Human Variation

[ysabetwordsmith]

A 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.

Comments

[sylvaine]

That would be amazing. How cool would it be if our ancestors actually *did* manage to get along with The Other?

>>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.)

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

The little that was on NPR said that they spanned a few centuries. I know that some gross structures vary quite widely based on environment (that difference between round and long skulls that so many phrenologist and Social Darwinists used to castigate what whipping boys they would? Diet based. Long skulls (which are a neoteny trait iirc) happen in progeny that get increased diet to their round skulled paren†s. (semi-explaining why 'corn-fed farm boys' are a distinct body type*))

*as in all things human, there is variation within a group at least as significant as similarity between groups.

[cmcmck]

And watch an adult human interact with a baby orang and how the baby orang says with the eyes pick me up and cuddle me, I need your undivided attention. That's a close relationship! :o)

[msminlr.livejournal.com]

Totally OT for human evolution, but I thought you might be interested in this article; may even know something about the subject already.

http://clonehenge.com/2013/10/17/the-henge-on-a-hill-off-longhollow-road-its-a-mystery/

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

Thanks to a genetic bottleneck thousands of years ago, which left maybe 10,000 people worldwide, the modern homo sapiens is very much inbred. There is more genetic difference between a collie and a Labrador than there is between black people and white people.

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.)

[rhodielady-47.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm....
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.
:)