Flat-faced hominid skulls from China

The "African Eve" theory of human evolution was given much play in the media a few years back. According to the "African" view, modern humans arose exclusively in Africa and, about 100,000 years ago, expanded rapidly from there into Europe and Asia, displacing "lesser" hominids. Unfortunately, the DNA studies that stimulated this conjecture have been found to be flawed. And now new fossil testimony casts further doubt.

In 1989 and 1990, near the Han River, in China's Hube Province, anthropologists found hominid skulls with the characteristic flat faces of modern humans. These skulls seem to be about 350,000 years old. Although they apparently retain some primitive features, paleoanthropologist D. Erler, of the University of California, asserted, "This shows that modern features were emerging in different parts of the world." In other words, all of the evolutionary action was not confined to Africa. Proponents of the "African Eve" theory retort that the dating of the Chinese skulls is questionable and that flat faces alone are not enough to support the idea that modern humans arose separately in widely separated locales?

(Gibbons, Ann; "An About-Face for Modern Human Origins," Science, 256: 1521, 1992. Also: Bower, Bruce; "Erectus Unhinged," Science News, 141:408, 1992.)

Comment. Could the African and Asian fossils imply that so-called "parallel" or "convergent" evolution has occurred in the human lineage, too, just as it has in so many other forms of life?

Language researchers have been going through all kinds of transformations ever since it was discovered that the Sa'ami were not simply adventuresome proto-Finns and proto-Latvians venturing into the Fenno-Scandian peninsula some 3,000 years ago.

In fact, the belief now, based on DNA is that the Sa'ami are primarily the descendants of the first Western Europeans to escape from the Franco-Spanish "refugia" at the end of the last period of glaciation as far back as 14,000 years ago.

As such they have to be looked at as a SOURCE of linguistic development in the region, and not as simply runaway Finns.

Of note, the latest discovery is that the Sa'ami went due North up the Norwegian Coast and then East around the residual icelobe in Sweden/Finland and then down toward what became the Baltic ~ and even settled the Carpathian Mountains.

Rather than the Sa'ami languages being part of a Fenno-Ughric group, most of the analysts digging into the problem are positing them as being part of a totally different group ~ one proposal is that they are a variation on Sumerian. Intriguingly Hungarian Sumerian language translators are now getting back into business and they've been arguing for 60 years that Hungarian has more than a Central Asian root language worked into its structure ~ and that older root is akin to Sumerian.

Sumerian specialists are also pointing to the Dravidian group found mostly in India these days as the primary source for Sumerian.

DNA studies will get more sophisticated, and if there's any trace of ancient Dravidian people working their way across India to the Middle East to the Carpathians to the Sapma, it'll show up sure as shootin'.

Like I noted about the Hungarian theory on Sumerian, this is hardly a new idea.

Now, a caveat, we live in modern times and the Sa'ami and Finnish languages share a great deal of vocabulary. At the same time both sets of languages share a great deal of vocabulary with German and English, and when it comes to Finnish, WITH LATIN due to a conscious effort starting in the 1880s to "upgrade the couth" (so to speak). People even Latinized their names ~ much to the distress of many American genealogists BTW. You'all gotta' go back to the old names so's we can figger this out!

German has a gramatical structure that's commonly found in the Sa'ami languages, BTW, and probably came from them when Sa'ami ventured South into the more primitive hunter/gatherer communities of 5,000 years ago.

Again, everything you ever read about Uralic/Altaic language groupings, or a Fenno-Ughric is under study and revisions are being made as we speak.

One group has already formed to RESIST this Sa'amification of history because they claim they'll simply use it as the basis of a major land claim and try to kick the Norse out!

‘At the same time both sets of languages share a great deal of vocabulary with German and English, and when it comes to Finnish, WITH LATIN due to a conscious effort starting in the 1880s to “upgrade the couth” (so to speak). People even Latinized their names ~’

I remember reading many years ago that there was a Finnish radio station that broadcast at least part time in Latin. Your info helps explain that, thanks. I wonder if they broadcast in Medieval (Church) Latin, like Vatican radio, or in Classical Latin, which I guess is more likely, the Finns not being very Catholic these days.

Almost forgot, there are different Sa'ami nations each with its own language. At the moment 10 are still spoken ~ last month one of them went extinct with the death of the last speaker.

Finland has representation from 3 Sa'ami languages, one of which is called Northern Sa'ami, common in the area where your father's folks were from, and another called Inari Sa'ami, common around Lake Inari, and Skolt Sa'ami, common in the East as well as the Kola Peninsula.

The Skolt speakers are the traditional hard-core reindeer woods runners of Scandinavia. Since there are only 500 of them remaining who still do that kind of work and speak the old tongue Finnish and Swedish National Health Service researchers have decided to use them as a health study group.

What they do is examine every aspect of their lives, measure everything they eat, drink, wear, and do, and then compare and contrast the results with a non-Sa'ami group. Frequently that'll be the Pomars, a Norse/Latvian origin people from Russia who took up the Skolt lifestyle of chasing reindeer several centuries ago.

When you read about the Skolt in the old days the writers frequently confound them with the Pomars ~ and say the craziest things. Well, anyway, they compare them and then write extensive medical and scientific reports on their findings.

I have relatively close relatives with every single difference or medical problem the Skolt appear to have. At the same time we have NONE of the problems typical of the Pomars.

It's for that reason I read every medical report regarding the Skolt that I can get my hands on.

Still, for all that the Finns and Swedes have missed some stuff that the Russians have picked up on. The Skolt are far more numerous in Russia with about 5,000 people still speaking the language. Due to Chernobyl they no longer run reindeer. Instead, they've taken over abandoned military buildings and lands in the Kola and run sheep.

All Skolt agree that mutton smells truly foul. I concur.

It's so bad it can't be eaten.

My impression is they can pick up on spots of brown or red at 20+ miles distance across a white ice or snow background.

If you can do that and think that mutton is really rank you probably ought to pay attention to the medical reports about the Skolt.

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