The Australopithecine and Early Hominin Thread

Adam Khor · 20-12-2012 9:29pm

Wibbs wrote: »

Funny enough we have very thick enamel considering our jaw size and bigger tooth roots. Thicker than chimps for example. Usually found in animals with high bite strengths. IIRC I read a study which found we've apparently the most efficient bite of any great ape hence we need the robust teeth.

Wait... that doesn´t mean we have a stronger bite than the other apes, right? Cuz I find that hard to believe... may be wrong tho.

Wibbs · 21-12-2012 1:04am

Nah AK, more efficient, so that we can apply more force with far less muscle power involved.

Poor Uncle Tom · 21-12-2012 11:55pm

Wibbs wrote: »

Judging by the shapes of their torsos which are big bellied compared to our more V shape and they had enough of a gut to break down plant material alright. Teeth wise they tended to be bigger and flatter for crushing plant material.

When we get to Erectus the picture changes. Their teeth have been tested and have been found to be much better at processing meat. Their bodies became the modern template too. Commanding fire and making tools externalised a lot of the digestive tract too. Chew a raw potato and you've your work cut out, cook it and it's lovely and soft. Ditto for meat in general. Slicing tasks were taken over by tool use.

Our bodies seem to reflect these changes. Our guts got shorter and our teeth generally get smaller the more recent the human. Even in modern humans our teeth have reduced in size even over the last 20,000 years. Modern native Aussies would have about the biggest teeth overall, followed by Europeans. Funny enough we have very thick enamel considering our jaw size and bigger tooth roots. Thicker than chimps for example. Usually found in animals with high bite strengths. IIRC I read a study which found we've apparently the most efficient bite of any great ape hence we need the robust teeth.

I always thought that we (humans) did eat grass and plants at our early stages, while evolving we developed a more diverse diet leading to the changes described.

The real question, is not whether we used to eat grass or not, but rather is the inside of our bodies evolving at the same rate as the outside is?

It was thought that our appendix played a role in the breakdown and/or absorbtion of chlorophyll into our systems. Basically chlorophyll cleaned the blood and kept the blood high in alkaline. This maintained our hemoglobin and prevented damage to our DNA.

As humans we also have melanin which is said to be a cousin to chlorophyll. Melanin is a skin pigment in humans as is chlorophyll as pigment in plants.

We gain energy externally from the sun as do plants. In order for us to get the sun's energy within us, we did and should ingest plants (chlorophyll).

I wonder what the skin colour of our early ancestors was, given that they ate a lot of grass?

Poor Uncle Tom · 22-12-2012 12:01am

Wibbs wrote: »

Nah AK, more efficient, so that we can apply more force with far less muscle power involved.

Hardly more force, given that the muscles around the mandible cause the force rather than the teeth. I'd say the difference is that humans have a more diverse range of teeth rather like a swiss army knife can be likened to a pen knife for campers. Just a thought......:)

Sam Kade · 22-12-2012 12:03am

Rubecula wrote: »

We eat bread which is made from grass (wheat)

Bread is made from seed of wheat not the leaves

Wibbs · 22-12-2012 6:19pm

Poor Uncle Tom wrote: »

We gain energy externally from the sun as do plants. In order for us to get the sun's energy within us, we did and should ingest plants (chlorophyll)

Eh wut? No we don't. We get vitamin D from sun exposure alright, but we don't get energy/sugars from light. Humans do not photosynthesise. Plus chlorophyll is useless to the human body as we don't metabolise it. Chlorophyll of course is quite the common compound your alternative types mention but it's bogus and provably and logically so.

Poor Uncle Tom wrote: »

Hardly more force, given that the muscles around the mandible cause the force rather than the teeth. I'd say the difference is that humans have a more diverse range of teeth rather like a swiss army knife can be likened to a pen knife for campers. Just a thought......:)

Here we go http://news.discovery.com/human/human-bite.html Like I said more efficient.

Poor Uncle Tom · 22-12-2012 8:45pm

Well, you live and learn. The day we don't learn something is a day wasted...:pac:

Capt'n Midnight · 22-12-2012 10:09pm

gelada baboons can handle grass

Adam Khor · 04-01-2013 12:18am

Did Homo erectus wear clothes?

http://news.yahoo.com/peking-man-fashion-plate-191530302.html

Wibbs · 04-01-2013 4:37pm

Well processed and wore hides anyway. Clothes is a step more. It seem, so far anyway, that we were the first to have needles to more carefully tailor clothes to fit.

Adam Khor · 05-01-2013 12:45am

Wibbs wrote: »

Well processed and wore hides anyway. Clothes is a step more. It seem, so far anyway, that we were the first to have needles to more carefully tailor clothes to fit.

They said the same about Neanderthals, didn´t they? I remember in one of our early discussions someone mentioned that they didn´t seem to wear clothes either but hell, you never know anymore with these guys...

You know what would be cool? If we could have a post dedicated to hominins in which we wrote what is actually known about each species (Neanderthalensis, erectus, etc) and we could update it as more stuff is found. Much of what you've told us about them doesn´t show in Wikipedia... :P

Kess73 · 06-01-2013 2:56pm

A thread that was full of Wibbs posting his thoughts/knowledge with regards to hominins?

That actually sounds like a fantastic idea as I love reading his posts on that topic. I have gone and read up on so many things (that I most likely would not have) because of his posts on here.

Capt'n Midnight · 06-01-2013 6:50pm

you wouldn't need needles - remember Bear Grylls in the seal suit ?

Or you could make a nice hoodie out of a cave bear

Wibbs · 06-01-2013 10:53pm

Or maybe they/some archaic hominids could take more extremes of weather than we give credit for? For a start they may have been hairier, or at least selected for hairier at times through their history? They may have had a slightly thicker layer of adipose tissue on top of their muscles?

Or like I say maybe they could get used to lower temps without fitted clothes. I have an old book somewhere in my gaff, written in the 1890's IIRC where the author describes natives of Tierra del Fuego who he observed as having little more than cloaks of rough furs on otherwise naked bodies. Here you'll see examples. Warning NSFW with some native boobies on show(PM's Galvasean the link..:D). The young ladies are standing stripped to the waist in a snowscape. IIRC Darwin notes this too. Now Tierra del Fuego has got to be in the running for "Worst area descriptive name ever". Up there with Greenland. Land of fire my arse. "Tierra de monos de bronce/Land of brass monkeys" more like. Yet these folks lived there quite happily. Their living arrangements weren't much cosier, mostly relying on glorified windbreaks.

Recently enough there were tools of the Mousterian type found in eastern Europe at a latitude far more northerly and more recent than expected. That tool set is indicative(though not exclusively though usually in Europe AFAIK) to Neandertals, who weren't expected that far north, so maybe a little of the Tierra del Fuego folks going on? Plus whatever about Erectus, Neandertals were more cold adapted. Thickset very heavily muscled bodies which develop a lot of heat, so more able to take lower temps with not much more than ponchos. In summer I'd say they were likely wandering around in the nip like German nudists because of excess heat.

Plus as the good Captain points out there is more than one way to skin a cat, or elk or bear or whatever to be better fitting. On top of that we come to tailoring itself. OK so far no needles for definite Neandertal sites, however they do find lots of scrapers for processing hides and even their non symmetric arm bone development didn't come from stabbing spears into large hairy things, but from said scraping. They also seemed to use their teeth as a third hand in such processing, so they were rattling out raw materials a fair bit. That tells me anyway, that they were going through this raw material pretty quickly. Wear and tear? OK, but a wrap or a poncho doesn't wear and tear nearly so quickly as something more fitted so maybe..? Though maybe they were using the hides like tents/teepees where they'd need lots of it? Maybe they discarded the hides soon after use? Doesn't compute. They lived in Europe for half a million years, so they weren't exactly crosseyed gobshítes.

Now they also find burins, sharp pointed stone tools with lots of point wear. Sure they might and had been drilling wood or bone, but equally they might have been drilling holes in leather. Add in sinew to those holes and OK you're not getting Chanel tailoring, but you're doing OK. I reckon there's an element of "we use needles to cut holes and to thread...well thread

, so that's how others would do it and if they didn't they didn't have tailoring". I haven't seen Erectus burins as far as I can recall(then again

) so ponchos and wraps might have been all they had. Even so that extra layer might give you a few degrees more of cold tolerance. I know if I was stuck in the wicklow mountains in November given a choice between in the nip and in the nip with a bearskin, I'll take the latter please Carol. So long as I personally don't have to get the skin from the actual bear, who I'm quite sure would be pissed off at the suggestion.

Odd late night aside; I hate that we will never know what they called themselves. Erectus, Neandertal, Denisovans etc is so removed from them and who they were, or might have been. A necessary, but dry description on a label. Did they think of and describe themselves by family or group name or area or did they have the concept of "Us" as a distinctive people? Especially if and when they encountered other humans like us? Maybe that came later? After all early Us, looked fairly close to Them at the time, so maybe such distinctions weren't that obvious? We got jiggy enough with each other for it to survive down to today, so maybe not, or maybe all of us got off on the exotic as we do today? I mean how many threads in AH and elsewhere across the world wide webbage do we see "foreign men/women are sexier"? www.PaleolithicBoards.ie might well have had similar threads. "Sapiens boys are sooooo scrawny. Give me a Neandertal boy any day. hubba hubba".

Capt'n Midnight · 06-01-2013 11:04pm

Wibbs wrote: »

I have an old book somewhere in my gaff, written in the 1890's IIRC where the author describes natives of Tierra del Fuego

IIRC Some French researchers tried sleeping like they did, but kept waking. Looks like those natives could take wider changes in body core temperatures than we could.

Either they adapted very quickly or was there a tiny off chance they were still adapted from crossing the Bearing Strait ?

Adam Khor · 07-01-2013 2:35am

Wibbs wrote: »

Now Tierra del Fuego has got to be in the running for "Worst area descriptive name ever". Up there with Greenland. Land of fire my arse. "Tierra de monos de bronce/Land of brass monkeys" more like. Yet these folks lived there quite happily.

I read just days ago that they called it Tierra del Fuego because of the fires used by the natives to warm themselves which were seen as lights from ships... but I don´t know how true that is. I always found it rather odd a name for such a place, just like Greenland, too :>

Yitzhak Rabin · 07-01-2013 5:08am

Adam Khor wrote: »

I read just days ago that they called it Tierra del Fuego because of the fires used by the natives to warm themselves which were seen as lights from ships... but I don´t know how true that is. I always found it rather odd a name for such a place, just like Greenland, too :>

Yep, actually it was originally called the land of smoke, but changed it later to fire.

I was in the Argie part only last month. It was the middle of summer and it was still miserable! I like Wibb's name

Wibbs · 07-01-2013 10:55am

Adam Khor wrote: »

I always found it rather odd a name for such a place, just like Greenland, too :>

Well Greenland used to be green, or at least greener, though I suspect the name was more like advertising for settlers...

steddyeddy · 08-01-2013 9:17pm

Adam Khor wrote: »

I read just days ago that they called it Tierra del Fuego because of the fires used by the natives to warm themselves which were seen as lights from ships... but I don´t know how true that is. I always found it rather odd a name for such a place, just like Greenland, too :>

Green was the first thing european explorers saw when they pulled up to greenland so it got the name greenland!

Adam Khor · 18-01-2013 1:19am

The part that caught my eye the most: "Probably the pygmy-like people exterminated the larger bodied people and then migrated to other pastures including Africa".

Regardless of whether its true, the idea of prehistoric pygmies exterminating big people is kinda cool.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/Kolkata/African-pygmies-may-have-roots-in-Narmada-valley-says-new-study/Article1-980375.aspx

Beware of evil hobbits now...

Yitzhak Rabin · 19-01-2013 9:36pm

Isn't it more likely that the Indian Hamada valley pygmys ( and their proposed close relative the andaman islanders) originated in Africa rather than the other way around?

Ziphius · 19-01-2013 11:33pm

Yitzhak Rabin wrote: »

Isn't it more likely that the Indian Hamada valley pygmys ( and their proposed close relative the andaman islanders) originated in Africa rather than the other way around?

Yes, that sounds more likely. Alternatively they could just be another population which adapted to their environment in the same way -- a case of convergent evolution.

Adam Khor · 20-01-2013 1:02am

Yeah, that's what I thought too. Guess for the Indian readers it is more satisfying to read that the origin of something was in India and not in Africa for a change

Adam Khor · 21-03-2013 10:32pm

Turkana Boy found to be non pathological. I didn´t even know he was supossed to be pathological. Shows how much I know...

http://news.yahoo.com/best-preserved-human-ancestor-didnt-bone-disorder-152318177.html

Wibbs · 22-03-2013 12:09am

Great points by yer man. My take would be that the spine is the important bit. It was constricted in a seemingly pathological way. It was about the first thing noted of the lad when first found. Still angles like this are brilliant to read, especially from such learned quarters. He's got a great face though. I always thought he had a great nobility to his features.

steddyeddy · 21-08-2013 8:10pm

New research seems to indicate that the "hobbit" is a new species and not a group of humans with laron's disease, cretinisim or microcephaly. It may have been likely when the first specimen was discovered but the discovery of subsequent specimens made this highly unlikely IMHO.

Heres the article below and I bolded my favouraite bit. The bit which leaves some room in the debate as to whether the hobbit is a descendant of an australopithicus or homo habilis with more wander lust than we give them credit for or a dwarf like descendant of homo erectus. Myself I choose the small bodied ancestor over the erectus thoery but I would be happy to hear everyones opinions on this. Myself and Wibbs had a great debate about this previously!

A joint Australian-Indonesian team of archaeologists unearthed partial
skeletons of nine small-bodied hominins on the Indonesian island of Flores in
2003. Among the specimens found were an 18,000-year-old almost complete skull
(labeled LB1) and a partial skeleton, consisting of leg bones, parts of the
pelvis, hands and feet, and some other fragments. The fossils have been
attributed to a new human species, Homo floresiensis.

LB1 was an adult of about 30, probably female. She was only about 3.3 feet (1
m) in height with a very small brain size of 417 cc.

Since the discovery, researchers have clashed over whether LB1 really does
represent a species of its own, a descendant of Homo erectus or a
pathological form of Homo sapiens.

“The origin of hominins found on the remote Indonesian island of Flores
remains highly contentious,” Dr Harvati and her colleagues wrote in a paper reporting the findings in the
open-access journal PLoS ONE.

“These specimens may represent a new hominin species, Homo
floresiensis, descended from a local population of Homo erectus or
from an earlier migration of a small-bodied and small-brained hominin out of
Africa. Alternatively, some workers suggest that some or all of the specimens
recovered from Liang Bua are pathological members of a small-bodied modern human
population. Pathological conditions proposed to explain their documented
anatomical features include microcephaly, cretinism and Laron syndrome.”

Dr Harvati’s team compared the LB1 skull to skulls of healthy modern humans,
humans with microcephaly and other pathological conditions, archaic
Homo using methods of 3D geometric morphometrics. The methods use 3D
coordinates of cranial surface anatomical landmarks, computer imaging and
multivariate statistical analysis to achieve a detailed analysis of shape.

“This is the most comprehensive study to date to simultaneously evaluate the
two competing hypotheses about the status of Homo floresiensis.”

The scientists found that the LB1 skull shows greater affinities to the
fossil Homo sample than to pathological modern humans. Although some
superficial similarities were found between LB1 and skulls of modern humans with
pathologies, additional features linked LB1 exclusively with fossil
Homo.

Analyses of data show that LB1 is “clearly distinct from healthy modern
humans and from those exhibiting hypothyroidism and Laron syndrome. Modern human
microcephalic specimens converge, to some extent, on crania of extinct species
of Homo. However in the features that distinguish these two groups, LB1
consistently groups with fossil hominins and is most similar to H.
erectus,” the authors wrote.

“Our study provides further support for recognizing the Flores hominins as a
distinct species, H. floresiensis, whose affinities lie with archaic
Homo.”

Dr Harvati and colleagues said: “our findings provide the most comprehensive
evidence to date linking the Homo floresiensis skull with extinct
fossil human species rather than with pathological modern humans. Our study
therefore refutes the hypothesis that this specimen represents a modern human
with a pathological condition, such as microcephaly.”

Also judging from the position of Flores is it unlikely that the small bodies hominid didnt occupy various other nearby islands such as Sumatra?

Adam Khor · 21-08-2013 9:15pm

I never really bought the idea of it being a "diseased" human. I remember that when it was first found, there were also stone tools perfectly proportioned to the little guys (correct me if I'm wrong, plz).

steddyeddy wrote: »

Also judging from the position of Flores is it unlikely that the small bodies hominid didnt occupy various other nearby islands such as Sumatra?

I remember reading that during part of the Pleistocene, Sumatra, Java and other nearby islands were all part of a larger continent called Sundaland, which would later become almost completely submerged. And apparently animals in Sundalands were huge (tigers, pangolins, elephants and tapirs, amongst others).
I also think that Meganthropus would've been part of this fauna, although some say Meganthropus isn´t even valid now.

What I don´t know is when exactly did Sundaland dissappear, or if Flores was a part of it originally.

Maybe Wibbs can clear this up for us?

Wibbs · 21-08-2013 9:51pm

Adam Khor wrote: »

I never really bought the idea of it being a "diseased" human. I remember that when it was first found, there were also stone tools perfectly proportioned to the little guys (correct me if I'm wrong, plz).

IIRC the tools were "normal" enough in size. Even if they weren't lithic size isn't that great an indicator of the makers size. EG some Neandertal lithics can sometimes be very delicate and small and those lads were feckin bruisers.

Actually the tools interest me. Their relative "modernity" in design is odd. NOt modern human level, but way beyond what would be expected of people of that great age. Indeed if it can be proven that the Hobbits made those tools(and the jury is still out) then for me that's as big a gamechanger as the little guys themselves. Dates seem to suggest they did, but it can be hard to pin down a maker unless you're sure there are no other potential makers in the area at the time.

The idea that they're a possible even earlier migration out of africa is intriguing. My issue with that would be that the candidates we have for earlier African folks don't have a couple of the killer apps that allowed Erectus to go walkabout. Namely fire, bifacial(and other) stone toolset and a more meat based diet. Australopithecus was far more a herbivore and that restricts migrations into new territories. "Meat" is nearly everywhere you go on the planet, but vegetation varies a lot and much of it deadly.

Now it's possible that another undiscovered new Homiind from that early time mae those leaps, enough to migrate and what we're seeing is the end point of those folks. That would be fantastic. Hopefully that's the case.

MY take? The primitive wrist features et al are more a result of later features looking more ancient because of dwarfism adaptation that mimics the earlier hominids, rather than the the earlier folks themselves, if you know what I mean?

AFAIK AK and from what I've read Flores has been an island for longer than humans were around in any form, so they would have had to make a sea voyage. Which raises even bigger questions. We're missing a fair bit of the jigsaw I reckon.

Adam Khor · 22-08-2013 2:40am

Aliens, no doubt

steddyeddy · 26-08-2013 3:26pm

Adam Khor wrote: »

I never really bought the idea of it being a "diseased" human. I remember that when it was first found, there were also stone tools perfectly proportioned to the little guys (correct me if I'm wrong, plz).

I remember reading that during part of the Pleistocene, Sumatra, Java and other nearby islands were all part of a larger continent called Sundaland, which would later become almost completely submerged. And apparently animals in Sundalands were huge (tigers, pangolins, elephants and tapirs, amongst others).
I also think that Meganthropus would've been part of this fauna, although some say Meganthropus isn´t even valid now.

What I don´t know is when exactly did Sundaland dissappear, or if Flores was a part of it originally.

Maybe Wibbs can clear this up for us?

Actually the newest controversy seems to be "Ok Flores man is a separate species but the tools are far too advanced to be made by them".

Adam Khor · 26-08-2013 9:15pm

steddyeddy wrote: »

Actually the newest controversy seems to be "Ok Flores man is a separatespecies but the tools are far too advanced to be made by them".

Even tho I guess thats a possibility, how do we know what is "too advanced" for floresiensis? Years ago we would've thought that many of the tools made by chimpanzees were too advanced for them, yet there you have them using hammers to crack nut shells, and stabbing bushbabies with spears...

steddyeddy · 26-08-2013 9:19pm

Adam Khor wrote: »

Even tho I guess thats a possibility, how do we know what is "too advanced" for floresiensis? Years ago we would've thought that many of the tools made by chimpanzees were too advanced for them, yet there you have them using hammers to crack nut shells, and stabbing bushbabies with spears...

They said that the tools found at the Flores site surpassed their brain capacity by a large degree.

Wibbs · 26-08-2013 10:15pm

steddyeddy wrote: »

They said that the tools found at the Flores site surpassed their brain capacity by a large degree.

Very much so SE. Never mind the brain capacity, they appear to come from a much later lithic culture. It would be a shock to find them in situ with Eerctus who had a much larger brain capacity. If it is proven to be made by them that would be a real seachange in current thinking and we'd have to revisit the brain size rubicon. Maybe it is all about brain organisation rather than brain size? Still major rethink ahoy. IIRC some researchers reckoned the hobbits were diseased moderns because of this lithic incongruity.

steddyeddy · 26-08-2013 10:49pm

Wibbs wrote: »

Very much so SE. Never mind the brain capacity, they appear to come from a much later lithic culture. It would be a shock to find them in situ with Eerctus who had a much larger brain capacity. If it is proven to be made by them that would be a real seachange in current thinking and we'd have to revisit the brain size rubicon. Maybe it is all about brain organisation rather than brain size? Still major rethink ahoy. IIRC some researchers reckoned the hobbits were diseased moderns because of this lithic incongruity.

I haven't a notion as to the tool's creators in fairness Wibbs but I would say you are on to something with the brain organization thing. Using brain casing casts scientists seen that an area called Broca's area was over developed for a creature of that size. Broca's area is associated with communication and langauge. All the same we are also discovering that the brain is more "plastic" than it seems and even losses of brain tissue can result in a reformation of neural networks so brain size doesn't always equal capacity!

Adam Khor · 27-08-2013 7:19pm

That's what I was going to say about brain size, but I thought I'd better shut up before I made it obvious how little I know on the subject

And, wasn´t there a recent study precisely on the floresiensis brain, which said it was bigger than previously thought anyways?

steddyeddy · 27-08-2013 7:26pm

Adam Khor wrote: »

That's what I was going to say about brain size, but I thought I'd better shut up before I made it obvious how little I know on the subject
And, wasn´t there a recent study precisely on the floresiensis brain, which said it was bigger than previously thought anyways?

I think that's the same study Adam! Certain areas are proportionally bigger than our own which showed an increase in complexity without an increase in size.

Wibbs · 27-08-2013 8:29pm

Been looking at more and better pics of their stone tools and TBH I have to really backtrack and rescind my previous take on them. I have to say to my eye at least they don't look anything like modern human lithics (or Neandertal et al), so the idea that they're proof of diseased modern humans is well bogus for me. They're clearly not modern human stuff, even if you dumbed our stuff right down, they're much more like early Erectus stuff, minus the more complex bifaces. That fits the dates. They would be extremely anachronistic in a confirmed modern human site. Like finding a Greek water clock in a watchmakers window. It even fits a possible earlier non erectus migration out of Africa yet to be discovered as they're not far off older African lithic production(though like I reckoned above I've some issues with that for other reasons).

On the brain size front, there's also the matter of their brain to body size ratio. They were tiny little feckers, barely 3 feet tall. Scale em up to the average erectus height and the brain/body ratio wouldn't be that much out, or at least not so shockingly small as just taking the skull in isolation would be..

steddyeddy · 28-08-2013 7:27pm

Just to update on the brain issue. Flores man was also found to have an area of the brain called Brodmanns area 10 which is the same size as the area found in modern humans despite their small brain size. This area is asociated with higher cognition and could explain how Flores man is asociated with more complex behaviours.

Adam Khor · 17-10-2013 10:01pm

I'd like to know what Wibbs thinks of this :B

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/science/fossil-skull-may-rewrite-humans-evolutionary-story.html?_r=0

Wibbs · 17-10-2013 11:29pm

Oh I'm sooo gonna search for a thread in here from way back and then go "I informed you thusly".

:D

I've long held this opinion that too many "species" of human have actually been down to individual variation in a population and called species for the simple reason of the dearth of enough specimens to make the call about a population to take averages from. Look at modern humans FFS. My closest mate is a good 6 inches(in old money) shorter than me, with more muscle bulk, rounder face, less of a lantern jaw and less forehead. Given I have an extra vertebra too, if we were dug up in a thousand years hence they might be asking WTF, clearly different species. Add in me or my mate with a lad from Liberia or a lad from Australia, or the Congo and the diversity would look like shítoads of different humans around at the time. Yet we know we'd all be so close genetically that we'd be in danger of inbreeding(I'll give the banjo a go, give the Congo lad the guitar and see where we go from there...).

The Georgian fossils have shown this to be BS for quite a while. At first the disparity between the fossils they found was worried at and then considered sexual dimorphism as one explanation. The obvious idea that humans vary and vary a lot - and this is obvious today - seemed to be ignored by many outside the dig team(the local guys and gals to their credit were gung ho for the natural variability thang). One reason is likely down to researchers hoping to find their "missing link", the skull that will make them famous and that they can name. That approach has muddied things considerably IMHO.

Adam Khor · 18-10-2013 12:27am

So, the hominin with the big canines that was in Nat Geo magazine years ago... not a species of its own?

Wibbs · 18-10-2013 9:11am

Hard to say AK. An individual could be a good representation of their species, or could be an outlier. Are the finds from a male or female or juvenile? If sexual dimorphism was in play at any stage a female skull could look like a different more gracile species. It's a hard one.

Take Neandertals, of whom we've got a fair amount of finds. You often see the French La Ferrassie 1 bloke held as a standard for reconstruction, yet he seems to have had a very long face(the Sarah Jessica Parker of the ancient world) by comparison to others. Did all Neandertals have a long face? No. Or take one of the Shanidar guys from Iraq. IIRC one guy was tall, 5' 10" kinda height. If he was the only specimen we had we might assume they were all fairly tall.

The Georgian sites(and the atapuerca site in Spain) where he have many individuals to compare are the only places we can be sure of what an average may have been, at one particular time and place anyway. As Georgia has shown they weren't so average, at least at that point.

JuliusCaesar · 28-12-2013 4:51pm

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/38718/title/The-Mating-Habits-of-Early-Hominins/

A high-quality genome sequence obtained from a female Neanderthal toe bone reveals that the individual’s parents were close relatives and that such inbreeding was prevalent among her recent ancestors, according to a paper published today (December 18) in Nature. But the sequence also reveals that interbreeding occurred between Neanderthals and other hominin groups, including early modern humans.

“Did humans evolve like a constantly branching tree? A lot of people think so,” said Milford Wolpoff, a professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, who was not involved in the study. “But there’s also been this thread of thought, by some people like me, that humans evolved more like a network, where there are different populations and they split and sometimes they come back together and they mate.” The new toe bone sequence data, he said, is “really important because it’s giving us good evidence that there’s been constant interbreeding between different human groups all through prehistory.”

Wibbs · 29-12-2013 7:11pm

The network idea appeals to me too. Makes more sense. You see it in populations even today. Cultures/populations mostly date and mate inwards, but some date and mate outwards. Even in very multicultural societies you tend to see this. Go back to a time of much lower populations densities and this would make even more sense. You get some inbreeding yes, but then you also have outlier genes coming in and going out from time to time.

The old idea still held on to dearly by some that we're all Africans, some left and we just outcompeted other humans always looked dodgy to me. We weren't migrating into virgin territory(except for the Americas/Australia), there were people already living there. In Africa too. I'm sure there were incidents of violence and xenophobia and you can see this among hunter gatherers today, but people being people you also see quite a bit of horizontal mambo goin on too. Exchanges of mates can often be a peace treaty vibe too. Chief's son marries other chiefs daughter kinda thing. Even Neandertals who seem to have been very xenophobic(in Europe anyway) got it on with moderns and vice versa.

Plus go back in time a bit and we don't look that very different from each other. Early modern humans are slightly taller on average, less bulky, but still more bulky than we are today. They had often had stonking brow ridges, eyes wider apart than us and not that much of a chin.

Let's take the Pepsi challenge

Spot the African early modern dude versus the European Neandertal?

Neandertal is the first guy, Early modern the second. Now unless you're really looking for certain features there's not that much between them. In life the biggest obvious diff would have been skin colour. The Neandertals were pale(though no doubt pretty tanned) and the Early modern were a dark people.

Interestingly when you google for Neandertal skull, this guy comes up a lot;

And IMHO it's the same Early Modern Skhul V I posted above. Compare and contrast I reckon they're one and the same. That's how easy it is too mix them up.

Adam Khor · 30-12-2013 2:41am

Funny that you should post this, as just yesterday I was looking at this (rather creepy) video of a supossed Yeren-human hybrid from China (Yeren being the name for the local Bigfoot/wildman variant). The mother claims to have been raped by the Yeren, but refused to allow her son to be studied further. (He's dead now, apparently).
Of course many say this was just someone afflicted with microcephaly or something, but there IS something eerily ape-like about him. Reminds me a lot of many Homo erectus reconstructions.

Not trying to defend the hybrid idea- just thought it was interesting and worth seeing if you hadn´t already:

Wibbs · 30-12-2013 11:49am

Man that's freaky..

Adam Khor · 10-04-2015 6:48pm

This is the hominin usually known as "Little Foot"

http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-evolution-human-origins/scientists-estimate-fossilized-pre-human-creature-020282

The-skull-of-Little-Foot.jpg?itok=L3Yh2kER

The-skull-of-Little-Foot.jpg?itok=L3Yh2kER

Adam Khor · 11-01-2016 6:53am

According to this study, the dentition of Homo floresiensis does not support the idea that it evolved from an archaic, Australopithecus-like ancestor but rather from Homo erectus as has been suggested before.

journal.pone.0141614.g009

Wibbs · 11-01-2016 11:14am

So it seems the primitive looking features were a result of dwarfism.

Adam Khor · 13-01-2016 2:06am

The Flores natives said that the Ebu Gogo were hairy all over, tho... even if it wasn´t that primitive, it probably looked the part

The Australopithecine and Early Hominin Thread

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