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Europe was the birthplace of mankind


MysteryMike

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The history of human evolution has been rewritten after scientists discovered that Europe was the birthplace of mankind, not Africa. 

Currently, most experts believe that our human lineage split from apes around seven million years ago in central Africa, where hominids remained for the next five million years before venturing further afield.

But two fossils of an ape-like creature which had human-like teeth have been found in Bulgaria and Greece, dating to 7.2 million years ago.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/05/22/europe-birthplace-mankind-not-africa-scientists-find/

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Don't get me wrong it's interesting, but it's only one tooth and half a jaw? How much can they determine from that? :unsure:

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5 hours ago, The Russian Hare said:

Don't get me wrong it's interesting, but it's only one tooth and half a jaw? How much can they determine from that? :unsure:

That's exactly what John Hawks said, without at least a decent part of the cranium. it hard to tell whether it's a proto-homo or an more remote hominidae which happen to develop a human like denture.
 

4 hours ago, seanjo said:

Pretty much the same evidence they used to decide that human life had started in Africa.

Back in the early days of paleontology, that was true, but nowadays, they usually have good parts of the crania which makes comparison possible.

hominid-skulls_1.jpg

Edited by Gingitsune
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Well "discoveries" keep the grant money flowing.  Now more money is needed to attempt to prove this new theory.

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It's still a step. Science can be very slow at times ...

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2 hours ago, paperdyer said:

Well "discoveries" keep the grant money flowing.  Now more money is needed to attempt to prove this new theory.

Like digging around these finds' site to see whether the could find more clues. The Balkan peninsula is not quite as well explored as other part of Europe, there may be some more complete Graecopithecus freybergi remains, or even find than they are just a local version of an already known hominidea.

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Interesting, but I'm suspicious. This reminds me of how the proverbial scientists say that milk, chocolate and wine are bad for you one year and then change their tone the following year. More specifically to this story however; Neanderthal man has been reported to be part of the human family for years, and then was downgraded to being only a sub-species of human. I came across an article a year ago where some scientists now believe that the Neanderthal is not part of the human family at all and is its own species. So, as it relates to this new find in Europe, one can easily place this story in the fake news/alternative facts section of human history until additional information on this discovery can be properly analyzed by paleoanthropologists from various nations. Mitigating cognitive biases on the veracity of the origins of the human family is a challenge amongst most scientists…Piltdown man comes to mind.

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I look forward to the attempt to find more samples. 

In this day and age the Greeks need something to brag about....

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Well given most of our most important 'discoveries' are not testable and provable I shall take this opportunity to tell people how humans came about. (Prove me wrong)

The little bang theory...

Once upon a time several hundred thousand years ago, The planet earth was a very interesting place to visit. Many an alien visited the planet earth that was before the interstellar wars. And on several occasions, like all dimwitted families, the pets got left behind. You guessed it our ancestors were the pets. Now some of the pets survived and others died. One thing is for sure, the pets were scattered all across the globe. Eventually like all life does we evolved into the half ape, half pig hybrid that we call humans. But like all invasive species we are slowly destroying the native species. Sort of like Feral Cats in Australia have done to this point. The future does not look good for the native species or humans. Once in awhile we get an alien checking in to see what damage has been done and records it so that they can finally outlaw having human hybrids as pets in the interstellar communities. I swear it's all true. You will just have to believe me because well unless you have a time machine you can't prove that I am wrong. Forgot to add, our concept of God was actually a extreme conditioning control mechanism that was used to keep our ancestors obedient.

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36 minutes ago, Nzo said:

Well given most of our most important 'discoveries' are not testable and provable I shall take this opportunity to tell people how humans came about. (Prove me wrong)

The little bang theory...

Once upon a time several hundred thousand years ago, The planet earth was a very interesting place to visit. Many an alien visited the planet earth that was before the interstellar wars. And on several occasions, like all dimwitted families, the pets got left behind. You guessed it our ancestors were the pets. Now some of the pets survived and others died. One thing is for sure, the pets were scattered all across the globe. Eventually like all life does we evolved into the half ape, half pig hybrid that we call humans. But like all invasive species we are slowly destroying the native species. Sort of like Feral Cats in Australia have done to this point. The future does not look good for the native species or humans. Once in awhile we get an alien checking in to see what damage has been done and records it so that they can finally outlaw having human hybrids as pets in the interstellar communities. I swear it's all true. You will just have to believe me because well unless you have a time machine you can't prove that I am wrong. Forgot to add, our concept of God was actually a extreme conditioning control mechanism that was used to keep our ancestors obedient.

Well most of our most important discoveries are testable, and nothing is provable. When I see the demand "prove me wrong" I become quite sure the person saying this is a kook, almost certainly wrong.

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2 hours ago, DieChecker said:

I look forward to the attempt to find more samples. 

In this day and age the Greeks need something to brag about....

You must admit it seems unlikely, but I suppose we are talking about times pushing ten million years ago, and chimps cold have been almost anywhere in Africa, including what is now the Sahara.  I know of no fossils but maybe someone else does.

However, we seem to have a slightly closer relationship with bonobos, and they are and always have been limited to the Congo basin.

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2 hours ago, DieChecker said:

I look forward to the attempt to find more samples. 

In this day and age the Greeks need something to brag about....

Oh, please, the Greeks have plenty to boast about in the way of real historical achievement, not just who mixed whose DNA with whom.

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12 hours ago, paperdyer said:

Well "discoveries" keep the grant money flowing.  Now more money is needed to attempt to prove this new theory.

Yea, and some discoveries are "made" to get money.

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12 hours ago, Gingitsune said:

That's exactly what John Hawks said, without at least a decent part of the cranium. it hard to tell whether it's a proto-homo or an more remote hominidae which happen to develop a human like denture.
 

Back in the early days of paleontology, that was true, but nowadays, they usually have good parts of the crania which makes comparison possible.

hominid-skulls_1.jpg

The "golden age" of apes was around twenty million years ago and all over the Western Hemisphere in what may have been fifty or more species.  It has since dwindled to a handful in Africa, the gibbon and siamang in SE Asia, the Orangs in Indonesia, and of course Homo sapiens all over the place.

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8 hours ago, Stealth_Goat said:

Interesting, but I'm suspicious. This reminds me of how the proverbial scientists say that milk, chocolate and wine are bad for you one year and then change their tone the following year. More specifically to this story however; Neanderthal man has been reported to be part of the human family for years, and then was downgraded to being only a sub-species of human. I came across an article a year ago where some scientists now believe that the Neanderthal is not part of the human family at all and is its own species. So, as it relates to this new find in Europe, one can easily place this story in the fake news/alternative facts section of human history until additional information on this discovery can be properly analyzed by paleoanthropologists from various nations. Mitigating cognitive biases on the veracity of the origins of the human family is a challenge amongst most scientists…Piltdown man comes to mind.

Knowledge of human paleontology now numbers in the hundreds of fossils.  The general outline is now well understood.  Inform yourself.

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17 hours ago, Stealth_Goat said:

Interesting, but I'm suspicious. This reminds me of how the proverbial scientists say that milk, chocolate and wine are bad for you one year and then change their tone the following year. More specifically to this story however; Neanderthal man has been reported to be part of the human family for years, and then was downgraded to being only a sub-species of human. I came across an article a year ago where some scientists now believe that the Neanderthal is not part of the human family at all and is its own species. So, as it relates to this new find in Europe, one can easily place this story in the fake news/alternative facts section of human history until additional information on this discovery can be properly analyzed by paleoanthropologists from various nations. Mitigating cognitive biases on the veracity of the origins of the human family is a challenge amongst most scientists…Piltdown man comes to mind.

Be careful mixing ideas derived from statistical methods and ideas from discoveries.

The "milk, chocolate, and wine" studies are done using statistics. They do initial studies using low numbers of test subjects. That is done to reduce costs. They get a result which has a 95% chance of being correct. There is also a 1 in 20 chance of being wrong and wrong by chance, not by poor work or sloppy work or poorly designed experiments. Positive results lead to better studies reducing the chance of error.

A discovery such as a tooth, jaw, piece of pottery, carving, etc. does not have this 1 in 20 chance of being a fluke that does not exist.  It is an object to study and place in its proper context.

Let's be careful and not mix up the two ideas. I do agree with your later comments about the difficulty in placing an object in its context and how subsequent discoveries may lead to a reassignment or adjustment in the thinking about previous discoveries.

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10 hours ago, Frank Merton said:

You must admit it seems unlikely, but I suppose we are talking about times pushing ten million years ago, and chimps cold have been almost anywhere in Africa, including what is now the Sahara.  I know of no fossils but maybe someone else does.

However, we seem to have a slightly closer relationship with bonobos, and they are and always have been limited to the Congo basin.

I agree that it seems unlikely, as all other early hominids have shown up in Africa.

I've read that chimpanzee fossils are extremely rare. Partly due to the habitats they live in, where the environment recycles organic matter pretty quick. 

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This is a great discovery, and whatever it turns out to be will undoubtedly be interesting. That being said, I think it's a bit premature to declare that we know 100% that humans evolved in the Balkans instead of Africa.

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IIRC, h. Heidelbergensis spent 90 years being represented only by a mandible.

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On 5/23/2017 at 11:55 PM, Nzo said:

Well given most of our most important 'discoveries' are not testable and provable I shall take this opportunity to tell people how humans came about. (Prove me wrong)

The little bang theory...

Once upon a time several hundred thousand years ago, The planet earth was a very interesting place to visit. Many an alien visited the planet earth that was before the interstellar wars. And on several occasions, like all dimwitted families, the pets got left behind. You guessed it our ancestors were the pets. Now some of the pets survived and others died. One thing is for sure, the pets were scattered all across the globe. Eventually like all life does we evolved into the half ape, half pig hybrid that we call humans. But like all invasive species we are slowly destroying the native species. Sort of like Feral Cats in Australia have done to this point. The future does not look good for the native species or humans. Once in awhile we get an alien checking in to see what damage has been done and records it so that they can finally outlaw having human hybrids as pets in the interstellar communities. I swear it's all true. You will just have to believe me because well unless you have a time machine you can't prove that I am wrong. Forgot to add, our concept of God was actually a extreme conditioning control mechanism that was used to keep our ancestors obedient.

And that's when DNA come in. Comparing the DNA from living... things (animals, plants, bacteria, etc.) we get this tree of life (we are among the eukaryotes): 

11TREEOFLIFE-superJumbo.jpg

I spare you the bit about lobster and spiders, fast forwards to vertebrates:

A phylogenetic tree of a broad selection of jawed vertebrates shows that lungfish, not coelacanth, is the closest relative of tetrapods.

And the final branches around humans:

66106131f4c2c0104bce463fb6a19b95.gif

So either the aliens pets were proto-bacteria or they only tinkered a little bit with a local species.

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If homo sapiens didn't develop in Africa how do they explained the oldest  bones found in the migration into what is now Israel that died out and into Asia and Europe ?

 

Edited by docyabut2
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On 5/25/2017 at 3:34 PM, Gingitsune said:


A phylogenetic tree of a broad selection of jawed vertebrates shows that lungfish, not coelacanth, is the closest relative of tetrapods.

Is that a young Andy Kaufman being used as a representative for humans?

I also notice that "Loki" and "Thor" are represented among the eukaryotes.

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Ho hum, another fragment for paleoanthropologists to squabble over.   One authority will say X, another will say Z, a third will say Y.  In fifty years time, more evidence will turn up which will show that one was right or they were all wrong.  

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On 5/23/2017 at 1:46 PM, seanjo said:

Pretty much the same evidence they used to decide that human life had started in Africa.

 

But I remain sceptical of all theories until more evidence is produced.

Well not really true, some of the most complete and comprehensive remains of "ape" ancestors have been found in Africa (Richard Leaky research in Ethiopia) and Wit University in South Africa (cradle of human kind) sure none as old as 7.2 million years ago, but lots of fossils and more being found regularly in Africa. 

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