Debate Over a Skull [NYT Letter to Ed.]

NY Times: Letters ^ | 6-22-03 | C. LORING BRACE

[Pharmboy]

To the Editor:

"The Beginning of Modern Humans" (editorial, June 15) states that a newly discovered Ethiopian skull more than 150,000 years old is "recognizably modern to paleoanthropologists but not to most of the rest of us." It does not look recognizably modern to this paleoanthropologist, and it is a much less probable candidate for being the ancestor of the modern European human than the European Neanderthal is.

I have superimposed the outlines of the crania being compared. Statistical analysis of a battery of measurements shows that the European Neanderthal is more closely related to modern Europeans than to anyone else in the world. This can only be because there is an actual genetic relationship.

That splendid Ethiopian specimen is a good candidate for being an ancestor of Ethiopians, but not Europeans.

Ann Arbor, Mich., June 16, 2003 The writer is a professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan.

[Pharmboy]

A Wolpoff colleague speaks out against the PC-anthro crowd and the Paper of [an awful] Record deigns to publish it--on Sunday no less!

[Pharmboy]

Multiregional Ping

[eno_]

My wife would call my jutting brow and large, thick skull prima facie evidence of direct descent from Neanderthals.

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

Your wife knows best. However,in addition to your wife, many have said that in fact you do look neanderthoid! I'm Cro Magnon.

[blam]

"A Wolpoff colleague speaks out against the PC-anthro crowd and the Paper of [an awful] Record deigns to publish it--on Sunday no less!"

Multiregionalists rule. Wolpoff is my guy.

[blam]

Does Race Exist?

Dr C. Loring Brace

[Pharmboy]

Thanks for the link...I knew we would agree on this.

[blam]

...And one of your previous posts. Bet you forgot this one, huh?

Australia DNA Challenges Human Origins Theory

[Pharmboy]

You are good! I guess I have lost too many neurons over the years to remember, but that blast from the past was a good 'un.