Mid-afternoon. You and Kim went to Liberty
Tavern in Powell because Kim said it is very much like Brennan’s Colony in
Cleveland Heights. – Amorella
1442
hours. It is very much so like Brennan’s. The food is generous and excellent. A
short time ago Kim and Paul drove to see Andy for future investment strategies.
Cathy is seeing friends in Flint so I am heading over to Aunt Patsy’s shortly
to have a visit. Doug sent me a note about the recent discovery of a human
sub-species. I love this kind of news. Always interesting.
** **
BBC: Science & Environment
10 September 2015
New human-like species discovered in S Africa
By
Pallab Ghosh
Science
correspondent, BBC News, Johannesburg
Scientists have discovered a new human-like species in a burial
chamber deep in a cave system in South Africa.
The discovery of 15 partial skeletons is the largest single
discovery of its type in Africa.
The researchers claim that the discovery will change ideas about
our human ancestors.
The studies
which have been published in the journal Elife also indicate
that these individuals were capable of ritual behaviour.
The species,
which has been named naledi, has been classified in the grouping, or
genus, Homo, to which modern humans belong.
The researchers
who made the find have not been able to find out how long ago these creatures
lived - but the scientist who led the team, Prof Lee Berger, told BBC News that
he believed they could be among the first of our kind (genus Homo) and
could have lived in Africa up to three million years ago.
Like all those working in the field, he is at pains to avoid the
term "missing link". Prof Berger says naledi could be thought
of as a "bridge" between more primitive bipedal primates and humans.
"We'd gone in with the idea of recovering one fossil. That
turned into multiple fossils. That turned into the discovery of multiple
skeletons and multiple individuals.
"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."
Prof Chris
Stringer of the Natural History Museum said naledi was "a very
important discovery".
"What we are seeing is more and more species of creatures
that suggests that nature was experimenting with how to evolve humans, thus
giving rise to several different types of human-like creatures originating in
parallel in different parts of Africa. Only one line eventually survived to
give rise to us," he told BBC News.
I went to see
the bones which are kept in a secure room at Witwatersrand University. The door
to the room looks like one that would seal a bank vault. As Prof Berger turned
the large lever on the door, he told me that our knowledge of very early humans
is based on partial skeletons and the occasional skull.
The haul of 15 partial skeletons includes both males and females
of varying ages - from infants to elderly. The discovery is unprecedented in
Africa and will shed more light on how the first humans evolved.
"We are going to know everything about this species,"
Prof Berger told me as we walked over to the remains of H. naledi.
"We are going to know when its children were weaned, when
they were born, how they developed, the speed at which they developed, the
difference between males and females at every developmental stage from infancy,
to childhood to teens to how they aged and how they died."
***
A chronology of human
evolution
Ardipithecus ramidus (4.4 million years ago) : Fossils were discovered in Ethiopia
in the 1990s. Pelvis shows adaptations to both tree climbing and upright
walking.
Australopithecus afarensis (3.9 - 2.9 million years ago) : The famous "Lucy"
skeleton belongs to this species of human relative. So far, fossils of this
species have only been found in East Africa. Several traits in the skeleton
suggest afarensis walked upright, but they may have spent some time in
the trees.
Homo habilis (2.8 -
1.5 million years ago) : This human relative had a slightly larger braincase
and smaller teeth than the australopithecines or older species, but retains
many more primitive features such as long arms.
Homo naledi (Of
unknown age, but researchers say it could be as old as three million years) :
The new discovery has small, modern-looking teeth, human-like feet but more
primitive fingers and a small braincase.
Homo erectus (1.9
million years - unknown) : Homo erectus had a modern body plan that was
almost indistinguishable from ours. But it had a smaller brain than a modern
person's combined with a more primitive face.
Homo neanderthalensis (200,000 years - 40,000 years) The Neanderthals were a
side-group to modern humans, inhabiting western Eurasia before our species left
Africa. They were shorter and more muscular than modern people but had slightly
larger brains.
Homo sapiens
(200,000 years - present) Modern humans evolved in Africa from a predecessor
species known as Homo heidelbergensis. A small group of Homo sapiens
left Africa 60,000 years ago and settled the rest of the world, replacing the
other human species they encountered (with a small amount of interbreeding).
***
I was astonished to see how well preserved the bones were. The
skull, teeth and feet looked as if they belonged to a human child - even though
the skeleton was that of an elderly female.
Its hand looked human-like too, up to its fingers which curl
around a bit like those of an ape.
Homo naledi is unlike
any primitive human found in Africa. It has a tiny brain - about the size of a
gorilla's and a primitive pelvis and shoulders. But it is put into the same
genus as humans because of the more progressive shape of its skull, relatively
small teeth, characteristic long legs and modern-looking feet.
"I saw something I thought I would never see in my
career," Prof Berger told me.
"It was a moment that 25 years as a paleoanthropologist had
not prepared me for."
One of the most
intriguing questions raised by the find is how the remains got there.
I visited the site of the find, the Rising Star cave, an hour's
drive from the university in an area known as the Cradle of Humankind. The cave
leads to a narrow underground tunnel through which some of Prof Berger's team
crawled in an expedition funded by the National
Geographic Society.
Small women were chosen because the tunnel was so narrow. They
crawled through darkness lit only by their head torches on a precarious 20
minute-long journey to find a chamber containing hundreds of bones.
Among them was Marina Elliott. She showed me the narrow entrance
to the cave and then described how she felt when she first saw the chamber.
"The first time I went to the excavation site I likened it
to the feeling that Howard Carter must have had when he opened Tutankhamen's
tomb - that you are in a very confined space and then it opens up and all of a
sudden all you can see are all these wonderful things - it was
incredible," she said.
Ms Elliott and her colleagues believe that they have found a
burial chamber. The Homo naledi people appear to have carried
individuals deep into the cave system and deposited them in the chamber -
possibly over generations.
If that is correct, it suggests naledi was capable of
ritual behaviour and possibly symbolic thought - something that until now had
only been associated with much later humans within the last 200,000 years.
Prof Berger said: "We are going to have to contemplate some
very deep things about what it is to be human. Have we been wrong all along
about this kind of behaviour that we thought was unique to modern humans?
"Did we
inherit that behaviour from deep time and is it something that (the earliest
humans) have always been able to do?"
Prof Berger believes that the discovery of a creature that has
such a mix of modern and primitive features should make scientists rethink the
definition of what it is to be human - so much so that he himself is reluctant
to describe naledi as human.
Other
researchers working in the field, such as Prof Stringer, believe that naledi
should be described as a primitive human. But he agrees that current theories
need to be re-evaluated and that we have only just scratched the surface of the
rich and complex story of human evolution.
Selected and
edited from -- http://www.bbcDOTcom/news/science-environment-34192447
** **
1500
hours. These naledi may have been capable of ritual and symbolic thoughts at
possibly two to three million years ago. This is very interesting. If so, it
has taken a very long time to live up to our potential today and perhaps it
will take us two or three million more years to see what our real potential
will show us to be capable of. Most cool.
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