
Jawbone of Earliest Modern Human Out of Africa Discovered in Israeli Cave - thewayfarer
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/science/jawbone-fossil-israel.html
======
pdog
Every couple of months, we find new fossil evidence that "rewrites" the
history of our species.

At what point is the theory just wrong?

~~~
badosu
The theory is always 'wrong' if 'correct' means fitting the data perfectly.

Having to adjust the parameters of the model and having to change the
fundamental aspects (e.g. humans came from Africa) are different things.

~~~
thephyber
It's interesting how you chose the oppose of "wrong" with "correct"; my first
thought was "right".

Right/wrong is most commonly used in a moral framework. Correct/incorrect
seems more apt during application of an observed value to an expected value.

~~~
badosu
You're right

------
macrael
One of the laws of archeology is "There's always an older find"

------
yohann305
It seems in the past couple years, scientists keep finding new artifacts that
shake our current understanding of our roots.

We live in a fascinating time!

~~~
publicfig
>That does not mean that this person contributed to the DNA of anyone living
today, he added. It is possible that the jawbone belonged to a previously
unknown population of Homo sapiens that departed Africa and then died off.

From the article

------
themgt
As far as I can tell, the entire "Out of Africa" model taken for granted
within the MSM is being treated with increasing skepticism/nuance by
scientists actually studying the facts on the ground, leading to these odd &
increasingly ancient "first modern out of Africa" stories which may be
confusing the public more than they're illuminating the history of human
populations.

Razib Khan had a good short primer on this topic a little while back [1],
excerpt:

 _The data for non-Africans is rather unequivocal. The vast majority of (
>90%) of the ancestry of non-Africans seems to go back to a small number of
common ancestors ~60,000 years ago. Perhaps in the range of ~1,000
individuals. These individuals seem to be a node within a phylogenetic tree
where all the other branches are occupied by African populations. Between this
period and ~15,000 years ago these non-Africans underwent a massive range
expansion, until modern humans were present on all continents except
Antarctica. Additionally, after the Holocene some of these non-African groups
also experienced huge population growth due to intensive agricultural
practice.

To give a sense of what I’m getting at, the bottleneck and common ancestry of
non-Africans goes back ~60,000 years, but the shared ancestry of Khoisan
peoples and non-Khoisan peoples goes back ~150,000-200,000 years. A major
lacunae of the current discussion is that often the dynamics which
characterize non-Africans are assumed to be applicable to Africans. But they
are not._

[1] [https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2017/04/28/beyond-out-of-
afri...](https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2017/04/28/beyond-out-of-africa-and-
multiregionalism-a-new-synthesis/)

~~~
haberman
Can you recommend a good primer on what we know about evolution and the
history of our species, and the supporting evidence?

I thought _The Selfish Gene_ would be this, but it seemed primarily focused on
more abstract/philosophical questions, like group selection vs. gene
selection. I'm more interested in concrete information about what our DNA and
the fossil record can credibly establish. I want to know what facts are
indisputably known, and which are more speculative.

~~~
sigil
It sounds like there's precious little certainty to be had [1]:

 _So far, nobody has recovered ancient DNA from archaic human skeletal remains
in Africa. The 2000-year-old Ballito Bay boy is not the oldest, but there are
no DNA results from truly archaic specimens, like the Kabwe skull from Zambia.
As a result, we don’t have the kind of record within Africa that geneticists
have built for Neanderthals and Denisovans in Eurasia..._

 _Morphology does not tell the story of modern human origins...Did short faces
and rounded braincases really make a difference to the survival and success of
modern humans? Maybe they were chance legacies of the population that gave
rise to our gene pool. We don’t know._

Conclusion:

 _We have to discover more fossils. That’s the way that we will start to solve
these new problems and shed light on old mysteries._

[1] [https://medium.com/@johnhawks/the-story-of-modern-human-
orig...](https://medium.com/@johnhawks/the-story-of-modern-human-origins-just-
got-more-complicated-9e435bea24f6) via
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16234903](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16234903)

~~~
burfog
Short faces and rounded braincases would affect the surface-to-volume ratio.
This would help with cold-weather survival.

------
zakki
Will it conclude who the owner of Jerusalem is?

~~~
castle-bravo
Homo Erectus, obviously.

------
skimaskninja87
Melanated people (aka Africans, which is a European term) were the first
Hebrews and Arabs. "Africans" who migrated East to China, then back migrated
after they went through mutation, and mixed with the original people. But of
course, no one would believe it unless, well, you already know. Hopefully all
the "pseudo-scholars" who spread this knowledge can rest easy now. Most of
them died broke while these "discoverers" will die wealthy and famous. Of my
post is perceived as racist, so what. I didn't hurt nothing but feelings.

~~~
burfog
The current population of Syria is the closest genetic match to Egyptian
mummies.

