tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post5466934345735568282..comments2024-03-18T03:26:46.125-04:00Comments on Evo and Proud: Archaic admixture in AfricansPeter Frosthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04303172060029254340noreply@blogger.comBlogger35125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-3013918603416534632017-07-28T17:46:37.591-04:002017-07-28T17:46:37.591-04:00The comments totally went to shit after 2010The comments totally went to shit after 2010Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-25557122151862648852015-05-08T20:19:03.059-04:002015-05-08T20:19:03.059-04:00What I have a problem with is the over simplificat...What I have a problem with is the over simplification of African Cultures. Anon only looked at the obvious that Mediterranean culture were more advanced... Except he doesn't include how the cultures took influences from each other for longs period of time, in different geographies to influence cultures so you would obviously have more advance cultures. SS Africans actual did began to trade with neighboring Berbers since the 2nd half of the 1st millennium of B.C.E and eventually took influence from Arabs and built empires. Also for your "straw huts and spears" comment they actually built mud and palm leaf settlements which could be build around above 20 feet high in the case of palaces that they actually planned out as well as farming communities that possibly could have risen from independent metal work (look up Nok, Nigeria). As well (despite it being basic) art like masks, small statues, and engravings still require geometric skill. When you compare Greek and Roman aspects to Africa like their architecture for instance....they didn't build damn columns in a day. Such construction requires ages to develop. And with time and influence you would be surprised at how well Africans can get (Look up Sudano-Sahelian, Yoruba, and Bamileke Architecture). Look, I'm not saying you are a racist based on your policy on using facts, but I am African descent of the populations that this admixture applies to. With my facts and knowledge, I have the right to challenge ignorance on how a society takes actual development and misconceptions on "tribal" populations like Africa. I'm not trying to be a zealot but I respectively ask how much do you really know on cultural history of the world, because if you took it seriously you would've known about SOME of these facts.Macedo78https://www.blogger.com/profile/15009713179494103409noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-37643573958252540392014-06-03T16:29:34.783-04:002014-06-03T16:29:34.783-04:00It sounds like people are finally starting to care...It sounds like people are finally starting to care more about science then being politically correct. Yes, African's seem to be the original species on earth, that evolved for millions of years, and are still connected to the primates. Is there much variation or evolution from them though? the evolutionary tree seems "on shaky ground" based on a cave they found with 5 homo erectus skeletons with a lot of variety. Found seperately, they all would have been called different species. If we call all in the homo line homo erectus, other then the big brained Neanderthal (brain size being highly connected to IQ) One might say that any before Neanderthal were homo erectus for millians of years. (Not called humans.) So any homo erectus who didn't interbreed with the Neanderthal, would not make cro magnon, called modern man. Those in the Canary Islands are thought to represent pure cro Magnon stock, and they are an obvious mix of white and black. Thus,it fits that is two species mixing started a very primitive modern man like them, that the Neanderthal would be the original modern man, and like the brain size shows, we have de-evolved by interbreeding. . .it is a deep and controversial theory, but I would love some descussion on it. Check out a very indepth and connected theory on the Neanderthal here, http://passionateproject.blogspot.com/2014/05/all-about-hybrid-neanderthal-named-adam.html and one on the homo erectus here. http://passionateproject.blogspot.com/2014/05/all-about-africans-original-earthly.htmlAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-85630883140845413752013-10-04T10:49:51.793-04:002013-10-04T10:49:51.793-04:00Unknown Sub-Saharan African hominin
In 2011 Micha...Unknown Sub-Saharan African hominin<br /><br />In 2011 Michael Hammer et al. at the University of Arizona studied DNA from two African hunter-gatherer groups, the Biaka Pygmies, the San and the West African agricultural Mandinka people. <br />They concluded that roughly 2% of the genetic material found in these modern African populations was inserted into the human genome approximately 35,000 years ago. They also concluded these sequences must have come from a now-extinct member of the Homo genus that broke away from the modern human lineage around 700,000 years ago.<br /><br />In 2012 another study was done by Sarah Tishkoff et al. at the University of Pennsylvania. They tested 3 sub-Saharan African populations - Pygmies from Cameroon and the Hadza and Sandawe, both from Tanzania. The team found signs that the ancestors of the hunter-gatherers bred with different species of hominins, probably more than 40,000 years ago<br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_human_admixture_with_modern_Homo_sapiens#Unknown_Sub-Saharan_African_homininAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-7775513852266546042013-10-03T01:26:35.673-04:002013-10-03T01:26:35.673-04:00What we FALSIFY here is the strong out-of-Africa h...What we FALSIFY here is the strong out-of-Africa hypothesis <br />that everyone comes from the same population,” Dr. Paabo<br /><br />http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/07/science/07neanderthal.html?_r=0Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-133671474614085792013-03-13T03:11:30.860-04:002013-03-13T03:11:30.860-04:00Now they found out an African American man had arc...Now they found out an African American man had archaic Y DNA lineage from 338,000 years ago that predates modern homo sapient. What do we make of that? I'm sure more of this will be found in modern humans. I don't like that we get politically correct about science. It does not help anyone and does not help us understand our human journey. According to Cambridge University, Africans were a bunch of different hominids that melted together at times and also mixed with modern homo sapient. It is not true that Africans did not mix with the people of east Africa. Those people went to Eurasia, but also back into Africa never having mixed with Neanderthals. We all have that predominant East African DNA, but then we also have mixed with different hominids.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-57020045354242070822012-07-07T05:54:42.472-04:002012-07-07T05:54:42.472-04:00Superb. I know it well -- negroes are not human.Superb. I know it well -- negroes are not human.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-89864456941100904062012-04-26T16:14:19.936-04:002012-04-26T16:14:19.936-04:00Never ceases to amaze me how liberal zealot colleg...Never ceases to amaze me how liberal zealot college types ignore reality & logic, and look for any tiny piece of evidence to support their 'politically correct' theories. Why does a logically & practical thinking person who disagrees with these rac & evolutionary theories have to be a racist? All your theories are just that...but my thought is based on historical fact. First off, it doean't hurt my 'racist' feelings to know Europeans are not 'pure homo sapiens'...that is simply a word..the facts are pure Africans (homo sapiens) are further back in evolutionary time...you even state that,,,thus, they are physical stronger (closer to apes in time), while pure Europeans (your hybreds) are more intelligent, as they do not need to be physically stronger to adapt...they use technology,,,i.e. intelligence. Nothing complicated here. Early Egyptian civilation was advanced because the upper class were decendents of meditterranean types, Romans were expotentially more advanced than any African culture. Europeans had gun powder, ocean going ships, castles, etc...while the most advance African cultures were basically still in straw hut with spears...and this was well before colonialization. To negate one of your examples,,,Greeks fought among each other, so they had to develope technoilogies is a ridiculous theory, as certainly Africans fought more violently against each other ...and still do within their own nation.Call me what you want..you 'sugar coating the reality'...while I am presenting logic with no bias.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-84958535246510774312011-08-13T20:02:43.693-04:002011-08-13T20:02:43.693-04:00"About 13% of the sub-Saharan gene pool comes..."About 13% of the sub-Saharan gene pool comes from an earlier expansion of pre-modern hominins that occurred c. 111,000 years ago"<br /><br /><br />What about the remaining 87%.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-37739071032467899122011-08-13T20:02:10.916-04:002011-08-13T20:02:10.916-04:00"About 13% of the sub-Saharan gene pool comes..."About 13% of the sub-Saharan gene pool comes from an earlier expansion of pre-modern hominins that occurred c. 111,000 years ago"<br /><br /><br />What about the remaining 87%?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-3081129221158385912011-07-21T21:30:44.298-04:002011-07-21T21:30:44.298-04:00This article is very interesting and seems to disa...This article is very interesting and seems to disagree with orthodoxy: http://rafonda.com/origin_of_humans.htmlAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-73472130959717511902011-07-21T21:28:03.945-04:002011-07-21T21:28:03.945-04:00Has anyone seen this: http://erectuswalksamongst.u...Has anyone seen this: http://erectuswalksamongst.us/Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-2180050335947895102010-06-28T21:13:44.825-04:002010-06-28T21:13:44.825-04:00"I'm sorry but you're wrong. Most ant..."I'm sorry but you're wrong. Most anthropologists accept that a major behavioral shift occurred c. 80,000 BP. Yes, there were incremental improvements previously, but they were much more modest."<br /><br />I posted what you replied to awhile ago. How is it wrong when what I cited suggests behavioral modernity occured long ago?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-48106658898638102572010-05-26T13:37:25.951-04:002010-05-26T13:37:25.951-04:00Tod,
Your quote hit the nail on the head!
Ben10,...Tod,<br /><br />Your quote hit the nail on the head!<br /><br />Ben10,<br /><br />Any definition of Homo sapiens will be open to debate. For one thing, the genetic differences between the Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens are less than the differences between the latter and present-day Homo sapiens.<br /><br />John Hawks made this point a few weeks ago on his blog (May 6, 2010):<br /><br />"In our earlier work, we inferred a recent acceleration of human evolution from living human populations. That is a measure of the number of new selected mutations that have arisen very recently, within the last 40,000 years. And most of those happened within the past 10,000 years. <br /><br />[...] Our recent evolution, after the dispersal of human populations across the world, was much faster than the evolution of Late Pleistocene populations. In adaptive terms, it is really true -- we're more different from early "modern" humans today, than they were from Neandertals. Possibly many times more different." <br /><br />Anon,<br /><br />"The question is whether or not this archaic admixture can be considered human. What do you think?"<br /><br />All humans have archaic admixture, be it Neanderthal, Paleoafrican, or whatever. But that doesn't make us less human. There are even genes of viral origin in our genome. Does that make you feel icky? I hope not. We are what we are.Peter Frostnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-35817376388592259712010-05-26T12:21:03.963-04:002010-05-26T12:21:03.963-04:00Dawkins
"If species A evolves into a later sp...<a href="http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/dawkins01.htm" rel="nofollow"> Dawkins</a><br />"If species A evolves into a later species B ... there must come a point when a mother belongs to the old species A and her child belongs to the new species B. Members of different species cannot interbreed with one another. ... a child could hardly be so different from its parents that it could not interbreed with their kind. So, isn't this a fatal flaw in the theory of evolution?<br /><br />But it is we that choose to divide animals up into discontinuous species. On the evolutionary view of life there must have been intermediates, even though, conveniently for our naming rituals, they are usually extinct: <br /><br />The lawyer, with his trained discontinuous mind, insists on placing individuals firmly in this species or that. He does not allow for the possibility that an individual might lie half-way between two species, or a tenth of the way from species A to species B. 'Human', to the discontinuous mind, is an absolute concept. There can be no half measures. And from this flows much evil.<br /><br />The word 'apes' usually means chimpanzees, gorillas, orang-utans, gibbons and siamangs. We admit that we are like apes, but we seldom realise that we are apes. Our common ancestor with the chimpanzees and gorillas is much more recent than their common ancestor with the Asian apes — the gibbons and orang-utans. There is no natural category that includes chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans but excludes humans." <br /><br />The 'questions' of Anonymous remind me of someone.Todnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-7949974867032717952010-05-25T21:02:16.281-04:002010-05-25T21:02:16.281-04:00One other thing- it seems as though correcting for...One other thing- it seems as though correcting for brain size and age between humans and chimpanzees, there's still distinct cognitive differences between the two. It holds true for virtually any higher primates, whether it be gorillas and orangutans as well.<br /><br />Many retarded children probably overlap the higher primate brain size average, yet all of them do indeed have capacities far different from them.<br /><br />What probably sets humans apart is some sort of distinct internal structural traits and wiring that works independently of brain size. And what I'm wondering is when this truly arose.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-69727553972155251132010-05-25T17:56:56.902-04:002010-05-25T17:56:56.902-04:00Thanks for your input, but a couple of things rega...Thanks for your input, but a couple of things regarding sapiency:<br /><br />"Well, I tought it was not even certain that Australopithecus made their stone tools. Was even Homo erectus much smarter than a chimp ? <br />I wonder what these hominids needed their big brain for, as it seems that with a little bit of training, a chimp or a gorilla with a 500 cc brain can do as well as an erectus with a 800 cc, or more, brain. <br />I guess it is another example of unintelligent design. Hominids had variants with bigger brains with no use, maybe (that's my pet hypothesis) as a result for constant sexual selection for neotenic traits which could have fuelled an encephalisation trend in the homo genus."<br /><br />I don't know if this is really true at all- there's good evidence indicating the correlation between IQ and brain size follows very similarly throughout the primate order: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1654998.ece<br /><br />"He also found that the single most important factor in deciding a species’ intelligence was simply the size of its brain: “The correlation of brain size with mental ability found in humans appears to extend throughout the primate order.”"<br /><br />I don't know if it's a perfectly linear correlation, but I once read part of the study and found it a very similar correlation between tests of primate intelligence and normal IQ tests in humans between brain size.<br /><br />"There are also some modern cases of growth retardation with microcephaly and the affected individuals can still speak despite a very small brain. So the idea that sapience is an all-or-nothing mental state restricted in our species is hard to support."<br /><br />People with mental retardation can speak too. There's more going on than just brain size.<br /><br />"If the cultural shift 80 000 years ago is a proven thing, it indicates a shift in brain hardwired which should be enough to remove the older h. sapiens from their status of modern humans."<br /><br />I don't know about that- genetic similarity is a prime factor here.<br /><br />I'm confused as to where you all stand on behavioral modernity- did it arise relatively recently, or much longer ago?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-2407301520565164122010-05-25T17:46:13.312-04:002010-05-25T17:46:13.312-04:00Anonymous, I am not an expert anthropologue but re...Anonymous, I am not an expert anthropologue but regarding sapience, I'll argue that we cannot regard the higher primates as completely deprived of it. Chimpanzee can hunt in group, they use stone tool, although they don't make it, and they surely exchange elementary communication signs. They know the concepts of 'I' and 'you'. I am not sure that Australopithecus was much better than that. Well, I tought it was not even certain that Australopithecus made their stone tools. Was even Homo erectus much smarter than a chimp ? <br />I wonder what these hominids needed their big brain for, as it seems that with a little bit of training, a chimp or a gorilla with a 500 cc brain can do as well as an erectus with a 800 cc, or more, brain. <br />I guess it is another example of unintelligent design. Hominids had variants with bigger brains with no use, maybe (that's my pet hypothesis) as a result for constant sexual selection for neotenic traits which could have fuelled an encephalisation trend in the homo genus.<br />There are also some modern cases of growth retardation with microcephaly and the affected individuals can still speak despite a very small brain. So the idea that sapience is an all-or-nothing mental state restricted in our species is hard to support. <br />If Neanderthal was able to make decorative tools (like in the latest issue of Scientific American) then i can't see how we could be sure he was more stupid than a modern hunter gatherer with an IQ of 70.<br />This said, I don't agree with this fear to classify modern humans in different subspecies of h. sapiens sapiens. Neanderthal was put in a different subspecies based on anatomical differences but in fact, I believe that anatomic similarities, the capacity to interbreed and a common african origin have no legitimacy anymore to classify modern humans in a single species.<br />Everything has happened in the brain at a far higher speed than previously in Evolution. If the cultural shift 80 000 years ago is a proven thing, it indicates a shift in brain hardwired which should be enough to remove the older h. sapiens from their status of modern humans.Ben10noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-2041768353010791402010-05-25T14:14:45.838-04:002010-05-25T14:14:45.838-04:00"Again, we're looking at a continuum of p..."Again, we're looking at a continuum of physical and behavioral changes that has continued up to the present. Nobody is fully anything. Evolution is an ongoing process. The term 'sapiens' is a discontinuous construct that we impose on a continuous reality, presumably to make reality more understandable."<br /><br />I don't know if I really agree. There was definitely a point in time where humans wern't fully sapient, so why shouldn't there be a sort of division?<br /><br />Where do you stand on the issue of behavioral modernity then?<br /><br />"We all have 100% ancestry from non-humans if you go back far enough. It might be better to ask whether archaic admixture is evolutionarily meaningful. If a human population has 20% admixture, is it more backward than one that has 10% admixture?"<br /><br />The question is whether or not this archaic admixture can be considered human. What do you think?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-64127593390660595032010-05-25T13:46:07.540-04:002010-05-25T13:46:07.540-04:00"If you believe behavioral modernity didn'..."If you believe behavioral modernity didn't arise until so recently, then does that mean people wern't fully sapient until then?"<br /><br />Again, we're looking at a continuum of physical and behavioral changes that has continued up to the present. Nobody is fully anything. Evolution is an ongoing process. The term 'sapiens' is a discontinuous construct that we impose on a continuous reality, presumably to make reality more understandable.<br /><br />"How can we all be considered human beings if we have varying degrees of ancestry from non-human hominids who were also non-sapient?"<br /><br />We all have 100% ancestry from non-humans if you go back far enough. It might be better to ask whether archaic admixture is evolutionarily meaningful. If a human population has 20% admixture, is it more backward than one that has 10% admixture?<br /><br />My answer: probably not. If natural selection is allowed to operate, it will gradually replace less useful "archaic" alleles with more useful "modern" ones. So this is not a subject to feel emotionally distressed over.<br /><br />Archaic admixture becomes interesting if it contributes alleles that are more useful. This is the big debate over Neanderthal admixture in modern Eurasians. Did it contribute anything useful? I'm frankly skeptical, but I could be wrong.Peter Frostnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-11631843819017890772010-05-24T16:49:39.911-04:002010-05-24T16:49:39.911-04:00Frost,
If you believe behavioral modernity didn&#...Frost,<br /><br />If you believe behavioral modernity didn't arise until so recently, then does that mean people wern't fully sapient until then? How can we all be considered human beings if we have varying degrees of ancestry from non-human hominids who were also non-sapient?<br /><br />And again, just how old were these paleo-africans? How old do you think "humanity" is?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-56359969823196256492010-05-24T15:24:10.587-04:002010-05-24T15:24:10.587-04:00Ben10,
There are several hypotheses. In my opinio...Ben10,<br /><br />There are several hypotheses. In my opinion, the two leading ones are:<br /><br />1. Modern humans received Neanderthal admixture as they began to spread out of Africa. This would explain the similar level of admixture in Europeans, East Asians, and Papuans.<br /><br />2. 'Neanderthal admixture' is a proxy for admixture with any of the different archaic groups in Eurasia, i.e., these other archaics were genetically similar to Neanderthals.Peter Frostnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-64203386659433689032010-05-24T14:58:33.513-04:002010-05-24T14:58:33.513-04:00Anon,
1. There have been a number of articles on ...Anon,<br /><br />1. There have been a number of articles on archaic admixture in modern Africans (Dienekes has them listed under 'Paleoafricans' on his blog).<br /><br />The most recent article is one by Wall, Lohmueller, and Plagnol (2009) "Detecting ancient admixture and estimating demographic parameters in multiple human populations." They too found that the signal of ancient admixture was stronger in their West African sample than in their European and East Asian samples.<br /><br />2. "I don't think many people still hold onto this idea behavioral modernity any more"<br /><br />I'm sorry but you're wrong. Most anthropologists accept that a major behavioral shift occurred c. 80,000 BP. Yes, there were incremental improvements previously, but they were much more modest.<br /><br />Only 40,000 years before this 'great leap forward', the Skhul-Qafzeh hominins spread out of Africa and into the Middle East. They were largly modern anatomically, yet their technology was indistinguishable from that of the Neanderthals. Something major happened after 120,000 BP.<br /><br />3. The 'paleoafricans' may have survived until 20,000 years ago in parts of Africa. Were they Homo erectus? The question is semantic. 'Homo sapiens' and Homo erectus' are terms that we impose on a continuum of anatomical and behavioral development. It might be nice to situate the boundary between the two at the 'great leap forward' 80,000 years ago. But this is not a point I would argue.<br /><br />On the other hand, if you think Homo sapiens arose 1 million years ago, I would have to strongly -- strongly -- disagree.Peter Frostnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-566431260876313052010-05-24T14:50:27.711-04:002010-05-24T14:50:27.711-04:00Peter, you're correct about my ancestry but yo...Peter, you're correct about my ancestry but you said:<br />"...The archaic admixture is different. Modern Europeans admixed with Neanderthals ..."<br /><br />You just said before they did not, unless you mean 'european ancestors, while still in the middle east, admixed with early african nenderthals'.<br />So, once again, European Neanderthals have nothing to do with this admixture or do they ?<br /> <br />Beside the point, but in scientific american there is this article who describe a, hairy but not furry, neanderthal with some sort of necklace made of seashell.Ben10noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-9992050719897588412010-05-24T14:16:02.799-04:002010-05-24T14:16:02.799-04:00I'm not sure what you're arguing for. The ...I'm not sure what you're arguing for. The sort of behavioral modernity I'm showing argues that it arose quite some time ago, and took awhile to fully propser due to certain social dynamics.<br /><br />In regards to neanderthals:<br /><br />http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5098748.stm<br />http://science.niuz.biz/worlds-t97868.html?s=32dcfe67413f7f6eccd8e2b88125c3ae&Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com