Humanities African Origins Under Scrutiny

[usmbguest5318]

It's not a contest. It's discovering history. That's all.

I disagree. The link is worded in a way to fool the ignorant into claiming homo sapiens sapiens begin in europe. My link is way more scientific. How can europe be "the birthplace of mankind" if homo sapiens arose first in Africa?

My comment was directed at both of you. It is not a contest as to which 'race' is better. The concept of race is a subjective, social, man made one, not a scientific, objective one. Scientists, hypothetically, are not interested in proving the superiority of one race over another but just in learning the truth. That we have believed and may still believe humans began on the African continent does not equate somehow to a superiority of a race because the concept of race is so specious. Making racial superiority, either of you, the issue is foolish and limiting.

My comment had nothing to do with who was better. It was correcting the intentionally misleading information in the OP. All I did was post the fact that homo sapiens first arose in Africa. How is that making it a contest?

correcting the intentionally misleading information in the OP

What's misleading in the OP? At best, I'd say that the classification of the Graecopithecus as European, with its attendant implication that the creature is indigenous to that region -- researchers do not yet know whether Graecopithecus originated in Europe or elsewhere -- is a bit of an exaggeration, but I think the OP also reigns in that bit of hyperbole with the statement "it was found in Europe." Short of that, I don't see anything misleading in the OP.

 

[Asclepias]

The likelihood that there are older hominid bones in more temperate climates is very high. They just haven't discovered them yet. There really is no supporting evidence that Graecopithecus originated in europe at least not from the link in the OP. Could this be something a relative of the deceased carried with him and dropped in europe while migrating?

 

[Asclepias]

It's not a contest. It's discovering history. That's all.

I disagree. The link is worded in a way to fool the ignorant into claiming homo sapiens sapiens begin in europe. My link is way more scientific. How can europe be "the birthplace of mankind" if homo sapiens arose first in Africa?

My comment was directed at both of you. It is not a contest as to which 'race' is better. The concept of race is a subjective, social, man made one, not a scientific, objective one. Scientists, hypothetically, are not interested in proving the superiority of one race over another but just in learning the truth. That we have believed and may still believe humans began on the African continent does not equate somehow to a superiority of a race because the concept of race is so specious. Making racial superiority, either of you, the issue is foolish and limiting.

My comment had nothing to do with who was better. It was correcting the intentionally misleading information in the OP. All I did was post the fact that homo sapiens first arose in Africa. How is that making it a contest?

correcting the intentionally misleading information in the OP

What's misleading in the OP? At best, I'd say that the classification of the Graecopithecus as European, with its attendant implication that the creature is indigenous to that region -- researchers do not yet know whether Graecopithecus originated in Europe or elsewhere -- is a bit of an exaggeration, but I think the OP also reigns in that bit of hyperbole with the statement "it was found in Europe." Short of that, I don't see anything misleading in the OP.

Maybe its just me but this is very misleading on every level. It goes out of its way to say "not Africa"

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

I thought they found evidence of homo sapiens when I initially read that.

 

[Esmeralda]

It's not a contest. It's discovering history. That's all.

I disagree. The link is worded in a way to fool the ignorant into claiming homo sapiens sapiens begin in europe. My link is way more scientific. How can europe be "the birthplace of mankind" if homo sapiens arose first in Africa?

My comment was directed at both of you. It is not a contest as to which 'race' is better. The concept of race is a subjective, social, man made one, not a scientific, objective one. Scientists, hypothetically, are not interested in proving the superiority of one race over another but just in learning the truth. That we have believed and may still believe humans began on the African continent does not equate somehow to a superiority of a race because the concept of race is so specious. Making racial superiority, either of you, the issue is foolish and limiting.

My comment had nothing to do with who was better. It was correcting the intentionally misleading information in the OP. All I did was post the fact that homo sapiens first arose in Africa. How is that making it a contest?

Okay.

 

[usmbguest5318]

It's not a contest. It's discovering history. That's all.

I disagree. The link is worded in a way to fool the ignorant into claiming homo sapiens sapiens begin in europe. My link is way more scientific. How can europe be "the birthplace of mankind" if homo sapiens arose first in Africa?

My comment was directed at both of you. It is not a contest as to which 'race' is better. The concept of race is a subjective, social, man made one, not a scientific, objective one. Scientists, hypothetically, are not interested in proving the superiority of one race over another but just in learning the truth. That we have believed and may still believe humans began on the African continent does not equate somehow to a superiority of a race because the concept of race is so specious. Making racial superiority, either of you, the issue is foolish and limiting.

My comment had nothing to do with who was better. It was correcting the intentionally misleading information in the OP. All I did was post the fact that homo sapiens first arose in Africa. How is that making it a contest?

correcting the intentionally misleading information in the OP

What's misleading in the OP? At best, I'd say that the classification of the Graecopithecus as European, with its attendant implication that the creature is indigenous to that region -- researchers do not yet know whether Graecopithecus originated in Europe or elsewhere -- is a bit of an exaggeration, but I think the OP also reigns in that bit of hyperbole with the statement "it was found in Europe." Short of that, I don't see anything misleading in the OP.

Maybe its just me but this is very misleading on every level. It goes out of its way to say "not Africa"

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

I thought they found evidence of homo sapiens when I initially read that.

Okay...I agree the headline of the article the OP-er used as the discussion rubric for the thread is misleading; it does indeed overstate the nature of the discovery and it presents an invalid conclusion given the researcher's findings as depicted in the article.

I thought you meant the OP-er's own comments were misleading, and I think it unfair to hold an OP-er here accountable for the headline of an article they thus cite. I understand what you mean now. TY for the clarification.


Aside:

Can members, recognizing that an article's headline is misleading, write their own more neutrally phrased text and hyperlink the same article? Well, yes, they can, but I can't justify expecting folks here to do so.​

 

[Asclepias]

Agreed. While the OP didnt really say anything wrong in the OP he is a known racist which makes me suspect him of intentionally picking that specific link.

 

[Tank]

It's clear that humans evolved out of Africa

 

[usmbguest5318]

For those who, like me, found the Graecopithecus discovery interesting and want higher quality information about it than is found in this thread's rubric article, the following articles/essays are worth reading:

• Evolution and Environment in Hominoidea
• The Late Miocene hominoids Ouranopithecus and Graecopithecus. Implications about their relationships and taxonomy
  
• Potential hominin affinities of Graecopithecus from the Late Miocene of Europe

One thing that seems relevant to note, and that the article does not mention, is that Graecopithecus is not a newly discovered hominid. Fossils of them were some time ago found in France, though those specimens didn't date as old as the more recently found one.

FWIW, one will find a listing of excellent references regarding Sahelanthropus tchadensis here -- Sahelanthropus tchadensis | The Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program -- along with a brief discussion of that hominid.

To Asclepias' point about the misleading nature of the article's headline and expounding upon it, one observes that the article makes a few statements that cannot be categorically true based on neither the information in the article nor the additional content one finds in the original research into Graecopithecus. For example:

• "The species was also found to be several hundred thousand years older than the oldest African hominid." -- It'd be considerably more accurate -- that is, realizing that everything having to do with the matter of modern human origins involves a good deal of nuance -- to say the Graecopithecus specimen is older than any currently known/heretofore found African hominid specimens. It may be the Graecopithecus species is older, but I didn't see anything in the article warranting a species-level assertion. Did you?
• "During the period the Mediterranean Sea went through frequent periods of drying up completely, forming a land bridge between Europe and Africa and allowing apes and early hominids to pass between the continents." -- There's nothing misleading about that statement; however, that it is true means early hominids could have been -- given observed migration patterns of all sorts of modern creatures, likely were -- moving back and forth and throughout Africa, Western Asia and Europe.
  
  For some things, what one does not find is indicative of that thing/process not having happened. In other matters, what is not found in no way precludes an event from having happened. As goes the evolution and movement of hominids and other creatures, and the subsequent preservation of their remains such that they sit somewhere awaiting our present day discovery of them, the latter is most certainly the case. It does, after all, take a somewhat rarefied set of circumstances for a dead creature's body to survive intact in spite of the vicissitudes of climate, scavenging, and decay.
  
  To wit, there are probably prehistoric creature remains buried in the rock layers beneath the waters of the Mediterranean, but I'm fairly certain nobody will undertake an expedition to look there. Our only alternative, at least for now, is to look in places we can readily access and hope that whatever creatures died in the desiccated Mediterranean Sea had peers that died in other places and are preserved there so we can eventually find them.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Baby boomers are a blight on American culture, and history. The nation, and world will be better of when they're gone...

Silence, heathen! Or the Mighty Gods of Rock and Roll, ACDC, will smite thee from above!

 

[JimBowie1958]

I think it safe to say that the Graecopithecus discovery establishes that the progression of "churning," as you put it, happened over a broader area than was previously known and the incremental changes that eventually transformed primates/hominids into modern humans commenced earlier than was previously known. That's useful information for it gives us a new puzzle piece regarding rates of evolutionary change.

The discovery of Graecopithecus gives rise to a variety of new questions, not the least of which include:

• Did Graecopithecus evolve in Europe? Or did it evolve elsewhere and migrate to Europe?
  • Depending on the answer to those questions, is it reasonable to hypothesize that human precursors dwelt in other places on the planet other than EMEA and in turn seek evidence of same?
• Is the Graecopithecus finding material enough to militate for modifying our working evolutionary change models, given our new knowledge about how early some modern human traits appeared? If it is, how should the models be adjusted?
• What new premises, inferences and conclusions become plausible, or more plausible than before, given the Graecopithecus discovery? What premises and inferences have thus become less plausible?

I am neither a geneticist nor an paleoanthropologist, nor some blend of the two, so I have no idea of what be correct answers to those and other questions the Graecopithecus discovery necessarily forces one to evaluate and answer as best as possible.

I get the impression that hominids and great apes had a much larger range of habitation across the Ice Age cycles than we had imagined, as you pointed out above, so is it realistic to ask *where* they are from?

Seems that they are from everywhere.

 

[usmbguest5318]

I think it safe to say that the Graecopithecus discovery establishes that the progression of "churning," as you put it, happened over a broader area than was previously known and the incremental changes that eventually transformed primates/hominids into modern humans commenced earlier than was previously known. That's useful information for it gives us a new puzzle piece regarding rates of evolutionary change.

The discovery of Graecopithecus gives rise to a variety of new questions, not the least of which include:

• Did Graecopithecus evolve in Europe? Or did it evolve elsewhere and migrate to Europe?
  • Depending on the answer to those questions, is it reasonable to hypothesize that human precursors dwelt in other places on the planet other than EMEA and in turn seek evidence of same?
• Is the Graecopithecus finding material enough to militate for modifying our working evolutionary change models, given our new knowledge about how early some modern human traits appeared? If it is, how should the models be adjusted?
• What new premises, inferences and conclusions become plausible, or more plausible than before, given the Graecopithecus discovery? What premises and inferences have thus become less plausible?

I am neither a geneticist nor an paleoanthropologist, nor some blend of the two, so I have no idea of what be correct answers to those and other questions the Graecopithecus discovery necessarily forces one to evaluate and answer as best as possible.

I get the impression that hominids and great apes had a much larger range of habitation across the Ice Age cycles than we had imagined, as you pointed out above, so is it realistic to ask *where* they are from?

Seems that they are from everywhere.

I get the impression that hominids and great apes had a much larger range of habitation across the Ice Age cycles than we had imagined,

...And over a longer period of time did they apparently inhabit those areas.

 

[Aletheia4u]

New fossil information is helping mankind get a broader picture of the development of modern man. This new European hominid species, dates older than the oldest known African specimen. But it’s been found in Europe. Very interesting...
Europe was the birthplace of mankind, not Africa, scientists find

 

[Two Thumbs]

New fossil information is helping mankind get a broader picture of the development of modern man. This new European hominid species, dates older than the oldest known African specimen. But it’s been found in Europe. Very interesting...
Europe was the birthplace of mankind, not Africa, scientists find

while interesting, it makes it clear that the first 'humans' did not come from eu.

simply another prehumen monkey.

 

[Vastator]

New fossil information is helping mankind get a broader picture of the development of modern man. This new European hominid species, dates older than the oldest known African specimen. But it’s been found in Europe. Very interesting...
Europe was the birthplace of mankind, not Africa, scientists find

while interesting, it makes it clear that the first 'humans' did not come from eu.

simply another prehumen monkey.

Actually the finding has nothing to do with monkeys. If fact humans don't even have monkeys in their lineage... Hominids come from the ape line... You really failed in your comprehension of the information contained in the article. You might want to reread it...

 

[Two Thumbs]

New fossil information is helping mankind get a broader picture of the development of modern man. This new European hominid species, dates older than the oldest known African specimen. But it’s been found in Europe. Very interesting...
Europe was the birthplace of mankind, not Africa, scientists find

while interesting, it makes it clear that the first 'humans' did not come from eu.

simply another prehumen monkey.

Actually the finding has nothing to do with monkeys. If fact humans don't even have monkeys in their lineage... Hominids come from the ape line... You really failed in your comprehension of the information contained in the article. You might want to reread it...

I read it, it's neat.

but your stuck with humans, actual humans, coming out of Africa.

 

[Vastator]

New fossil information is helping mankind get a broader picture of the development of modern man. This new European hominid species, dates older than the oldest known African specimen. But it’s been found in Europe. Very interesting...
Europe was the birthplace of mankind, not Africa, scientists find

while interesting, it makes it clear that the first 'humans' did not come from eu.

simply another prehumen monkey.

Actually the finding has nothing to do with monkeys. If fact humans don't even have monkeys in their lineage... Hominids come from the ape line... You really failed in your comprehension of the information contained in the article. You might want to reread it...

I read it, it's neat.

but your stuck with humans, actual humans, coming out of Africa.

What's your point? The article isn't about actual humans...

 

[Two Thumbs]

New fossil information is helping mankind get a broader picture of the development of modern man. This new European hominid species, dates older than the oldest known African specimen. But it’s been found in Europe. Very interesting...
Europe was the birthplace of mankind, not Africa, scientists find

while interesting, it makes it clear that the first 'humans' did not come from eu.

simply another prehumen monkey.

Actually the finding has nothing to do with monkeys. If fact humans don't even have monkeys in their lineage... Hominids come from the ape line... You really failed in your comprehension of the information contained in the article. You might want to reread it...

I read it, it's neat.

but your stuck with humans, actual humans, coming out of Africa.

What's your point? The article isn't about actual humans...

yea, you don't strike me as the kind of guy that cares what's in a foreign paper or about evolution stories.

you strike me as a racist and you are just dying inside at the idea that your deep roots are African.

 

[Vastator]

New fossil information is helping mankind get a broader picture of the development of modern man. This new European hominid species, dates older than the oldest known African specimen. But it’s been found in Europe. Very interesting...
Europe was the birthplace of mankind, not Africa, scientists find

while interesting, it makes it clear that the first 'humans' did not come from eu.

simply another prehumen monkey.

Actually the finding has nothing to do with monkeys. If fact humans don't even have monkeys in their lineage... Hominids come from the ape line... You really failed in your comprehension of the information contained in the article. You might want to reread it...

I read it, it's neat.

but your stuck with humans, actual humans, coming out of Africa.

What's your point? The article isn't about actual humans...

yea, you don't strike me as the kind of guy that cares what's in a foreign paper or about evolution stories.

you strike me as a racist and you are just dying inside at the idea that your deep roots are African.

Ohhh. So you really didn't care about the content of the thread. You we're just dying to make your personal feeling about me known to the board... Thanks for clearing that up.
Pro tip - USMB has a race/race relations sub forum. Sounds like that better fits your interests; you should try posting your theories there.

 

[CarlinAnnArbor]

yea, you don't strike me as the kind of guy that cares what's in a foreign paper or about evolution stories

BINGO!