There were THREE types of ancient humans

[silverfox]

There were THREE types of ancient humans: 30,000-year-old fossils prove Neanderthals and modern humans were not the only species on Earth

I'm quite prepared to believe this but it does worry me that an old bone or tooth lead scientists to such conclusions.

If I had a pound for every time some scientists find a fragment of an old bone/tooth and declare it to be (take your pick):

a new species of dinosaur

a third species of elephant

a third group of humans

Commonsense tells us humans didn't all evolve in Africa and somehow colonise the world (a scientific myth). You've only got to look around you to tell we're not all from the same stock.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1340830/There-THREE-types-ancient-humans-30-000-year-old-finger-fossil-new-species.html

[DJKillaQueen]

Errrm that's not quite correct...check out mitocondrial DNA for example.

The thinking has been for some time that several forms of human evolved but ultimately some died out and one form continued to evolve into us today. There is nothing new in any of this. Evolution works exactly in that way. Guess that's what happens when the daily mail becomes the source for anthropological education.

Plus Africa didn't exist as a contnent in it own right at the early evolutionary period of mankind. That's what enabled early humans to migrste accross europe...there were no oceans to cross...so Africa is relative to origin. It would be more correct to say we originted from the same part of a grand land mass which eventually split and flooded to form the continents that we recogniose today. And the part of that land mass from which we originated is what we know as Equatorial Africa today, because in terms of earth evolution it provided the first ideal conditions for life of any kind.

[silverfox]

Don't you smell a rat here DJKQ? The cavemen have been called Denisovans and the tooth and bone were found in Siberia.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich who told of his time in a Siberian Gulag.

I wouldn't get too sniffy about the sources of anthropological education if I were you. 30,000 year old mitocondrial DNA must be a bit suspect. You may find some of the great 'discoveries' are due more to trying to hold on to sources of finance for such study than hard science.

[SeanMacGabhann]

A commonsense eh? remind me why commonsense tells us this?

[Jeremy]

silverfox - are you suggesting that different races are actually different species?

[Huguenot]

Erm... Not sure if this is a wind up?

In Russian the suffix often changes e meaning of the original word.

'ovich' is often called a 'patronymic' because it tells you the name of the father. Hence Ivan Denisovich means John son of Denis. These names were chosen because they were so popular in Russia that they represented 'everyone' in much the same way that John Smith does in the UK. Ivan was supposed to represent every Russian ensnared by the regime.

'ova' means ownership, and is often used by women to denote marriage. They add it to the husbands surname to become their new surname.

However, in this case 'Denisova Cave' simply means 'the cave belonging to Denis'. Denis was a local hermit who lived there a couple of hundred years ago.

The choice of name has absolutely no bearing on the veracity of this find.

I've no idea what the other point you're making is?

[DJKillaQueen]

From what I saw on the news, it's simply a case that another species of human evolved alongside the ones we already know about and it too died out like the other ones that we already know about. We don't know why it died out or why indeed our own species survived, beyond speculative theories.

None of that has any bearing on whether the species that we evolved from migrated out of the land mass we now call Africa or not.....so equally confused as you H on the point of the OP.

A note to the OP...there's an excellent book...that's not overtly technical on the subject of DNA and anthropology called 'The Journey of Man - A Genetic Odyssey' by Spencer Wells. It explains in convicing detail why DNA has presented an accepted theory that we are all descneded from Africa.

[Marmora Man]

Just to add to debate / confusion it is reported that the "third" species may have intermingled with Neandertal and Homo Sapiens so that some modern "humans" carry some genes from these extinct species. This seems to be not improbable.

[HAL9000]

This discovery represents four 'human' sub-species co-existing in recent prehistory if one includes Homo floresiensis.

Edited for clarity.

[Brendan]

I?ve just read a 1 page introduction to quantum mechanics and I don?t think I agree with it. Goes against common sense. I?m off to start a thread challenging the basic hypothesis of the field.

[nashoi]

Plus Africa didn't exist as a contnent in it own right at the early evolutionary period of mankind. That's what enabled early humans to migrste accross europe...there were no oceans to cross...so Africa is relative to origin. It would be more correct to say we originted from the same part of a grand land mass which eventually split and flooded to form the continents that we recogniose today. And the part of that land mass from which we originated is what we know as Equatorial Africa today, because in terms of earth evolution it provided the first ideal conditions for life of any kind.

I think your timing might be a bit off here.

[DJKillaQueen]

Probably yes lol......but early migration from A-B was determined by environment and ease of terrain to move. That is the only significance in Africa being a starting point.

[mockney piers]

Blimey djqk, only a couple of hundred million years out!

think you're confusing it with the rise and fall of oceans due to far far far far far more recent glacial period, the peaks and troughs of the hundred thousand years leading up to the end of the glacial period 10,000 years ago.

Stephen Oppenheimer did a couple of good books, Eden in the East and Origins of the British which are a great starting point.

Basically Europeans are all Mesopotamian and Brits are all spaniards. Mwah hah hah.

[Dickensman]

Yes there are thre types of people, the people like us who are sweet natured and positively delightful in every way.

Then there are the mugging thieving rogues and riff-raff who are no good to anyone but the undertaker.

Then there are bankers, lawyers, politicians, insurance pedlars..........................please add any I have missed.

[Jeremy]

DJKillaQueen Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> That's what enabled early humans to migrste

> accross europe...there were no oceans to

> cross.

Isn't Africa still connected to Europe? I thought it was...

[mockney piers]

Ooh, and no one has the foggiest idea where (or precisely how) life of any kind started, but earth 3-4 billion (!!!!!!!!!!!!!) years ago bore no resemblance to anything we can refer to today.

[Brendan]

Humans have always migrated far further and more easily along coastlines and waterways than across land masses.

[DJKillaQueen]

And settled along rivers etc....of which many very long ones run through some continents.

Yeah I conceed my timeline of techtonic plate momvement is way out lol.....

But I still hold that where we originate from holds no real significance apart from if one is a member of the BNP (and really do believe that modern man began with the Saxons) it seems.

[Huguenot]

I don't think silverfox's point was a racist one, I think it was a religious one.

For literal interpreters of the Bible, ridicule of evolution relies heavily on the absence of a 'missing link'. The discovery of genetic markers demonstrating the evolutionary process is a hard cross to bear for those insisting the world is 4,000 years old, and mankind is special.

Likewise silverfox had to have a crack at 'out of Africa'. For god botherers, we didn't emerge from Africa, but from the Garden of Eden after being put there by God, and women were fashioned an evil subsidiary role to men, and should still be paying the price.

[DJKillaQueen]

I hadn't even considered a religious motivation, probably because, in spite of missing links, the evidence for evolution is so overwhelming.

[mockney piers]

Damn these scientific myths. How much easier to believe we were created from mud in a place without sin, where the lions used to cuddle the donkeys and woman was made from a rib 4000 years ago.

That's scriptural fact!

[silverfox]

Did the first humans originate in the Middle East?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1341973/Did-humans-come-Middle-East-Africa-Scientists-forced-write-evolution-modern-man.html

The problem with theories is that they are just that - theories. This is what I mean when I talk about scientific myths. The theory is accepted as fact by a gullible public. In years to come when the Antarctic is less frozen more human-like bones will be found and scientists will be running round like headless chickens trying to revise their theories. This is why I keep banging on about the religious like belief of science and those who lap it up.

[mockney piers]

Science doesnt have issues with discoveries that shed new light or even undermine current theories. That's what science is about.

A gullible public doesn't lap it up, because they don't read obscure scientific journals.

A gullible public puts too much import on the dreadful standard of scientific reporting in mainstream journalism in organs such as the daily mail.

And again, no ones gullible if they believe the earth is 4000 years old, but they are if they believe anything a 'scientist'* tells them.

And how exactly can a scientific discovery undermine science again? I've said it before, science and religion are chalk and cheese. It always smacks of deedsperation when religion co-opts scientific language/theories to undermine it. It makes no sense to me.

Stick to faith and ignore science. It only threatens religion if the individual is uneasy that faith is undermined.

In this case I feel he doth protest too much the gentleman.

If this is actually part of the intrinsic evangelism of Christianity, then I fear your call to arms is falling on deaf ears.

*read journalist.

[DJKillaQueen]

Well said Mockney and the evidence I'm afraid silverfox IS overwhelming. DNA in fact was the final nail in the coffin of those determined to dismiss Darwin as 'fantasy'.

What I often find with those that easily dismiss science is that they are lazy in their beliefs as well as misguided. There is tons of evidence, and scientific process that works again and again and makes sense if only they look for themselves.

After all, science comes up with a theory and then tests that theory by trying to disprove it. Scientists are way more skeptical than theologoians, but the difference is that whilst one works hard to find the truth, the other lazily takes for truth the views of a belief system that is based on very little truth and worse still shamelessly thinks that is somehow superior to the hard work of science.

[silverfox]

This is an interesting example of the psychology of group dynamics. No where have I mentioned religion and yet you've all decided this was some sort of fundamentalist attack on science.

my point is, if it is not true that human origins originated in Africa then your belief in that falsehood was as silly as you regard the story of Adam and Eve being silly. You would have believed a scientific myth.