Chinese Roots: Skull May Complicate Human-Origins Debate

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

[Marysecretary]

And it will never end, Grampa Dave. People are sometimes very obtuse.

[stanz]

Perhaps you should take this discussion to Rael. My time here is finished.

[Ahban]

Re: Toba

If Toba is the cause of the bottleneck, how come only the genes of humans bottlenecked? No other primate has such a bottleneck. Two chimps from different groups living on the SAME MOUNTIAN in Africa have more genetic diversity than any two human beings alive.

Did it grealty reduce the human population, but not the chimp, bonobo, gorilla, or orangutan, or gibbon populations? That makes no sense to me at all. Two of those live EXCLUSIVLEY in Toba's neighborhood. Why do they not show a bottleneck?

If Toba ia the answer, why are only humans, among all primates, showing it?

[blam]

"If Toba ia the answer, why are only humans, among all primates, showing it?"

Don't know. What do you think.

[Bernard Marx]

Excellent information!

[Light Speed]

Hi blam.

Intersting article...some of the links from others on the thread good aswell.
Hypothesis:
If the Homo Sapien skull from China is this advanced..it would also reveal a strong DNA mapping.
If the skull is like ours..then the rest of the system..is like ours...
Therefore..the ability to procreate successfully.
In the supposition..then mankind should have been populating the planet in numbers that would stagger our imagination...or..they were cut back.
I can nod to the Skull from China with the dating..but then I need some system introducing itself in intervals to snuff manout...cut him back to low number thresholds.
Both of us agree on the mechanics of catastrophism.
If this skull is on..and is DNA sound ..matches us..then this planet has been rocked by Catrastrophism to a scale we can't imagine..because millions would have to be getting obliterated...in continuing cycles.
The other concern is habitation...they have some going back 15,000...a few.
Again..if left to a gradual curve without catastrophism..man would have been doing the habitation thingy much earlier than 15,000..and we would have numerous sites..globally.
If the skull is on...then so must the catastrophism.

[Aracelis]

If the Homo Sapien skull from China is this advanced..it would also reveal a strong DNA mapping.

The article doesn't say, but I suspect that there isn't any DNA left in this find. Typically, bone that is buried becomes a fossil by mineral replacement of the original structure. (Some of the most beautiful fossils I have seen were opalized - that is, silica-rich groundwaters percolated through the sediments and replaced the original calcium with opal) The best we can probably hope for is age-dating the fossils and the sediments in which they were found.

[Ahban]

I don't know either, except that maybe Toba, bad as it was, did not bring any primate species alive today close to extinction. Human genes are so close simply because man himself is very recent- after Toba. Of course, if the dating of the fossil in your post holds up, mankind would be older.

Still, that skull looks completely modern - I suspect it is far more recent than the preliminary dating, based on sediments and not the skull itself, suggests. BTW Mungo Man may not be from so far back after all. VadeRetro, to his credit since it undermined his point, found a good link casting grave doubts on the 60K date for Mungo Man in favor of a much more recent date.

[Ahban]

my #68 is meant for you....

[Light Speed]

Yes you are correct on your comment concerning DNA....
poor wording choice on my part.
From my perspective..if the skull is like ours..and is near the time window they are forwarding...and unless man had some problem procreating...human population numerics would be much like ours...hence mankind would have probably been into the habitation phase much earlier than the 15,000 yr window which we are discovering today.
I suspect catastrophism to be the prime mover in keeping population numbers down..and driving man into migrations.

[Aracelis]

human population numerics would be much like ours

That certainly might have happened, except that the average life-span may have only been into the early to mid-twenties due to disease, etc. Still, that amount of time might have been sufficient for each female to produce 5 or 6 offspring.

[Aracelis]

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.

I tend to agree with Physicist...that humans could have migrated very far within a relatively short period of time. Mitochondrial evidence does indeed support African roots, but let's see what further investigation reveals.

[Aracelis]

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.

I hope you are following your dream now and working on that degree.

[JudyB1938]

I am almost 65 years old. To be really effective in the field requires years. I don't have them left. Plus I have a problem now remembering details. But that's okay. I asked Jesus to give me an "instant rerun" when I get to Heaven. LOL

In the meantime, I have blam. :0)

[blam]

"In the meantime, I have blam. :0)"

GULP!

[blam]

"I don't know either, except that maybe Toba, bad as it was, did not bring any primate species alive today close to extinction. "

Everyone is fussing about Mungo Man.

I caught parts of a documentary about an archaeologist who claims to have found 'human activity' (In the Indonesian area) just above the Toba layer. She speculated that there were human survivors in the immediate Toba area. We need more data.

[Little Bill]

mitochondrial DNA..

The premis assumes that man originated in Africa, I was disgusted with the theory when I read about it in The Scientific American. This is another tautolgy.

[SunkenCiv]

Blast from the Past.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
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[LiteKeeper]

YEC INTREP

[blam]

Ping.