Nobody Cares about Pre-History

[Lexxi]

It's nice that you're rediscovering the original March of Progress illustration but original intentions and the like are a side discussion. The "abbreviated" version that starts with the ape is the version that is part of our common culture and how I was introduced to it, and the interpretation of it as a single line of ascent is what it's now seen to be describing.

I don't know if it *evolved* into that through purposeful effort or by happenstance. Honestly I don't really care - as you note, it's just a Time-Life book pictographic assembly. The point is that it's been used for decades to misrepresent scientific understanding (sometimes by scientists!), and attempts to disassemble these false, or at least simplistic and equivocal, representations (like zoological trees of life) is something I enjoy learning about.

Yeah, I have no problem with what you write here. Regardless of intention, the abbreviated version was used most often, and there was either an implied, or direct interpretation attached that it was a line of evolution.

The problem I have is the way the video presenter showed things. Here's this book, here's a graphic representation showing the line of up to Homo sapiens. If it had been "here's this book, regardless of original intent, it has for many years, at least this abbreviated version here, been used in graphics to imply directly or indirectly that humans evolved from knuckle-walking creatures".

That's the problem I have with it - he had the book in his hands. Heck, just pick up a random graph that shows that line of knuckle-walker to walking tall homo sapiens without mentioning the Time Life book and I'd have been happy enough.

It just makes me wonder what else did he not elaborate on in a way that implies certain things.

 

[Free]

The problem I have is the way the video presenter showed things.

Why don't you comment on his video and inform him of his mistake? I believe he knows people make them all the time.

 

[Lexxi]

Thanks, Free, this video builds nicely on the evidence I read about in Fossil Men, which follows the archeologists who discovered Ardi. Their contention that it's chimps and gorillas who diverged from the earlier model of locomotion was considered radical and controversial, but it's quite persuasive.

I also read that Fossil Men book - because you mentioned it. It's a good book.

 

[Lexxi]

Why don't you comment on his video and inform him of his mistake? I believe he knows people make them all the time.

I actually replied to post of his on Twitter before you mentioned commenting on video. I don't comment on YouTube.

 

[Free]

I don't comment on YouTube.

Good rule.

 

[Lexxi]

Good rule.

Of course I ended up apologizing to him for pointing out the issue. Because I'm weird.

 

[WolfEyes]

And last but not least, an interesting article about Ötzi's clothes:

Here's What the Iceman Was Wearing When He Died 5,300 Years Ago

New DNA study of ancient clothing reveals that Otzi the European mummy "shopped" locally.

www.nationalgeographic.com

Now we know where the idea of satyrs came from.

 

[Isabeau]

From more “recent” times

https://gizmodo.com/baby-woolly-mammoth-mummy-yukon-1849137599

'Gasps' as Scientists Reveal Preserved Baby Woolly Mammoth
A well-preserved baby woolly mammoth has been discovered in the Yukon. It's the first time a complete mammoth ‘mummy’ has been found in North America.

…

For some, however, it was just another day at work. Travis Mudry, only 30 days into his job at McCaughan Family’s Treadstone Gold company, was operating the excavator with a ripping attachment that cut chunks out of a cliff of permafrost. Like the hundreds of other Yukon placer mines, he was looking for gold. He stopped what he was doing when something strange tumbled out of a section of the permafrost—perhaps a bison skull, he thought. He got out and investigated. This was no bison and it certainly wasn’t just a skull: this was an animal with skin, eyes and a trunk. He got on the two-way radio and contacted Treadstone’s owner and foreman, Brian McCaughan, announcing, “I found a body!”

[…]

 

[Beebo Brink]

Archaeologists unearth 600,000-year-old evidence of Britain’s early inhabitants

According to the research, led by the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge, archaeological discoveries made on the outskirts of Canterbury, Kent (England) confirm the presence of early humans in southern Britain between 560,000 and 620,000 years ago, making it one of the earliest known Palaeolithic sites in northern Europe.

Researchers have now used contemporary dating techniques using radiometric dating, infrared-radiofluorescence (IR-RF) dating, and controlled excavations of the site. The site was initially discovered in the 1920s when laborers discovered handaxes in an old riverbed.

In a study, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the researchers have confirmed the presence of Homo heidelbergensis, an extinct species or subspecies of archaic human which existed during the Middle Pleistocene and an ancestor of Neanderthals. Homo heidelbergensis is thought to have descended from the African Homo erectus during the first early expansions of hominins out of Africa beginning roughly 2 million years ago.

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

Archaeologists unearth 600,000-year-old evidence of Britain’s early inhabitants

I just want to say this is amazingly cool.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Looking forward to more of this research line, to see where my Meso-American Indian lineage fits in.

A Strange Fossil in South China Reveals an Intriguing Link With The First Americans

Remains recovered from a cave in the Chinese province of Yunnan more than 10 years ago have finally given up their secrets, with a DNA analysis revealing not just who left them, but ultimately where their ancestors would go.

www.sciencealert.com

 

[Beebo Brink]

1.4 million-year-old jawbone may belong to oldest known human relative in Europe

 

[Beebo Brink]

Archaeologists find ice age footprints of earliest North Americans

Dozens of fossilized prints laid down during the ice age have been discovered in dried-up riverbeds in a desert in the western state of Utah in the United...

www.dailysabah.com

 

[Isabeau]

Archaeologists find ice age footprints of earliest North Americans

Dozens of fossilized prints laid down during the ice age have been discovered in dried-up riverbeds in a desert in the western state of Utah in the United...

www.dailysabah.com

Crazy.

The fossils could have remained unnoticed if not for a chance glance out of a moving car as researchers Daron Duke and Thomas Urban drove through Hill Air Force Base chatting about footprints.

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

Crazy.

Slight digression, but its almost as if the universe heard them. [The digression is, about a week maybe, after the spouse was saying that the perfect kitty would be a polydactyl tabby, we noticed a kitten in our yard who is a polydactyl tabby [she's already picking things up]

So, I guess be careful what we mention in passing, the universe is listening.

 

[Isabeau]

P.E.I. school teacher stumbles upon fossil that may be 300 million years old

A P.E.I. school teacher has made the discovery of a lifetime after stumbling upon a fossil that could be 300 million years old.

...

"I saw something that I thought was a root," she said. "And when I looked closer at it, I realized that there were ribs. And then I saw the spine, and the skull."

 

[Free]

Int. Er. Est. Ing.

Surgeons performed a successful amputation 31,000 years ago in Borneo

The skeleton of an individual known as Tebo 1 dates to around 31,000 years old.

arstechnica.com

Archaeologists recently unearthed the remains of a young adult buried 31,000 years ago in a cave called Liang Tebo. Surprisingly, the person’s left leg ended a few inches above the ankle, with clean diagonal cuts severing the ends of the tibia and fibula (the two bones of the lower leg). This is the oldest evidence of surgical amputation ever found—and it suggests that the patient survived for years afterward.

 

[Beebo Brink]

See the striking facial reconstruction of a Paleolithic woman who lived 31,000 years ago

 

[Beebo Brink]

The stone age ended about ~3000 to 4000 years ago, yes. But Homo Sapiens - the folks belonging to the species you see out there in the streets - arrived in the picture around 200000 years ago.

We have a huge, huge gap of knowledge regarding ourselves in that timespan, sadly. But we, as we are today - not our Homo predecessor species but plain 'everyday humans', with the same brains, motivations, capacity for reasoning and instincts - have been around for 200k years. Kind of crazy to think about.

Chalice Yao posted this comment a while ago, but it's an apt prelude to the article below. It's humbling to realize how quickly we forget even great civilizations. Here's this ancient, complex society -- which was densely inhabited -- and even the memory of it is gone now. We have no idea who these people were and it will take decades of archaeological work to figure it out.

Discoveries like this show how fragile civilizations can be, and I suspect our current high-tech/industrialized culture will someday be buried and forgotten in a similar way. Society collapses, huge numbers of people die, and the survivors are scrambling to find food to get through each day, not passing on "useless" knowledge of glory days gone by. No one is going to teach C-sharp to their kids when the lights go out.

Lidar reveals undiscovered city beneath Amazon rainforest

It's Friday and the world is falling apart, so let's just take a short mental health break with some interesting news out of the field of archaeology,

techcrunch.com

 

[Khamon]

Thank You Beebo! It's brings to mind Asimov's Nightfall.

The link is to a copy at archive.org which is a most fabulous service.