homo - unless homo naledi is it.

[Vanyali]

I think there are more social, legal and moral reasons to "not bother" reclassifying living humans than there are scientific reasons. If someone suggested it publicly you'd see Godwin faster than ever before in any debate.

While there would be those that would take advantage, it also literally doesn't matter - it's like trying to make up a new species because you bred a shepherd and a papillon because the two looked different. That's the level of absurdity trying to pull the classifications apart would reach.

- - - Updated - - -

There is a missing link between australopithecus and homo - unless homo naledi is it.

There really, really isn't.

The only way there'd be a missing link would be if we didn't know that they were related and it turned out they were. Which.. we know they are through various traits. Nothing is missing to link them together; fine-tuning of what changed where is not revealed for very few traits, but it's not a missing link. That term is both outdated and annoying, as well as showcasing not an insignificant amount of ignorance.

[Deleted]

I think there are more social, legal and moral reasons to "not bother" reclassifying living humans than there are scientific reasons. If someone suggested it publicly you'd see Godwin faster than ever before in any debate.

Specialists have already bothered extensively with this topic. Every single human being that lives above the sub-saharan part of Africa has neanderthal genes to some very small degree. Its broadely situated between 1,3 and 2,2%. Atleast in the publications I know.

Everyone originating south of the sub-saharan part of Africa has no neanderthal genes. We are still the same. There is no difference in our visual appearance.

Which is completely different for ALL other Hominin types. They all look extremely different to the first homo sapiens. Thus there are already several dozens of homini and all can be distinguished by looks alone. A neanderthal looks nothing like a homo sapiens sapiens. The bones are easily seperated.

[Endus]

This really doesn't support that claim. At best, it's showing that early hominids were more widespread than we knew. There's no direct evidence suggesting we're a direct descendent from this new find, and even all hominids were, it just means we moved into Africa millions of years back as early hominids, and developed there for millions of years, before our relatively recent exodus (in evolutionary scales).

The "out of Africa" concept was never that all human antecedents only ever lived on the African continent, it was that the origin of Homo Sapiens was in Africa before spreading to the rest of the world, and nothing here contests that.

It doesn't matter if people are upset or not, facts are facts. I long suspected this. The "fertile crescent" can be a little unforgiving weather wise, it didn't make sense to me that mankind would have been born there (unless we lost adaptions through evolution we previously had). I also think that this latest evidence is not the end of the story either.

This is because the Middle East today is nothing like the way it was 10,000 years ago. The whole region was rich and highly productive grasslands, not desert. It's like the Sahara; it's within human historical record that the region has shifted from hugely fertile plains into the massive desert we know it as today.

[Freighter]

Specialists have already bothered extensively with this topic. Every single human being that lives above the sub-saharan part of Africa has neanderthal genes to some very small degree. Its broadely situated between 1,3 and 2,2%. Atleast in the publications I know.

Everyone originating south of the sub-saharan part of Africa has no neanderthal genes. We are still the same. There is no difference in our visual appearance.

Which is completely different for ALL other Hominin types. They all look extremely different to the first homo sapiens. Thus there are already several dozens of homini and all can be distinguished by looks alone. A neanderthal looks nothing like a homo sapiens sapiens. The bones are easily seperated.

There are differences in bones between the different races in humans too. We can even tell each other apart just by looking at the other in living form.

[Endus]

There is a missing link between australopithecus and homo - unless homo naledi is it.

The entire concept of a "missing link" is garbage science, to begin with. Unless we have fossil records of literally every single individual in a person's ancestry, there are "missing links". It doesn't mean the connections between evolutionary forms aren't understood.

It's like the nonsense about "transitional fossils". That's not a thing. A fish doesn't just go "oh, I should grow legs and lungs and live on land" and give birth to lizards. We have "transitional" forms, and they're all around us. Critters like lungfish, for instance. Whether they died out or not had to do with their success as a species themselves. Every species is in "transition" from what came before it, to whatever it will branch into afterward. It's all "transitional".