Apes don’t carve logs and notch them to build structures.
While not “modern humans” it’s important not to fall into the trap of thinking those who came prior to us had some degree of lesser intelligence. Truth is they probably just knew different things that were important to their lives then. Instead of knowing how to drive a car or use credit card they knew what plants to eat, how to make tools, hunt, and apparently build houses with logs.
Homo heidelbergensis is the common ancestor between modern humans and Neanderthals. They are pretty darn close to modern humans. And if you took a modern human from, say, 10,000 years ago and raised them in the modern world you’d just have a modern human. While this seems like a long way back, this subspecies probably isn’t that far from that scenario.
And recent research into Neanderthal DNA shows that there was intermingling and an ebb and flow of genetic mixing over long periods of time. I only say that to suggest that things are less linear than we were taught.
The whole concept of different human species may be a taxonomic error of historic proportions despite the morphological differences we see in the fossil record. Information on the genome of archaic humans is a very recent development in a centuries old field so it is still catching up, especially at the level of educational material.
Based on my reading of the paper about the sequenced neanderthal bone [1] and a global genetic variation study [2], the difference between neanderthals and modern humans isn't that much bigger than the natural variation within the modern human genome. That difference is much smaller (on the order of 10-40x) than the difference between modern humans and chimpanzees and given the multiple genetic bottleneck events in our evolution, I think it's much more accurate to look at all the different species of archaic humans as breeds of modern humans that happen to show a larger difference with older samples because of the limited founding population and the diversity of our ancestors (of which we have very few biased samples).
Where to draw the line in speciation is always controversial but my theory is that once tool use really got going by the second stone industry, early humans started artificially self-selecting for intelligence just like we later did with dogs and eventually the modern human "breed" was born. By the million year ago mark, roughly the time evidence of fire started showing up in the archaeological record, I think the species that is modern humans was already long spreading and out competing other apes. I think shortly after this point is when we started developing clothing and moving into the colder climates, leaving evidence at places like Atapuerca.
We're not used to seeing diversity in humans, as the extant population is remarkably same-ish apart from very extremely minor traits like skin colour or eyelid variations. There's quite a bit of genetic diversity within the African continent, but even there it's remarkable how well we all cluster together, genetically.
So given a fossil record where we find people without chins and broader shoulders, etc. we go crazy with the species boundaries.
But given how rare fossilization conditions are, we're only seeing a tiny fraction of what was out there anyways, so it seems remarkably bold to classify with such confidence.
The reality is that nature doesn't "care" about species. There were likely bagloads of individuals who sat on a continuum of a diversity of traits that have since disappeared because of population bottlenecks at, disease, famine, homogenization, etc.
> Apes don’t carve logs and notch them to build structures.
The builders were much closer to us than to apes. We separated from great apes (chimpanzee ancestors) 7 million years ago (mya). This structure is from 0.5 mya and Homo sapiens first walked the Earth ~0.2-0.3 mya.
> While not “modern humans” it’s important not to fall into the trap of thinking those who came prior to us had some degree of lesser intelligence. Truth is they probably just knew different things that were important to their lives then.
What makes that 'truth'? Evidence: It depends on how far back you go, of course, but between ~7 million and ~2.6 mya (with some uncertain evidence from 3.3 mya), none of our ancestors figured out how to make or use tools. Around 1.8 mya we figured out Acheulean tools, which were made by finding an appropriate hand-sized rock, knocking flakes off one edge to sharpen it, and voila - a 'handaxe'. Acheulean tools, arugably the most relatively successful technology in history, dominated world-wide Homo tool market for a long time: We didn't improve on them for about 1.3 million years, when we figured out how to use make tools from the sharp flakes, and to attach the tools to hafts.
That's just one example, and it all speaks cleary to ability. More importantly, there is no evidence of ability approaching ours, afaik.
Well the exciting part to me is that it suggests settlement or at least deeper investment in a location.
Not surprising given what we found in Wonderwerk Cave in the Kalahari Desert, but it is totally challenging to some people’s long held beliefs in archeology.
While not “modern humans” it’s important not to fall into the trap of thinking those who came prior to us had some degree of lesser intelligence. Truth is they probably just knew different things that were important to their lives then. Instead of knowing how to drive a car or use credit card they knew what plants to eat, how to make tools, hunt, and apparently build houses with logs.
Homo heidelbergensis is the common ancestor between modern humans and Neanderthals. They are pretty darn close to modern humans. And if you took a modern human from, say, 10,000 years ago and raised them in the modern world you’d just have a modern human. While this seems like a long way back, this subspecies probably isn’t that far from that scenario.
And recent research into Neanderthal DNA shows that there was intermingling and an ebb and flow of genetic mixing over long periods of time. I only say that to suggest that things are less linear than we were taught.
https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics/ancient-dna-an....