Fossil find changes evolutionary beliefs (New human fossils found in Georgia, north of Africa)

Long Beach Press Telegram ^ | 11/17/2007 06:29:00 PM PST | Alex Rodriguez

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

ARCHAEOLOGY: New human fossils found in Georgia, north of Africa, have some rethinking migration of early man.

DMANISI, Georgia - The forested bluff that overlooks this sleepy Georgian hamlet seems an unlikely portal into the mysteries surrounding the dawn of man.

Think human evolution, and one conjures up the wind-swept savannas and badlands of east Africa's Great Rift Valley. Georgians may claim their ancestors made Georgia the cradle of wine 8,000 years ago, but the cradle of mankind lies 3,300 miles away, at Tanzania's famed Olduvai Gorge.

But it is here in the verdant uplands of southern Georgia that David Lordkipanidze, a paleoanthropologist, has been unearthing one of the largest and most significant troves of prehistoric human fossils ever found outside of the Great Rift Valley. In doing so, his work has begun to

change fundamental beliefs about human evolution, and about early man's migration out of Africa.

Lordkipanidze's latest findings, partial skeletons 1.77 million years old and described in Nature magazine this fall, paint a portrait of small-framed early humans with primitive brains but longer, more human-like legs, well-suited for long-distance walking.

Why they left Africa remains a mystery. But the Dmanisi fossils provide ample evidence that when mankind's ancestors did leave Africa, they first trekked through the Fertile Crescent and made their way to the lush highlands at the foot of the Caucasus Mountains.

"The Dmanisi fossils are no doubt the earliest hominid fossils in Europe," Lordkipanidze said. "They are

the first immigrants. They could be ancestors for any European or Asian population."

[redpoll]

This isn’t a new fossil find. The news of the Homo erectus fossils in Georgia has been circulating for many years. It’s interesting to find fossils like this in a place like Georgia, but if my readings are any indication, Georgia is drop-dead gorgeous place with a beautiful climate and awesome scenery, so it makes sense that our ancestors would move there and set up house. I would, too, if I didn’t have to worry about political instability in the region.

[Bringbackthedraft]

I’ll stick to the old beliefs. My ancestors arrived here from a planet outside our solar system in an ice ship. Too bad the damn ship melted so we can no longer prove it.

[Verginius Rufus]

Georgia is also the region known in antiquity as Colchis...so these early hominids may have been in search of the Golden Fleece.

[Sola Veritas]

“Why they left Africa remains a mystery.”

Maybe the rent was too high, or possibly HIV was a problem even then. Ya think? ;-\

[FastCoyote]

On a weekend canoeing trip down a river in the Georgia back country, four urban businessmen enter a nightmare in which both nature and mankind conspire to send them through a crucible of danger and degradation in which their lives and perhaps even their souls are put at horrendous risk.

Is this where they found the ancient bones?

[Islander7]

Anyone who thinks primitive humans are extinct never met my in-laws.

[Jaysun]

Amazing just what they can deduce from fossil fragments, isn’t it?

No kidding. I hate it when they say that man started here or there because that's where they found the oldest one. Have you look everywhere else, a**holes? How do you know it's the oldest?

Half the time their great early man finds turn out to be common apes or other animals anyway.

[JoeFromSidney]

but if my readings are any indication, Georgia is drop-dead gorgeous place with a beautiful climate and awesome scenery

It is a gorgeous place. Climate, at least near the Black Sea, is moderate. At Batumi, on the Black Sea, there is a botanic garden with plants from all over the world. When I was there in 1999, they had sections devoted to Japan, Australia, the Himalayas, as well as others. One of the highlights of my tour.

[Kevmo]

bmflr

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Now that is frightening!

[SunkenCiv]

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[Grimmy]

I don’t know about all this. Just look at the first sentence.

First: A forested bluff? Bluffs usually occur when aces don’t pair up or on a bad draw to an inside straight. There’s nothing about forests in the rules at all.

Then there’s the whole spiel about Hamlet being from Georgia. He was Danish iirc, that means he was probably from Minnesota. Or, maybe they meant Dutch and he was from Pennsylvania. Georgia? No way. Everyone knows that was mostly Gaels from Wales.