Friday, December 31, 2010

All change: Theories of human ancestry get an overhaul

Article in BBC News Online, today 31st December, 2010

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12093345
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2 comments:

  1. I have only just started to read your book on the "humans that went exctinct" - but I've already started to like it - and I think I can tell that you wouldn't like this SciAm article very much: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=human-ancestors-in-eurasia-earlier&WT.mc_id=SA_DD_20110607

    All the usual stuff you complain about is there: whole clades and species based on a few scraps of evidence, wild models of geographical routes, and a nice theory about what got H.erectus from Africa to Dmanisi.

    But there is also on thing there that made me wonder. As absurd as it seems that these early Georgians had jogged all the way from Africa to the Caucasus just because they'd found a taste of meat (and then jogged back to keep evolving in Africa again), it does seem that bands of humans do not onle just disperse the way doves do. The kids moving in two miles down the valley may be one model of widening the area of distribution, but groups of people do move together in search of better habitats or food (especially if that food is mobile too) or to avoid conflict or whatever.And they do so for long distances at a time at times. Why should that kind of movement not have sped up proto-people on their way to Dmanisi or Java or Australia or wherever?

    Sorry if this comment is somewhat garbled .... maybe I should just read on anyway ...

    A great read so far, in any case.

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  2. Thanks for your reference. I'll follow it and back for review.

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