Human Variation
Oct. 18th, 2013 03:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithA set of ancient skulls have raised the question of diversity in the human family tree. It could be that these are normal variations within a single species. People are arguing about precisely that. It's possible; collies and pugs look quite different.
Apparently nobody has thought to raise the other possibility: a community of several species living together or perhaps members of a circumannular species/subspecies ring. And you know what? That really would be an outlier, because the rest of humanity is downright xenophobic. Imagine if we had ancestors who somehow managed to get along. That would take prehistoric fiction to a whole new level. What would humanity look like without the meme, "It's okay to kill people if you don't like them" ...?
I'm thinking that would get them kicked off the family tree. You, out of the gene pool! Go sit with the bonobos.
Anyhow, I'd look for markers of family ties among skeletons found close to each other, and look for cultural or technological markers across distant finds. Homo ergaster had a pretty sophisticated hand-axe but didn't seem to adapt it once invented nor share it around much. Other folks seemed to develop their own different tools. So artifacts can give important clues.
Apparently nobody has thought to raise the other possibility: a community of several species living together or perhaps members of a circumannular species/subspecies ring. And you know what? That really would be an outlier, because the rest of humanity is downright xenophobic. Imagine if we had ancestors who somehow managed to get along. That would take prehistoric fiction to a whole new level. What would humanity look like without the meme, "It's okay to kill people if you don't like them" ...?
I'm thinking that would get them kicked off the family tree. You, out of the gene pool! Go sit with the bonobos.
Anyhow, I'd look for markers of family ties among skeletons found close to each other, and look for cultural or technological markers across distant finds. Homo ergaster had a pretty sophisticated hand-axe but didn't seem to adapt it once invented nor share it around much. Other folks seemed to develop their own different tools. So artifacts can give important clues.
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(no subject)
Date: 2013-10-18 10:04 am (UTC)>>You, out of the gene pool! Go sit with the bonobos.<<
*gigglesnort*
(I'd love to see fiction based upon this premise. Because collaboration & teamwork = pretty much always best thing ever, particularly if set in an era/setting where the usual idea is rather the opposite.)
(Hmmm, maybe I could come up with a prompt for this for the next poetry fishbowl? I'm so bad at prompting though, argh.)
Well...
Date: 2013-10-26 03:34 am (UTC)November's theme is "family gatherings," couldn't ask for a better opportunity. You can just prompt me with the article and a reminder of the multi-species idea.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-10-18 12:00 pm (UTC)*as in all things human, there is variation within a group at least as significant as similarity between groups.
Thoughts
Date: 2013-10-19 06:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-10-18 12:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-10-18 03:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-10-18 04:05 pm (UTC)Terry Pratchet described them as looking like a baby coconut.
The late Carl Giles, the well known UK cartoonist, got into all sorts of trouble with Marie Stopes for his portrayals of babies, but looking back at them, you realise just how horribly accurate they were.
http://www.biblepicturegallery.com/thumbs/ca/editors/children/The%20Giles%20baby%20smiling.jpg
(no subject)
Date: 2013-10-18 05:49 pm (UTC)And that baby coconut is so evocative. Churchill will surely use that the next seance he crashes.
Well...
Date: 2013-10-19 04:39 am (UTC)Yes...
Date: 2013-10-19 06:23 am (UTC)Re: Yes...
Date: 2013-10-19 11:07 am (UTC)Re: Yes...
Date: 2013-10-21 07:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-10-18 12:12 pm (UTC)http://clonehenge.com/2013/10/17/the-henge-on-a-hill-off-longhollow-road-its-a-mystery/
(no subject)
Date: 2013-10-19 12:23 am (UTC)I'm thinking that would get them kicked off the family tree. You, out of the gene pool! Go sit with the bonobos.
Why punish the poor bonobos? They're the hippy sex addicts of the pan line.
Personally, I think "Homo sapiens sapiens" is extremely inaccurate and conceited a name. I prefer "Nudipan narrans," which means "Naked, story-telling ape."
As to human species living in harmony, aside from the obvious of cro-magnon and Neanderthal interbreeding to make European whites... there's some of that going on in "Darwin's Children" (the sequel to "Darwin's Radio"), including a scene where several different human species were found living together back in the distant past.
Also, I find scifi stories depicting two or more native sentient species peacefully coexisting (more or less) to be rare and interesting. One reason why I'm glad there are three (or four, if you include the symbionts) sentient species coexisting peacefully (more or less) on Traipah. I also loved the Xindi, in "Enterprise." That planet had FIVE sentient species of greatly different kinds living together: primates, arboreals, reptilians, insectoids, and aquatics. (Six at one time, but the avians died out.)
Yes...
Date: 2013-10-19 05:17 am (UTC)*laugh* I like that one.
>> there's some of that going on in "Darwin's Children" (the sequel to "Darwin's Radio"), <<
Yes, that was cool, although much of the series was about interspecies conflict.
>> That planet had FIVE sentient species of greatly different kinds living together: primates, arboreals, reptilians, insectoids, and aquatics. (Six at one time, but the avians died out.) <<
That's what I loved about Dinotopia too.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-10-19 05:24 pm (UTC)Juat thinking out loud here but perhaps those stone axes were more of a ceremonial tool rather than an every-day tool?
These people may have had all sorts of tools which they used every day and in lots of different ways which just didn't survive for us to find.
We are still a long way from being a smoothly homogenous species even today. Most people would be amazed to see how much variation there is amongst modern peoples' skeletons alone, much less all the visual differences between the different races of modern humanity. I think chances are good that ancient humanity had just as many visual differences between them as we do and perhaps more which didn't survive along with the bones.
The true evidence for us having evolved from the hybridization of several different human subspecies shows up in the genetics concerned with our blood and its many blood groupings (i.e.: ABO blood grouping, Lewis grouping, Rh factor, American Indian/Asian factor, etc.).
I strongly suspect that blood group incompatibility is one of the main causes of early spontaneous abortions (the sort where the mother thinks her period has simply arrived late).
After all, two species don't have to look different from each other to be separate species. Genetic incompatibility alone is enough to make them separate.
:)
Thoughts
Date: 2013-10-20 12:08 am (UTC)Possible, but it seems to be an everyday, all-purpose tool.
>> These people may have had all sorts of tools which they used every day and in lots of different ways which just didn't survive for us to find. <<
Also likely.
>>After all, two species don't have to look different from each other to be separate species. Genetic incompatibility alone is enough to make them separate.<<
Those are all excellent points.
Actually, this matches something I was thinking: it's possible to have a cluster of subspecies, some of which can interbreed and others not. The circumannual pattern seems most common but there are others.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2013-10-20 06:06 am (UTC)I agree.
:)