Human Kind not a Homo sapien. Another example of the flawed system of classifying ancient PeopleKind http://news.yahoo.com/300-000-old-caveman-39-campfire-39-found-152628371.html "A newly discovered hearth full of ash and charred bone in a cave in modern-day Israel hints that early humans sat around fires as early as 300,000 years ago before Homo sapiens arose in Africa. . . " From H. habilus on they were H. sapien via continuity through continuous hybridization. Could a person today produce an off spring by H. habilus that would be fertile ? If yes, then of the same species. Moi Quel primitif
You are not ready to tell scientists they dont know how to do their work. It is Homo sapiens, not "sapien" and "habilis" not "habilus" A cow and an american bison can produce a fertile offspring, so your idea about species could use a little brushing up, dont you think so?
Fire may have been used by erectus as long as 1.5 million years ago... With out dna there is no way to determine what you propose...but I would say habilis and sapiens is out of the question...
I long ago stopped paying attention to these stories because, interesting as they may be, they're inevitably contradicted or complicated by data from the next discovery. Our knowledge is too scant to make more than plausible conjectures about the remote past. Go to the archives of the NY Times to find several decades of stories about discoveries compelling revision of theories about our origins. They all seem persuasive ... until new data demolishes them.
Remember those skulls of several ancient HumanKinds found in a cave in the Caucasus ? Armenia maybe. Within the last year or two. I believe their brain case was no bigger than H. habilus although they have not been so identified. They no doubt had to have some smarts, culture, planning, to have lived there in their time. Probably even curing hides and sewing to create garments. And they must have had some fire even if they could only maintain it and not create it. ref. Quest for Fire Wyly What were they in your book? Check with your daughter too. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/july-dec13/ancestry2_10-18.html Those folks. What were they? taikoo - YES ! And in my lifetime I have witnessed my positions winning as the scientist were disproven. PM me if you would like some of my list. Neanderthal genes in most of "us" is my recent big win over decades of arguing with an "anthropologist" woo woo Moi Think it through. Think FREE View attachment 25062 Quel Primitif
The thing with this discovery, it is not so much the fire pits themselves, but what else we find that might change things. Most evidence points to humans developing culture around 100,000 years ago. If the right artifacts are discovered around the area of the pits, it may lead to a bit of a rethink about current theories
Cross breeding between Erectus and Sapiens might be a slim possibility, as they likely overlap in existence....Habilis however predates both by millions of years. Neanderthal is pretty much a given, as Sapien existed at the same time in many of the same locations...and genetics have shown we have a bit of them in us.
Iike tecoyah I think to much time would've passed and the likelyhood of a fertile hybrid would be small...the genetic evidence for a link to neanderthal is very small even though we apparently occupied the same regions for some 70k years...so it would appear very little genetic exchange occured...if we were closely related I would've expected neanderthal to have been completely assimulated by the more numerous sapiens, but that never happened...and as I understand the dna evidence that the genetic mix occurred very early on near the the time of initial contact... Donkeys and horses have hybrid offspring, the males are always sterile but occasionally the females are fertile....maybe that was the case with neanderthals...maybe there was only a single viable offspring in 70k of contact that supplied the dna contribution to our modern populations...if that is case we are not all that close genetically and habilis even further removed genetically...
i have no idea...i read the other day that cows and bison can interbreed, I don't know if that's true though...
You're quite right, and it's interesting. But a year from now we may read of a new discovery from 500,000 years ago, forcing yet another revision. We just don't have complete data, so we make shaky inferences.
"The American bison and European bison(wisent) have been hybridized with Domestic Cattle. With wisent, this was originally done in an attempt to reinvigorate the declining wisent population. First generation hybrid males are sterile, but females may be crossed back to either a wisent or domestic bull to produce fertile males. Modern wisent herds keep hybrids well isolated from pure wisent. However, since the modern purebred wisent are descended from less than 2 dozen individuals, this has resulted in a significant genetic bottleneck for the purebred wisent. European bison (Wisent) have also been crossed with domestic cattle to produce the zubron. These were first bred in Poland in 1847 as hardy, disease resistant alternatives to domestic cattle. Breeding was discontinued in the 1980s. The few remaining zubron can be found at Bialowieski National Park. American bison bulls (American "buffalo") have been crossed with domestic cattle to produce beefalo and cattalo. These are variable in type and colour, depending on the breed of cattle used e.g. Herefords and Charolais (beef cattle), Holsteins (dairy) or Brahman (humped cattle). Generally, they are horned with heavy set forequarters, sloping backs and lighter hindquarters. Beefalo have been back-crossed to bison and to domestic cattle; some of these resemble pied bison with smooth coats and a maned hump. The aim is to produce high protein, low fat and low cholesterol beef on animals which have "less hump and more rump". Although bison bull/domestic cow crossings are more usual, domestic bull/bison cow crossings have a lower infant mortality rate (cow immune systems can reject hybrid calves). Modern beefalo include fertile bulls, making the beefalo a variety of "improved cattle" with a dash of bison. There were suggestions of crossing the beefalo to Cape buffalo, although this idea essentially ended when the Cape buffalo was found to have 52 chromosomes (instead of 60 as in cattle and bison), meaning that the hybrid's success would be unlikely. Bull and cow cattalos are reported in Wonders of Animal Life edited by J A Hammerton (1930)."
it is true, and they can produce viable offspring. They dont look much alike. Gotta find a paleontologist to ask, i bet they have diverged at least as long ago as H. sapiens and H. habilis. The auroch and bison are not even considered to be the same genus. i kind of think that any two of the same genus should be able to interbreed.
OT but there is the most incredible youtube of a guy in S Africa who found a way to make friends with wild cape buffalo. its really something to watch.
That is why it is such an exciting field - Just when we think we have those ancients worked out - Bang they jump up and bight us again
The original objection to bothering with the latest discovery is akin to saying he dont read nothing 'bout the civil war, coz they keep larnin' new stuff that invalidates them old ideas. Data does not change. The oldest know this or that is still at the same level and date, when something older is found. The civil wat still happened when they say it did. The fire pit was there with people using it, when they say it was. The oldest known was originally presented as "oldest known" the biggest as the biggest known, and so on. Science is always like that. No conclusions, just more data. if that is boring, then it is. Life is boring, so jump off a bridge.
I saw that too on a documentary, dispels myths of their ferocious temperament.. they do kill people but that's understandable when they've been shot, animals tend to get angry when that happens...
horses and zebras are but still have sterile young...so there doesn't appear to be a simple straight line that can be drawn to differentiate species and viability...but based on how little neanderthal and sapiens intermingled and habilis was much much further back in time it seems unlikely to me...without dna I can't see it ever being verified...
i think in a way, the garden of eden story is true, we could freely mingle with most animals, no problem, if we'd quit teaching them that we are bad news. lions, i dont know about trusting them if they get hungry.
And brown bears and polar bears. They can interbreed. Assuming homo habilis had 46 chromosomes, which is reasonable, I would think it likely they could interbreed. I just doubt they would. I mean, that's really the last girl at the bar at closing time before you make that move.
check out you tube and see what the buffaloes will do to lions when they get the chance...it's not for the squeamish...
well this is really fortuitous it supports my earlier post...I was just reading today's news stories from around the world and more revelations in regards to neanderthal sapien DNA were released...it appears that from the genetic evidence that sapiens and neanderthal mixtures resulted in mostly sterile offspring, very few appear to have been viable...that suggests neanderthals and sapiens were at the very limits of genetic compatibility, so those early meetings some 100K ago were likely the only ones to result in viable children... If this holds true I'll have bragging rights in my household for a while, it's gets a bit tiresome having my daughter wave her two degrees in my face to claim victory in any archeology debate....
The scientific classification of plants and animals changed recently due to the influence of the study and understanding of DNA, and then Genome maps. Currently the Homo part of Homo sapiens (Modern humans), or Homo Habilus, is a classification term: Genus. To further explain this, "Pan" is another Genus that contains Chimpanzees and a collection of Chimpanzee-like animals. A Genus isn't strictly a DNA category of linear evolution, but actually it can contain any number of parallel species who belong to the same Family of creatures, just as long as they have a common ancestor to the modern example. This is basically a shaky definition used to lump together Humans and several old, human-like animals. These are NOT the same Species. And, just because a human-like animal was part of the Genus "Homo" it doesn't mean they were an earlier form of modern human. The Homo Genus contains a pretty diverse group of creatures spanning several million years. Homo Models [Public domain], by ישראל קרול, from Wikimedia Commons And, perhaps, regarding time and the sophistication of their body forms, extreme ends of these groups wouldn't even be able to breed with us and they would look very different like other apes compare to us now. Homo habilis is the oldest, non controversial, member of the "Homo" Genus, existing over 2 million years ago. Because Genus (a higher order) isn't a species (a lower order), no it's doubtful that any possible offspring between us and them would result in the same species. Unless somehow the fetus decided to become one species over the other instead of becoming a, perhaps sterile, hybrid. Of course since all "Homo" animals, but except for modern Humans, are extinct we have no idea what breeding potential our various DNA genetic codes would allow for. Well, until they study this in a genetics lab. But, first, we need Genome maps of the others (we already have those maps for modern humans and Neanderthals). Now, if you want to move past the Genus level, Here is a more complete, extended list of "humans," beyond just the Homo Genus: look at their skulls: List of human evolution fossils.
Recently I saw an image of a Neanderthal with his hair tied up and wearing beads. Then there are the more brutish images we are more familiar. So what is HumanKind Are the humanoids found in the Georgian cave with a brain case 1/3 of mine, or 1/2 of wyly's - are they people ? Living as they did, where they did, convinces me they had some technology beyond sticking a twig in a termite mound to collect insects. http://creation.com/dmanisi <edit> Rather than lumping Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis with Homo erectus, I have previously argued that they should instead be lumped in with the australopithecines, possibly as the same species as Australopithecus sediba, and I see no reason to change this assessment because of Skull 5.9 One reason is that one also has to consider the rest of the skeleton (the postcranial remains). Whilst there are no postcranial remains reliably linked to Homo rudolfensis,10 the only set of postcranial remains linked with Homo habilis sensu stricto that are associated with taxonomically diagnostic cranial elements is OH 62, and its estimated limb-length proportions are as ape-like as Australopithecus afarensis.11 In fact, one evolutionist has argued that although living nearly a million and a half years after Lucy, the OH62 animal was more ape-like in form than she.12 As for the Dmanisi specimens, an earlier study by Lordkipanidze et al. described the Dmanisi postcranial remains as having derived features that include modern-human-like body proportions and lower limb morphology indicative of the capability for long-distance travel.13 That the Dmanisi individuals appear to have long legs and short arms based on the fossils that have been found,14 is very different from the relatively long arms still adapted for climbing in Homo habilis.8 Also, despite Skull 5 being described as having had a number of primitive features: a long apelike face, large teeth and a tiny braincase,15 the skulls vertically orientated upper face and the shape of the braincase distinguish it from Australopithecus.3 The skulls braincase has been described as shaped like a typical H. erectus despite its small size. <edit> Are they Us or Them ? Moi No
