Posted on 02/19/2002 7:53:03 AM PST by PatrickHenry
University of Toronto anthropologist David Begun and his European colleagues are re-writing the book on the history of great apes and humans, arguing that most of their evolutionary development took place in Eurasia, not Africa.
In back-to-back issues of the Journal of Human Evolution, Begun and his collaborators describe two fossils, both discovered in Europe. One comes from the oldest relative of all living great apes (orangutans and African apes) and humans; the other is the most complete skull ever found of a close relative of the African apes and humans.
In the November 2001 issue, Begun and colleague Elmar Heizmann of the Natural History Museum of Stuttgart discuss the earliest-known great ape fossil, broadly ancestral to all living great apes and humans. "Found in Germany 20 years ago, this specimen is about 16.5 million years old, some 1.5 million years older than similar species from East Africa," Begun says. "It suggests that the great ape and human lineage first appeared in Eurasia and not Africa."
In the December 2001 paper, Begun and colleague László Kordos of the Geological Museum of Hungary describe the skull of Dryopithecus, discovered in Hungary by their team a couple of years ago. The fossil is identical to living great apes in brain size and very similar to African apes in the shape of the skull and face and in details of the teeth, the researchers say.
The discoveries suggest that the early ancestors of the hominids (the family of great apes and humans) migrated to Eurasia from Africa about 17 million years ago, just before these two continents were cut off from each other by an expansion of the Mediterranean Sea. Begun says that the great apes flourished in Eurasia and that their lineage leading to the African apes and humans - Dryopithecus - migrated south from Europe or Western Asia into Africa, where populations diverged into the lines leading towards great apes, gorillas and chimps (chimpanzees and bonobos). One of those lines eventually evolved into the ancestors of humans about six million years ago.
[Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by University Of Toronto for journalists and other members of the public. If you wish to quote from any part of this story, please credit University Of Toronto as the original source. You may also wish to include the following link in any citation: Source. ]
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Many years ago, humankind began in Africa. These earliest humans spread out in all directions, and some of them ended up in Europe. Over the course of a few thousand years, these European versions of the human changed, and became substantially different than any other humans. They built ships, sailed the seas, discovered fundamental truths about the universe they lived in, created the discipline of science that has so enriched and improved all our lives. And one day, thousands of years later, they returned to Africa.
What did they find there? A culture in many ways as advanced as their own, as would be discovered in the Far East? A "great" religion, as would be the case with the Mohammedans of the Middle East? No. They discovered the inhabitants still living in primitive barbarism, jumping up and down and eating each other. Of COURSE Europe was where evolution flowered. How anyone can look at human history and not immediately and instinctively know this is beyond me.
Please, feel free to discuss. :) I'll look back in on this thread tonight and see how many hysterical denunciations I manage to attract. Oh, and by the way, I'm NOT a racist. I don't care what color you are, what country you come from, or what fairy tale you believe in so long as you don't want to use the power of the state to make me live like you do. That's why I like FREE Republic so much.
The real answer to human origins may have unpleasant results for the "were all equal" crowd. First, the genetic similarity is found to have ignored the fact some genes matter more and some matter not at all. Then it develops that the "Neanderthals died out" theory may not be right. We'll soon see just how much our tendentious left wants to "celebrate diversity."
The facts are a hard master, which is why liberals are so loath to confront them. But on the highly charged subject of race most of the world (both conservative and liberal) has forbidden the logical examination of the evidence. The evidence leads to some very uncomfortable conclusions.
I do not see how the first appearance allows the conclusion expressed in the first statement above. I also do not see how great apes can flourish before their lineage migrates and diverges into lines leading towards great apes. Further, why was this assertion not accepted when first proposed by László Kordos in January 2000.---
New results of Hominoid research in the Carpathian Basin
The combination of RUD-200 and other specimens of Dryopithecus from Hungary,France and Spain provides evidence of an African great ape morphology of the palate,mid-face,orbital region,neurocranium and craniofacial hafting,lending substantial support to the hypothesis of European origin of the African ape and human clade.
Finally, why is there no substantiation to “the earliest-known great ape fossil, broadly ancestral to all living great apes and humans” What is it, a tooth?
I think you have confused the flowering of Western culture with the biological evolution of the human species. No doubt, we in the West were among the first to begin making serious intellectual and technological progress. But it wasn't too long ago that our own ancestors were just as primitive as those living elsewhere. Yet we are the same species. Our cultures are vastly unequal, of course.
I've read it, and his theory represents a contorted, complex, sometimes self-contradictory attempt to present an 'alternative' explanation of the disparate results of Western civilization versus 'other cultures'. My review: nice try but not convincing.
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