Posted on 07/15/2018 3:22:44 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Consider the ancient human fossils from a Moroccan cave called Jebel Irhoud, which were described just last year. These 315,000-year-old bones are the oldest known fossils of Homo sapiens. They not only pushed back the proposed dawn of our species, but they added northwest Africa to the list of possible origin sites. They also had an odd combination of features, combining the flat faces of modern humans with the elongated skulls of ancient species like Homo erectus. From the front, they could have passed for us; from the side, they would have stood out.
Fossils from all over Africa have modern and ancient traits in varied combinations, including the 260,000-year-old Florisbad skull from South Africa; the 195,000-year-old remains from Omo Kibish in Ethiopia; and the 160,000-year-old Herto skull, also from Ethiopia. Some scientists have argued that these remains represent different subspecies of Homo sapiens, or different species altogether.
But perhaps they really were all Homo sapiens, and our species simply used to be far more diverse than we currently are. "If you look at skulls, you'll see different features of modern humans arising in different locations at different times," says Eleanor Scerri, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford. And the reason for that, she says, is that "we're a species with multiple African origins."
She and others argue that humans originated from several diverse populations that lived across Africa. Separated from each other by geographical barriers, they mostly evolved in isolation, and each group developed some of our hallmark traits, but not others. But their separation wasn't constant... This theory, known as "African multiregionalism," is a fundamentally different view...
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
“Them”? They don’t. You do.
Round round get around we get around.
Oldest Tools Outside Africa Found, Rewriting Human Story
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3670229/posts
On Crete, New Evidence of Very Ancient Mariners [2010]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2453256/posts
Funny and true.
I believe that man’s orgin was in Minnesoda.
By a lake near pine trees and birch trees.
I was standing before the large skeleton of triceratops a when an old guy (older than me) came up beside me. The animal was very large, rino size, and had horns and spines and armor. The guy said I just can imagine the guy that hunted that animal with a spear.
I couldn't believe what I just heard
BTW, for the record, the museum also exhibits the largest museum collection of the Burgess Shale fossils. They are the opposite end of the size scale.
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