Until now, we only had fragments of these cousins. Now we have face. Studying our evolutionary development and our sister-species is one of my favorite aspects of archeology. We’re constantly developing new information.
Side note: look up the initial presentation of Homo naledi. The leading archeologist did a phenomenal talk a couple of years ago (I think in December). It was really an exciting presentation. But I’m also pretty nerdy.
is big if true, so far we knew they existed due to DNA tests on small fragments of bones, quite a small footprint for a whole subspecies
Imagine being so ugly future anthropologists misclassify you?
I understand why we give them different names…
But they’re not really different, it’s just human variation. Like a German shepherd and a beagle, they’re still both dogs and can still reproduce, which is why they’re not separate species.
So all those other hominids whose DNA we still carry…
They’re still the same species as us. Our branch of the family tree just has the “uncanny valley” hatred, so anyone that doesn’t look like who we grew up around became “them”. So we pruned the shit out of our family tree till it’s basically a straight line.
There’s a lot of shit racists came up with 200 years ago that we just haven’t thrown out yet, but it’s going to take a while before we get the widespread acceptance that all those “distant relatives” really weren’t that different than us.
All the shit that was supposed to make us “special” was present so far back on the family tree that it’s almost statistically impossible for only our branch to keep those traits and everyone else to have lost them.
We’re still in the moving goalposts phase of why we were special snowflakes, but another couple decades and we might finally widely acknowledge the truth
I mean, disagree. The DNA pretty conclusively proves the other homonids were not us, just a distant part of us. Same genus, different species.
If they were alive today they’d be extremely distinct, but we’d still be able to interbreed, think like wolves vs dogs.
All races of homo sapien came from a species out of Africa at the same time. Some stayed, others wandered and intermingled with other homonids mixing our DNAs.
I think it is more like tigers and lions. Neanderthal human hybrids were likely less fertile, particularly any hybrid with a Neanderthal y chromosome. This has gone extinct.
There are…less pleasant explanations for the extinction of the neanderthal y chromosome
We dont talk about that
Same genus, different species.
Species can’t interbreed…
That’s like, the main thing for speciation
think like wolves vs dogs.
You mean like one species? You do know wolves and dogs are still the same species if they can produce fertile offspring, right?
Like, there’s a lot of misunderstanding to unwrap here, but I’m thinking you think it’s a hard-line and a German Shepherd and a Chihuahua are the same distance from a Gray wolf…
That’s not real life, that’s the dumb downed version we teach 12 year olds in science class.
All races of homo sapien came from a species out of Africa at the same time
Wildly untrue, is that a typo or did you really mean that?
You really should read up on what actually makes a species a separate species, and stop just memorizing the list some racist made centuries ago…
Like, those same people said Africans were a separate species, do you believe that too?
If not, you really should take the time to learn what you’re talking about, instead of just repeating centuries old racist takes.
Organisms are grouped into species partly according to their morphological, or external, similarities, but more important in classifying sexually reproducing organisms is the organisms’ ability to successfully interbreed. Individuals of a single species can mate and produce viable offspring with one another but almost never with members of other species. Separate species have been known to produce hybrid offspring (for example, the horse and the donkey producing the mule), but, because the offspring are almost always inviable or sterile, the interbreeding is not considered successful.
And apologies, I did you a disservice by not replying to your single citation.
At the top of the definition:
however. Some examples include the ecological species concept, which describes a species as a group of organisms framed by the resources they depend on (in other words, their ecological niche), and the genetic species concept, which considers all organisms capable of inheriting traits from one another within a common gene pool and the amount of genetic difference between populations of that species.
The definition of genetic species are distinct due to more than just “can they successfully interbreed”. It’s more about their genetic drift and timeline.
Your own text extraction says things like “usually” and “almost always”, because we have distinct examples of this happening over and over.
Like most of science and nature it’s messy and categories are imperfect, but we use what we got to do the science we can.
Species can’t interbreed… That’s like, the main thing for speciation
False. Have you even tried looking this up? https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelmarshalleurope/2018/08/28/a-long-busted-myth-its-not-true-that-animals-belonging-to-different-species-can-never-interbreed/
You mean like one species? You do know wolves and dogs are still the same species if they can produce fertile offspring, right?
False. Wildly false. Where are you getting this from? Cite your sources.
Wildly untrue, is that a typo or did you really mean that?
You really should read up on what actually makes a species a separate species, and stop just memorizing the list some racist made centuries ago…
Based on what? Cite your sources. Otherwise you’re just spitting vibes and making up meanings for words. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_African_origin_of_modern_humans
False. Have you even tried looking this up?
They identified the right problem, but came up with the opposite of the right answer…
Similarly, human evolution was rife with interspecies sex. Modern humans have interbred with both Neanderthals and Denisovans, Neanderthals and Denisovans interbred, and Denisovans interbred with an unidentified hominin.
They’re saying because they could interbreed, it means some species can interbreed.
Because the author isn’t ready to acknowledge it means they’re the same species.
We really need to stick to one issue at a time if we’re gonna make any progress.
If you just want an argument, I’m not investing the time to help tho.
Quick edit:
Nevermind, double replies are a big red flag.
I apologize for the double reply, truly. Didn’t want to add a huge amount of text in an edit since I figured you’d reply quickly.
I’ll summarize my rebuttal thusly, and you can decide for yourself if you want to continue.
I think we’re arguing over the definition of species using two separate definitions. Encyclopedia Brittannica indicates that genetic species is a distinct definition from the definition of biological species.
Is it fair to say that genetically these homonids are extremely closely related, but had distinct populations with distinct traits and morphology over time and across large geographies due to adaptive pressure?
So then the debate centers on when or if speciation occured with each of those definitions, which I don’t think is a really productive exercise. We’re basically saying the same things just differently.
Species can’t interbreed…
Explain mules lol
Mules are infertile. Cranky science person you are responding to does specify that in one of their rants.
A buffalo can breed with a domestic bull and produce fertile offspring
I’m not agreeing with cranky science person, just saying they specifically mentioned sterility in offspring as a thing in “cross species” mating.
We don’t know if hybrids of early humans were sterile. Since we have exactly zero mitochondrial DNA from Neanderthals, it may be the case that Sapiens fathers and Neanderthal mothers produced infertile offspring
It’s not just breeding. Are the offspring sterile? A male horse and a female donkey will get you a hinny, but they’re sterile. Male donkey and female horse makes a mule, which are almost always sterile with a few exceptions.
This isnt a special snowflakes issue. This part of the scientific process.
If there is an issue with it, its that news media is hopping on every paper long before they are verified.
This isnt a special snowflakes issue
What I meant is the modern accepted view is that Homo Sapiens are, well, what the name implies. The smartest hominds.
We started out saying we knew that was true because of jewelry, burial rituals, and cave paintings. All of which were found in Europe and thought unique to us, specifically Europeans because everyone was hella racist back then.
Then we found out Neanderthals did all that, then we found out Denisovans did it…
Semi-recently we found out the last common ancestor we all shared also did those things that we claimed made Homo Sapiens “the smart ones”.
That’s what I mean later about moving the goalpost so we can still say we’re better.
We’re not smarter than the other hominds were.
We were just the one with an innate drive to kill other hominds that didn’t look exactly like what we grew up around. The vestiges of that is why “in group/out group” still develops in modern humans and why racism is a thing.
That, and we reproduced faster than others, which enabled the crazy levels of aggression. So even when the occasional hybrid tribe showed up, our genes would mostly drown out the genes of other hominids. Wed absorb a few good traits into the population, but still be mostly human in a short amount of time on the evolutionary timeline.
It’s not a pretty story, but all available evidence points to that being the reason why we’re the last standing homind. It’s just hard to admit.
Okay, so I agree on the first bit that goes into the “we are special” thing. See Sir PTerry’s bit on Pans Narrans over the egotistical Homo Sapiens.
I would note that every cultures default state was racism and exclusion, much like the notoriously violent Chimps and the less physically violent but no less ruthless rigid social hierachies of bonobos. Europeans do not have an exclusive lock on that.
Note that eastern cultures are still extremely racist and sexist, and were for a very long time before any meaningful direct contact with Europe. Also the original concept that Sapiens exclusively killed off Neanderthalensis (as well as Denisova) is wildly incorrect.
At least for Homo Erectus, we are absolutely smarter but physically weaker than them. Yeah they apparent could build wooden structures, but for tooling they never moved beyond stone hand axes for over a million years. as others have put it: “they early on perfected the hand held stone tool and never moved beyond it.”
It was really a combination of Homo Habilis and Homo Erectus that wiped out most of the other “human” species, not Homo Sapiens.
You seem to be focusing on intelligence which hasn’t been considered a particularly big factor past like homo-habilus since the 70s, Homo-sapiens were the most adaptive which basically allowed us to exist in any environment. Our biggest strength was our thermo regulation everything else was sub standard compared to the other human populations, but because of our weaknesses we basically had to pursue more advanced technology to compensate. A neanderthal could take a hit from a wooly rhino a Homo-sapien could not, so we made spear throwers and improved the spearheads.
Secondarily neanderthals killed each other about as often as different tribes would interact, this could actually explain their absurd level of population spread compared to actual population size. This population spread is also why they were going extinct before homo-sapiens moved into Eurasia, they were getting pretty damned inbred in a lot of areas.
Mankind is a prime example of survival of the fittest, we weren’t the strongest, biggest, or even smartest, but we were the most stubborn and willing to fuck everyone out of existence. Seriously a new consensus is that most of the other African homo went extinct because they started to interbreed to a massive degree, which Homo-sapiens emerged out of.
The “us and them” mentality that is a naturally human thought pattern has been made a fascinatingly black/white thought pattern in USA through all of their history, giving the need for a separate filter for most people when discovery of new “human species” is covered by US scientists or when reported by their news outlets, as the people and their news outlets are more superficial. As a European example of a difference, the most stereotypically Norwegian I know is a third generation Iraqi, but still being a 100% Norwegian.
