A Review of What We Know About Ancient Human "Species Interbreeding" (as the scientists call it, what bunk!)

Hola darlings!

A fundamental tenet of biology teaches us that like breeds with like.  As our technology continues to improve and we continue to dig more deeply into our human origins and people aren't afraid to toss off preconceived notions and never stop asking "but what about this? What about that?", I think all the crap some of learned in school (and some people still believe) about "ape men" and the classic Darwinian take on "evolution" is a bunch of baloney.  Now, on to the article at Phys Org - and do try to ignore the silly title:

How a one night stand in the Ice Age affects us all today

October 8, 2015 by Darren Curnoe, The Conversation

Over the past half decade, ancient DNA research has revealed some surprising aspects to our evolutionary history during the past 50,000 years.  Perhaps the most startling of these has been the extent to which the ancestors of living people across the planet interbred with other closely related species of human.

But where in the world did these cross-species matings occur? Which archaic species were involved? Just how much of the human genome comprises DNA from these archaic relatives?And what impact did interbreeding have on our evolution and general biology as a species?

These are questions are the core of current research into interbreeding as revealed by DNA sequences obtained from fossils in Europe and Asia, as well as from comparisons with the genomes of living people.

Yet Another New Kind of Human?

The full story has yet to be told - that's for sure!  Darwin, I hope you're spinning in your grave!

The BBC article is posted in full below (not including photographs), but the full press release [excerpted below] from the University of New South Wales (Australia) can be found here.  It contains somewhat different information than the BBC article that gives more of a flavor for just what exciting knowledge the study of these bones (found in 1979 and 1989) may yield. 

Mystery human fossils put spotlight on China

Youngest of their kind ever found in mainland East Asia

		IMAGE:An artist's reconstruction of fossils from two caves in southwest China have revealed a previously unknown Stone Age people and give a rare glimpse of a recent stage of human... Click here for more information.

Fossils from two caves in south-west China have revealed a previously unknown Stone Age people and give a rare glimpse of a recent stage of human evolution with startling implications for the early peopling of Asia.

The fossils are of a people with a highly unusual mix of archaic and modern anatomical features and are the youngest of their kind ever found in mainland East Asia.

Dated to just 14,500 to 11,500 years old, these people would have shared the landscape with modern-looking people at a time when China's earliest farming cultures were beginning, says an international team of scientists led by Associate Professor Darren Curnoe, of the University of New South Wales, and Professor Ji Xueping of the Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archeology.
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Whoever these people were, the youngest of their bones are dated to around the end of the last Ice Age.  What a shockeroo this is!  I believe I can already feel it reverberating around the world of the scientific elite.  Oh my! 

Soooo, let's see, over the past few years while I've been writing this bloe there has been and continues to be a "fresh look" at the former "Ape-Man" Neanderthal whose DNA survives in millions of humans alive today; there are the "mysterious" Denisovans in Siberia, whose DNA also continues to exist in millions of humans alive today; and now, the "Red Deer People" in Southwest China (not to mention the "Hobbits" -- Homo floresiensis  -- that experts will be talking about for the next 50 years...).  If the researchers are successful in extracting DNA from these young bones, what more secrets to the herstory of womankind may be revealed?

So you tell me, darlings?  What, precisely, does the word "extinct" mean???  If our experts in the field of "evolution" haven't even yet settled upon a definition for what a "modern human" (homo sapiens sapiens) is, who on earth are they to tell ME that so and so was descended from so and so, and THIS is the way it was, and shut the flying F up if you don't agree because we;re the experts and you're not!  Oooooh, it just tickles me pink how many people must be gagging on their past and present words tonight.  Here's a wicked laugh just for you:  BWWWWWWWWWAAAAHHHHAAAAAHHHHHAAAAA!


From BBC News
14 March 2012 Last updated at 11:19 ET
By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News

Human fossils hint at new species

The remains of what may be a previously unknown human species have been identified in southern China.

The bones, which represent at least five individuals, have been dated to between 11,500 and 14,500 years ago.

But scientists are calling them simply the Red Deer Cave people, after one of the sites where they were unearthed.

The team has told the PLoS One journal that far more detailed analysis of the fossils is required before they can be ascribed to a new human lineage.

"We're trying to be very careful at this stage about definitely classifying them," said study co-leader Darren Curnoe from the University of New South Wales, Australia.

"One of the reasons for that is that in the science of human evolution or palaeoanthropology, we presently don't have a generally agreed, biological definition for our own species (Homo sapiens), believe it or not. And so this is a highly contentious area," he told BBC News.

Much of the material has been in Chinese collections for some time but has only recently been subjected to intense investigation.

The remains of some of the individuals come from Maludong (or Red Deer Cave), near the city of Mengzi in Yunnan Province. A further skeleton was discovered at Longlin, in neighbouring Guangxi Province.

The skulls and teeth from the two locations are very similar to each other, suggesting they are from the same population.

But their features are quite distinct from what you might call a fully modern human, says the team. Instead, the Red Deer Cave people have a mix of archaic and modern characteristics.

In general, the individuals had rounded brain cases with prominent brow ridges. Their skull bones were quite thick. Their faces were quite short and flat and tucked under the brain, and they had broad noses.

Their jaws jutted forward but they lacked a modern-human-like chin. Computed Tomography (X-ray) scans of their brain cavities indicate they had modern-looking frontal lobes but quite archaic-looking anterior, or parietal, lobes. They also had large molar teeth.

Dr Curnoe and colleagues put forward two possible scenarios in their PLoS One paper for the origin of the Red Deer Cave population.

One posits that they represent a very early migration of a primitive-looking Homo sapiens that lived separately from other forms in Asia before dying out.
Another possibility contends that they were indeed a distinct Homo species that evolved in Asia and lived alongside our own kind until remarkably recently.

A third scenario being suggested by scientists not connected with the research is that the Red Deer Cave people could be hybrids.

"It's possible these were modern humans who inter-mixed or bred with archaic humans that were around at the time," explained Dr Isabelle De Groote, a palaeoanthropologist from London's Natural History Museum.

"The other option is that they evolved these more primitive features independently because of genetic drift or isolation, or in a response to an environmental pressure such as climate."

Dr Curnoe agreed all this was "certainly possible".

Attempts are being made to extract DNA from the remains. This could yield information about interbreeding, just as genetic studies have on the closely related human species - the Neanderthals and an enigmatic group of people from Siberia known as the Denisovans.

Whatever their true place in the Homo family tree, the Red Deer People are an important find simply because of the dearth of well dated, well described specimens from this part of the world.

And their unearthing all adds to the fascinating and increasingly complex story of human migration and development.

"The Red Deer People were living at what was a really interesting time in China, during what we call the epipalaeolithic or the end of the Stone Age," says Dr Curnoe.

"Not far from Longlin, there are quite well known archaeological sites where some of the very earliest evidence for the epipalaeolithic in East Asia has been found.

"These were occupied by very modern looking people who are already starting to make ceramics - pottery - to store food. And they're already harvesting from the landscape wild rice. There was an economic transition going on from full-blown foraging and gathering towards agriculture."

Quite how the Red Deer People fit into this picture is unclear. The research team is promising to report further investigations into some of the stone tools and cultural artefacts discovered at the dig sites.

The co-leader on the project is Professor Ji Xueping of the Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology.

If They Live On In Us, How Can They Be Called "Extinct?"

The bottom line is that if we could breed together and produce viable offspring who could also reproduce, we were all humans despite the labels that modern science obstinantly continues to put on us; a vestige of clinging to the 19th century concept of "evolution," perhaps.  I suppose there are still scientists who are actively looking for the "missing link."  Good luck with finding something that never existed!

From popular-archaeology.com
Vol. 4 September 2011 - Print the September 2011 Issue

Neanderthals Vanished Because of Their Own Success, Suggests Study
November 17, 2011

Researchers used archaeology and complex computer modeling to develop new insights into the extinction of Neanderthals and the behavior of other human hunter-gatherers during the last Ice Age.

Using data obtained from the archaeological record, a team of researchers at Arizona State University and the University of Colorado, Denver, conducted experiments using complex computer modeling to analyze evidence of how human hunter-gatherers responded culturally and biologically to the dramatic changes that took place during the last Ice Age. The results showed, among other things, that the Neanderthals, thought by many scientists to have become extinct at least in part because of their inadaptability and inability to compete with the expanding presence of modern humans, may have actually been victims of their own success.

The researchers used the archeological record to track human behavioral changes in Late Pleistocene (126,000 - 10,000 B.P.) Western Eurasia over a period of 100,000 years and across the equivalent of 1,500 generations of human hunter-gatherers. They applied computer modeling to determine the evolutionary consequences of cultural and biological changes, which included how changes in the movements of modern humans and Neanderthals caused them to interact and interbreed with each other. The results showed that human mobility during the environmental changes associated with the Ice Age increased over time, likely in response to those environmental changes. The modeling suggested that the last Ice Age caused the ancestors of modern humans -- and Neanderthals -- to widen their ranges across Western Eurasia in search of new resources as the climate shifted.

According to study co-author Julien Riel-Salvatore of the University of Colorado, Denver, this provided new evidence that Neanderthals were more adaptable and resourceful than previously thought. Moreover, the study results suggested that the Neanderthals were gradually absorbed within the expanding modern human populations until they eventually disappeared as a distinctly separate human population and phenotype. [Are we really sure that they were ever a 'distinctly separate human population and phenotype?'  It seems that this assumption is based on our current knowledge of DNA analysis, which right now is primitive. Indeed, we're learning more nearly every day, it seems, about how alike so-called Neanderthal and so-called modern humans were - along with a third group of co-existing humans in the Far East - (China or Korea?)  Let's see what develops over the next 100 years in terms of both technology and our ability to use it to intepret existing and future evidence.]

Says Riel-Salvatore, "It's been long believed that Neanderthals were outcompeted by fitter modern humans and they could not adapt. We are changing the main narrative. Neanderthals were just as adaptable and in many ways, simply victims of their own success. Neanderthals had proven that they could roll with the punches and when they met the more numerous modern humans, they adapted again. But modern humans probably saw the Neanderthals as possible mates. As a result, over time, the Neanderthals died out as a physically recognizable population."

Michael Barton, study co-author and expert on archaeological applications to computer modeling at Arizona State University, agrees. "We tested the modeling results against the empirical archaeological record and found that there is evidence that Neanderthals, and moderns, did adapt their behaviors in the way in which we modeled," said Barton. "Moreover, the modeling predicts the kind of low-level genetic admixture of Neanderthal genes that are being found in the newest genetic studies just now being published.

Continued Barton, "In other words, successful behavioral adaptations to severe environmental conditions made Neanderthals, and other non-moderns about whom we know little, vulnerable to biological extinction, but at the same time, ensured they made a genetic contribution to modern populations."

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship and a Fulbright Graduate Student Fellowship. The paper is published in the December issue of Human Ecology as Modeling Human Ecodynamics and Biocultural Interactions in the Late Pleistocene of Western Eurasia, available online on November 17, 2011. It is co-authored by Michael Barton, Arizona State University; Julien Riel-Salvatore, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado Denver; John Martin Anderies, associate professor of computational social science at ASU in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change and the School of Sustainability; and Gabriel Popescu, anthropology doctoral student at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University.

Independent Research Line Confirms "Neanderthal" Genes in Most Humans

Eventually they'll get it right...

From Discovery News
All Non-Africans Part Neanderthal, Genetics Confirm
Analysis by Jennifer Viegas
Mon Jul 18, 2011 10:25 AM ET

If your heritage is non-African, you are part Neanderthal, according to a new study in the July issue of Molecular Biology and Evolution. Discovery News has been reporting on human/Neanderthal interbreeding for some time now, so this latest research confirms earlier findings.

Damian Labuda of the University of Montreal's Department of Pediatrics and the CHU Sainte-Justine Research Center conducted the study with his colleagues. They determined some of the human X chromosome originates from Neanderthals, but only in people of non-African heritage.

"This confirms recent findings suggesting that the two populations interbred," Labuda was quoted as saying in a press release. His team believes most, if not all, of the interbreeding took place in the Middle East, while modern humans were migrating out of Africa and spreading to other regions.

The ancestors of Neanderthals left Africa about 400,000 to 800,000 years ago. They evolved over the millennia mostly in what are now France, Spain, Germany and Russia. They went extinct, or were simply absorbed into the modern human population, about 30,000 years ago.

Neanderthals possessed the gene for language and had sophisticated music, art and tool craftsmanship skills, so they must have not been all that unattractive to modern humans at the time.

"In addition, because our methods were totally independent of Neanderthal material, we can also conclude that previous results were not influenced by contaminating artifacts," Labuda said.

This work goes back to nearly a decade ago, when Labuda and his colleagues identified a piece of DNA, called a haplotype, in the human X chromosome that seemed different. They questioned its origins.

Fast forward to 2010, when the Neanderthal genome was sequenced. The researchers could then compare the haplotype to the Neanderthal genome as well as to the DNA of existing humans. The scientists found that the sequence was present in people across all continents, except for sub-Saharan Africa, and including Australia.

"There is little doubt that this haplotype is present because of mating with our ancestors and Neanderthals," said Nick Patterson of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University. Patterson did not participate in the latest research. He added, "This is a very nice result, and further analysis may help determine more details."

David Reich, a Harvard Medical School geneticist, added, "Dr. Labuda and his colleagues were the first to identify a genetic variation in non-Africans that was likely to have come from an archaic population. This was done entirely without the Neanderthal genome sequence, but in light of the Neanderthal sequence, it is now clear that they were absolutely right!"

The modern human/Neanderthal combo likely benefitted our species, enabling it to survive in harsh, cold regions that Neanderthals previously had adapted to.

"Variability is very important for long-term survival of a species," Labuda concluded. "Every addition to the genome can be enriching."

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The article is confusing, to say the least, because according to current theory, ALL people came out of Africa, including the ancestors of so-called Neanderthal.  So, when the article says "non-African" heritage, to what population is that pointing to?  Only people with no "black" African ancestry?  But I thought we ALL were descended from black Africans.  Didn't we all start out black skinned and over time different populations' skin color changed according to the level of sun received?  But if that's the case, why are people who live in the Nordic regions blond haired, white skinned and blue-eyed while the Native Americans and First Nations people who live in the Arctic regions are dark skinned and dark-eyed with black hair? 

There's a big part of the story still missing here, obviously, and in more ways than one!  For instance, if most of the interbreeding (which we know happened) between 'modern' humans and 'archaic' Neanderthals took place in the Middle East, how could this have had any impact on the resulting offspring and their offspring, etc. being able to adapt better to survival in cold Europe?  Where, in the Middle East, did it ever get that cold?  And does the Middle East include Egypt?

Not Cannibals After All?

This story certainly presents a different take on this discovery - I'm sure I read about it a few months ago and then it was being said the marks on the human bones were evidence of butchering.  Now, the careful term defleshing is being used.  Well, as much as I hate to think that humans ate other humans, we certainly know that happened, so why not back then, too?  Does that make us sound too uncivilized, certainly a lot less civilized than the so-called Neanderthals?

20 June 2011 Last updated at 19:22 ET
Early human fossils unearthed in Ukraine
By Jennifer Carpenter
Science reporter, BBC News

Ancient remains uncovered in Ukraine represent some of the oldest evidence of modern people in Europe, experts have claimed.

Archaeologists found human bones and teeth, tools, ivory ornaments and animal remains at the Buran-Kaya cave site.

The 32,000-year-old fossils bear cut marks suggesting they were defleshed as part of a post-mortem ritual.

Details have been published in the journal PLoS One.

Archaeologist Dr Alexander Yanevich from the National Ukrainian Academy of Science in Kiev discovered the four Buran-Kaya caves in the Crimean mountains in 1991.

Since then, roughly two hundred human bone fragments have been unearthed at the site.  Among the shards of human bones and teeth, archaeologists have found ornaments fashioned from ivory, along with the abundant remains of animals.

The artefacts made by humans at the site allowed archaeologists to tie the ancient people to a cultural tradition known as the Gravettian. This culture came to span the entire European continent and is named after the site of La Gravette in France, where this stone age culture was first studied.

Researchers were able to directly date the human fossils using radiocarbon techniques. The shape and form of the remains told the scientists they were dealing with modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens).
Eastern promise
One thing that intrigued researchers was the scarcity of human long bones (bones from the limbs) in the caves.

The site yielded countless limb bones from antelope, foxes and hares.

But the human remains consisted of vertebrae, teeth and skull bones no larger than 12cm. What is more, the positions of cut marks found on the human fragments were distinct from those found on the animal bones.

And while the bone marrow had been removed from butchered animals, it had been left alone in the case of the human remains at the site, explained co-author Sandrine Prat from the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris. She suspects this demonstrates that human bones were processed differently from those of animals. Human flesh was removed as part of ritual "cleaning", not to be eaten.

Defining culture
The finds offer anthropologists a glimpse into a very early and important human culture, said Professor Clive Finlayson, an evolutionary ecologist and director of the Gibraltar Museum.

"Gravettian culture is the culture that defines modern humans. These people had knives, lightweight tools, open air camps, they used mammoth bones to make tents," he said, adding that this was the earliest example of the Gravettian cultural tradition.

Professor Finlayson said that uncovering evidence of this culture in Ukraine gave weight to the idea that early modern people spread into Europe from the Russian plains, not north through the Balkans from the Middle East.

"What has excited me is that we have found evidence of humans where I would expect them to be, exploiting foods that I would expect them to be exploiting," Professor Finlayson told BBC News.

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What happened to the "long bones," then? Were they buried somewhere, yet to be discovered?  Did they dissolve away while the other bones/fragments survived inside the cave? 

So, perhaps humans were eating each other 32,000 years ago - or not.  The jury is definitely still out on this one.  Just because the marrow wasn't removed from the human bones doesn't mean the flesh wasn't consumed.  Perhaps there was some big tribal ataboo about eating human bone marrow.  We just don't know - and probably will never know.

Still not explained - how Homo Sapiens Sapiens, Homo Neanderthalis and Homo Denisovan could breed with each other and produce viable human beings that evidently also were able to produce offspring, enough at any rate, that some genes of both Neanderthal and Denisovan are found in modern human populations.  (This was reported at New Science on June 16, 2010, Breeding with Neanderthals helped humans go global).  Do you see the bias implicit in that article's title?  As if Neanderthals were something less than fully human!  Har!

Some people would have us believe that modern humans and the chimpanzee are like 99.98% related.  Fine - so their DNA may share many similarities.  Yet, humans cannot breed with chimpanzees, or great apes, or bonopos, etc. etc.  Let's face it, there is a fundamental, unbridgeable difference between a human being and not-human ape-like being, and never the twain shall meet, not 2 million, 1 million, 100,000 or 10,000 years ago, and not 10,000, 100,000, 1 million or 2 million years from now.  Neanderthals and Denisovans were fully human, and they bred with other humans.  Their descendants walk among us today, and we know it now, for certain, because some of their unique DNA sequences survived in today's human population.

Could these teeth turn "out of Africa" theory upside down?

We live in exciting times, archaeologically, that's for damn sure.  Thank Goddess for the internet - where news like this can now be instantaly published and read by anyone who has an interest.  Here is a new twist on what we thought we thought we knew :)

Ancient teeth raise new questions about the origins of modern man
2 Feb 2011
Binghamton University

BINGHAMTON, NY – Eight small teeth found in a cave near Rosh Haain, central Israel, are raising big questions about the earliest existence of humans and where we may have originated, says Binghamton University anthropologist Rolf Quam. Part of a team of international researchers led by Dr. Israel Hershovitz of Tel Aviv University, Qaum and his colleagues have been examining the dental discovery and recently published their joint findings in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

Excavated at Qesem cave, a pre-historic site that was uncovered in 2000, the size and shape of the teeth are very similar to those of modern man, Homo sapiens, which have been found at other sites is Israel, such as Oafzeh and Skhul - but they're a lot older than any previously discovered remains.

"The Qesem teeth come from a time period between 200,000 - 400,000 years ago when human remains from the Middle East are very scarce," Quam said. "We have numerous remains of Neandertals and Homo sapiens from more recent times, that is around 60,00 - 150,000 years ago, but fossils from earlier time periods are rare. So these teeth are providing us with some new information about who the earlier occupants of this region were as well as their potential evolutionary relationships with the later fossils from this same region."

Rest of article.

Ancient Teeth Found in Israel. Credit: Rolf Quam.

It struck me just now, looking at this photograph of some of the teeth the article speaks to, that they rather resemble man's early attempts to make dice...

Ancient Trade: Cretan Tools Point to 130,000 Year Old Sea Travel

You read that correctly - 130,000 year old sea travel in the Mediterranean.  Story at the guardian.co.uk.

AP foreign, Monday January 3 2011
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Archaeologists on the island of Crete have discovered what may be evidence of one of the world's first sea voyages by human ancestors, the Greek Culture Ministry said Monday. [How can they be so sure this was a journey by "human ancestors?"  How do they know they have their dating right?  How do they know the accepted chronology of "evolution" is correct, for that matter - ah, but that's an argument for somewhere else.  If memory serves me correctly, so-called "modern" man appeared on the scene about 100,000 years ago.  But what if "modern" man is older than previously thought?  What if the entire chronology is flawed because we have so much information missing?  Just a thought --]

A ministry statement said experts from Greece and the U.S. have found rough axes and other tools thought to be between 130,000 and 700,000 years old close to shelters on the island's south coast.

Crete has been separated from the mainland for about five million years, so whoever made the tools must have traveled there by sea (a distance of at least 40 miles). That would upset the current view that human ancestors migrated to Europe from Africa by land alone.

"The results of the survey not only provide evidence of sea voyages in the Mediterranean tens of thousands of years earlier than we were aware of so far, but also change our understanding of early hominids' cognitive abilities," the ministry statement said.

The previous earliest evidence of open-sea travel in Greece dates back 11,000 years (worldwide, about 60,000 years — although considerably earlier dates have been proposed).

The tools were found during a survey of caves and rock shelters near the village of Plakias by archaeologists from the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and the Culture Ministry.

Such rough stone implements are associated with Heidelberg Man and Homo Erectus, extinct precursors of the modern human race, which evolved from Africa about 200,000 years ago.

"Up to now we had no proof of Early Stone Age presence on Crete," said senior ministry archaeologist Maria Vlazaki, who was not involved in the survey. She said it was unclear where the hominids had sailed from, or whether the settlements were permanent.

"They may have come from Africa or from the east," she said. "Future study should help."

The team of archaeologists has applied for permission to conduct a more thorough excavation of the area, which Greek authorities are expected to approve later this year.

Out of Africa Proponents Getting Desperate

Are you kidding me? What does the presence of lakes in the Sahara 11,000 years ago have to do with the spread of homo sapiens sapiens around the globe? If the hypothesis that is currently championed as "The Truth about Evolution" is to be believed, so-called "modern" man would have long before hiked out of Africa and slowly spread around the world.   Is this article meant to be a joke?  I thought so-called "modern" man was responsible for wiping out so-called Neanderthal Man (last evidence of so-called NM was 30,000 BCE or thereabouts), and the mega-fauna in North American (last evidence within 1,000 years or so of the end of the last Ice Age), peopling Melanesia and Australia X-thousand years ago, etc. etc. But now we're supposed to believe that none of this happened prior to some 11,000 years ago???  

Fish Swam the Sahara, Bolstering Out of Africa Theory
By Charles Q. Choi, LiveScience Contributor
posted: 28 December 2010 05:14 pm ET [Excerpted]

Fish may have once swum across the Sahara, a finding that could shed light on how humanity made its way out of Africa, researchers said.

The cradle of humanity lies south of the Sahara, which begs the question as to how our species made its way past it. The Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world, and would seem a major barrier for any humans striving to migrate off the continent.

Scientists have often focused on the Nile Valley as the corridor by which humans left Africa. However, considerable research efforts have failed to uncover evidence for its consistent use by people leaving the continent [maybe because there is no such evidence?], and precisely how watery it has been over time is controversial.

Now it turns out the Sahara might not have been quite as impassable as once thought — not only for humanity, but for fish as well.

"Fish appeared to have swam across the Sahara during its last wet phase sometime between 10,000 and 6,000 years ago," researcher Nick Drake, a geographer at King's College London, told LiveScience. "The Sahara is not a barrier to the migrations of animals and people. Thus it is possible — likely? —that early modern humans did so, and this could explain how we got out of Africa."

Yeah, right. This is really funny, LOL!

Bones, Oh Those Bones

We are, I believe, literally at the threshhold of learning much more about our true past as humans than we ever dreamed was possible before, with the new tools we have for dating archaeological layers and analysing "human" remains.  Whether they are human remains to be seen and, I sincerely hope, will be contested and discussed for the next hundred years or however long it takes until we realize that "man" has been "man" all along.  But hey, that's just my take on the subject.

I found this article interesting because it introduces an element of mystery into the "human" settlement of the area we today call The Netherlands.  Physical remains that may date back some 370,000 years.  Say what?

Neanderthal may not be the oldest Dutchman
Published on : 26 March 2010 - 4:48pm | By Henk-Sjoerd Oosterhoff

People may well have been roaming the land we now call the Netherlands for far longer than was assumed until recently. There is evidence to suggest that the country was home to the forebears of the Neanderthals. Amateur archaeologist Pieter Stoel found materials used by the oldest inhabitants in the central town of Woerden. These artefacts were shown to be at least 370,000 years old, which takes us back to long before the time of the Neanderthals.

They Still Don't Get It

Article from newscientist.com Early humans may have cared for disabled young 14:03 31 March 2009 by Ewen Callaway A recently unearthed ancient human skull shows signs of a disorder that might have caused mental retardation. This offers the earliest evidence that ancestors of Homo sapiens did not abandon young with severe birth defects. The 500,000-year-old skeleton belonged to a five to 12-year-old child who suffered from craniosynostosis. The rare congenital condition occurs when two of the flat bones that make up the skull fuse together along their margins (sutures) too early during fetal development, hindering brain growth. Spanish researchers discovered the first pieces of the skull near Atapuerca, Spain, in 2001, but they only recently pieced enough of it together to make a conclusive diagnosis. "We were sure we had evidence of a real pathology," says Ana Gracia, a palaeoanthropologist at Complutense University in Madrid, who led the new study. "It's obvious – you only have to look at the cranium." Different Appearance The child suffered from a form of craniosynostosis that occurs in about 1 in every 200,000 children. He or she was a member of the species Homo heidelbergensis, – early humans that lived in Europe up to 800,000 years ago and may have given rise to Neanderthals. The discovery marks the earliest example of a human skeleton with signs of a physical deformity that that might have made the individual dependent on others for survival. Most animals, including primates, sacrifice or abandon young born with crippling deformities, Gracia says. It's impossible to know whether the child suffered from any cognitive problems, but he or she would undoubtedly have looked different from family and friends, she says. Rest of article.

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When are the scientists and evolution folks finally going to get it that humankind is NOT an animal, duh! Within their paradigm, they cannot explain the presence of flowers in the graves of so-called "Neanderthals." It is totally outside their realm of accepted "animal" experience. And yet there are plenty of accounts that demonstrate that so-called "animals" mourn the loss of a loved one. Today we have so-called Homo Sapiens Sapiens ("Modern Man") who routinely torture, starve, abuse and kill their own children in various ways, and show no remorse or grief whatsoever. So who is truly "human," and who is not? You tell me.

700,000 Year Old "Earl Humans"?

This article is full of baloney - if you accept the present time line of human development as absolutely correct! There were NO "early humans" 700,000 years ago! "Early humans" didn't exist until perhaps 40,000 years ago according to currently accepted chronology. Everything else is just pre-human, according to the experts. Personally, I think the "out of Africa" stuff is just as suspect as the dating of this Qatar settlement! Article from www.thepeninsulaqatar.com Prehistoric settlement found in Qatar Tuesday, June 24, 2008-->Web posted at: 6/23/2008 2:25:18 Source ::: Agencies DOHA • A prehistoric settlement in what is now Qatar may confirm alternative theories on how early humans emigrated from the African continent, a report in a Danish newspaper said. Danish archaeologists have uncovered a settlement they believe may be over 700,000 years old, making it the oldest organised human community ever found, reported Berlingske Tidende newspaper. Eight dwellings in the desert region of Qatar indicate that an early human species crossed what is now the Red Sea to leave their origins in Africa, according to the scientists. There is still uncertainty within the scientific community as to which routes early humans used to migrate out of Africa. The new discovery has only been tentatively dated by the archaeologists, who have estimated the age from types of artefacts found at the site, which include axes and knives. Other dating tests are necessary to confirm the estimates, but the find can only be carbon-dated with accuracy if organic material, such as bones, are found.