Wednesday, March 5, 2025

Fascinating Money, Lies, God interview on Gaslight Nation

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VFVgoGl8X0

  Katherine Stewart, author of the new book Money, Lies, and God,

Middle Pleistocene Archaic Humans were Dark-Skinned: An African and European comparison from 400,000 years ago

 

 pdf is open access thru link

 

 Why are European "cave men" always shown to have light, "white" skin?


 It is hypothesized that these cave men developed light colored skin due to lack of sun light in the forest. But this ignores that while Neanderthals evolved in Europe they actually had non-white skin:

For example, in 2012 Caio Cerqueira and coworkers presented a survey of the genotypes of more than a hundred genetic polymorphisms thought to be associated with pigmentation of hair, skin, and eyes in the known Neandertal and Denisovan genomes. ...They found that the known Neandertal genomes had very few SNP alleles associated with light pigmentation in today's people. They suggested that Neandertals had been dark-skinned, brown or red-haired, and brown eyed.Apr 2, 2023

 https://johnhawks.net/weblog/what-color-were-neandertals/

Archaic Homo species, including the expressive morphological variability of the specimens included under the umbrella-term “Homo heidelbergensis” from Africa, Asia, and Europe. Our results support that cannot be accommodated in one same species. Additionally, we contribute to the disputable discussion about the origin of H. sapiens, adding support to an African origin for our species.

 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2950236524000033

  there is a certain proximity between neandertals and modern humans with either European and African H. heidelbergensis;

This is especially true for the Asian fossils (Lee and Hudock, 2021). Position number 4 (Roksandic et al., 2022) suggests a new taxon, Homo bodoensis, for the African and Middle Eastern Middle Pleistocene fossils. According to this proposal, Homo bodoensis would be the ancestor of Homo sapiens, most probably in Africa. In this case, the European forms should be reassigned to Homo neanderthalensis, and considered as early Neanderthals, while the Asian Middle Pleistocene fossils, particularly from China, likely represent a different lineage altogether.
Our results support position 4, namely, that H. heildelbergensis is not a valid taxonomic unit,

 ....

 Therefore, we support that Middle Pleistocene fossils from Africa and Asia should be considered as different species, Homo bodoensis and Homo daliensis, respectively. The latter suggestion is inspired by the recent proposition of Ji et al. (2021), although not based on exactly the same hipodigm as ours. The European Chibanian fossils should be kept as H. heidelbergensis, taking into account the precedence of the original proposition of Schoetensack (1908).
.............

Our results show a strong superposition of the H. sapiens individuals regardless of their geographic origin. African, Asian, and European modern humans occupy one single well-defined area in the morphospace. This pattern is in complete accordance with a common origin for living people, indicating a shared bauplan for modern humans from all around the world. In the case of a multiregional origin, it would be expected to observe a distribution of the H. sapiens specimens separated in accord with their geographic region (like the Chibanian hominins discussed above), which does not occur.
Since the earliest representatives of our species appear in Africa around 230 ka (Vidal et al., 2022), the most parsimonious hypothesis is that the emergence of H. sapiens did occur in that continent.

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departing from Homo erectus, three lineages of Chibanian hominins differentiated in Africa, Europe, and Asia: Homo bodesiensis, Homo heidelbergensis, and Homo daliensis, respectively. Although different species, these three taxa exhibited some common marked traits: large and robust skulls, flattened forehead, medium to large cranial capacity ( ± 1.200 cm3), and an accentuated supra-orbital torus. The face varied from flat to moderately expanded forward.
Homo bodesiensis gave rise to modern humans in Africa, while Homo heidelbergensis gave rise to neandertals in Europe. The transition from bodesiensis to sapiens occurred around 300 ka, while the transition from heidelbergensis to neandertals occurred around 450 ka. Homo daliensis seems to have been a coup-de-sac, despite the strong opposition of the Chinese paleoanthropological community to this idea. The first representatives of our species can be found in Africa around 230 ka, while the first representatives of neandertals can be found in Europe, between approximately 200 and 160 ka.

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 As soon as our species appeared in Africa, they started migrating out of that region, having reached the Middle East around 180 ka, and Europe at least around 200 ka, where they eventually replaced neandertals. Homo sapiens reached East Asia around 120 ka, and much probably replaced archaic humans (Homo daliensis; Homo longi) still existing in the region. During their expansion out of Africa, modern humans exchanged genes with several archaic humans still present in Europe and Asia, and possibly even in Africa. These genetic interbreeding was, however, not sufficient to change the cranial morphological pattern characterized by a short and globular neurocranium, a cranial capacity of approximately 1.350 cm3, a flat face, a distinguished chin, and a small dentition.