Chinese Roots: Skull May Complicate Human-Origins Debate

Science News ^ | 12-21/28-2002 | Bruce Bower

[MHGinTN]

Is there a way to investigate whether disease, such as a sudden appearing mutation to a before benign virus, might be responsible for certain extinction processes? Might a massive stress in the environment (like a comet/meteor strike) allow a before deadly but not extinction creating virus to wipe out species?

[BenR2]

Debate? What debate?

Ohhhh, I get it: They don't know about Genesis, Chapters 1-11.

[stanz]

There were many Nefertaris. The most famous one, Nefertari Mery Mut, Great Wife of Rameses II, was not Nubian by descent. She was the daughter of Bakenkhonsu, a royal official of the Theban court with ancestors in attendance for many generations. Ahmes Nefertari, daughter of Seqenenre of the 17th dynasty, became the wife of Ahmose I, founder of the 18th dynasty. She is thought to be the great-grandmother of Nefertari Mery Mut. There is no evidence that they descended from any Nubian line.

[jlogajan]

That's the Nefertari I was referring to. There are many web sites out there that claim her to be a Nubian. However, the claims are not well backed up. Whether she came from Thebes or not would not automatically exclude her from being Nubian, though.

[Reeses]

H. sapiens

HOMO sapiens? It's not like homo is a long word. Out of favor?

[Doctor Stochastic]

Genera are usually abbreviated such as in H.Pylori. (Personally I like to write them out for the Boethians.)

[JudyB1938]

Speaking of Nefertari, I think you will enjoy this website:

http://www.touregypt.net/historicalessays/nefertari.htm

[blam]

I have a bronze statue of Nefertiti that I picked up in Cairo when I was through there in the mid-60's. I'm not much interested in Egyptian archaeology these days. The action is in South America. IMO.

[stanz]

Thanks. I recall that from a time last fall when I was stalking Egyptian sites looking for tomb paintings.

[stanz]

I think the sources which suggest she was Nubian are Afro-centric. I recall looking at one recently which claimed the whole of ancient Egyptian genealogy was Black which is just not true. The Nubian kings ruled in the later dynasties. Also, there's this:

http://www.osirisnet.net/tombes/pharaons/nofr/e_nofr/e_nofr.htm

Ahmes-Nefertari, Amenotep l's mother, was the first to enjoy an official cult after her death because of her eminent priestly functions, and this was of course fervently continued during succeeding dynasties. Having been deified, she appears in many monuments as a black-skinned queen -a rare privilege, previously granted only to gods or deified kings. The black colour that then differentiates her from other persons of her rank seems in the event to denote sanctification : her new physical appearance was thus a tangible sign that she had arrived in the world of the divine. It was no doubt on the basis of a similar principle that the queens of the Ramesside era, in having themselves depicted in their tombs with pink skin, also wished to indicate that they were diffe- rent in nature from other women (cf view 17 from the craftman Inerkhau's tomb) Top of Page

She may have been depicted as being black-skinned, but Egyptians took great liberties with skin color in tomb paintings. Osiris was always green; royal ladies almost always yellow; later Queens of the 19th and later dynasties sometimes portrayed with pink skin; men whether royal or not always portrayed as brown-skinned....just traditional representations.

[CobaltBlue]

>>However, if age-dating these finds reveals that the specimens were emplaced contemporaneously with surrounding sediments, then we will have to re-think our current theories.<<

It seems to me that all that would need to be re-thought is the assumptions about the timing of genetic variations in mitochondrial DNA.

Older human skeletons push the timeline further backwards but don't, in and of themselves, change the well-established pattern of genetic variation of mitochondrial DNA, which clearly supports a single origin traceable back to Africa.

[jlogajan]

Also what is now southern Egypt was then part of Nubia. So there were many Nubian royalties in what is now Egypt. Of course we associate most of Egyptian history to the northern part.

[stanz]

There's a good site which discusses ancient Nubia (don't be dismayed by its title, it's legit):

http://www.internetpuppets.org/afrnubia.html

If you scroll down to the time chart, you'll note that Kings from Nubia only ruled Egypt from approx. 800 BC to 650 BC which is considered "late" in ancient Egyptian civilization...much later came rule by the Persians, then later Greece and Rome, but Egypt had seen the last of her glory days by the end of the New Kingdom.

[Right Wing Professor]

HOMO sapiens? It's not like homo is a long word. Out of favor?

No, just convention to abbreviate the generic name when you're discussing species within a single genus. I'm not Homophobic (at least not in this sense).

[jlogajan]

That would be H. phobic, right? :-)

[JudyB1938]

I wanted to be an archaeologist in Central or South America, but I wasn't allowed to go to college in 1956 because I was a girl. My mother said it'd be a waste of money.

[blam]

"My mother said it'd be a waste of money."

You should always listen to your mother. (ducking)

[crystalk]

The Out of Africa idea as currently propounded, which says that as recently as some 80 to 140 thousand years ago, persons deceptively called "modern humans" came out of Africa, and took over the world, replacing any earlier members of genus Homo that might have been there before, with no very significant admixture/intermarriage with said premoderns....

While this idea might be FALSE, it is hardly one that is congenial to traditional Darwinism or evolution. Quite the contrary, it begs almost for the intervention of Celestials both to produce [by genetics] the "modern humans," and then to give them UFO rides to settlement sites worldwide!

[stanz]

Celestials???????????

The theory at this time is not false or valid until more evidence comes in to either substantiate it or or not. Humans evolved. That is one thing that is certain. H. sapiens is called "modern" because it is the most evolved species of hominid around.That much is no deception.

[crystalk]

Evolved from the monkeys? Up to a point.

Then, man was monkeyed with. By whom? My answer is: the Elohim, the Celestials.

Too many ways in which man differs even from the closest animals, in ways that could not possibly be pro-survival or naturally selected, even if there were the zillions of years of time between H.erectus and us that there are NOT!

The very OOA theory itself says that in effect the whole thing leaped from Erectus to As Good As Yo Mama in about the period from 300,000 to 100,000 yrs ago.