Oldest man in China

S.A.M.

S.A.M.

uniquely dreadful
Valued Senior Member
The remains of one of the earliest modern humans to inhabit eastern Asia have been unearthed in a cave in China.

The find could shed light on how our ancestors colonised the East, a movement that is only poorly understood by anthropologists.

Researchers found 34 bone fragments belonging to a single individual at the Tianyuan Cave, near Beijing.

According to the "Out of Africa" theory, modern humans (Homo sapiens) evolved in East Africa and then spread out across the globe about 70,000 years ago, replacing earlier, or archaic, human populations, such as the Neanderthals, with very little, if any, interbreeding.

The Tianyuan remains display diagnostic features of modern H. sapiens. But co-author Erik Trinkaus and his colleagues argue, controversially, that the bones also display features characteristic of earlier human species, such as relatively large front teeth.

The most likely explanation, they argue, is interbreeding between early modern humans emerging from Africa and the archaic populations they encountered in Europe and Asia.

"The pattern we see across the Old World is basically a modern human in terms of its newly emerged characteristics, but also a minority of traits that are absent or lost in the earliest modern humans in East Africa," Professor Trinkaus told the BBC News website.

"The question is where did they get them from? Either they re-evolved them, which is not very likely, or, to some degree, they interbred with archaic groups.

He added that evidence from the animal world suggested two closely related species, which have been separate for less than two million years, could interbreed successfully when given the opportunity to mate.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6518527.stm
 
Aren't East Asian Orientals today still known for large front teeth?

It used to be a sterotype that Japanese and Chinese people had buckteeth.
 
samcdkey said:
The most likely explanation, they argue, is interbreeding between early modern humans emerging from Africa and the archaic populations they encountered in Europe and Asia.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6518527.stm
Click to expand...

I don't get it. The neanderthals home country was western europe but homo sapiens which separated from them are mostly rh positive. the caucasian race has the highest percentage of rh negative blood which can be linked to the neanderthals. So is it saying that homo sapiens and neanderthals mated.

I always knew that probably was true. You see many neanderthals to this very day!
 
Considering blood with antibodies will win out over those that don't, it is obvious why homo sapiens proliferated and had an advantage over neanderthals. As well, history has many examples of European settlers who quite unintentionally won out against native populations because the latter had no antibodies against diseases such as measles which the Europeans brought with them.

The puzzle pieces fit.
 
MANY BELIEVE.... MAN... did not come out of africa..

but... evolved all over the world... at the same time...

with breeding... inter-breeding all along the way.

humaniods have been found... 3 million years ago... in china.

-MT
 
I am quite familiar with the author of this article. Erik Trinkaus is very famous for his stance on Neanderthals being related to Homo sapiens, and for his research studies on the mutual influence that each had on each other. He is a very respectable paleoanthropologist at Washington University. He does, however, have controversial view in that he considers Neanderthals to be more "normal" than Homo sapiens. I believe that his most recent paper is, "Modern Humans versus Neandertal Evolutionary Distinctivenes."

Trinkaus is a revolutionary thinker in the paleontology field. He proposes that we should rethink the framework of the Earth being divided up between what we now refer to as the "West" and the "East." In this respect, this is why Trinkaus rethinks the human evolutionary patterns of migration in his shifting perspective.

There's a pretty good Science Daily article about this at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/08/050821233037.htm

See also the Wikipedia article on Erik trinkaus at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Trinkaus

He has a Homepage at: http://artsci.wustl.edu/~anthro/blurb/b_trink.html
 
Prince_James said:
Aren't East Asian Orientals today still known for large front teeth?

It used to be a sterotype that Japanese and Chinese people had buckteeth.
Click to expand...
Yes. This is the observation, but you are taking it one step forward from what they are saying here. So you shouldn't be taking it that one step forward without any empirical evidence. Although it is a very plausible assumption. This is a very tricky subject that needs to be meticulously analyzed with the utmost caution.
 
Valich:

Certainly, but it is peculiar that a bucktoothed ancient human should be found in an area known to produce bucktoothed people even today.
 
valich said:
Yes. This is the observation, but you are taking it one step forward from what they are saying here. So you shouldn't be taking it that one step forward without any empirical evidence. Although it is a very plausible assumption. This is a very tricky subject that needs to be meticulously analyzed with the utmost caution.
Click to expand...

This is not profound in any way. They are not saying modern humans originated from east asia or the west. H. sapien interbred with groups in asia and the west. This makes sense considering when two groups live in close proximity, some will end up interbreeding. With migration to different territory, genes will mutate over time in adaptation to the environment. This repeats itself as migration continues with reinterbreeding along the way. Just the same in current time for example if a caucasian migrates to asia or in the states as different races intermingle. But rhpositive h. sapein in the past evolutionary scenario would dominate and win out because others did not have any immunity. With this geneswapping there is modern h.sapien with traits from all. Either way though, I'm pretty sure all of us have current genes and traits which can be traced to archaic groups including the neanderthals which we tend to disassociate with. If you take a current halfbreed today, it's difficult to attribute what came from who when blended. We know about the neanderthals but there probably was another distinct group or tribe in east asia. The truth is organic life is messy and to box groups up without any association is highly unrealistic.

Here is a good link
http://www.aoi.com.au/bcw/neanderbasque.htm
 
I agree with your analysis although I lost the train of thought on this and have to review the articles again. I was commenting mostly on his comment that: "It used to be a sterotype that Japanese and Chinese people had buckteeth." This is too great of an evolutionary assumption to be made without empirical evidence, though it does have merit. You're right. It is not profound in any way, and that is what I am also saying.

I think the consensus is that we still do not know for certain whether or not homo sapiens and neanderthals mated or interbred. This is a good thread. I hope we can keep it going.
 
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