Re: Monkey is Your Uncle: Sid Harth
Sid Harth
Modern man a wimp says anthropologist
Wed Oct 14, 2009 10:24am EDT
By John Mehaffey
LONDON (Reuters) - Many prehistoric Australian aboriginals could have
outrun world 100 and 200 meters record holder Usain Bolt in modern
conditions.
Some Tutsi men in Rwanda exceeded the current world high jump record
of 2.45 meters during initiation ceremonies in which they had to jump
at least their own height to progress to manhood.
Any Neanderthal woman could have beaten former bodybuilder and current
California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in an arm wrestle.
These and other eye-catching claims are detailed in a book by
Australian anthropologist Peter McAllister entitled "Manthropology"
and provocatively sub-titled "The Science of the Inadequate Modern
Male."
McAllister sets out his stall in the opening sentence of the prologue.
"If you're reading this then you -- or the male you have bought it for
-- are the worst man in history.
"No ifs, no buts -- the worst man, period...As a class we are in fact
the sorriest cohort of masculine Homo sapiens to ever walk the
planet."
Delving into a wide range of source material McAllister finds evidence
he believes proves that modern man is inferior to his predecessors in,
among other fields, the basic Olympic athletics disciplines of running
and jumping.
His conclusions about the speed of Australian aboriginals 20,000 years
ago are based on a set of footprints, preserved in a fossilized
claypan lake bed, of six men chasing prey.
FLEET-FOOTED ABORIGINALS
An analysis of the footsteps of one of the men, dubbed T8, shows he
reached speeds of 37 kph on a soft, muddy lake edge. Bolt, by
comparison, reached a top speed of 42 kph during his then world 100
meters record of 9.69 seconds at last year's Beijing Olympics.
In an interview in the English university town of Cambridge where he
was temporarily resident, McAllister said that, with modern training,
spiked shoes and rubberized tracks, aboriginal hunters might have
reached speeds of 45 kph.
"We can assume they are running close to their maximum if they are
chasing an animal," he said.
"But if they can do that speed of 37 kph on very soft ground I suspect
there is a strong chance they would have outdone Usain Bolt if they
had all the advantages that he does.
"We can tell that T8 is accelerating toward the end of his tracks."
McAllister said it was probable that any number of T8's contemporaries
could have run as fast.
"We have to remember too how incredibly rare these fossilizations
are," he said. "What are the odds that you would get the fastest
runner in Australia at that particular time in that particular place
in such a way that was going to be preserved?"
Turning to the high jump, McAllister said photographs taken by a
German anthropologist showed young men jumping heights of up to 2.52
meters in the early years of last century.
STARK DECLINE
"It was an initiation ritual, everybody had to do it. They had to be
able to jump their own height to progress to manhood," he said.
"It was something they did all the time and they lived very active
lives from a very early age. They developed very phenomenal abilities
in jumping. They were jumping from boyhood onwards to prove
themselves."
McAllister said a Neanderthal woman had 10 percent more muscle bulk
than modern European man. Trained to capacity she would have reached
90 percent of Schwarzenegger's bulk at his peak in the 1970s.
"But because of the quirk of her physiology, with a much shorter lower
arm, she would slam him to the table without a problem," he said.
Manthropology abounds with other examples:
* Roman legions completed more than one-and-a-half marathons a day
carrying more than half their body weight in equipment.
* Athens employed 30,000 rowers who could all exceed the achievements
of modern oarsmen.
* Australian aboriginals threw a hardwood spear 110 meters or more
(the current world javelin record is 98.48).
McAllister said it was difficult to equate the ancient spear with the
modern javelin but added: "Given other evidence of Aboriginal man's
superb athleticism you'd have to wonder whether they couldn't have
taken out every modern javelin event they entered."
Why the decline?
"We are so inactive these days and have been since the industrial
revolution really kicked into gear," McAllister replied. "These people
were much more robust than we were.
"We don't see that because we convert to what things were like about
30 years ago. There's been such a stark improvement in times,
technique has improved out of sight, times and heights have all
improved vastly since then but if you go back further it's a different
story.
"At the start of the industrial revolution there are statistics about
how much harder people worked then.
"The human body is very plastic and it responds to stress. We have
lost 40 percent of the shafts of our long bones because we have much
less of a muscular load placed upon them these days.
"We are simply not exposed to the same loads or challenges that people
were in the ancient past and even in the recent past so our bodies
haven't developed. Even the level of training that we do, our elite
athletes, doesn't come close to replicating that.
"We wouldn't want to go back to the brutality of those days but there
are some things we would do well to profit from."
(Editing by Clare Fallon; To query or comment on this story email
sportsf...@thomsonreuters.com)
© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved
...and I am Sid Harth
chhotemianinshallah
Cooking up a new theory of evolution
With his smaller teeth and jaws, what separated Homo erectus from his
predecessors was not just eating meat, but cooking what he caught.
by Rob Lyons
What makes us human? It is a question for the ages, to be kicked about
by scientists, philosophers and historians to name a few. And you can
put together your own answer from a list including language, brain
size, an ability to have sex pretty much all the time, love, culture,
science, and so on.
Richard Wrangham, in his new book Catching Fire, asks a different, if
related, question: what made us human? Most people would agree that
human beings are different to other creatures (even those who would
like to equate humans morally to the great apes). But why have we come
to be so different? If we leave aside the religious explanation - an
invisible supreme being made us this way - we are left to wonder what
it is in our evolutionary past that set us on a different track from
other apes.
Wrangham’s answer, while not entirely original, is still very
interesting. He believes that the crucial turning point was neither
controlling fire in itself (despite the book’s title) nor eating meat,
but cooking. It is the change in our diets, and the improved ability
to absorb nourishment that comes about through being able to cook
food, that allowed ape-like creatures to evolve relatively quickly
into recognisably human individuals, even if the finished product -
Homo sapiens - was still a long way off.
Roughly 120,000 generations ago, the forebears of modern humans were
chimpanzee-sized creatures called australopithecines. Apart from the
fact that they walked upright, they were not very different to modern
chimpanzees. Wrangham imagines the experience of meeting one: ‘Beneath
a low forehead and big brow-ridge, bright dark eyes surmount a massive
jaw. Her long, muscular arms and short legs intimate her gymnastic
climbing ability.’
From at least 2.6million years ago, australopithecines were using
tools in order to get at meat from dead animals, something beyond
other apes, including modern chimpanzees. Around 2.3million years ago,
a new species - habilines - seems to have emerged, the so-called
‘missing link’. While still the same overall size as modern, nonhuman
apes, they had brains twice the size of our living ‘relatives’. Even
then, the next step on the evolutionary road took hundreds of
thousands of years, but somewhere around 1.9million years ago, some of
these habilines evolved into Homo erectus, the first proper members of
the genus Homo. Homo erectus had an anatomy, upright stance and
pattern of walking similar to ours, but its brain was still smaller.
Modern humans only emerged around 200,000 years ago.
“Wrangham believes that the crucial turning point was neither
controlling fire in itself nor eating meat, but cooking”
The question for Wrangham is this: what changed to create Homo
erectus? The common explanation is the eating of meat, the ‘Man-as-
Hunter’ thesis. Australopithecines seem to have been, in dietary
terms, similar to modern chimpanzees, who will eat monkeys, piglets or
small antelopes when available, but who will also have a diet entirely
free of meat for months on end. However, the upright
australopithecines would have found chasing down prey much easier than
a chimpanzee does on all fours. In turn, the development of such
behaviour would itself have encouraged team work, larger bodies,
increasing intelligence and cooperation.
However, Wrangham argues that the Man-as-Hunter thesis is inadequate
in a number of ways. Most importantly, the thesis can’t explain why
there are two forks in the evolutionary road - first habilines, then
Homo erectus. How could both of these changes, hundreds of thousands
of years apart, be caused by a single factor: eating meat? Meat-eating
accounts for the first change well enough, but Wrangham points out
that habilines looked markedly different from Homo erectus, ‘which had
small jaws and small teeth that were poorly adapted for eating the
tough, raw meat of game animals. These weaker mouths cannot be
explained by Homo erectus‘s becoming better at hunting. Something else
must have been going on.’
That something else, argues Wrangham, was cooking. Scientific research
on those who choose to eat a mostly, or exclusively, raw-food diet
gives us a clue as to why this might be the case. In 2006, nine
volunteers took part in an experiment for BBC television where they
spent 12 days eating like apes while living in a tented enclosure at
Paignton Zoo in south-west England. The idea was to replicate the diet
that we are supposed to have evolved to eat: mostly vegetables, with a
little fish, and entirely raw. The volunteers consumed up to five
kilogrammes of food per day, with nutritionists ensuring they consumed
a healthy number of calories, yet they lost an average of 4.4
kilogrammes (about 10 pounds) in less than two weeks.
In another study in Germany of 513 raw-foodists, the average weight-
loss over time was 12 kilogrammes (about 27 pounds) for women and 10
kilogrammes (22 pounds) for men. The researchers, quoted by Wrangham,
concluded that ‘a strict raw-food diet cannot guarantee an adequate
energy supply’. Among women eating totally raw-food diets, 50 per cent
stopped menstruating, while a further 10 per cent suffered irregular
cycles that were hardly conducive to reproduction.
Wrangham quotes another raw-foodist, Christopher Westra, describing
his changing thoughts on sex. ‘In my experience, starting on living
foods brought about a change in sexuality that was dramatic and
completely unexpected. In just a few weeks, the number of times per
day I thought about sex decreased tremendously.’ Westra seems to think
this is a good thing, but Wrangham asks how a species could flourish
on such a diet when over half of the women would be unable to become
pregnant and the men lose interest in sex?
The effect of cooking, however, is dramatic, making it far easier for
our bodies to obtain the nourishment from food. Wrangham notes that
digestion comes in two parts: the first starts in the mouth and
continues in the stomach, and is completed by the small intestine. The
second part is done by the 400 or more species of ‘friendly bacteria’
that take up residence in our large intestines. So, the quicker we
digest food, the more of its goodness we can grab for ourselves.
“If we are using less of our energy to digest food, that can be
diverted elsewhere. In short, cooked food is brain food”
Cooking makes a big difference to this, as illustrated by patients who
have had their large intestines removed, so that food is removed
through a bag attached to the end of their small intestine, or ileum.
These ileostomy patients can easily digest cooked starch - at least 95
per cent of oats, wheat, potatoes, plantains, cornflakes. A similar
figure applies to a typical European or American diet of starchy
foods, dairy products and meat. On the other hand, the figures for the
‘ileal digestibility’ of raw foods are much lower: wheat starch (71
per cent); potatoes (51 per cent); plaintains (48 per cent). This
differential also seems to apply to protein. Wrangham points to the
example of eggs, which are much better digested cooked rather than
raw.
Why does this matter? Well, if nutrients are more easily extracted
from food, then we can maximise their usefulness given our current
digestive systems. But over the hundreds of thousands of years that
evolution takes, this externalisation of digestion changed our
digestive systems substantially. Compared to apes, humans have much
shorter digestive tracts. And if we our using less of the energy
available to us to digest food, that can be diverted to other areas of
our bodies. Essentially, argues Wrangham, cooked food is brain food.
In the transition from australopithecines to habilines, brain volume
rose by one third, from about 450 cubic centimetres to 612 cubic
centimetres. In the earliest examples of Homo erectus (1.8million
years ago), this had reached 870 cubic centimetres and went on to
around 1,400 cubic centimetres with Homo sapiens around 200,000 years
ago. Although we are about three times the size of australopithecines,
our brains are bigger both absolutely and relatively in proportion to
the rest of our bodies.
The change is not purely nutritional. Wrangham argues that it has
social consequences, too. A sexual division of labour between male
hunters and female gatherer/cooks only makes sense if eating is a
relatively quick process. This is borne out by the fact that
individuals in modern hunter-gatherer societies can spend as little as
an hour per day eating, knowing that this will provide all the
nutrition they need, freeing them to spend long periods finding and
pursuing game. Without this free time, each individual would have to
spend most of his or her time finding and consuming food for
themselves, and a specialisation of labour would be impossible.
Wrangham compares this situation to the behaviour of chimpanzees and
gorillas, who spend most of their time eating since they need to
ingest relatively large quantities of fruit and leaves to survive.
That process makes hunting, which chimpanzees will sometimes engage in
for a few minutes at a time, a relatively risky business taking
valuable time away from eating and digesting with no guarantee of
success.
Wrangham’s ideas are fascinating and clearly have some substantial
explanatory value. That said, they are often based on very small
samples of fossils. Furthermore, there is no direct proof that humans
began cooking 1.8million years ago. It could only be when cooking was
done in well-established settings - like some kind of crude,
constructed oven - that there would be any chance of evidence
surviving. Such constructions clearly didn’t clearly begin until much
later. As such, Wrangham must rely on indirect evidence to support his
argument. There is also, as with many popular discussions of
evolution, a storytelling aspect as Wrangham fills in gaps with
educated speculations that provide plausible explanations for how
society and anatomy develops, but are ultimately unprovable, for now
at least.
“Could it be that our current, highly processed diet means that we are
effectively consuming far more food than we think? ”
One possible consequence of Wrangham’s ideas, however, is not at all
academic and may be a useful avenue of research for a very modern
problem: obesity. Could it be that our current, highly processed diet
means that we are effectively consuming far more food than we think?
Wrangham points out that the traditional method of counting calories
in food, the Atwater convention, may be misleading in this regard.
Wilbur Atwater was a nineteenth-century professor of chemistry in
Connecticut, USA. He argued that the amount of energy in food could be
calculated by completely burning it in a device called a bomb
calorimeter and measuring the heat produced. It’s still, give or take
a few tweaks, the way we calculate calorie content today.
However, we don’t burn food, we digest it - and digestion is a costly
process. How much energy is consumed in digestion varies from one food
type to another. Protein is harder to digest than carbohydrate, which
is in turn harder to digest than fat. But the nature of the food also
has an effect. Soft food in small particles will be easier to digest
than bigger lumps of tough food - which is where cooking, and food
processing, may have a significant impact. Furthermore, Atwater
assumed that only about 10 per cent of food would pass all the way
through, undigested. But roughly milled flour, for example, is much
more likely to remain undigested than finely milled flour. Protein
consumed with high-fibre foods is also less likely to be digested than
if it is eaten on its own or with low-fibre foods.
Wrangham concludes, following food writer Michael Pollan, that we
should choose ‘real foods’ over ‘nutrients’: ‘The less processed our
food, the less intense we can expect the obesity crisis to be.’ In
effect, Wrangham is arguing that - in one respect at least - processed
food is actually too nutritious because we can digest it significantly
more easily. It’s an interesting point, but it also seems a little
throwaway, tacked on to the end of a much more developed argument
about human evolution. Wrangham’s thesis would help to explain why
obesity rates have shot up in recent years, despite the fact that
calorie intakes appear not to have changed much: all calories are not
the same. On the other hand, is our food today really very different
from what we ate 50 years ago in terms of digestibility? And is eating
more traditional food really the answer? A dozen pages at the end of a
book on a rather different subject is not enough evidence to decide.
Nonetheless, Catching Fire is a great example of the popular science
book: take a Big Idea and serve in bite-sized, easily digested
portions, leaving the reader well satisfied.
Rob Lyons is deputy editor of spiked. He edits spiked’s What’s the
Future of Food? online debate.
Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, by Richard Wrangham, is
published by Basic Books. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).)
spiked, Signet House, 49-51 Farringdon Road, London, EC1M 3JP Tel:
+44 (0)207 40 40 470 Email: email spiked
© spiked 2000-2009 All rights reserved.
chhotemianinshallah
Genetic 'map' of Asia's diversity
The study indicates that all of Asia was populated through one
migration event
An international scientific effort has revealed the genetics behind
Asia's diversity.
The Human Genome Organisation's (HUGO) Pan-Asian SNP Consortium
carried out a study of almost 2,000 people across the continent.
Their findings support the hypothesis that Asia was populated
primarily through a single migration event from the south.
The researchers described their findings in the journal Science.
They found genetic similarities between populations throughout Asia
and an increase in genetic diversity from northern to southern
latitudes.
The team screened genetic samples from 73 Asian populations for more
than 50,000 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs).
These are variations in pieces of the DNA code, which can be compared
to find out how closely related two individuals are genetically.
This is the first study to give a clear answer to the question on
the origin of East Asian populations
Shuhua Xu
Chinese Academy of Sciences
The study found that, as expected, individuals who were from the same
region, or who shared a common language also had a great deal in
common genetically.
But it also answered a question about the origin of Asia's population.
It showed that the continent was likely populated primarily through a
single migration event from the south.
Previously, there has been some debate about whether Asia was
populated in two waves - one to South East Asia, and a later one to
central and north-east Asia, or whether only a single migration
occurred.
Diversity explained
Edison Liu from the Genome Institute of Singapore was a leading member
of the consortium.
He explained that the age of a population has a much bigger effect on
genetic diversity than the population size.
"It seems likely from our data that they entered South East Asia first
- making these populations older [and therefore more diverse]," he
said.
"[It continued] later and probably more slowly to the north, with
diversity being lost along the way in these 'younger' populations.
"So although the Chinese population is very large, it has less
variation than the smaller number of individuals living in South East
Asia, because the Chinese expansion occurred very recently, following
the development of rice agriculture - within only the last 10,000
years."
Dr Liu said that it was "good news" that populations throughout Asia
are genetically similar.
This knowledge will aid future genetic studies in the continent and
help in the design of medicines to treat diseases that Asian
populations might be at a higher risk of.
And the discovery of this common genetic heritage, he added, was a
"reassuring social message", that "robbed racism of much biological
support".
This provides another important piece to the jigsaw puzzle of global
human diversity
Peter Underhill, Stanford University
Shuhua Xu from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who was a member of
the consortium, said that this was "the first comprehensive study of
genetic diversity and history of Asian populations".
"This is the first study to give a clear answer to the question on the
origin of East Asian populations," Dr Xu added.
Vincent Macaulay, a statistical geneticist at the University of
Glasgow in the UK told Science magazine that the team had produced "a
fabulous data set".
The evidence for the southern coastal migration route, he said seemed
"very strong".
The consortium involved 90 scientists from 11 countries including
China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines,
Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and the US.
Peter Underhill, a geneticist from Stanford University who was not
involved in this study said that it represented an investment of a
"tremendous amount of time, work and inter-institution
collaboration".
He told BBC News: "This provides another important piece to the jigsaw
puzzle of global human diversity."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8406506.stm
chhotemianinshallah
Wednesday 24 November 2004 2.10am-2.40am (Tuesday night)
John Sulston has a knighthood, a Nobel Prize and the credit for
uncovering our genetic instructions for life. His mapping of the human
genome has put him at the forefront of scientific endeavour.
But Sulston remains happiest away from the awards platform and behind
his microscope. A Guardian-reading, muesli-chomping, self-confessed
"nerd turned hippie", he is very much what fellow Nobel Laureate Paul
Nurse calls "a scientist's scientist".
Worm work
The son of a vicar and a teacher, Sulston was, at an early age, imbued
with a strong moral code and curiosity for how things work. When he
arrived in the research labs of Cambridge, he discovered his vocation
in the unlikely form of the nematode worm.
Tracking the worm's cellular development took Sulston eight hours a
day. Eighteen months later, he had made some radical discoveries about
cell lineage in humans and earned himself a Nobel Prize.
Scientific pilgrimage
Sulston was considered a safe pair of scientific hands to receive a
huge cheque and the keys to the Sanger Centre in Cambridge, where he
set about directing the British end of the international Human Genome
Project.
He was the obvious choice for the task of deconstructing the 3,000
million gene bases in each human being, but even Sulston was
unprepared for how this scientific pilgrimage became an exercise, too,
in diplomatic relations.
Showdown
The anti-consumerist Sulston withstood attempts by US scientist Craig
Venter to speed up the process and patent the best, most lucrative
genes, a business decision with the potential for profound political
and ethical ramifications.
Dragged into a PR war with corporate America, Sulston managed to
summon extra energy and funding, and the race for the genome was on.
He also defiantly kept his data in the public domain, making his
opponents' lab secrets less lucrative.
Disillusioned?
A draw was finally declared a couple of years ago, but both Sulston
and Venter still bristle on the subject of who should claim credit for
the success of the project. And Sulston appears disillusioned by the
society he witnessed away from his lab, one convinced by image rather
than reality.
Faced with the prospect of a world unbalanced by the monopoly of
scientific knowledge and economic power, the Cambridge professor has
himself resisted the financial trappings of his phenomenal success.
John Sulston asks, "What else do you want apart from conversation?"
Caroline Frost
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/profile/john-sulston.shtml
Sid Harth
Prashanth G N, TNN 12 December 2009, 01:08am IST
BANGALORE: The ancestors of most Asian populations, including the
Chinese and southeast Asians, came from India, a new genetic study
across 10 countries has revealed. The study found that humans first
migrated to the Indian subcontinent from Africa some 100,000 years ago
and then spread to other parts of Asia.
"When humans moved out of Africa, there was a migration to India and
from India to southeast Asia and then east Asia, and finally to the
Americas. So, all Asians have a genetic connection with India," Mitali
Mukerji, a scientist from the Institute of Genomics and Integrative
Biology who was in the team, said.
The study — Mapping Human Genetic History in Asia — was conducted in
10 Asian countries including India. Apart from the Council of
Scientific and Industrial Research DG Samir Brahmachari, the Indian
study team comprised eight members and some students from IGIB, New
Delhi, anthropologist Partha Majumdar and researchers from the Centre
for Genomic Applications.
The study contradicts earlier findings that humans directly went to
East Asia from Africa. The study found remarkable similarities between
the Dravidian population of south India and specific populations in
Malaysia and Singapore. More interestingly, north Indians and
Dravidians, too, were found to be genetically connected — meaning
there are similarities in their gene structures.
Siva,TN,says:Finally what RSS told about indian group as one has come
true.
[12 Dec, 2009 1726hrs IST]
Victor Ilu,Zanzibar,says:With all due respect to IGIB, not many people
outside of India are going to lend much credence to this report unless
it is backed by other -- non-Indian -- research bodies.
[12 Dec, 2009 1723hrs IST]
Herold,Oman,says:May be the world had no religion and it was small now
the world is divide by Religion caste & creed its a pity
[12 Dec, 2009 1714hrs IST]
bhai chare mae hi chine ll make us servant...,aurangabad,says:as u knw
china is capturing both frm water space & frm hilly areas....time will
come he ll start fighr & we indians unable to do anything....
[12 Dec, 2009 1658hrs IST]
Jayaraman,Kodaikanal,says:Finally the borders are cemented that no
longer need to refer as McMohan line but shall be called as
Brahmachari line from now on.
[12 Dec, 2009 1639hrs IST]
Satheesh ,UAE,says:Intially there was nothing. Then came energy from
somewhere. It is the intial great force. From that everything came.
Why hating each other?. Do love each other because we are all one.
[12 Dec, 2009 1638hrs IST]
ChinnMam,UAE,says:This is very true, It is all the more evident that
the existance of human beings records first in India. So obviously the
rest of the people around the world moved from here and created their
own habitat and religion and behaviour.
[12 Dec, 2009 1501hrs IST]
Pramod Shah,Montreal, Canada,says:How wonderful...Hindi chini bhai
bahi so are others from all of south east Asia.
[12 Dec, 2009 1241hrs IST]
Anejat Shyam,Allahabad,says:And do we great Indians accept the same
connection with African countries?
[12 Dec, 2009 1240hrs IST]
raj,bangalore,says:i also believe this. please tell this to china. we
can still be friends.
[12 Dec, 2009 1200hrs IST]
Diepiriye,New Delhi,says:Do people in India really want to know about
their African ancestry? Just search 'Africa' on this very newspaper's
site and 99% of the articles are about Nigerian drug dealers, and the
odd one about the sportsman/woman. Skin bleach can erase that Africa
right outta your gene pool! Even better if you can harass an actual
African on the street, just to highlight how different we are!
[12 Dec, 2009 1116hrs IST]
Tony Fernandez,Goa,says:Studies galore. Bizzare observations and
totally irrelevant and outdated conclusions.
[12 Dec, 2009 1111hrs IST]
Shrikant Atre,Pune,says:And the history teaches us that some 2200
years ago Kushans (QUI-sHANs) were the first chinese migrants to India
who ruled Kashmir and most of the northern territory of India. In fact
"Kujul Kadphises and Wim Takhtu and their predecessors" started the
"Golden Era" of India much before Guptas by minting first punch-marked
gold coins in India...! Are Hindi-Cheeni real bhai bhai ?
[12 Dec, 2009 0953hrs IST]
Raj,MUmbai,says:Go tell this story to China people and govt see what
they will do to India.
[12 Dec, 2009 0944hrs IST]
Ng,Pra,says:So even in those days, the best and the brightest had to
leave India if they wanted to get something better in their
life... :))))
[12 Dec, 2009 0854hrs IST]
S.Balakrishnan,USA,says:There you go - now China can claim India to be
its territory also i.e. completly not just Arunachal Pradesh and
Ladakh. If their ancestors came from here does that not mean that
there is an inherent right to secure their ancestral land. The Chinese
need no bigger reason to claim any part of the territory adjoining the
ones they control to expand more. Now Indian CSIR gives the reason the
Chinese have been searching all these years to annex India. What else
was the reason to claim Tibet despite its language being more closer
to Indian languages than the Chinese language. Just because Buddhism
was spread via Tibet to China they think Tibet is their by right. If
we can prove the Chinese themselves came from India there can be no
better reason necessary.
[12 Dec, 2009 0839hrs IST]
Deepak ,China,says:Pairs of young men and women first appeared in
Tibbet from "nowhere" millions of years ago according to Vedas. Looks
like people from Africa had migrated to India to celebrate and mark
this event 100,000 years ago. But then, this suggest that people were
already there in Indian subcontinent before groups of people from
Africa migrated to India.
[12 Dec, 2009 0827hrs IST]
Raj,mubai,says:Please stop this superiority complex......now the next
research would be that american French British are basically from
India.......stop that nonsense.....
[12 Dec, 2009 0806hrs IST]
Mangal Pandey,Sydney,says:Hindi chini bhai bhai !
[12 Dec, 2009 0803hrs IST]
Moorthy,AU,says:At least the leftist-dravidian scoundrals can stop
talking about Aryan theory nonsense.
[12 Dec, 2009 0753hrs IST]
Gamma Pegasi,Malaysia,says:This research is either to pamper Chinese
or to make communist naxalites happy. And now the drama would be
Chinese not only demand for Arunachal Pradesh but also the entire
India saying that their ancestors lived in Kanyakumari. But one thing
I must strongly agree with this study is, there is no such thing in
the world called as "Aryan Invasion into India". Dravidians and Aryans
were always a part of India except that a few provincial changes have
been adopted according to geographical conditions and scientifically
so called Aryan Invasion is proved wrong.
[12 Dec, 2009 0740hrs IST]
Sriram,Mumbai,says:It really just means all Indians are Africans. Talk
about sensationalism
[12 Dec, 2009 0733hrs IST]
siddhartha ghosh dastidar,Kolkata,says:The news -"Ancestors of Chinese
came from India: Study" (ToI) is no new as the breakthrugh came in the
mid 1990s and the Population Genetics Unit of Indian Statistical
Institute played a part in this human genome study. Moreover, Prof
Partha Pratim Majumdar is no anthropologist , but a quantitative
geneticist.
[12 Dec, 2009 0714hrs IST]
Bala N. Aiyer,Sugar Land, Texas, USA,says:This is great. The mention
of Dravidian vs North Indian is wrong. There is no such thing as a
Genetic or Racial group as Dravidian - may be just a cultural
tradition only. National Geographic Research study by Spencer Wells in
his book "Journey of Man" shows ALL of India has ONE Male and TWO
Female Genetic Markers that is all mixed all over - Just as Indian
Purana - Kashyapar with two wives Dithi and Adhiti. 95% of Indians are
like this.
[12 Dec, 2009 0641hrs IST]
K.R.Murthy,MY,says:this is a very interesting genetic study. Somehow,
I feel that Africa and India are related. As a common man when I see
the traditions of native people of Africa, India, tribes in
Andamans,Australia and NZ, they seen to be similar. Traditions in Far
east places like Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Mynmar are very
similar. This genetic study linking China and North America with India
is very interesting indeed. This study should be continued further and
substantiated and full publicity should be given. This genetic study
should be used in future history books. If funds are needed for
further studies NRIs and business groups can chip in for this
important study. Indian Government also should support this important
study. Regards
[12 Dec, 2009 0627hrs IST]
zee.b,Canada,says:If Bhagwat Gita had predicted coming of the Holy
Prophet Muhammad pbuh who may have said 129000 prophets came before him
(He being the last with original material of Quran) then according to
the people of the Books after Great Flood only Prophet Noah survived
with a pair of current some original species and some of his
followers.Rest of the Population Drowned (including his stubborn
unbelieving Son who had chosen to move to highest Peak in the
neigbourhood.The Survivors if landed in High Himalaya of India then
India may have privelege to have chinese ancestors.If they had landed
elsewhere then India vs China story about DNA may not be accurate.
[12 Dec, 2009 0615hrs IST]
ssmoorthy,carmel usa,says:Genetic studies about population are
evolving and as it stands we cannot be definite.According to the
book"The History and Geography of Human Genes,by Luca Cavalli-Sforza
et al. India has a large genetic pool of eurasia.There were so many
invasions,migrations etc it is difficult to say by the genetic studies
about the complex population studies of India.India has
Asian,European,African and Chinese genes.The studies are interesting
indicating the Indians are no specific group, and none in the world
are "pure".
[12 Dec, 2009 0605hrs IST]
Anand,Stuttgart, Germany,says:If people don't change reading these
researches , what we can say about us ... we are like still as " Six
Sensed Fools "
[12 Dec, 2009 0413hrs IST]
Dev,Bangalore,says:Being a historian, i can share the following data.
You can twist the years of Tamils history. You can refer about Chola
Dynasty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chola_Dynasty) and their kingdom
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rajendra_map_new.png), which will
tell the truth. The Cholas has a vast kingdom across south india,
maldives, total south east asia in their control. Ther heirs who
resided and maintained the kingdom, only constructed world famous
Angorvat temple in thailand. Still lot to tell....
[12 Dec, 2009 0410hrs IST]
P.M.G,Pillai,Mannar,Allaopuzha,Kerala India,says:dear on line editor,
The finding maybe true because it is found that VEDAS are the OLDEST
books on this earth which conclusively proves that during that age in
In India people were well educated and they did have their own culture
considerd as the VEDIC CULTURE.When this in linked to civilisation
then it is quite possible that it is from India a well deveoped
society and distinctive culture using sanscript language might have
migrqated to all over soth east asia ornear by countries.thus the
temple in Bangkok etc must have been built.datd December12th 2009 time
0335Hrs ist AM
[12 Dec, 2009 0335hrs IST]
Sudarshan,Melbourne,says:You stupid... it seems everyone have a
genetic connection to Africa from the sounds of it.
[12 Dec, 2009 0333hrs IST]
Newslvr,Las vegas,says:Dear Editor your is a wonderful news paper
which has good readership in the US and around the world. Please do
not publish these type of unfounded, un necessary taking credit for
nothing types of news. Some regional and Caste fanatic has issued this
un authenticated finding therefore it is false and un acceptable News
Lvr, USA
[12 Dec, 2009 0321hrs IST]
Emanuel D. Samuel,Toronto On. Canada,says:I did a detailed study of
the Inca of Peru and wrote a book which established that the Inca were
Hindu, specifically Vaisnavite. I cant get anyone to accept it despite
the fact that I directly approached the Consul General of Peru here in
Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and offered it to them. In fact, the title
so jolted him he nearly jumped out of his chair. So, I hope Mitali
Mukherji or anyone in the team is willing to accept it for review. I
will send it right away. Please make my email accessible to any one of
those named in the team. Dhanyavad.
[12 Dec, 2009 0307hrs IST]
Supriya,Chicago,says:Can I get the reference for this study?
[12 Dec, 2009 0304hrs IST]
Cogon Alex,India,says:I am sure she has cooked her results. The theory
that Afircan came to India and we all have African origin is all fake
and illogical. Whay some one from Africa will all the way migrate to
India without migrating to the nearest neighoring country? How did
they came ? by sea route (impossible at that time) or land route ? How
many people she has analyzed to have come to this conclusion. Any way
all the humans has 99.999 % similar genome.
[12 Dec, 2009 0301hrs IST]
Srinivasan Vankatesh,Trichy,Tamilnadu,says:Sir,This is a remarkable
finding.China has often been quoted as saying previously that
"Historically ,India culturally conquered us without sending a single
soldier".Perhaps these finding could enable both the neighbours look
at historical reason for reconciliation and peace.Also,if this is
really true report,as it seems to be,then Aryan invasion theory stands
exposed as a fraudulent mischief.Finally,this once again proves that
the events mentioned in Vedas are indeed authentic and that India is
the real cradle of world civilization and religions.I hope more such
studies are performed to revive the glorius past of our nation.
[12 Dec, 2009 0256hrs IST]
sdxsa,dsa,says:In which journal is this published? or yet to be
published?
[12 Dec, 2009 0250hrs IST]
Mahesh,Redmond, WA,says:Is this study published in a peer reviewed
journal? While this is interesting, I want to understand exactly how
this conclusion was reached.
[12 Dec, 2009 0218hrs IST]
Naveen,Atlanta, GA,says:I really don't trust the Indian media, why the
news is so distorted. Here is the link of BBC news, there is no
mention of Chinese ancestor being of Indian origin.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8406506.stm Thanks, Naveen
[12 Dec, 2009 0212hrs IST]
Anuj Jain,USA,says:Bravo! it conculdes that so called Aryans and
Dravidians are connected and that Aryans did not invade India, as
propagated by the english historians. India is definitely the most
ancient and advanced civilization, but it is conveniently ignored over
other cultures in absense of any visible signs (e.g. Pyramid in
Egypt). Western scientists do not believe our scriptures/vedas becasue
they only believe in what they can see, whereas our scriptures deal
with 6th sense or rather abstract form of spiritual science.
[12 Dec, 2009 0140hrs IST]
Saba,Bangalore,says:Now India should claim entire China; as all
Chinese are originally Indians. How is that?!!!
[12 Dec, 2009 0136hrs IST]
rajesh,Bangalore,says:Hahahaha..rishtey mey to hum tumarey baap lagtey
hey..
[12 Dec, 2009 0129hrs IST]
bademiyansubhanallah
Posted by Vamban on Jan 7th, 2010 10:42:02
Bangkok, Jan 7 – A 35-million-year-old primate fossil found in
southern Thailand has added to evidence that primates, which include
humans, might have originated in Asia rather than Africa, Thai media
reports said Thursday.
Adisak Thiongkhaimuk, the director general of Thailand’s Mineral
Resources Department, confirmed Wednesday that fossils of a primate’s
right jaw found in an abandoned coal mine in Krabi province belonged
to a gibbon-like primate that roamed the earth about 35 million years
ago, The Nation newspaper reported.
The announcement was made to mark the department’s 118th anniversary.
Confirmation of the age of the Siamopithecus eocaenus fossils was
published in the scientific journal Anatomical Record in November. A
previous piece of jawbone of inferior quality was discovered in 1994,
leading to the recording of the Siam ape as a new primate species in
Nature Magazine in 1995.
Thai archaeologists have collaborated with experts from France and
Switzerland to study and date a new fossil found in 1996, which has
confirmed its age at 35 million years.
‘These are the most perfect pieces of primate fossil we’ve found in
the country so far,’ said Yaowalak Chaimanee, the department’s fossil
expert.
Yaowalak told The Nation that the discovery proved simians – which
include monkeys, apes and humans – originated and evolved in Asia.
The oldest primate fossil found in Africa is 32 million years old.
“35-mn-year-old Fossil Raises Questions on Primates’ Origin”
Marcia Earth says:
January 7, 2010 at 4:03 pm
” primates, which include humans, might have originated in Asia rather
than Africa, ”
This sentence seems to indirectly imply that humans might have
originated in Asia.
The first human being was born on Earth long after the first primate.
It is possible for primates to have originated in Asia and humans to
have originated in Africa.
The sentence isn’t false – but the way it is written, it creates
ambiguity.
http://www.vamban.com/35-mn-year-old-fossil-raises-questions-on-primates-origin/#comment-1210
Sid Harth
PTI Sunday, February 7, 2010 17:26 IST
Kuala Berang (Malaysia): Eight thousand-year-old skeletal remains
believed to be those of a pre-historic human have been discovered from
the Gua Bewah Cave in the Kenyir Lake area here.
The Star Online quoted the deputy director of the Institute of the
Malay World and Civilisation Prof Nik Hasan Shuhaimi Nik Abdul Rahman,
as saying that the remains found at a depth of 65 to 70cm could be
between 8,000 and 11,000 years old.
A white cobra was seen guarding the burial ground when the
archaeologists were excavating the site in November last year. However
the cobra was said to have disappeared since then.
“When excavation work started, the snake emerged but it did not
disturb our team,” assistant director of Terengganu Museums historical
department Rashid Hamat said.
The find was the second in the Kenyir Lake area, the first one being
in the Batu Tok Bidan Cave in 1975.
DNA samples from the remains had been sent to the United States for
analysis and results are expected by next month.
Pieces of pottery believed to date back to the Neolithic Age (4000BC
to 2200BC, or between 6000 to 4000 years ago) were also found from the
caves.
The state government would carry on with excavation to find other
historical artefacts.
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Advanced Search Home > Sci/Tech > Report
Sophisticated human behavior found half-million years earlier than
previously thought
ANI Wednesday, December 23, 2009 15:30 IST
WASHINGTON: Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers have discovered
evidence of sophisticated, human behavior as early as 750,000 years
ago, which is some half a million years earlier than has previously
been estimated by archaeologists.
The discovery was made in the course of excavations at the prehistoric
Gesher Benot Ya'aqov site, located along the Dead Sea rift in the
southern Hula Valley of northern Israel, by a team from the Hebrew
University Institute of Archaeology.
Analysis of the spatial distribution of the findings there reveals a
pattern of specific areas in which various activities were carried
out.
This kind of designation indicates a formalized conceptualization of
living space, requiring social organization and communication between
group members.
Such organizational skills are thought to be unique to modern humans.
Attempts until now to trace the origins of such behavior at various
prehistoric sites in the world have concentrated on spatial analyses
of Middle Paleolithic sites, where activity areas, particularly those
associated with hearths, have been found dating back only to some
250,000 years ago.
The new Hebrew University study describes an Acheulian (an early stone
tools culture) layer at Gesher Benot Ya'aqov that has been dated to
about 750,000 years ago.
The evidence found there consists of numerous stone tools, animal
bones and a rich collection of botanical remains.
Analyses of the spatial distribution of all these finds revealed two
activity areas in the layer: the first area is characterized by
abundant evidence of flint tool manufacturing.
A high density of fish remains in this area also suggests that the
processing and consumption of many fish were carried out in this area
- one of the earliest evidences for fish consumption by prehistoric
people anywhere.
In the second area, identified evidence indicates a greater variation
of activities - all of which took place in the vicinity of a hearth.
The many wood pieces found in this area were used as fuel for the
fire.
Processing of basalt and limestone was spatially restricted to the
hearth area, where activities indicate the use of large stone tools
such as hand axes, chopping tools, scrapers, and awls.
The presence of stone hammers, and in particular of pitted anvils
(used as nutting stones), suggest that nut processing was carried out
near the hearth and may have involved the use of nut roasting.
In addition, fish and crabs were probably consumed near the hearth.
'Modern' living was invented by Homo Erectus, not Homo Sapiens
ANI Thursday, January 14, 2010 22:45 IST Email
Washington DC: Modern living may have originated roughly 500,000 years
earlier than it is believed and was actually invented by Homo Erectus-
our hairy, heavy-browed ancestor species- and not the "modern" humans,
Homo Sapiens, according to a new study.
At the prehistoric Gesher Benot Ya'aqov site in northern Israel,
researchers have found the earliest known evidence of social
organization, communication, and divided living and working spaces-all
considered traits of modern human behaviour.
Archaeologists have claimed that the former hunter-gatherer encampment
dates back as far as 750,000 years ago, and must have been built by
Homo erectus or another ancestral human species.
Fossil record suggests that Homo Sapiens-our own species-emerged only
about a couple hundred thousand years ago.
At the site, researchers found artifacts including hand axes, chopping
tools, scrapers, hammers and awls, animal bones, and botanical remains
buried in distinct areas.
"Different tasks"-from nut processing to seafood preparation-"were
taking place in different locations in the site," National Geographic
News quoted archaeologist Naama Goren-Inbar, who led the excavation,
as saying.
"The modification of basalt tools was done in proximity to the
fireplace but, on the other hand, flint [sharpening] was done on the
other end of the site in association with where we found a lot of fish
teeth," said Goren-Inbar, of Hebrew University's Institute of
Archaeology in Mount Scopus, Israel.
On the basis of their finds and evidence from other sites and groups,
the researchers assume there was a division of labour at Gesher Benot
Ya'aqov.
Based on ethnographic analogies and comparisons, Goren-Inbar
speculated that women must be gathering nuts and processing small
animals like fish, crabs, and turtles close to the communal hearth.
The men would be off hunting or situated in farther corners of the
site butchering larger game, including a long-extinct elephant
species, she hinted.
Basalt, limestone, and flint tool making would also be taking place in
various locations around the encampment.
And some people would just be chewing down on roasted nuts-still a
local staple-or fish.
"One of the highlights of our report is that people ate fish more than
750,000 years ago," said Goren-Inbar.
The study suggested that the encampment, located on an ancient
lakeshore, holds some of the earliest evidence of fish eating ever
found.
Archaeologist Dani Nadel agreed that the new discovery indicates a
surprisingly early emergence of modern human behavior.
The study has been published in the journal Science.
European cavemen roasted birds 150,000 years ago
ANI Friday, November 27, 2009 19:56 IST
WASHINGTON: A new study has found that although early modern humans
and their predecessors in Europe were mostly big game hunters, but a
pile of well-nibbled bird bones suggests that at least some
prehistoric European cavemen enjoyed small prey too, about 150,000
years ago.
According to a report in Discovery News, the 202 bones, belonging to
the Aythya genus of diving ducks, were found at Bolomor Cave near the
town of Tavernes in Valencia, Spain.
The ducks date to around 150,000 years ago, and were not eaten
daintily.
"The birds were de-fleshed using both stone tools and teeth," co-
author Ruth Blasco told Discovery News, noting that some of the ducks
may have even been consumed raw.
"The modifications observed on small remains from Bolomor Cave are the
strongest evidence for bird consumption in the European Middle
Pleistocene," she added.
Blasco, a researcher at the Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social
Evolution in Tarragona, Spain, and colleague Josep Fernandez Peris
analyzed the duck bones under high magnification.
They determined three characteristics allow the bird remains to be
considered duck dinner leftovers.
First, they found "cutmarks on bones of both the front and hind limb."
Second, they identified the "presence of burning patterns on the
extremities of the bones, areas of the skeleton with less meat."
Finally, the researchers discovered "human tooth marks on limb bones."
Although both Neanderthal and modern human remains have been found at
the Bolomor Cave complex, the geological level of the roasted duck
finds suggests that Homo heidelbergensis is the human species that ate
the duck meals.
Evidence supports that African hominids ate birds as early as the Plio-
Pleistocene era, around 2 million years ago.
Early European cavemen, on the other hand, are usually associated with
spear thrusting and group hunting efforts.
But, they might have also been fleet footed with fast reflexes.
"The acquiring of fast-running and quick-flying small prey requires a
sophisticated technology and involves obtaining and processing ways
different from those used for large and medium-sized animals,"
according to the scientists, who think Heidelberg Man might have used
traps, bird calls and other techniques to obtain ducks.
http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report_european-cavemen-roasted-birds-150000-years-ago_1317326
Analysing DNA directly from 30,000-year-old modern humans now made
possible
ANI Friday, January 1, 2010 14:13 IST
WASHINGTON: A team of scientists has shown how it is possible to
directly analyse DNA from ancient modern humans who lived around
30,000 years ago. DNA that is left in the remains of long-dead plants,
animals, or humans allows a direct look into the history of
evolution.
So far, studies of this kind on ancestral members of our own species
have been hampered by scientists' inability to distinguish the ancient
DNA from modern-day human DNA contamination.
Now, a new research by Svante Paabo from The Max-Planck Institute for
Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, has overcomes this
hurdle and shows how it is possible to directly analyze DNA from a
member of our own species who lived around 30,000 years ago.
DNA is a hardy molecule and can persist, conditions permitting, for
several tens of thousands of years.
Such ancient DNA provides scientists with unique possibilities to
directly glimpse into the genetic make-up of organisms that have long
since vanished from the Earth.
Using ancient DNA extracted from bones, the biology of extinct
animals, such as mammoths, as well as of ancient humans, such as the
Neanderthals, has been successfully studied in recent years.
The ancient DNA approach could not be easily applied to ancient
members of our own species.
This is because the ancient DNA fragments are multiplied with special
molecular probes that target certain DNA sequences.
These probes, however, cannot distinguish whether the DNA they
recognize comes from the ancient human sample or was introduced much
later, for instance by the archaeologists who handled the bones.
Using the remains of humans that lived in Russia about 30,000 years
ago, Paabo and his colleagues now make use of the latest DNA
sequencing techniques to overcome this problem.
These techniques, known as "second-generation sequencing," enable the
researchers to "read" directly from ancient DNA molecules, without
having to use probes to multiply the DNA.
The application of this technology to the remains of members of our
own species that lived tens of thousands of years ago now opens a
possibility to address questions about the evolution and prehistory of
our own species that were not possible with previous methods.
For instance, whether the humans living in Europe 30,000 years ago are
the direct ancestors of present-day Europeans or whether they were
later replaced by immigrants that brought new technology such as
farming with them.
"We can now do what I thought was impossible just a year ago -
determine reliable DNA sequences from modern humans," said Paabo.
navanavonmilita
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.china/browse_thread/thread/dce0d4821fe42501/44ec2d6fa29b35eb?lnk=raot
Fossil Skeletons May Be Human Ancestor
LiveScience.com
Handout photo shows a cranium forming part of the holotype skeleton of
Australopithecus sediba from the Malapa site in South Africa Reuters –
Handout photo released April 8, 2010 shows a cranium forming part of
the holotype skeleton of Australopithecus …
* Dinosaurs and Fossils Slideshow:Dinosaurs and Fossils
Charles Q. Choi
LiveScience Contributor
LiveScience.com charles Q. Choi
livescience Contributor
livescience.com – Thu Apr 8, 10:10 am ET
A newfound ancient relative of humanity discovered in a cave in Africa
is a strong candidate for the immediate ancestor to the human lineage,
an international team of scientists said today.
The remarkably well-preserved skeletons - a juvenile male and an adult
female that lived nearly 2 million years ago - were found near the
surface in the remains of a deeply eroded limestone cave system.
Scientists don't know how they died, but it's possible they fell into
the cave.
The hominids had longer arms than we do, and smaller brains. But their
faces were human-like, and scientists say the discovery represents an
important look into our pre-human past. Researchers stopped short of
calling the new species, dubbed Australopithecus sediba, a missing
link.
http://www.livescience.com/culture/091030-origins-top10-special.html
Click image to see more fossil photos
AP
Australopithecus means 'southern ape.' Sediba means "natural spring,
fountain or wellspring in Sotho, one of the 11 official languages of
South Africa," said researcher Lee Berger, a paleoanthropologist at
the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa. This was "deemed an
appropriate name for a species that might be the point from which the
genus Homo arises," Berger said.
Rich fossil site
The partial skeletons were found near Johannesburg at a site called
Malapa, which means "homestead" in Sotho, in an area named the Cradle
of Humankind.
http://www.livescience.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?s=history&c=news&l=on&pic=hominid-skull-100408-02.jpg&cap=The+cranium+of+the+newly+identified+species%2C+Australopithecus+sediba%2C+was+found+at+the+Malapa+site%2C+South+Africa.+Credit%3A+Photo+by+Brett+Eloff+courtesy+of+Lee+Berger+and+the+University+of+the+Witwatersrand.&title=
"This is one of the richest fossil sites in Africa," said researcher
Daniel Farber, an earth scientist at the University of California at
Santa Cruz. Nearly a third of the entire evidence for human origins in
Africa come from just a few sites in this region.
The sex of the fossils was determined from the shape of the jaws and
hips, while analysis of the teeth suggest the young male was about 12
years old and the adult female in her late 20s or early 30s. Since
these specimens apparently died at or about the same time as each
other - anytime from hours to weeks apart - the researchers suggest
they would almost certainly have known each other in life and may very
well have been related.
Both stood upright a little more than 4 feet high (1.2 meters). "The
female probably weighed about 33 kilograms (72 lbs.) and the child
about 27 kilograms (59 lbs.) at the time of his death," Berger noted.
The male was "right on the cusp of adulthood."
In many ways, the skeleton appears to be a mishmash of features, with
some resembling members of the human family tree and others more like
those of earlier ape-like hominids. (A hominid includes humans,
chimpanzees, gorillas and their extinct ancestors, while hominins
include those species after the human lineage split from that of
chimpanzees.)
For instance, "the brain size of the juvenile was between 420 and 450
cubic centimeters, which is small when compared to the human brain of
about 1,200 to 1,600 cubic centimeters," Berger said. "It would look
almost like a pinhead."
http://www.livescience.com/history/091113-origins-evolving.html
Still, "the shape of the brain seems to be more advanced than that of
australopithecines," Berger noted. Indeed, a number of skull features,
such as certain wide, broad lines in the bone, "are ones you tend to
attribute to early members of genus Homo," Berger told LiveScience -
that is to say, our lineage.
Human-like faces
A number of facial and dental features resemble those of early human
species, such as small teeth and a projecting nose. At the same time,
"it had very long forearms - in fact, as long as an orangutans,"
Berger said, similar to other members of the genus Australopithecus.
Its fingers were curved, ideal for climbing trees, yet relatively
short, like in humans.
http://www.livescience.com/history/091026-top10-origins-mysteries.html
Its legs were relatively long and the ankles seem to be intermediate
between modern humans and earlier hominids. Critically, its pelvis and
hip were more advanced than other australopithecines, approaching the
hip structure of the extinct human species Homo erectus.
http://www.livescience.com/culture/091030-origins-top10-special.html
This indicates that A. sediba was able to walk upright in a striding
manner.
Despite the differences in sex, the male and female skeletons
physically resembled each other, something they seem to have had in
common with the human family tree but not with more distant relatives,
such as chimpanzees. This could mean that A. sediba leaned toward
social behavior "where you don't necessarily have a dominant alpha
male and you are lowering violence between males who are probably
working more cooperatively in a group," Berger suggested.
Time machine
A combination of dating techniques determined the rocks encasing the
fossils are 1.95 million to 1.78 million years old.
"This fits in a critical moment in time," Berger explained. The human
lineage is thought to have originated between 1.8 million to 2 million
years ago, but the hominid fossils unearthed so far from that period
have proven remarkably poor, giving scientists a great deal of room
for speculation as to how our family tree evolved.
http://www.livescience.com/history/091026-top10-origins-mysteries.html
Due to A. sediba's age and physical traits, the researchers believe it
is a convincing candidate for the immediate ancestor to the genus
Homo. Based on its physique, they suggest its appearance signified the
dawn of more energy-efficient forms of walking and running.
Many scientists believe the human genus Homo evolved from
Australopithecus a little more than 2 million years ago, but that
possibility has been widely debated, with other experts proposing an
evolution from the genus Kenyanthropus. This new species might help
clear up that controversy.
"These fossils give us an extraordinarily detailed look into a new
chapter of human evolution, and provide a window into a critical
period when hominids made the committed change from dependency on life
in the trees to life on the ground," Berger said. "Australopithecus
sediba appears to present a mosaic of features demonstrating an animal
comfortable in both worlds."
http://www.livescience.com/history/091102-human-origins-start.html
Not a missing link
Based on its age and overall details of its body, researchers
suggested A. sediba descended from Australopithecus africanus, which
lived between 2 million and 3 million years ago and seemed to have
eaten mostly soft foods like fleshy fruits, young leaves and perhaps
some meat. This new species appears more similar to humans than do
Australopithecus afarensis, most famed for Lucy, or Australopithecus
garhi, which was discovered in 1996.
http://www.livescience.com/history/070717_lucy_link.html
"We are perhaps at the beginning of a more coherent view of the
diversity of the earliest South African hominids," said
paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall at the American Museum of Natural
History in New York, who did not take part in this research. These
specimens provide "a better position to perceive the larger
evolutionary patterns among hominids in a critical part of the
timeframe."
As intriguing as the new fossil is, "it's not everything the rumor
mill said it was going to be," said paleoanthropologist John Hawks at
the University of Wisconsin at Madison. "It's not a missing link."
http://www.livescience.com/health/top10_missinglinks.html
One of the biggest mysteries in human evolution is when the human
genus Homo arose.
"What sets us apart most from the australopithecines is the size of
our brain," Hawks said. With this new fossil, "while it has a somewhat
Homo-like face, it doesn't have a Homo-like brain - it's smaller than
the average for the earlier [Australopithecus] africanus."
"Maybe these findings suggest we look to South Africa for a possible
origin for Homo, but there's not a smoking gun here," Hawks added.
Intriguing fossils have also emerged in East Africa, and even Asia,
and much remains unknown when it comes to Central Africa and West
Africa. All these clues raise the question of which species were our
ancestors and which just evolved similar traits in a parallel manner.
"We just need to find more skulls," he noted.
Regardless of whether they are a side-branch removed from humanity or
whether they are our ancestors, these new hominids are "a time
machine," Berger said, a window into the evolutionary pressures and
processes during that crucial period when the human lineage arose.
Setting the scene
The sedimentary and geological setting the skeletons were found in
suggests the two hominids died about the same time, shortly before a
mud flow carried them to where they were buried.
"We think the environment [Australopithecus] sediba lived in was, in
many ways, similar to the environment today," said researcher Paul
Dirks, a geologist at James Cook University in Australia. "For
example, one with predominantly grassy plains, transected by more
vegetated, wooded valleys. However, the rivers flowed in different
directions and the landscape was not static, but changed all the
time."
The hominids were found along with at least 25 other species of
animals, including saber-tooth cats, hyenas, a wild dog, a wildcat, a
horse, a species of antelope known as a kudu, and smaller animals such
as mice and rabbits. The fact that the hominid fossils were intact and
well-preserved suggests they were trapped in the cave beyond the reach
of scavengers that could have scattered their skeletons.
All these fossils were preserved in a hard, concrete-like substance
known as calcified clastic sediment that formed at the bottom of what
appears to be a shallow underground lake or pool.
"We believe the cave originally was deep and only accessible through
vertical entranceways, which made it hard for animals to escape once
they became trapped," Farber said.
Cause of death?
The cave would have likely once been some 100 to 150 feet deep (30 to
45 meters). "We are looking at very eroded and denuded portions of
this cave system, where nature has exposed what had once been the deep
reaches," Farber said.
The cave might have acted as a death trap for animals seeking water.
"We would speculate that perhaps at the time of their death, the area
in which [Australopithecus] sediba lived experienced a severe
drought," Dirks said. "Animals may have smelled the water, ventured in
too deep, fallen down hidden shafts in the pitch dark, or got lost and
died."
Although researchers can only speculate on how these hominids died,
Farber speculated that they probably fell into the cave. "Even now,
there are places where you can fall into unexpected cracks in this
landscape," he said.
A deeper understanding of the environment these hominids lived in
could yield critical insights into their evolution. For instance, was
there anything about their surroundings that might have driven them to
stand upright?
"Those were the original questions that we will continue to look at as
part of the broader study," Farber said. The scientists will detail
their findings in the April 9 issue of the journal Science.
A child's discovery
The scientists began the research that uncovered A. sediba in March of
2008, when Berger and Dirks started mapping the roughly 130 caves and
20 fossil sites identified in the region over the past several
decades. By July that year, the 3-D capabilities of Google Earth then
allowed Berger to identify nearly 500 new caves from satellite images,
which further research discovered included more than 25 fossil sites
previously unknown to science.
"It is a powerful, powerful tool for science," Berger said of Google
Earth. "I happen to know paleontologists around Africa who are using
that tool to hunt for fossils."
In late July 2008, using Google Earth, Berger noted a series of caves
running along a fault that pointed to a blank area in the region, an
area that appeared to have clusters of trees that typically marked
cave deposits. On August 1 that year, when Dirks was dropped off with
his dog Tau to map the caves, he almost immediately discovered a rich
new fossil site.
http://www.livescience.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?s=history&c=news&l=on&pic=hominid-cave-100408-02.jpg&cap=A+view+of+the+uitkomst+cave%2C+a+well-known+archaeological+site+close+to+the+sediba+site.+It%0D+illustrates+the+broken%2C+diverse+nature+of+the+landscape.+Credit%3A+Paul+Dirks&title=
Two weeks after that, Berger explored this fossil site with his nine-
year-old son Matthew and his postdoctoral student Job Kibii.
"Matthew ran off the site, about 15 meters (50 feet) off-site, and
within about a minute-and-a-half, he said, 'Dad, I found a fossil,"
Berger said. "I thought it would be an antelope fossil, because that's
usually all we find, but as I walked toward him, I found he found a
hominid clavicle (collarbone) sticking out of the rock." That bone was
the first remains found of A. sediba - the collarbone of the juvenile.
Fossil preparators have worked arduously over the last two years to
extract the rest of the bones from the rock. In celebration of this
find, the children of South Africa have been invited to a competition
to decide what the name for the juvenile skeleton will be.
The future of the past
In the meantime, the researchers said there are at least two other
skeletons emerging from the site. He also refused to confirm or deny
whether they might have found any tools these hominids might have left
behind.
"The presence of tools is something that would have enormous
ramifications, obviously," Berger said. "We're treading carefully in
that area."
The skulls from the fossils they have retrieved so far are well-
preserved enough to reconstruct their faces, Berger noted.
"Sometime in the future, we will look into the face of sediba," he
said.
The researchers might even be able to retrieve DNA or proteins from
the site.
"We are seeing some organics preserved in various parts of the
assemblage," Berger noted.
* Top 10 Mysteries of the First Humans
http://www.livescience.com/history/091026-top10-origins-mysteries.html
* Humans Still Evolving as Our Brains Shrink
http://www.livescience.com/history/091113-origins-evolving.html
* Top 10 Things That Make Humans Special
http://www.livescience.com/culture/091030-origins-top10-special.html
* Original Story: Fossil Skeletons May Be Human Ancestor
http://www.livescience.com/history/new-hominid-human-ancestor-100408.html
LiveScience.com chronicles the daily advances and innovations made in
science and technology. We take on the misconceptions that often pop
up around scientific discoveries and deliver short, provocative
explanations with a certain wit and style. Check out our science
videos, Trivia & Quizzes and Top 10s. Join our community to debate hot-
button issues like stem cells, climate change and evolution. You can
also sign up for free newsletters, register for RSS feeds and get cool
gadgets at the LiveScience Store.
Related Searches:
* australopithecus garhi http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/search?p=australopithecus+garhi
* australopithecus africanus http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/search?p=australopithecus+africanus
* australopithecus afarensis http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/search?p=australopithecus+afarensis
* cradle of humankind http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/search?p=cradle+of+humankind
* google earth http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/search?p=google+earth
2,035 Comments
Show:
Lee J
575 users liked this comment
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Lee J 21 hours ago
IMPOSSIBLE!!!! Earth is only 6,000 years old. Satan put
those bones there to confuse us or God did to test us. I can't
remember which one is right.
Well now that being said we can move on to more comments
about this story.
Replies (181)
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Infidel
692 users liked this comment
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Infidel 21 hours ago
A nine-year old CHILD found the first of these important
fossils! Fantastic! At least he won't grow up to be deluded by the
bible-believers "young earth" myth. Too bad so many American children
are brainwashed with bible-thumping nonsense, and that with
conservative control over science textbooks, many more WILL be.
Replies (117)
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Bullwinkle
176 users liked this comment
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Bullwinkle 21 hours ago
Maybe they fell from the moon.
Replies (15)
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Tony
83 users liked this comment
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Tony 21 hours ago Report Abuse
oh the brain was smaller then the average brain of the ape a
million years before it how does where's the logic lol
Replies (14)
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Christian
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Christian 19 hours ago Report Abuse
wow very interesting
Replies (3)
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Daniela
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Daniela 19 hours ago Report Abuse
wow are you serious it could be and ancestor for an ape not
humans!
Replies (17)
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Jerk
481 users liked this comment
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Jerk 19 hours ago Report Abuse
So if we evolved from apes, why are there still apes?
There's also multiple species of fish... am I supposed to believe
there was 1 original fish and all the others evolved?
Replies (98)
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John
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John 19 hours ago Report Abuse
Interesting, but I don't buy it. In every species, when one
species evolves into another species, the previous one disappears. So,
if we evolved from monkeys and apes, why are there still monkeys and
apes? It takes more faith to believe in evolution than it does to
believe in creation.
Replies (88)
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Steve
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Steve 19 hours ago Report Abuse
That's Great....
Replies (7)
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Edward
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Edward 19 hours ago
It is interesting how the evolutionist continue to insist
man evolved from apes and the earth is billions years old. There are
still no intermediate transitional forms. There is natural selection
and adaptation but no macroevolution. Dogs still beget dogs and cats
still beget cats even though there are different varieties within the
kind.
These scientist have rejected the truth about the Creator
and have chosen to believe in fary tales for grown ups. The key to
true scientific understanding is believe in a recent creation and a
global cataclysmic flood in the days of Noah which would explain most
of the fossil record.
These evolutionist just can't exept the idea that they will
have to answer to the Creator one day for their sin. Jesus himself
attested to the historical accuracy of the Genesis record. I would
rather believe God's Son than athiests with an agenda.
Replies (48)
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Priscilla
5 users liked this
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Priscilla 19 hours ago Report Abuse
damn dats crazy!!! team kaname!!
Comment hidden due to low rating. Show Comment
Replies (2)
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Himitsu
106 users liked this comment
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Himitsu 19 hours ago
cool cool cool! I love when they find new stuff! I'm
excited. Kinda makes me want to be an archeologist...
Replies (2)
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Daniel
3 users liked this commentThumbs UpThumbs Down44 users disliked
this comment
Daniel 19 hours ago
Ho Hum
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High
53 users liked this comment
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High 19 hours ago
Peole read your bible !!!
It say that earth had man and likeman !!!
Eva think bones are from like-man !!!
Replies (12)
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sam
108 users liked this comment
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sam 19 hours ago
lets continue with the discovery of who we are. that is
amazing that we are able to, soon, prove who we are. i hope that child
understands the discovery they made. hopefully we can soon let our
children THINK for themselves an not be forced to belive in a figment
of a 2000 year old mans imagination. why would we want our future in
the hands of people who belive in a tribal view of creation, when
evolution has proved it self true.why should our leaders be people who
wont belive in the realitys of the facts. lets hope that we find the
rest of our past an can soon see the true evolution of man.
Replies (12)
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wrxacd
98 users liked this comment
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wrxacd 19 hours ago
I just want to make people, who don't already know, aware.
The dates they come up with are not accurate the dating techniques
used to come up with these numbers are VERY inaccurate beyond a few
thousand years. So how can they know it was "2 million years" ago? And
what really bugs me about these articles is how the author tries to
present all the information as "fact" when it is based on theory. The
old saying "Don't believe everything you see on TV" would apply
nowadays. DON"T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ ON THE INTERNET.
Replies (8)
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..::Beautiful::..
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..::Beautiful::.. 19 hours ago Report Abuse
FInally! Actual PROOF is coming out. What kind of "proofs"
does the theory of God have?
Replies (47)
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Joey
118 users liked this comment
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Joey 19 hours ago
HAHAHAHAHAHA there is so little evidence for evolution every
new find lends us some supposed new clue. These losers just dont want
to admit there is a God. This is honestly to funny.
Replies (11)
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Eric
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Eric 19 hours ago
In about a year, a very small article will appear(not on the
front page of Yahoo), stating that this hominid is not an ancestor of
us. Happens every time. And there are some of us who believe that the
universe is about 15 billion years old, and the earth is about 4
billion years old...Old Earth Creationists. Not to mention there are
Thiestic Evolutionists. So don't let that stop you from loving and
serving Jesus.
Replies (7)
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AustinR
50 users liked this comment
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AustinR 19 hours ago
Small brain and in Africa. Really, do I need to go there?
Replies (7)
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JeremyJ
88 users liked this comment
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JeremyJ 19 hours ago
I agree completely, If we all evolved from apes, why are
there still apes? Same applies to fish, etc... People who believe in
evolution are looking for a way to fill the gap that not believing in
God creates in their lives.
Replies (6)
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Rev Mike
47 users liked this comment
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Rev Mike 19 hours ago
Of course there is only one type of human left! We ate all
the others! LOL Hope they find more and I hope we get to read about
it!!
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ONE TIME
47 users liked this comment
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ONE TIME 19 hours ago
First, we find something and title it "May be a human
ancestor." Step two, say that it is and get it published in a school
text book. Step 3, after some 25 years we learn that it wasn't what we
thought it was and keep publishing that textbook as if it is true. ...
Replies (4)
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jake
93 users liked this comment
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jake 19 hours ago
Wow, people still believe in evolution? Religion has more
facts this this crap.
Replies (13)
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Charles Webb
87 users liked this comment
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Charles Webb 19 hours ago
Ancestors? Really!!? Its an Ape or monkey Specie that`s it.
We were created. We didnt evolve. Scientists will be looking for the
missing link for eternity,because it doesnt exist.
Replies (4)
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Shay
86 users liked this comment
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Shay 19 hours ago
How do you know its that old? The answer is you don't. It is
wrong to say something is that old when you have no idea. And as for
this "missing link" you will never find it. God created the world. Its
as simple as that. We did not evolve from a monkey.
Replies (7)
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Shaun S
49 users liked this comment
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Shaun S 19 hours ago
HAHAHA!!! Stupid atheists... the earth is only 10,000 years
old. There is no "human ancestor", we are now as we have always been!
Replies (8)
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Mat
56 users liked this comment
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Mat 19 hours ago
This is not the forum for a religious debate; feel free to
blog or chat elsewhere if you have theological issues on this.
It really is amazing that a child made such a find; or is
it? Children do tend to dig, quite a bit. The surprising part may be
that the child notified the correct people without continuing to dig
and causing serious damage to the discovery.
Replies (5)
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Mark
74 users liked this comment
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Mark 19 hours ago
when one species evolves into a new species it does not
automatically mean the elimination fo the old species.....I don't mind
a person choosing the bible over science but I find it troubling how
many anti-evolutionists clearly don't understand the theory in the
slightest
Replies (7)
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Stephen K
7 users liked this comment
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Stephen K 19 hours ago
HAHAHA.... @ Lee
Surely you don't believe that nonsense, right? lol
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Lee J
4 users liked this comment
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Lee J 19 hours ago
Tig....Tig........Tig Chill out.......Don't you know sarcasm when
you read it?
Replies (1)
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steph8208
17 users liked this comment
53 users disliked this comment
steph8208 19 hours ago
Dont Buy into it folks! Either is A.) a species that has went
extinct B) deformed animal we already have as a species or C) a
"deformed" human. This is hilarious!
Replies (3)
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Ruth
45 users liked this comment
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Ruth 19 hours ago
Ya'll are a mess.. Its just a species in the monkey family..
Humans did not evolve from apes.. smh
Replies (4)
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Michael
50 users liked this comment
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Michael 19 hours ago
The earth is only 6000 years old. About 4500 years ago there was a
catastrophic global flood, which changed things quite a bit. However,
there are no "human ancestors". Humans, and all animals originated at
the same time........the sixth day.
Replies (10)
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__A_YAHOO_USER__
60 users liked this comment
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__A_YAHOO_USER__ 19 hours ago
how would it take more faith to believe in evolution that is
backed by tangable facts, than it would to believe in creation that is
backed only by man written books, stories, and flintstones cartoons?
Replies (7)
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Paul
54 users liked this comment
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Paul 19 hours ago
God has complete control over everything including time, you
should read "The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and
Biblical Wisdom," Gerald L. Schroeder, I'm frankly tired of atheistic
comments against Christians, our founding fathers were Christian and
the reason this country is going down is because of people like you
that have no concept of sin. So instead of attacking me back, go read
something Mr. and Mrs. scientist.
Replies (6)
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Justin
73 users liked this comment
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Justin 19 hours ago
I swear to god (haha a pun), you religious people are all idiots
in denial. The Earth is certainly more than a measly 10,000 years old.
Heck that was the last ice age! Life began on this planet 4 BILLION
years ago. Finally more proof of evolution. Science. Facts. Take that
in your little "belief system". We have facts, you have random ideas.
Replies (13)
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dennis
49 users liked this comment
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dennis 19 hours ago
Here is a thought... Jesus Christ died for ALL OF US, AND ALL OF
OUR SINS, this skeleton may be an extinct species but NOT a human
ancestor. I firmly believe in the Bible, that being said, we
Christians NEED TO LOVE THOSE WHO DON'T BELIEVE; NOT ATTACK THEM!
Evolution is WRONG, ---IF WE ARE DESCENDANTS OF APES THEN SCIENCE
WOULD BE ABLE TO MIX HUMAN EGGS WITH PRIMATE SPERM OR VICE VERSA
PRODUCING OFFSPRING. THEY HAVE BEEN UNABLE TO DO SUCH A THING.----
Horses and donkeys produce (sterile) mules.... therefore (IF)
evolution was right and it is NOT, but if it was then there should be
an offspring which would be produced via the same technique... We are
to tell the world about Jesus, not attack the Lost or belittle them.
you will win the lost with love not hate or anger.
Replies (4)
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Christian
53 users liked this comment
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Christian 19 hours ago
I find it funny how these sort of articles always result in
religious lashing out.
Replies (3)
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Chris
36 users liked this comment
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Chris 19 hours ago
It is a FACT that Darwin himself changed and believed in Creation
not Evolution before he died!
Replies (12)
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KB
3 users liked this comment
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KB 19 hours ago Report Abuse
Poor stupid Lee J. Severe head injury... or just born
retarded?? Geez...
Comment hidden due to low rating. Show Comment
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Marko
31 users liked this comment
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Marko 19 hours ago
I'm sure it was the first Democrats. You can tell by the
small brain.
Replies (5)
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Tom
13 users liked this comment
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Tom 19 hours ago
Wow, Cool, another shape of a human skull...you know we all
are so much the same now. Have a little faith you amiba's Genesis
explains it all, Faith baby Faith!
Replies (2)
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John
17 users liked this comment
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John 19 hours ago
God made these creatures and they must be however remotely
related to our first parents. We will not gain more understanding
beyond the literal details of the Genesis creation accounts by hurling
insults at each other.
Reply
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Gray
65 users liked this comment
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Gray 19 hours ago
These religious people are really starting to piss me off.
Religion is fine and all I don't care if you are. Quit trying to
sholve it down peoples throats. It makes you looks ignorant.
Replies (7)
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JimmyJam
84 users liked this comment
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JimmyJam 19 hours ago
Judging by some of these comments, it's obvious that the
human brain is shrinking once again.
Replies (4)
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Loratta
26 users liked this comment
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Loratta 19 hours ago
i think this is an extrodinary find maybe one day with
discoverys like this we can put the debate of whether we discended
from apes or created by god can be put to rest
Replies (4)
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Michael
15 users liked this comment
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Michael 19 hours ago
The earth is only 6000 years old. About 4500 years ago there
was a catastrophic global flood, which changed things quite a bit.
However, there are no "human ancestors". Humans, and all animals
originated at the same time........the sixth day.
Replies (3)
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NathanA
34 users liked this comment
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NathanA 19 hours ago
One can be a believer and believe in evolution as well. The
concepts are not mutually exclusive.
Replies (3)
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Gonzo
4 users liked this comment
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Gonzo 19 hours ago
if this is all so then what explains ghost and spirits....
life is so crasy confuseing
Replies (1)
You get the picture...
Dr Jai Maharaj is a sad Monkey: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian/browse_thread/thread/778f6f077f33363b/bf1af43c5f2c24fa?lnk=raot&pli=1
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian/msg/d407520db5c5719f