Author	Topic:   Human Origins
Homo Sapiens origins (Moderator)	posted 9/9/03 9:32 AM     Dawn of human race uncovered 16:07 11 June 03 NewScientist.com news service Three fossil skulls from Ethiopia have been revealed as the oldest human remains yet discovered. The 160,000-year-old finds plug an important gap in the fossil record around the time our species first appeared and provides strong new evidence that Homo sapiens originated only in Africa. Fragments of volcanic rock allowed precise dating of the skulls "These are landmark finds in unravelling our origins," says Chris Stringer, at the Natural History Museum in London, and a champion of the 'Out of Africa' hypothesis. He believes modern humans evolved in Africa before migrating across the globe, rather than evolving in parallel in different places. "The problem with the African record is that it has been really sketchy," says Tim White at the University of California, Berkeley, who led the team that made the discoveries. There are good human fossils from 100,000 years ago, he adds, but from then back to 300,000 years ago the remains are either highly fragmented, poorly dated or both. In contrast, the newly revealed skulls have precise dates thanks to the fragments of volcanic rocks found with the fossils. When rocks cool, they begin to accumulate argon gas from the decay of a potassium isotope. Analysing the gas gives the rock's age, in this case 154,000 to 160,000 years old. Neanderthal influence Homo sapiens appeared sometime between 100,000 and 300,000 years ago, and controversy has raged over whether there was a single African origin or whether other hominids such as Homo erectus and Neanderthals made a significant contribution to the evolution of modern humans by interbreeding. The latest fossils provide substantial support for the Out of Africa camp, but proponents of the alternative 'multi-regional' hypothesis do not believe the argument is over. "This could easily be one of the ancestors of modern Europeans, but I don't believe it is the only ancestor," says Milford Wolpoff at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The skulls look almost human, but retain some slight primitive features and so the team has given them their own subspecies - Homo sapiens idàltu. The skulls, from two men and a child, are also very large by human standards suggesting the adults cut an imposing figure. The recovery of the fossils began in 1997, near the Ethiopian village of Herto, when White stumbled across a fossilised hippopotamus skull. His team eventually recovered skull fragments from 10 humans, along with many stone tools and animal fossils. The child's skull was in over 200 pieces strewn over hundreds of metres and it took two years of painstaking work to reconstruct it. Related Stories Oldest hominid skull shakes human family tree 10 July 2002 Out of Africa migration may be a no-brainer 4 July 2002 Oldest jewellery disputes "out of Africa" theory 15 February 2002 Ancestor worship Some of the most intriguing aspects of the skulls are the modifications made after death. One of the adult skulls has parallel grooves around the perimeter cut with a stone tool. "There's no meat in the places they're finding the cut marks," points out Sally McBrearty, a stone tool expert at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, so they did not result from cannibalism. The child's skull is also marked and broken edges have been polished. This suggests to White that the skull was carried around after death and buffed up in the process - possibly as part of an ancestor worshipping ritual. This is the earliest evidence that bones were kept by descendants and points to an advanced level of cultural development. Journal reference: Nature (vol 423, p 737) James Randerson http://groups.yahoo.com/group/askmartian ask the martian anything
Earliest Modern Humans Found in Romanian Cave (Moderator)	posted 9/24/03 1:11 PM     Science - Reuters Earliest Modern Humans Found in Romanian Cave Mon Sep 22, 6:02 PM ET By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The jawbone of a cave-man living in what is now Romania is the oldest fossil from an early modern human to be found in Europe, U.S. researchers said on Monday. Primitive features such as heavy bone and tooth structure also support the controversial idea that Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals may have interbred, the researchers said. The jawbone, found in southwestern Carpathian Mountains of Romania, was carbon-dated to between 34,000 and 36,000 years ago, said Erik Trinkaus of Washington University in St. Louis, who led the study. That makes it "the oldest definite early modern human specimen in Europe and provides perspectives on the emergence and evolution of early modern humans in the northwestern Old World," Trinkaus and colleagues wrote in their report, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The jawbone was found in 2002 in Pestera cu Oase, which means "cave with bones." Details can be seen on the Internet at http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~anthro/blurb/b_trink.html. "The jawbone is the oldest directly dated modern human fossil," Trinkaus, a leading expert on early humans, said in a telephone interview. "Taken together, the material is the first that securely documents what modern humans looked like when they spread into Europe. Although we call them 'modern humans,' they were not fully modern in the sense that we think of living people," he added. "They are all dirty and smelly and all that sort of stuff. The basic facial shape would have been like ours but from the cheeks on down they would have looked very large." The jawbone is similar to those of other early modern humans found in Africa, the Middle East and later in Europe. But the molars are unusually big and proportioned in a way that makes them look different -- almost Neanderthal, said Trinkaus. Trinkaus is a leading proponent of the controversial theory that early modern humans and Neanderthals interbred to some extent. The two subspecies of Homo sapiens lived side-by-side in Europe for thousands of years and evidence suggests some trade or other contact. "The specimens suggest that there have been clear changes in human anatomy since then," said Trinkaus. "The bones are also fully compatible with the blending of modern human and Neanderthal populations," he said. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=585&ncid=585&e=5&u=/nm/20030922/sc_nm/science_humans_dc
Neanderthal hunters rivalled human skills (Moderator)	posted 9/25/03 11:48 AM     New Scientist | AFP Wednesday September 24, 03:00 PM Neanderthal hunters rivalled human skills By Will Knight Neanderthals were not driven from northern Europe by vastly superior human hunters, suggests an analysis of hunting remains. The study by Donald Grayson of the University of Washington and Francoise Delpech of the University of Bordeaux challenges a popular theory that the primitive peoples died out because they were far less skillful hunters. The pair examined the fossilised remains of butchered animals from a cave in southwest France. Neanderthals inhabited southern France from 65,000 years before the present until roughly 40,000 to 35,000 years ago. Neanderthals disappeared from the region about the time the earliest anatomically modern humans, known as Cro-Magnon appeared. Precisely why Neanderthals disappeared remains a puzzle. But the idea that early humans were much more intelligent, dexterous and socially sophisticated is being questioned by a growing body of archaeological evidence. Grayson and Delpech found no difference in the prey caught and butchered by Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon after studying more than 7200 bones and teeth from large hoofed animals. Nimble-fingered Both Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon feasted on a wide variety of ungulate species including reindeer, roe deer and horse. In both cases the proportion of different species consumed varied according to climatic changes. "This study suggests Cro-Magnon were not superior in getting food from the landscape," says Grayson. "We could detect no difference in diet, the animals they were hunting and the way they were hunting across this period of time, aside from those caused by climate change." Recent analysis of Neanderthal hand bones also shows that they were as nimble-fingered as early humans. Other archaeological evidence indicated that they may have been as intelligent and socially sophisticated as early humans. Handheld spears "Clearly they did pretty well for hundreds of thousands of years," says Chris Stringer, an archaeologist at the UK's Natural History Museum. "One has to assume they knew how to get meat when they needed it." But Stringer adds that modern humans may have had better hunting technology, including harpoons, composite tools and possibly even fishing nets compared to the Neanderthals’ handheld spears. Neanderthals also appear to have suffered more hunting injuries, he told New Scientist . These factors, combined with particularly difficult environmental conditions, may have given early humans a crucial edge. "Being able to exploit the environment a little bit more efficiently could in the long run have led to the end of the Neanderthals," Stringer says. Journal reference: Journal of Archeological Science : (doi:10.1016/S0305-4403(03)00064-5) http://uk.news.yahoo.com/030924/12/e9ayu.html
Big chill killed off the Neanderthals	posted 6/8/04 6:15 AM     Big chill killed off the Neanderthals 19:00 21 January 04 It is possibly the longest-running murder mystery of them all. What, or even who, killed humankind's nearest relatives, the Neanderthals who once roamed Europe before dying out almost 30,000 years ago? Suspects have ranged from the climate to humans themselves, and the mystery has deeply divided experts. Now 30 scientists have come together to publish the most definitive answer yet to this enigma. They say Neanderthals simply did not have the technological know-how to survive the increasingly harsh winters. And intriguingly, rather than being Neanderthal killers, the original human settlers of Europe almost suffered the same fate. The last ice age Led by Tjeerd van Andel of the University of Cambridge, a team of archaeologists, anthropologists, geologists and climate modellers have compiled a vast new set of biological, environmental and social evidence on life between 20,000 and 40,000 years ago. It includes data from sediment cores and 400 or so archaeological sites, and information gleaned from fossil bones and stone tools. To this they have added the most up-to-date climate models, and radiometric dates of human and Neanderthal sites and artefacts. Seasonal migration The result is a definitive series of maps covering climate change over time, the appearance of animal and plant populations, and how human and Neanderthal communities migrated with the seasons. The resolution is so good that, for the first time, researchers can reliably trace the movements of both hominid species. Ice cores recovered from Greenland in the 1970s show that Europe's climate varied hugely during the last ice age, especially in the period between 70,000 and 20,000 years ago. Cold glacial periods were punctuated by warmer times, and the average temperature could rise and fall several degrees within a decade or so. Studies of permafrost patterns, the remains of small animals and pollen grains, as well as fossil bones, show that such changes had a dramatic effect on the flora and fauna of the time, including Homo sapiens and Neanderthals. The maps show that, facing temperatures that plummeted to -10°C in winter (see map), Neanderthals retreated south from northern Europe 30,000 years ago, a migration which coincided exactly with the southern march of the ice sheets (Neanderthal and Modern Humans in the European Landscape of the Last Glaciation: Archaeological Results of the Stage 3 Project). It is surprising "the extent to which Neanderthals seem to have been deterred by the cold, and retreated as the going got tough," says archaeologist William Davies, a co-editor of the report based at University of Southampton, UK. Last refuge The maps also reveal that the earliest modern humans, the Aurignacian people, who appeared around 40,000 years ago, could not cope with the glacial cold either. They retreated south until 25,000 years ago when they were reduced to a few refuges, such as southwest France and the shores of the Black Sea. The new maps show that even at the height of the last glacial period, 18,000 to around 22,000 years ago, continental Europe supported extensive grasslands which were fodder for huge numbers of migrant animals such as reindeer and bison. The archaeological evidence strongly suggests that both hominids coexisted in southern Europe for thousands of years, but competed for ever diminishing resources. And that might have been the end for both Homo sapiens and Neanderthals but for the arrival of the technologically advanced Gravettians. The Gravettians appeared in eastern Europe 29,000 to 30,000 years ago complete with flash new tools, such as javelin-like throwing spears and fishing nets, which allowed them to catch a greater range of prey. They also had clothing to keep the cold out, such as sewn furs and woven textiles, and possibly more specialised social structures. Their ability to tough out the colder climes dominating Europe 18,000 to 25,000 years ago revitalised the human population. Adapt to survive The Neanderthals, however, without either new blood or new technology, found it impossible to survive and died out, probably around 28,000 years ago. For Neanderthal expert Paul Pettitt of the University of Sheffield, UK, the evidence that climate adversely affected the Aurignacian people as much as the Neanderthals is fascinating. When the going got tough in northern Europe, says Pettitt, both adopted a "get out of the kitchen strategy". In contrast, Gravettians used their technological prowess "to reorganise the way the kitchen was used". Pettitt says that step was just as revolutionary as becoming modern Homo sapiens in the first place. Douglas Palmer http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994586
Pre-Human Walked Upright 6 Million Years Ago -Study	posted 9/3/04 1:30 PM     Science - Reuters Pre-Human Walked Upright 6 Million Years Ago -Study Thu Sep 2, 5:55 PM ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A chimp-sized human ancestor walked upright 6 million years ago, far earlier than anyone had been able to show before, researchers reported on Thursday. Specialized X-rays called CAT scans of the top of a fossil thighbone show clear evidence that the creature walked upright, like pre-humans, and not like apes, the researchers said. Their findings, published in Friday's issue of the journal Science, take the dawn of human gait back another 3 million years from "Lucy," the earliest known pre-human to have walked on two legs. "We have solid evidence of the earliest upright posture and bipedalism securely dated to six million years," said Dr. Robert Eckhardt, a professor in the Laboratory of Comparative Morphology and Mechanics at Pennsylvania State University. This older species, known scientifically as Orrorin tugenensis, lived in what is now the Kenyan Lukeino Formation. The international team of researchers studied bones dug up nearly four years ago. One thighbone includes the intact head of the left thighbone -- the ball that is inserted into the hip socket joint. The bones are about the same size as a modern chimpanzee's. But they look quite different. The researchers ran computed tomography or CAT scans on the bones. These computer-enhanced X-rays create a three-dimensional image. They found the neck connecting the ball to the shaft is thinner on top than it is on the bottom, a sign that the creature walked on two legs. "In present day chimps and gorillas, the thicknesses in the upper and lower parts of that bone are approximately equal," Eckhardt said in a statement. "In modern humans, the bone on top is thinner than on the bottom by a ratio of one to four or more. The ratio in this fossil is one to three." Genetic evidence suggests that chimps and human diverged from a common ancestor 7 million years ago. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=585&e=5&u=/nm/20040902/sc_nm/science_hominid_dc
Did the First Americans Come From, Er, Australia?	posted 9/6/04 3:05 PM     Science - Reuters Did the First Americans Come From, Er, Australia? 1 hour, 19 minutes ago EXETER, England (Reuters) - Anthropologists stepped into a hornets' nest on Monday, revealing research that suggests the original inhabitants of America may in fact have come from what is now known as Australia. The claim will be extremely unwelcome to today's native Americans who came overland from Siberia and say they were there first. But Silvia Gonzalez from John Moores University in Liverpool said skeletal evidence pointed strongly to this unpalatable truth and hinted that recovered DNA would corroborate it. "This is very contentious," Gonzalez, a Mexican, said with a smile at the annual meeting of the British association for the Advancement of Science. "They (native Americans) cannot claim to have been the first people there." She said there was very strong evidence that the first migration came from Australia via Japan and Polynesia and down the Pacific Coast of America. Skulls of a people with distinctively long and narrow heads discovered in Mexico and California predated by several thousand years the more rounded features of the skulls of native Americans. One particularly well preserved skull of a long-face woman had been carbon dated to 12,700 years ago, whereas the oldest accurately dated native American skull was only about 9,000 years old. "We have extracted her DNA. It is going to be a bomb," she said, declining to give details but adding that the tests carried out so far were being replicated to make sure they were accurate. She said there were tales from Spanish missionaries of an isolated coastal community of long-face people in Baja California of a completely different race and rituals from other communities in America at the time. These last survivors were wiped out by diseases imported by the Spanish conquerors, Gonzalez said. The research is one of 11 different projects in America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East being funded over a four-year period by Britain's Natural Environment Research Council. The projects, focusing on diet, dating and dispersal of people down the millennia in the face of climate change, aim to rewrite anthropology. "We want to make headlines from heads," said Professor Clive Gamble of Southampton university. "DNA will give us a completely new map of the world and how we peopled it." http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=585&e=1&u=/nm/20040906/sc_nm/science_migrations_dc
KENNEWICK MAN: A 9300-YEAR-OLD CAUCASIAN SKELETON IN NORTH AMERICA?	posted 10/6/04 10:43 AM     KENNEWICK MAN: A 9300-YEAR-OLD CAUCASIAN SKELETON IN NORTH AMERICA? The town of Kennewick, Washington, has lent its name to this ferociously controversial skeleton. It all began when the local sheriff asked anthropologist J. Chatters to take a look at a partially buried skeleton found on the shore of the Columbia River. (Ref. 1) "From head to toe, the bones were largely intact. The skeleton was that of a man, middle-aged at death, with Caucasian features, judging by skull measurements. Imbedded in the pelvis was a spearhead made of rock." Chatters initially thought he had merely a "pioneer" who had met an untimely death in the Wild West! "The real stunner came last month [June 1996], after bone samples were sent to the University of California at Riverside for radiocarbon dating. The conclusion: the skeleton of the 'pioneer' is 9,300 years old." (Ref. 2) Actually, the skeleton may well be that of a "pioneer" but one who came from the direction of the setting sun instead of the rising sun. Of course, it is perfectly all right for Asians to have crossed the Bering Strait into North America over 9,000 years ago, but a Caucasian raises scientific and emotional problems. "If Kennewick Man were actually Caucasian, it would be a startling discovery. So far, all of the oldest North American skeletons have been of Asian descent, although features on a few skulls have been controversially interpreted as Caucasoid. Another possibility is that the first Americans -- and their Asian ancestors -- had features that were Caucasoid. The real test of these theories would be DNA, which can pinpoint which modern populations are most closely related to the skeleton and so help identify the ancestors of early Americans and perhaps give clues to their migration patterns." (Ref. 3) But science may not get the opportunity to make the desired DNA tests. The local Umatilla Indians insist that the bones of Kennewick Man be surrendered to them for immediate reburial, as stipulated by the North American Graves Protection Act of 1990. But if the bones are truly those of a Caucasian, does the Act apply? And when does the scientific value of a skeleton outweigh native tradition? Ironically, the Umatilla Indians scoff at the idea of Asian diffusion across the Bering Strait. They claim that they have always lived in the Pacific Northwest! (Ref. 4) Comment. Perhaps pertinent are the Caucasian mummies recently discovered in China (SF#95) and, even more recently, 3,000-year-old graves uncovered at Baifu, just north of Beijing. These graves have yielded skeletons and artifacts with Caucasian characteristics. (Ref. 5) References Ref. 1. Anonymous; "Indian Bones," Earth Changes Report, November 1996. Cr. S.M. Johnson. Ref. 2. Egan, Timothy; "Tribe Stops Study of Bones That Challenge History," New York Times, September 30, 1996. Cr. M. Colpitts. Ref. 3. Gibbons, Ann; "DNA Enters Dust Up over Bones," Science, 274: 172, 1996. Ref. 4. Lemonick, Michael D.; "Bones of Contention," Time, 148:81, October 14, 1996. Ref. 5. Bower, B.; "Early Cross-Cultural Ties Arise in China," Science News, 150:245, 1996. http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf109/sf109p02.htm
"X factor" in genetic differences between Asians and Native Americans	posted 10/6/04 10:54 AM     "X factor" in genetic differences between Asians and Native Americans New World links seen to ancient Eurasian populations, which may help explain 9300-year old Kennewick Man. Genetic findings have added a new layer of interest to the already complex tale of the ancient skeleton called "Kennewick Man," discovered along the Columbia River in 1996 in a US Army Corps of Engineers district of Washington state. The nearly intact skeletal remains, found with a stone arrowhead lodged in the pelvic bone, were first thought by forensic anthropologists to be those of a 19th century Causasian male about 45 years old who was killed by an arrow. Radiocarbon dating of a finger bone, however, showed it to have great age, placing it at the end of the Paleoindian era. Local Native American tribes claimed the skeleton for reburial, and with the support of the Corps of Engineers, sequestered the remains from physical anthropologists who have wanted to study them more closely. While curation of the bones is currently very much in contention, a reconstruction has been made of the face with interesting if controversial results.The model.of Kennewick Man by anthropologist James Chatters and artist Tom McClelland, made from a resin cast of the skull, seems to most resemble the Ainu of northern Japan, an aboriginal race with perhaps more Caucasoid than Mongoloid physical traits. Resemblances noted between these non-Mongoloid body traits and recent genetic studies may support a link of Kennewick Man with ancient Eurasian populations. The genetic findings were announced earlier this year by Theodore Schurr, a molecular anthropologist from Emory University in Atlanta, at a meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Salt Lake City (discussed by Virginia Morell in Science, Vol. 280, 24 April 1998). The new data, from a genetic marker named Lineage X, suggest definite links between ancient Eurasians and Native Americans. It implies that ancient European peoples who reached North America after first, presumably, migrating though Asia, still retained a distinct genetic makeup which then passed into New World populations. This would appear to contradict unilateral theories about Paleoindians as migrants from Asia with primarily Mongoloid traits (like present Native Americans). If these Lineage X findings hold up, populations from Europe and the Middle East now seem to have been among the North American continent's early settlers. The "Lineage X" markers and possible source populations have been studied by Emory researchers Michael Brown and Douglas Wallace, and Antonio Torroni of the University of Rome and Hans-Jurgen Bandelt of the University of Hamburg. Lineage X, a site of genetic variation, is found in mitachondrial DNA (MtDNA) and thus is passed only through the maternal line. It is one of five markers or haplogroups in MtDNA now identified in Native American, of which the other four (A-D) are shared by Asians and Amerinds, in accordance with widely accepted theories of their ancient links. The fifth genetic marker, Lineage X, occurs at low frequencies in both modern and ancient remains of Native Americans and in some European and Near Eastern groups including Italians, Spaniards, Finns, Israelis, Turks, and Bulgarians. But Lineage X does not occur in any Asian population, including those of Tibet, Mongolia, Southeast Asia, or Northeast Asia. Brown and his coworkers had expected to find it in Asia like the other four Native American markers, and are now pressed to account for the gap in their data. One possible scenario that fits well with the Kennewick Man finding is that a group of Caucasians migrated from Europe to North America before 9000 years ago. Researchers note that, besides Kennewick Man, another anomalous early American skeleton is that of the Spirit Cave Mummy from Nevada, which also combines features of Caucasoid and Mongaloid physiques. Further study of the global distribution of Lineage X should help clarify this intriguing new aspect of early American migrations. http://www.athenapub.com/kenwick1.htm
Scientists Hope to Find More Tiny Indonesia Hominids	posted 10/28/04 9:06 AM     Science - Reuters Scientists Hope to Find More Tiny Indonesia Hominids Thu Oct 28, 1:34 AM ET Science - Reuters By Michael Perry SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian scientists who found a new species of hobbit-sized humans who lived about 13,000 years ago on an Indonesian island said on Thursday they expect to discover more new species of hominids on neighboring islands. The partial skeleton of Homo floresiensis, found in a cave on the island of Flores in 2003, was of an adult female that was 3 feet tall, had a brain smaller than a chimpanzee's, and probably lived alongside modern humans on the island. Australian and Indonesian scientists have since unearthed seven small hominids called "Flores man" from the Liang Bua limestone cave, the youngest living 13,000 years ago. "The finding of this distinctive human species, this endemic human species on Flores, also implies that there will be similar endemic species on other islands in that vicinity," project leader Mike Morwood, associate professor in archaeology at Australia's University of New England, said on Thursday. "So, you're likely to have a distinctive little hominid population on Lombok, on Sumbawa, on Timor, and on Sulawesi, and each of those will be distinct species, because they will have evolved in isolation," he told a news conference in Sydney. "Flores man" is thought to be a descendent of Homo erectus, which had a large brain, was full-sized and spread out from Africa to Asia about 2 million years ago. Morwood said the discovery of hominids on Flores was unexpected as no Asian land animal at the time had crossed the sea to the islands in eastern Indonesia and hominids were not believed to be developed enough to build and sail a craft. But if Homo erectus reached Flores and evolved into "Flores man" then others probably reached nearby islands and also evolved into new human species. Legends tell of small, man-like creatures existing on eastern islands long ago. The discovery of hominids in Southeast Asia almost to the start of agriculture 10,000 years ago means they were "contemporaries of modern humans," said Morwood, and added another piece to the complex puzzle of human evolution. HUNTING STEGODONS The hominid family tree, which includes humans and pre-humans, diverged from chimpanzees about 7 million years ago. Morwood said the "Flores man" evolved in isolation, becoming so small because of environmental conditions such as food shortages and a lack of predators. Scientists have pieced together an image of a hairless, dark-skinned dwarf species with a head the size of a grapefruit, sunken eyes, a flat nose and large teeth and mouth projecting forward with virtually no chin. What surprised scientists was that despite the shrinking of the brain "Flores man" still performed complex tasks like making miniature stone tools, hunting miniature Stegodon elephants and giant Komodo dragons and using fire to cook. "They were making sophisticated stone tools, some of which appear to be directly associated with the hunting of big game like Stegodon, like Komodo dragon...and for butchering these large animals," said Morwood. "So despite very, very small brains, this hominid population was doing sophisticated things," he said. The remains discovered have been dated as old as 95,000 years and as young as 13,000 years ago, meaning the Flores man's time overlaps modern humans by about 40,000 years, but it is not clear whether there was any interaction between the two on Flores. Scientists suspect "Flores man" became extinct after a massive volcanic eruption on the island around 12,000 years ago, but local folk tales suggest the hominids may have still been living on Flores up until the Dutch arrived in the 1500s. The expedition discovered "Flores man" while looking for records of modern human migration to Asia. The hominid find was reported in the latest edition of science journal Nature. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=585&e=2&u=/nm/20041028/sc_nm/science_hominid_dc
Brain reconstruction hints at 'hobbit' intelligence (Moderator)	posted 3/5/05 1:34 PM     Brain reconstruction hints at 'hobbit' intelligence 19:00 03 March 2005 NewScientist.com news service Will Knight Analysis of the diminutive cranium of Homo floresiensis - a tiny hobbit-like human that lived in Indonesia just 13,000 years ago - confirms it as a unique species and reveals remarkably advanced features for such a small brain. The skull and other bones of one female and fragments from up to six other specimens were discovered in caves on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003 and revealed to the world in October 2004. The remarkably petite human stood just a metre tall and had a brain about one-third the size of modern humans. But Dean Falk, an expert on brain evolution at Florida State University, US, who has analysed the skull of H. floresiensis says it has some remarkably advanced morphological features, including ones associated with complex brain processes in living humans. "It has an extraordinary morphology unlike anything I've seen in 30 years," she told New Scientist. This adds weight to the theory that H. floresiensis may have possessed an intelligence and tool-building ability traditionally associated with much larger-brained humans. The charred bones of animals were also found in the caves on Flores. "It may well be that the population was hunting, making tools and using fire," says Falk. "I'm conservative by nature but in light of these features we find nothing to contradict this speculation." Surface features Falk used data collected during CT scans performed shortly after the skull was discovered to build a 3D computer model of the cranial cavity. This mirrors the overall shape of the brain and can even reveal certain surface features. She compared the model to ones made from the skulls of other extinct pre-humans along with those of modern humans and living apes. Falk found several advanced morphological features, including enlarged frontal and temporal lobes and an extended area at the back called the lunate sulcus. In modern humans the frontal lobes are associated with forward planning and problem solving and temporal lobes are thought to play a key role in memory. The extension of the lunate sulcus is typically associated with a more highly developed ability to analyse sensory information, says Falk. Disregarding size, the brain of H. floresiensis most closely resembled that of Homo erectus, a human ancestor that disappeared around 70,000 years ago that was thought to have made relatively complex tools. But Chris Stringer at the Natural History Museum in London, UK, says it may be rash to draw too many conclusions about the intelligence of H. floresiensis from the brain morphology alone. He notes that some features also seem to predate H. erectus. "I reserve judgement on what kind of intelligence and technology the animal might have had," he says. Striking diversity Stringer adds that the picture is far from simple as the brain has some features unlike anything seen before. The discovery of H. floresiensis was hailed as the most important anthropological find for 50 years. It alters the picture of human evolution, showing that it have continued until very recently and was more diverse than previously thought. But the find has stirred up heated debate among anthropologists, a small number of whom refuse to accept it is a unique new species at all. Bernard Wood, an anthropologist at George Washington University, US, says the model should at least dispel dissenting claims that the remains are not a unique species but simply a modern human with microcephaly, a rare condition that results in a reduced cranium size. "Unequivocally, it is not what you would expect a miniaturised modern human brain to look like," Wood insists. "Nor is it like the brain of a human with a pathological microcephaly." Journal reference: Science (vol 307) http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7090
Footprints rewrite history of first Americans (Moderator)	posted 7/7/05 10:58 AM     Footprints rewrite history of first Americans 10:59 05 July 2005 NewScientist.com news service Robert Adler Hundreds of human and animal footprints were preserved in a layer of ash from a nearby volcano. Human footprints discovered beside an ancient Mexican lake have been dated to 40,000 years ago. If the finding survives the controversy it is bound to stir up, it means that humans must have moved into the New World at least 30,000 years earlier than previously thought. “If true, this would completely change our view of how and when the Americas were first colonised,” says Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, UK. But like several US experts, he is reserving judgement until the dates can be independently confirmed. The discovery was made by an international team led by Silvia Gonzalez, a geoarchaeologist at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK. She found the fossilised footprints in 2003 in a quarry near the city of Puebla, 100 kilometres southeast of Mexico City. “I walked 1 metre and started to see them,” Gonzalez says. “It felt like a thunderbolt.” In just two days, Gonzalez and her colleagues found hundreds of human and animal footprints preserved in a layer of ash from a nearby volcano. The footprints were made along the shore of a lake and were submerged after the water level rose, preserving them under sediments. “They are unmistakably human footprints,” says team member Matthew Bennett at Bournemouth University in the UK. “They meet all the criteria that were set up after the Laetoli prints were found [in Tanzania in 1976].” The sizes suggests that about one-third of them were made by children. Sand and shells But when were they made? It has taken the team two years, using a panoply of high-tech dating techniques, to determine that the prints are about 40,000 years old. The key date came from shells in the lake sediments, which the team carbon-dated to 38,000 years ago. Sand grains baked into the ash and dated using optically stimulated luminescence corroborated the finding. The researchers also used argon-argon, uranium series and electron spin resonance techniques to date the layers. “The footprints are clearly older than 38,000 years,” says team member Tom Higham of the carbon-dating lab at the University of Oxford, US. The conventional view is that humans arrived in the Americas via Beringia around 11,000 years ago, when a land bridge became available between Siberia and Alaska. There have been claims about earlier waves of settlers, who must have made the crossing over water, based mainly on sites with signs of habitation dated up to 40,000 years ago, but these claims have drawn intense criticism. “Accurate and reproducible” Gonzalez and her team expect the same. “This will be incredibly controversial, there’s no doubt about that,” Higham says. They invite other researchers to scrutinise their findings, due to be published in the journal Quaternary Science Review. “We have done a year of solid work to make sure it’s accurate and reproducible,” Higham stresses. How people got to Mexico 40 millennia ago is a matter for speculation. Bennett suspects that they migrated along the Pacific coasts of Asia and North America. But when it comes to the dates and footprints, he says, “those are not speculation at all". The footprints remain where they were found. The team has used laser scans and rapid prototyping equipment to create highly accurate three-dimensional copies, accurate to a fraction of a millimetre, which can be viewed at the Royal Society's Summer Exhibition in London, UK, which ends on 7 July. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7627
Gigantic Apes Coexisted with Early Humans, Study Finds (Moderator)	posted 12/12/05 11:17 AM     Gigantic Apes Coexisted with Early Humans, Study Finds By Bjorn Carey LiveScience Staff Writer posted: 07 November 2005 01:34 pm ET A gigantic ape standing 10 feet tall and weighing up to 1,200 pounds lived alongside humans for over a million years, according to a new study. Fortunately for the early humans, the huge primate's diet consisted mainly of bamboo. Scientists have known about Gigantopithecus blackii since the accidental discovery of some of its teeth on sale in a Hong Kong pharmacy about 80 years ago. While the idea of a giant ape piqued the interest of scientists – and bigfoot hunters – around the world, it was unclear how long ago this beast went extinct. Precise dating Now Jack Rink, a geochronologist at McMaster University in Ontario, has used a high-precision absolute-dating method to determine that this ape – the largest primate ever – roamed Southeast Asia for nearly a million years before the species died out 100,000 years ago during the Pleistocene period. By this time, humans had existed for a million years. "A missing piece of the puzzle has always focused on pin-pointing when Gigantopithecus existed," Rink said. "This is a primate that co-existed with humans at a time when humans were undergoing a major evolutionary change. Guangxhi province in southern China, where some of the Gigantopithecus fossils were found, is the same region where some believe the modern human race originated." Since the original discovery, scientists have been able to piece together a description of Gigantopithecus using just a handful of teeth and a set of jawbones. It may not be much, but the unusually large size of these teeth indicates they belonged to one big ape. "The size of these specimens – the crown of the molar, for instance, measures about an inch across – helped us understand the extraordinary size of the primate," Rink said. What happened? Humans may have helped destroy the ape. Further studies of the teeth revealed that the ape was an herbivore, and bamboo was probably its favorite meal. Some scientists believe that an appetite focused on bamboo combined with increasing competition from more nimble humans eventually led to the extinction of Gigantopithecus. While most scientists agree that Gigantopithecus died out long ago, some people – Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti enthusiasts in particular – believe that this ape is the source of tales of giant, hairy beasts roaming the woods. These claims are not considered credible by mainstream scientists. There have been cases in which creatures are first known first by their fossil remains and later found living, such as the coelacanth – a type of fish thought to have died out millions of years ago until it was discovered swimming off the coast of Africa in 1938. Researchers do not have a full skeleton for Gigantopithecus. But they can fill in the gaps and estimate its size and shape by comparing it to other primates – those that came before it, coexisted with it, and also modern apes. Currently, scientists are debating over how Gigantopithecus got around – was it bipedal or did it use its arms to help it walk, like modern chimpanzees and orangutans? The only way to answer this is to collect more bones. http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/051107_giant_ape.html
Did humans colonise north Europe earlier than thought? (Moderator)	posted 12/23/05 8:51 AM     Did humans colonise north Europe earlier than thought? 18:00 14 December 2005 NewScientist.com news service Rowan Hooper Enlarge image The flint tools discovered in Pakefield were evidently crafted from riverside stones and may have been used to cut meat (Image: Harry Taylor/Natural History Museum) Enlarge image The prehistoric humans who made the tools lived alongside elephants, lions and other large mammals (Artist’s impression: Natural History Museum)Humans may have colonised northern Europe 200,000 years earlier than previously thought. Stone tools found in eastern England suggest that humans were there at least 700,000 years ago. "We don't know for sure what species it was," says team member Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London, "but my bet is it's an early form of Homo heidelbergensis or Homo antecessor." H. heidelbergensis is known to have been present in central Europe about 500,000 years ago. Bones were first discovered in 1907 near Heidelberg, Germany, and have since been found in France and Greece. Hominin remains about 800,000 years old have been found in Spain and Italy, indicating that early humans had colonised southern Europe by this time. These early humans have been classed as another species, H. antecessor, though arguments remain over whether it is a really separate species to H. heidelbergensis. The 32 stone tools, made of black flint and many of them still sharp, were discovered by amateur archaeologists at Pakefield, Suffolk. They have been dated using several methods. Firstly, the magnetic polarity of iron-containing minerals in the sedimentary rocks where the tools were found is aligned north-south, just as it is today. The Earth's magnetic field underwent a polarity reversal 780,000 years ago, so the site must be younger than that. The tools were found beneath glacial deposits laid down during a period 450,000 years ago when the region was blanketed in ice, so they must be older than this. Also present were fossils of a water vole Mimomys, which was superseded by another vole species called Arvicola around 500,000 years ago. This leads the authors to speculate that the tools are around 700,000 years old. A new amino-acid dating technique developed by Kirsty Penkman of the University of York in the UK supports this estimate. The method was used to measure the breakdown of amino acids within shells of a freshwater snail found at the site (Nature, vol 438, p 1008). Back then Britain was connected to what is now the European mainland and had a climate similar to that of the Mediterranean today. The researchers found hippo fossils at the Pakefield site, as well as fossils of other warmth-loving species such as lion, an extinct giant deer called Megaloceros dawkinsi and Palaeoloxodon antiquus, an extinct straight-tusked elephant. Rhinos and hyenas also roamed the region. The warm climate probably allowed early humans to migrate northwards without the need to develop technology such as fire and clothing or to adapt to a colder climate, says Anthony Stuart of University College London, who coordinated the project. But the climate got the better of them eventually. "People couldn't settle here long-term," says Stringer. "They would have been swept away by the cold stage that followed about 100,000 years ago." http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8464
Did humans colonise north Europe earlier than thought? (Moderator)	posted 12/23/05 8:52 AM     Did humans colonise north Europe earlier than thought? 18:00 14 December 2005 NewScientist.com news service Rowan Hooper Enlarge image The flint tools discovered in Pakefield were evidently crafted from riverside stones and may have been used to cut meat (Image: Harry Taylor/Natural History Museum) Enlarge image The prehistoric humans who made the tools lived alongside elephants, lions and other large mammals (Artist’s impression: Natural History Museum)Humans may have colonised northern Europe 200,000 years earlier than previously thought. Stone tools found in eastern England suggest that humans were there at least 700,000 years ago. "We don't know for sure what species it was," says team member Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London, "but my bet is it's an early form of Homo heidelbergensis or Homo antecessor." H. heidelbergensis is known to have been present in central Europe about 500,000 years ago. Bones were first discovered in 1907 near Heidelberg, Germany, and have since been found in France and Greece. Hominin remains about 800,000 years old have been found in Spain and Italy, indicating that early humans had colonised southern Europe by this time. These early humans have been classed as another species, H. antecessor, though arguments remain over whether it is a really separate species to H. heidelbergensis. The 32 stone tools, made of black flint and many of them still sharp, were discovered by amateur archaeologists at Pakefield, Suffolk. They have been dated using several methods. Firstly, the magnetic polarity of iron-containing minerals in the sedimentary rocks where the tools were found is aligned north-south, just as it is today. The Earth's magnetic field underwent a polarity reversal 780,000 years ago, so the site must be younger than that. The tools were found beneath glacial deposits laid down during a period 450,000 years ago when the region was blanketed in ice, so they must be older than this. Also present were fossils of a water vole Mimomys, which was superseded by another vole species called Arvicola around 500,000 years ago. This leads the authors to speculate that the tools are around 700,000 years old. A new amino-acid dating technique developed by Kirsty Penkman of the University of York in the UK supports this estimate. The method was used to measure the breakdown of amino acids within shells of a freshwater snail found at the site (Nature, vol 438, p 1008). Back then Britain was connected to what is now the European mainland and had a climate similar to that of the Mediterranean today. The researchers found hippo fossils at the Pakefield site, as well as fossils of other warmth-loving species such as lion, an extinct giant deer called Megaloceros dawkinsi and Palaeoloxodon antiquus, an extinct straight-tusked elephant. Rhinos and hyenas also roamed the region. The warm climate probably allowed early humans to migrate northwards without the need to develop technology such as fire and clothing or to adapt to a colder climate, says Anthony Stuart of University College London, who coordinated the project. But the climate got the better of them eventually. "People couldn't settle here long-term," says Stringer. "They would have been swept away by the cold stage that followed about 100,000 years ago." http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8464
Neanderthals and humans lived side by side	posted 10/7/06 5:23 AM     Neanderthals and humans lived side by side 18:00 13 September 2006 NewScientist.com news service Rowan Hooper Neanderthals were thought to have died out as modern humans arrived in Europe. Now, artifacts found in a cave in Gibraltar reveal that the two groups coexisted for millennia before Neanderthals finally dwindled out of existence. Homo sapiens moved into Europe about 32,000 years ago. But the newly unearthered artefacts shows that a remnant population of Homo neanderthalensis clung on until at least 28,000 years ago, a significant overlap. Clive Finlayson at the Gibraltar Museum, and colleagues, recovered 240 stone tools and artefacts from sediments dated to the Upper Palaeolithic period – between 10,000 and 30,000 years ago. Mass spectrometry dating puts them between 28,000 and 24,000 years old. The exciting point is that the tools are all of a type known to palaeontologists as Mousterian: they are flints, cherts and quartzites exclusively associated with Neanderthal manufacture. “Mousterian technology is firmly associated with Neanderthals across Europe,” says Finlayson, who adds that in the sediment layers where the tools where found there is no hint of intrusion from more recent layers, and no sign of tools made by modern humans. Genetically distinct Since modern humans and Neanderthals seem to have overlapped for thousands of years in Europe, the big question is: did they interbreed? “The consensus now sees Neanderthals as having been largely replaced rather than assimilated into the modern human gene pool,” says Katerina Harvati, at the department of human evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. “Genetic evidence from several Neanderthals shows that they were very distant genetically in their mitochondrial DNA from modern humans.” So, if they did interbred, the Neanderthal genes did not survive. “The more realistic demographic models suggest that admixture (gene mixing) was unlikely, and probably minimal or zero,” says Harvati. The finding has implications for the status of a skeleton known as the Lagar Velho child. This individual, purported to be a hybrid of a Neanderthal and a modern human, was found in Portugal and has been dated to 24,500 years ago. Hanging in there Lagar Velho's juvenile nature has made it difficult to determine if it is indeed a hybrid, and one of the other objections has been the fact that it lived thousands of years after the Neanderthals were thought to have died out. “Clearly, our results show Neanderthals may have been around at the time,” says Finlayson. The site of the discovery in Gibraltar is Gorham’s Cave, where Neanderthal artefacts were first discovered more than 50 years ago. Animal bones found with the tools indicate that the occupants butchered their hunted prey in the cave. The environment is rich and diverse, which perhaps enabled the last of the Neanderthal stragglers to survive a little longer than most. Finlayson estimates that only a small group lived in the cave itself. Although modern humans were breeding all around them, we are not thought to have actively exterminated the Neanderthals. “Fragmented populations survived in southern localities and their final extinction may have been due to their small numbers,” says Finlayson. “Modern humans played a minor or no role in this.” Journal reference: Nature (DOI: 10.1038/nature05195) http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10070?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=dn10070

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