Thanks for this post. The press, as usual, has got it all wrong. I will
see if I can find out what is so exciting about this discovery but I can't
see it from what is written.
At 02:09 PM 3/26/97 -0500, Brooker, Darrin wrote about the hominid finds:
quoting article
> "These hominids might represent the oldest near-modern human
> specimens from anywhere in the world," they wrote in a letter to the
> science journal Nature.
...
> The skull is fairly complete, with all the teeth in the top jaw.
> "Our observations indicate that the hominid might represent an archaic
> Homo sapiens or a transitional specimen very closely related to modern
> humans," Brauer's group wrote.
> Stringer said it would have stood like a human, but with primitive
> features. "They don't look exactly like us," he said.
> "The brow ridge is still very strong...It would have a big face and
> flat forehead," he added. "They'd still stand out as being pretty
> strongly built by modern standards."
I am a little confused by this. Anatomically modern humans (AMH)do not have
large brow ridges,
although Australian Aborigine's have a very slight one. So this is not AMH.
But why the surprise? Archaic Homo sapiens have been known to exist from
500,000-30,000 anyway. Ian Tattersall writes
"In 1960, for example a cranium was found in a cave at Petralona, in
northeastern Greece. This is a marvellously preserved speciment htat has only
recently been totally cleaned of the calcite coating that had covered and
protected it. Unfortunately, the calcite matrix that was removed was not kept,
for it might have been used for dating using a new technique that I'll explain
later; as it is the specimen may be anything from about 250 to about 600 kyr
old, with the consensus at about 400 kyr. The Petralona fossil itself is
clearly neither Homo erectus nor Homo sapiens: it had a relatively large brain
of about 1,200 ml in volume, but the cranium, while better inflated than that
of Homo erectus, is longish, iwth a clearly retreating forehead behind large
brow ridges, and is clearly angled at the back. The face is large and projects
distinctly, especially in the midline. Early reports described this specimen
as belonging variously to Homo erectus and Homo sapiens, but most opinion
veered quite quickly towards an 'archaic' form of the latter, clearly distinct
from both modern humans and Neanderthals. Recent studies have, however,
detected some Neanderthal-like features in its face."~Ian Tattersall, The
Fossil Trail (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 174
Fagan notes:
"The Sidi Abderrahman quarries on the Atlantic coast of Morocco
yielded a cave containing jaw fragments of archaic Homo sapiens and 200,000-
year-old hand axes."~Brian M. Fagan, The Journey From Eden, (London: Thames and
Hudson, 1990), p. 68
"Homo erectus
was replaced in Africa around 500 ka by hominids termed archaic Homo sapiens."
~Sally McBrearty, Laura Bishop and John
Kingston, "Variability in traces of Middle Pleistocene Hominid Behavior in the
Kapthurin Formation, Baringo, Kenya," Journal of Human Evolution, (1996),
30:563-580, p. 563
> It has been generally accepted that modern humans, Homo sapiens
> sapiens (Eds: correct), emerged about 40,000 years ago. Archaic Homo
> sapiens, more modern than a Neanderthal but not quite like us, was
> believed to have emerged 90,000 years ago.
Neither of these dates are correct. Anatomically Modern humans are found in
strata dated 120,000 years ago at Klasies River Mouth Cave, South Africa.
Neanderthal is believed to have arisen between 150-230,000 years ago.
> Homo neanderthalensis, or Neanderthals, lived anywhere between
> 125,000 and 35,000 years ago, although this is being debated. Before
> Neanderthals came Homo erectus, which lived between 1.8 million and
> 100,000 years ago.
Don't believe everything you read in the Newspapers. Notice the
contradiction between this and the previous paragraphs.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm