160,000 year old human skulls discovered

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by elijah
Why is there that fossil gap between 100'000 and 300'000 years? I guess this makes us a very young species, which is ...weird.

Well, there isn't now so much of a gap, as this find is 160,000 years old.

Most of the species alive today are young. That's due to the nature of evolution/extinction and such. We do have some very ancient species (sharks, for example), but even they aren't unchanged from their ancestors (unless you come across a megalodon at some point, which we all hope never happens).

The answer is that it is one of the truths of anthropology that there are certain periods wherein we have gaps in the fossil record, and this is true over all time periods, and more prevalent the farther back you go. Out of a time span of maybe 3 billion years of life on the planet, a gap of 100,000 or so years is pretty small.

[Sava]

That's one area that I plan on staying ingorant on for as long as possible.

Fearing death is irrational. Death would logically be the same state as pre-birth. I don't remember that as being so bad. Most likely, death will be an infinitely long sleep. A total state of non-consciousness. But I agree that since we're alive, we should at least learn as much as possible and live our lives to the fullest.

Can I get a "Hallelujah?"

I'll give you a "w00t w00t!", but that's it.

[Lonestar]

The team concluded, "In this sense, we are all African."

so....

YO YO YO muthafukah! Respect this shiznit... don't be a playa hatah!


(I know, I know, it's just "Ghetto". Let me have my fun)

[Sava]

you a whacked out cracka

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by Lonestar


so....

YO YO YO muthafukah! Respect this shiznit... don't be a playa hatah!


(I know, I know, it's just "Ghetto". Let me have my fun)

holla back yo!

[Boris Godunov]

And...that's enough of that.

[Sava]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
And...that's enough of that.

don't hate the playa, hate the game... foo!@

[Berzerker]

Good find, but we need more fossils from the 300-000 to 150,000 range. But what's interesting about the article is that some of the scientists conclude this is another nail in the Neandertal-Cro-Magnon evolutionary connection. Think about that! If older anatomically ~modern humans speak against a connection to Neandertals, why do these scientists still claim we evolved from homo erectus? They've discovered homo erectus fossils in Indonesia dated to as recently as ~40,000 years old!!! Something strange happened in East Africa around 250,000 years ago, and according to a Zulu medicine man, humans - the "artifical ones" - were fighting against the "ape"men in the "mythic" past...

[Urban Ranger]

You meant the Java Man?

Of course, there's also the Peking Man.

[Berzerker]

No, Java Man was the name given to Dubois'(?) find long ago that first showed homo erectus made it to Indonesia. The fossil evidence for Indonesia so far shows erectus in stasis from the time they arrived to as recently as ~40,000 years ago while Africa was seeing a variety of archaic peoples diverging away from erectus around 200,000-300,000 years ago with anatomically modern humans appearing ~120,000 years ago.

[Dr. A. Cula]

Slightly off-topic, about Genesis: a few years ago, I was talking to a catholic priest. Someone asked how does he explain the fact that geologists say Earth is a few billion years old and the Bible says in was all made in 6 days. I remember his words exactly: "Yes, the Bible does say Creation took 6 days, but it doesn't say that one of those days lasted for 24 hours". So, unless the Pope says otherwise, I'll stick to that.

Disclaimer: by this I did not mean to start a holy war/crusade/jihad (tm), just to state a fact. Thank you for your attention.

[Jack the Bodiless]

It's true that recent specimens of Homo Erectus have apparently been found, but that doesn't mean that Sapiens didn't evolve from Erectus. There is no "law" which says that an ancestor species must become extinct when a new species evolves from it. Pockets of the older species can survive in isolated areas.

[Berzerker]

"Yes, the Bible does say Creation took 6 days, but it doesn't say that one of those days lasted for 24 hours".

The word for "day" in Genesis is used in other places when talking about days as we know them.

Jack, that's true, but they can't find serious evidence of ANY homo erectus outside of Africa "evolving" into more modern peoples except for Neandertals which arrived in Europe ~750,000 years ago (under a different classification of course), and their main improvement was brain size. If anything, Neandertals were even more heavily built than erectus. Only in Africa do we see this divergence of archaic humans and this happened 100,000-300,000 years ago.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Dr. A. Cula
Slightly off-topic, about Genesis: a few years ago, I was talking to a catholic priest. Someone asked how does he explain the fact that geologists say Earth is a few billion years old and the Bible says in was all made in 6 days. I remember his words exactly: "Yes, the Bible does say Creation took 6 days, but it doesn't say that one of those days lasted for 24 hours". So, unless the Pope says otherwise, I'll stick to that.

Disclaimer: by this I did not mean to start a holy war/crusade/jihad (tm), just to state a fact. Thank you for your attention.

If a "day" in Genesis means like, oh, 300,000,000 years, then you should ask the priest how, according to the order of creation, day and night appeared before we had the sun, and during the period sans sun, how the plants photosynthesized.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov

If one takes a literal interpretation of the Bible, and traces the geneologies and time frame given for specified events (Tower of Babel, Flood, etc), it's feasible to approximate that Genesis begins roughly 8-10 thousand years ago.

Ah yes, the great Bishop Ussher provided much entertainment in first year Geology class. Is teaching Creationism compulsory in these classes in the US too?

Yes indeed, from taking every reference in the Bible at face value (whatsit begat thingummy and suchlike), he decided that the first day of Creation was exactly Sunday October 23 4004 BC. I know Star Trek fans who do the same thing with Voyager. I guess that makes the good Bishop the original fanboy.

Originally posted by Sava
don't hate the playa, hate the game... foo!@

Hey, I can dig it.






SUCKAAAAA!