View Full Version : Science New human-like species discovered in South Africa
Feytalist
2015-09-10, 08:33 AM
Seems the remains of some up-to-now unknown human ancestor has been discovered. (http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34192447) No word of their exact age yet, but could be "up to three million years ago". Quite a few different specimens, too.
Sounds like quite a huge discovery.
But somewhat surprising to me, is that those cave systems have been studied and explored for many years now. I guess there's always something new to find.
This is an amazingly complete skeleton. I was expecting something like two or three bones.
Feytalist
2015-09-10, 08:53 AM
This is an amazingly complete skeleton. I was expecting something like two or three bones.
Yeah, quite.
And not just one, but 15 partials. Males and females, adults and juveniles. That's amazing.
"And so by the end of that remarkable 21-day experience, we had discovered the largest assemblage of fossil human relatives ever discovered in the history of the continent of Africa. That was an extraordinary experience."
Bulldog Psion
2015-09-10, 02:22 PM
If their teeth are essentially modern, that would suggest they already had fire for quite some time for food processing, wouldn't it?
georgie_leech
2015-09-10, 03:09 PM
Colour me interested, but I'll hold of on any judgments of mind-blowing until they are properly dated. A researcher's guess is just that, a guess. It could turn out to be something else entirely. Not to mention the possibility of a hoax.
Feytalist
2015-09-11, 03:12 AM
Colour me interested, but I'll hold of on any judgments of mind-blowing until they are properly dated. A researcher's guess is just that, a guess. It could turn out to be something else entirely. Not to mention the possibility of a hoax.
Fair enough. I'm no paleontologist, but surely they can ballpark the age down to at least a couple of millennia? Before exhaustive tests, I mean.
...or it could be a hoax :smallbiggrin: With that many remains, though...
Spacewolf
2015-09-11, 03:46 AM
Presumably the are dating it by rock layers and comparing the fossil to known specimens at this point unless there's a quick way of dating fossils I'm unaware of.
As for the teeth don't think so the smaller teeth are more to show that it belongs to a human ancestor as other great apes have larger canines. (Again working off my limited knowledge here)
Closet_Skeleton
2015-09-11, 08:10 AM
If their teeth are essentially modern, that would suggest they already had fire for quite some time for food processing, wouldn't it?
It certainly suggests that their diet was similar to (anatomically) modern humans but I think you'd need information about the gut as well to confirm that. An adaptation that's good for cooked food isn't necessarily an adaptation for cooked food. What it really means is that human teeth are very primitive.
If it is older than Homo Habilis but closer to modern humans, then it probably implies that Homo Habilis is a divergent branch and not a homo sapiens ancestor.
HOLY FREAKING BALLS!
Ok, just read through the paper linked from the story there.
This isn't a hoax, you can't hoax deposition of flowstone over geologically significant timespans, and there is flowstone partially covering some of the fossils.
No, this is HUGE, like I am amazed I haven't heard anything about it before, and I expect it to be showing up in pop science shows and even the freaking news channels before long.
They applied forensic techniques, bagged every bit of material removed for the excavation, 3-D scanned the site, recorded the whole process, streaming it all out, locked it down after it was found to contain hominins, and confirmed that the bones were not washed in there by floods.
They had to have arrived there either themselves in some strange repetitive death trap, catching babies, kids, adults, and seniors.
...or
They were carried in there and the chamber was used for ritualistic burial purposes.
These hominins have brains the size of a gorilla and hands which still show signs of climbing adaptations like a natural curl to the fingers, and were burying their dead nearly a hundred meters in a dark cave deliberately for generations it seems.
Flickerdart
2015-09-11, 01:15 PM
Just because they were burying their dead doesn't mean it was ritualistic - hiding corpses is a great way to not attract hyenas to the still-living members of the tribe.
Just because they were burying their dead doesn't mean it was ritualistic - hiding corpses is a great way to not attract hyenas to the still-living members of the tribe.
You don't have to go 80 meters in and 40 meters down through difficult climbs in the dark zone to do that.
They specifically brought them to a very difficult place for some reason. Simply avoiding scavengers doesn't justify the lengths they went too.
Heck they could have left them in the Dragon's Back room rather than going all the way back to the Dinaledi section and it would have worked just as well for keeping dangerous scavengers away.
But, the bodies would have been eaten by rodents and possible other vertebrates in there, while the deeper room left only invertebrates with access besides agile hominins.
Bulldog Psion
2015-09-11, 01:40 PM
Considering how massively upset I've seen dogs become when another dog dies, I think people tend to underestimate the ability of non-human animals to become attached to one another.
Heck, if this research (http://www.livescience.com/3818-love-powerful-sex-study-claims.html) is even partially correct, then something very like romantic or friendship feelings exist in things like voles.
To me, this smacks strongly of burial, which seems to consist of a psychological need to keep the dead with us. If we put them in a safe spot where we know they'll be, where their remains won't be destroyed by weather or scavengers, it seems to be the case that we feel they are still with us, just not animated any more. But we're still keeping people whom we value safe and present, in some sense.
If they were just looking to get rid of the dead to avoid attracting scavengers, why not toss them in the nearest river? More effective, less work. This sounds like "we want to keep them near us forever" type of thinking to me. And I don't see why a gorilla-sized brain couldn't handle that. Most animals aren't equipped to handle this type of stuff; but something with working hands and a rudimentary social structure could act on impulses that are probably present, but unrealizable, in other creatures.
They had to have arrived there either themselves in some strange repetitive death trap, catching babies, kids, adults, and seniors.
...or
They were carried in there and the chamber was used for ritualistic burial purposes.
Not to burst your bubble but unless there's hard evidence to the contrary (and I feel like this would be hard to come by) suggesting the "burials" happened with some time in between or such, or - something which I can't find in the article - the precise arrangement of the bodies suggesting a method behind it... I'm going to assume it was a family/tribe that got trapped in a cave in and died. Instead of apes having burial rituals. It just seems the more likely explanation. (No offense to their genus, of course)
Not to burst your bubble but unless there's hard evidence to the contrary (and I feel like this would be hard to come by) suggesting the "burials" happened with some time in between or such, or - something which I can't find in the article - the precise arrangement of the bodies suggesting a method behind it... I'm going to assume it was a family/tribe that got trapped in a cave in and died. Instead of apes having burial rituals. It just seems the more likely explanation. (No offense to their genus, of course)
I read the paper itself, they explain why this was multiple instances over a period of time (things like intact ankle/hand arrangements with different individual limbs resting across the long bones) and the deposition of sediment in the room itself took a while. The bones were all found within a certain layer but they were showing various patterns of weathering consistent with different periods of exposure to liquid and the cave invertebrates.
The fact that the bones weren't eaten, and that they could have easily climbed back out if they had already possessed the capabilty of getting in there, kinda precludes that possibility.
They covered it in great depth, they say that while they can't yet eliminate the possibility of it being a mass-death incident the specifics of the arrangements and condition and utter lack of vertebrate scavenging means the only things going in there were hominins, but none of them were eaten/eating/cutting up the bodies.
There are numerous alternate paths they could take through the cave which would lead easily back to the entrance without involving the very difficult and non-obvious climbs it takes to get back to the Dinaledi room. This isn't something you just stumble across blindly, we have been exploring the cave system for who knows how long and only a couple of amateur cavers had ever found the room before (one left survey pegs at some point in the 90's apparently, and a couple of the bones had been moved) so yeah... go check out the detail they go into to try and explain how these arrangements of bones could get there through another method.
They don't say it was ritualistic, but they do say it was most likely a deliberate burial practice, and the presence of bones on the far side of the room from the drains indicates that someone went down in there and put the bodies there.
None of them were panicky and clawing at the walls or fighting or eating each other, many healthy and remarkably intact skeletons of individuals which should have easily been capable of climbing back out were found in there, along with infants, children, teenagers, and elderly individuals.
If it was a spot where scared animals could blindly wander in and then succumb to a death trap repeatedly, one must ask why there are no other vertebrates in there?
Why did it take agile deliberate exploration by climbing bipeds to find it nowadays, and why did it apparently take the same to find it then?
Why would someone who could make it in there (again, not easy) do so with their entire family along for the ride?
Just doesn't hold up.
Ah, I just skimmed over the paper and mostly found discussion of biologic aspects, not of the cave or arrangement of the bones. Guess I should skim more carefully in the future :smallredface:
(Though I think it is hard to say how badly damaged all the bones where, considering what they found. I mean, there's not one complete skeleton, if everyone had one major bone broken it could have easily been a result of an unlucky stone fall or such. But yeah, i guess the theory doesn't hold up considering the rest)
Closet_Skeleton
2015-09-13, 06:11 PM
Just because they were burying their dead doesn't mean it was ritualistic - hiding corpses is a great way to not attract hyenas to the still-living members of the tribe.
You have a horribly narrow definition of ritualistic. You don't have to light candles and chant, any repeated pattern of behaviour can be ritual.
To me, this smacks strongly of burial, which seems to consist of a psychological need to keep the dead with us.
Or keep them the hell away from us. Lots of burial practices are about appeasement and fear, not love and sorrow. As well as superstitious reasons, its also hygienic to dispose of bodies properly.
If we put them in a safe spot where we know they'll be, where their remains won't be destroyed by weather or scavengers
Except when the burial ritual involves scavengers. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excarnation)
Instead of apes having burial rituals. It just seems the more likely explanation. (No offense to their genus, of course)
Our genus. We're not talking about apes. You might call them "ape men" in the silly non-scientific sense but they're very different from Chimpanzees.
We have no idea what a non-human ritual would even look like, so its arrogant to say that apes don't have rituals involving the dead, no matter how unlikely it is. You can't look at a piece of bone and say it wasn't at one point treated ritually, we have a gap in our evidence which is why this is so important.
(Though I think it is hard to say how badly damaged all the bones where, considering what they found. I mean, there's not one complete skeleton, if everyone had one major bone broken it could have easily been a result of an unlucky stone fall or such.
Complaining about not one complete skeleton in the most complete find of a homid from this era ever is a bit much.
You wouldn't expect bones from this era to be in anything but the worst condition.
Yeah, generally scientists would be having bonegasms over finding a tenth of what was uncovered there, and keep in mind that they specifically limited the dig area, they found these specifmens from an exploratory dig and what was already exposed.
Rockphed
2015-09-13, 07:31 PM
I heard about this on "Wait, wait, don't tell me!" And 15 fossils is huge, yes? Especially when they are mostly complete. I wonder what other wonders are hidden in a lost cave somewhere waiting for some enterprising (and very small) paleontologist to find.
Feytalist
2015-09-14, 03:34 AM
The Cradle of Humankind is a very rich area for archaeological discovery, after all. There's almost certainly even more discoveries to be made there. Getting through the many caves seems to be the biggest obstacle.
From Kenya to South Africa it's still over 3000km. That's like the distance from Spain to Russia. I wouldn't consider that the same general area.
Feytalist
2015-09-14, 06:41 AM
From Kenya to South Africa it's still over 3000km. That's like the distance from Spain to Russia. I wouldn't consider that the same general area.
The Cradle of Humankind is in South Africa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cradle_of_Humankind) :smalltongue:
There is an area called the "cradle of mankind" in Kenya, yes, but it's fairly unofficial as far as I know. Kenya itself is even sometimes called the "cradle of mankind".
Closet_Skeleton
2015-09-14, 10:16 AM
If that site was only given that name in 1999, then Kenya has just as good a claim. Its just publicity based naming, nothing to worry about unless its completely inaccurate.
Feytalist
2015-09-15, 05:56 AM
If that site was only given that name in 1999, then Kenya has just as good a claim. Its just publicity based naming, nothing to worry about unless its completely inaccurate.
Well, alright, fair enough.
Point is, the fossils were found in an area that has already produced some major discoveries. It's not unreasonable to imagine that there might be more hidden away in those caves.
Our genus. We're not talking about apes. You might call them "ape men" in the silly non-scientific sense but they're very different from Chimpanzees.
We have no idea what a non-human ritual would even look like, so its arrogant to say that apes don't have rituals involving the dead, no matter how unlikely it is. You can't look at a piece of bone and say it wasn't at one point treated ritually, we have a gap in our evidence which is why this is so important.
Sorry, biology isn't my strong field and especially in taxonomy I always get the terms mixed up :smallredface:
Complaining about not one complete skeleton in the most complete find of a homid from this era ever is a bit much.
You wouldn't expect bones from this era to be in anything but the worst condition.
I'm not "complaining", just saying you'd have a hard time judging whether a person had a broken bone when you didn't find all their bones, no?
Closet_Skeleton
2015-09-18, 04:39 PM
Sorry, biology isn't my strong field and especially in taxonomy I always get the terms mixed up :smallredface:
I can never remember the whole list of terms, I just know that species is the one called 'species'.
I'm not "complaining"
That was a figure of speech. I didn't mean you were literally complaining.
Sorry, biology isn't my strong field and especially in taxonomy I always get the terms mixed up :smallredface:
I'm not "complaining", just saying you'd have a hard time judging whether a person had a broken bone when you didn't find all their bones, no?
When you can't find a single green fracture (i.e. suffered while alive, rather than post-mortem) in a surprisingly large sample, you can apply statistics and determine that it is very very very unlikely, and the most likely explanation is that they were brought there intact and any damage to the bones was from things like the cave settling/flow stone fracturing, chemical weathering, and so forth.
One fracture which had been partially healed or even showed the sort of tell-tales which can be found even in a body that died with broken bones would suffice as a counter example, but to date they haven't found one, out of over a thousand fragments from 15 individuals.
As for genus and such, I try to keep up with that stuff but the changes in taxonomy, especially the move to cladistic naming as I recall has left me a bit out of my depth in many cases here, and I can confidently run the category on anything science related in Jeopardy due to being a font of mostly useless trivia. I didn't even think it was worth bringing up as you weren't doing something silly like insisting that an honest mistake was correct.
I can never remember the whole list of terms, I just know that species is the one called 'species'.
Well, yeah, but they definitely aren't our species. And short check tells me at least there was/is(?) some debate about whether they count as australopethicus. So my mistake is a bit less embarassing. (A bit)
When you can't find a single green fracture (i.e. suffered while alive, rather than post-mortem) in a surprisingly large sample, you can apply statistics and determine that it is very very very unlikely, and the most likely explanation is that they were brought there intact and any damage to the bones was from things like the cave settling/flow stone fracturing, chemical weathering, and so forth.
Well, I'm quite willing to trust in the forensic skills of anthropologists, I'm just sometimes a bit of a skeptic.
Which is wise, I am as well, but the paper, while incredibly dense, goes above and beyond ordinary rigor. They did a damn good job examining the site because they knew what a huge find this was.
Yuki Akuma
2015-09-20, 06:06 AM
Our genus. We're not talking about apes. You might call them "ape men" in the silly non-scientific sense but they're very different from Chimpanzees.
Well...
The genus Homo is part of the family Hominidae, along with genera Pongo, Gorilla, Pan and the probably-completely-extinct genus Australopithecus.
Hominidae is part of the superfamily Hominoidea, which includes all apes. Hominidae are in fact called the "Great Apes" mostly because they include us and we're nothing if not egotistical (well, also, they're bigger than gibbons).
So yeah these guys were apes. So are we.
Feytalist
2015-09-21, 03:54 AM
Alright, I have no experience in this field at all, and I understood like 2% of the paper, but I'm still interested :smallbiggrin:
So, in layman's terms; these guys are not necessarily our direct ancestors, but come from a divergent - but contemporary - branch to our own?
hamishspence
2015-09-21, 06:48 AM
So, in layman's terms; these guys are not necessarily our direct ancestors, but come from a divergent - but contemporary - branch to our own?
When it comes to fossils - it's very hard to tell for sure if anything is a direct ancestor to anything else.
Hence, cladograms show everything on branches.
Rater202
2015-09-21, 11:06 AM
Might be an ancestor, might be a branch.
Unless a bone breaks open and reveals perfectly preserved marrow with DNA to test against the human Genome(incredibly unlikely), there's no way to know for sure. Anything that involves digging up and studying old bones involves a lot of guess work.
Maelstrom
2015-09-22, 03:12 AM
Last weeks Nova presented this in a 90 or so minute episode, for those who are interested...
Grey_Wolf_c
2015-09-22, 08:35 AM
Colour me interested, but I'll hold of on any judgments of mind-blowing until they are properly dated. A researcher's guess is just that, a guess. It could turn out to be something else entirely.
As I understand it (and someone that has actually read the paper and can speak authoritatively about it, please do step in), accurate dating is probably not going to happen. We know they are old because they are beyond 14C dating (50k years), but obviously that doesn't really narrow it down much, not when you suspect the age of the bones might be best measured in millions of years. In such cases, you usually can date the strata around the bones - but this being a cave, not subject to normal weathering/erosion, the method has an error margin much larger than usual. Certain radiometric dating can be applied to the tools themselves, but I have not heard of any tools recovered from the site (another indication this is likely burial, rather than people trapped in a cave).
In short, the fact that this is an artificial placing of bodies is both an amazing find, but also a very annoying one, because it will make dating them a heck of a lot harder. Atapuerca (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atapuerca_Mountains), I hear, had similar problem in the bone pit, but the surrounding areas had sufficient clues to narrow it down somewhat.
(Aside note: bloody hell, Atapuerca was discovered in the 60s? Man, these things take forever to trickle into the public's radar, don't they? I'm glad I heard of the Naledi discovery in real time. Sometimes I am so glad to live in the future).
Grey Wolf
I read the paper but I'm not up to date at all on forensics, I merely was able to follow the rigor they used because of the rigor they used. The dating includes steps like working out when layers of stone were deposited, so this is pretty old, flowstone doesn't flow very fast.
Powered by vBulletin® Copyright © 2024 vBulletin Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.