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Discoveries and theories in human evolution and prehistory

Idris2002 said:
Have you seen this man?

Surprised? This is what ancient Europeans may have looked like
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I found this paragraph interesting:

One theory of how light skin emerged is that changes in diet may have been a big contributing factor, as farming became more commonplace. La Brana 1 lived in a time that predates agriculture and his genome shows he was lactose-intolerant and unable to digest starch.
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Does this mean that the ability to digest starch didn't exist in humans until the advent of agriculture?
 
I remember in my first Reader's Digest Atlas of the World, back in the sixties stating that the Celts spread through Europe from North Africa.
 
bimble said:
First modern Britons had 'dark to black' skin, Cheddar Man DNA analysis reveals
Interesting, new evidence that pale skin was a far more recent innovation than previously thought.
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I'd never considered that skin becoming paler might be so recent, that's incredible. Would love to see this analysis used more broadly across the archaeological record around the world to map the changes from dark to pale and compare it with changing ecological factors. It would make sense if it happened after the last ice age when it became viable to migrate north into more temperate climates.
 
Red Sky said:
The original research hasn't been published yet. This is also a press release for a TV show. Both reasons for this to be treated with a degree of scepticism.
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Programme was on last night, very interesting and as to be expected, very similar to what was in the article.

The science is not complete in that the geneteic code retrieved from the bones was incomplete, so there had to be a couple of assumptions, but considering it's age they were surprised at just how much of the code survived.

Similar genetic codes from known and more complete sequences which matched up in key genetic areas were used to fill in the gaps. I don't think that invalidates the results, seems like a fairly solid solution.

The bright blue eyes and very dark skin was quite a surprise to all of the academics from all fields, but did suggest a general correlation with the evidence of other hunter gatherers found across Europe from that period, suggesting a single population. Makes sense that as the last ice age receded that population expanded into Britain.

It also makes sense that it was only when humans moved into the far north that skin needed to adapt to absorb more vitamin D by getting paler.

Also of interest was the use of genetic testing of the modern Cheddar population for comparison. The early man shared about 10% of his genetic code with the modern locals, suggesting that he and his people were some of the ancestors of people who still live there today.

They used genetic testing kits from ancestry.com. I've always wanted to get that done, but have been put off by reports in the papers that it's mainly guesswork and wildly inaccurate. That a programme featuring some of our best scientists from the Natural History Museum, including Chris Stringer, would endorse and use that method makes me wonder if it's got better. At least I got the impression that was part of the investigation carried out by the museum, and not just something the programme makers did and added on, would be interesting to know.
 
I was interested in the findings, but found the programme unnecessarily sensational and portentous. It got in the way of what could have been more interesting had I not been so irritated by the voice over and the cliffhangery structure. Perhaps some of that was exacerbated by the fact we already knew everything that was in the programme from the various articles that preceded it.

I was puzzled by the way they tagged on the bit about Cheddar Man not being related (in a broad population sense) to the inhabitants of the cave from 5000 years previously. They wouldn't have been expected to be related, as the ice sheets had intervened and Cheddar Man's people were (relatively) newly colonising what became the British Isles. But that lack of expectation was skated over, despite the many times they repeated other matters. I got the distinct impression this test was only included because of the cannibalism angle.

However, it is indeed interesting that dark skin is so recent in the population. And the collection of features was intriguing. And the reconstruction was remarkable.

I just felt I was being dumbed down at.
 
danny la rouge said:
I was interested in the findings, but found the programme unnecessarily sensational and portentous. It got in the way of what could have been more interesting had I not been so irritated by the voice over and the cliffhangery structure. Perhaps some of that was exacerbated by the fact we already knew everything that was in the programme from the various articles that preceded it.

I was puzzled by the way they tagged on the bit about Cheddar Man not being related (in a broad population sense) to the inhabitants of the cave from 5000 years previously. They wouldn't have been expected to be related, as the ice sheets had intervened and Cheddar Man's people were (relatively) newly colonising what became the British Isles. But that lack of expectation was skated over, despite the many times they repeated other matters. I got the distinct impression this test was only included because of the cannibalism angle.

However, it is indeed interesting that dark skin is so recent in the population. And the collection of features was intriguing. And the reconstruction was remarkable.

I just felt I was being dumbed down at.
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Sounds like almost every documentary on tv nowadays. Even on subjects you're interested in, they can be unwatchable. They treat the viewers like idiots to whom everything is new. There's a way to not assume knowledge that doesn't patronise - Attenborough manages it - but most don't manage it.
 
danny la rouge said:
I was puzzled by the way they tagged on the bit about Cheddar Man not being related (in a broad population sense) to the inhabitants of the cave from 5000 years previously. They wouldn't have been expected to be related, as the ice sheets had intervened and Cheddar Man's people were (relatively) newly colonising what became the British Isles. But that lack of expectation was skated over, despite the many times they repeated other matters. I got the distinct impression this test was only included because of the cannibalism angle.
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Yeah, there was a lot of being very pleased we're not related to cannibals. Or at least not those particular cannibals.

I'd have been much more interested in what the current thinking was about the origins and later movements of the earlier inhabitants than just whether both populations were related.
 
Ooooh. Liking this, makes sense.

No single birthplace of mankind, say scientists
Researchers say it is time to drop the idea that modern humans originated from a single population in a single location

The origins of our species have long been traced to east Africa, where the world’s oldest undisputed Homo sapiens fossils were discovered. About 300,000 years ago, the story went, a group of primitive humans there underwent a series of genetic and cultural shifts that set them on a unique evolutionary path that resulted in everyone alive today.

However, a team of prominent scientists is now calling for a rewriting of this traditional narrative, based on a comprehensive survey of fossil, archaeological and genetic evidence. Instead, the international team argue, the distinctive features that make us human emerged mosaic-like across different populations spanning the entire African continent. Only after tens or hundreds of thousands of years of interbreeding and cultural exchange between these semi-isolated groups, did the fully fledged modern human come into being.

skulls.jpg

No single birthplace of mankind, say scientists
 
These dates keep getting pushed back, amazing stuff.
Especially interesting because Robin Dennell lectured my degree course on this in the 90's. He was absolutely convinced of it but didn't have a great deal of evidence so we thought he was full of crap. Turned out he was right :D

Oldest Tools Outside Africa Found, Rewriting Human Story
New evidence suggests that our ancient cousins left the continent much earlier than thought.

Modern humans' distant relatives left Africa earlier than previously thought—rewriting a key chapter in humankind's epic prequel, according to a discovery unveiled on Wednesday in Nature.

Nearly a hundred stone tools found at the Shangchen site in central China may push back the spread of our ancient cousins—hominins—out of Africa by more than a quarter million years.

The toolmakers lived at Shangchen on and off for 800,000 years between 2.1 and 1.3 million years ago, leaving behind tools that are unprecedented outside of Africa. The site's oldest tools are roughly 300,000 years older than Dmanisi, a 1.8-million-year-old site in the Republic of Georgia with the oldest known fossils of our extinct cousin Homo erectus.

shangchen.jpg

Oldest Tools Outside Africa Found, Rewriting Human Story
 
Stone Monuments in Western Sahara Record How People Adapted to Shifting Climate
February 04, 2019
The Tifariti area was once a natural basin, and as a water source in an region that was growing increasingly arid, it would certainly have been of interest to migrants thousands of years ago, from present-day Morocco, Libya, and Algeria to the north and what are now Mauritania and Mali to the south. “One of our theories is that as the Sahara dried in the mid Holocene—between five and six thousand years ago—this is one of the refugia, an area where water remained,” says Clarke. And where there was likely to be water, there were people. The variety of these monuments, archaeologists think, reflects the range of places from which these people migrated.
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Bog butter.

Study finds people in Ireland and Scotland made “bog butter” for millennia

“Ancient denizens of what is now Ireland and Scotland buried stashes of so-called "bog butter" in peat bogs, presumably to stave off spoilage. Thanks to the unique chemistry of those bogs, the stashes have survived for thousands of years. Now, scientists at University College Dublin have conducted chemical analysis and radiocarbon dating of several bog butters recovered from archaeological sites in Ireland. They found that the practice was a remarkably long-lived tradition, spanning at least 3,500 years, according to their new paper in Nature: Scientific Reports.”
 
danny la rouge said:
Bog butter.

Study finds people in Ireland and Scotland made “bog butter” for millennia

“Ancient denizens of what is now Ireland and Scotland buried stashes of so-called "bog butter" in peat bogs, presumably to stave off spoilage. Thanks to the unique chemistry of those bogs, the stashes have survived for thousands of years. Now, scientists at University College Dublin have conducted chemical analysis and radiocarbon dating of several bog butters recovered from archaeological sites in Ireland. They found that the practice was a remarkably long-lived tradition, spanning at least 3,500 years, according to their new paper in Nature: Scientific Reports.”
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No word on whether they tried some on toast?

edit: I see they did. :cool:
 
ringo said:
New Species Of Human Discovered In South Africa
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homo naledi was a completely new one on me courtesy of this doc (i should pay more attention to this thread!)


trabuquera said:
Yes, amazing - some quibbling going on about the team's apparent reluctance to date these remains, though?
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seems like they were very right not to jump to any interim conclusions - now securely dated between 335,000 and 236,000 years ago :eek:

more info on recent analysis including the "double blind" dating here :thumbs:

 
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