Ape/Man?

[Rorschach]

Well it seems that the more time passes the more scientists are finding proof to back up my thoughts on our evolution.

First human? The jawbone that has made us question where we’re from.
The discovery of the oldest remains of human ancestors could prove that we evolved from different species

http://www.theguardian.com/global/2015/ ... ery-africa

[Super Nova]

Roach,

It is a very difficult to find the unbroken linage through fossil records. I do expect apes and us have a common ancestor but it may be further back in time than current theories suggest. So your theory and instinct could be right.

I liked the summary at the end of your reference.

Born Somewhere in the Ethiopian highlands almost three million years ago. Predecessors included a species that is known as Australopithecus afarensis. LD 350-1 was different, however – at least to judge from his or her teeth, the only remnants we have for the founder of the lineage that eventually produced Homo sapiens.

Worst of times Going extinct several hundreds of thousands of years after appearing on the scene in ancient Africa.

Best of times Starting a lineage that survived almost three million years and which produced Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis and, of course, Homo sapiens.

What the remains tell us That life was changing three million years ago. Drier, hotter weather meant changes in diet – and dentures.

What others say “This is the first inkling we have of that transition to modern behaviour.” Brian Villmoare at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas.

[freediver]

In the last decade or so they have discovered neanderthal DNA in humans, except for sub-saharan Africans.

[Super Nova]

In the last decade or so they have discovered neanderthal DNA in humans, except for sub-saharan Africans.

yes, read that story.

The theory goes we interbred and bred them out rather than killed them off. (maybe a bit of both)

It shows how close they were to be able to breed. They were a breed of human rather than another species of human in my mind.

[boxy]

The divider between breeds and species is shades of grey. Neanderthals and Denisovans (which also contributed to our DNA) only left Africa a couple of hundred thousand years before the Sapiens, who caught up, and interbred with them.

Who knows what went on? Maybe it was like lions and tigers. Able to interbreed, but mostly infertile offspring, leading to their minor contribution to our genetic makeup (the small contribution coming from those lucky few who were fertile, by chance)?

[Super Nova]

Maybe we got our European smarts from the Neanderthal. They were more advanced than us... it appears.

I wonder if it was the genetic inbreeding or cultural transfer or both.

Neanderthal bone necklace ‘world’s oldest jewellery’

The 130,000-year-old Neanderthal “jewellery” made out of white-tailed eagle talons found in Croatia



Analysis of bones found a century ago at a paleolithic site in Croatia suggests that they were a necklace made by Neanderthals, and the oldest piece of jewellery in the world.

The white-tailed eagle talons were hewn in 130,000BC, at least 30,000 years before the earliest ornaments known to have been made by Homo sapiens, and suggest that the Neanderthals had more class than was previously thought.

Neanderthals arrived in Europe in about 300,000BC, developing a range of crude flint tools in what paleontologists have labelled the “Mousterian” culture.

Previous digs have found that they began to use more advanced technologies, including a house built of mammoth bones, shortly after the influx of modern humans in 45,000BC. There is evidence of interbreeding between the two species, but Neanderthals are thought to have died out 5,000 years later.

The necklace, which was found at the turn of the last century in Krapina, a cave complex in the hills of northern Croatia, could push complex Neanderthal culture back long before the advent of humanity.

“These talons provide multiple new lines of evidence for Neanderthals’ abilities and cultural sophistication,” paleontologists frnewsom Kansas and Croatia wrote in PLOS ONE. “They are the earliest evidence for jewellery in the European fossil record and demonstrate that Neanderthals possessed a symbolic culture long before more modern human forms arrived in Europe.”

Four of the eagle talons appear to have been cut with deep, V-shaped grooves and then smoothed in several places, while all eight show signs that they have been polished. Three of the largest claws have been notched at the edge of their blades.

“These features suggest they were part of a jewellery assemblage — the manipulations [seem to be] a consequence of mounting the talons in a necklace or bracelet,” the archaeologists wrote.

David Frayer, professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Kansas, who led the study, said: “It’s really a stunning discovery. It’s so unexpected and it’s so startling because there’s just nothing like it, until very recent times, to find this kind of jewellery.”

• Archaeologists from the University of Cambridge believe they have found the world’s oldest man-made landscape. At Messak Settafet, a 350km-long outcrop of sandstone in Libya, which is famed for its prehistoric rock art, they found an average of 75 stone tools per square metre in layers going back a million years.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/science/a ... 379276.ece

[freediver]

It is my understanding that the neaderthal DNA is about skin colour. If it had any benefits beyond that, it would have made it's way back to southern africa.

[Super Nova]

It is my understanding that the neaderthal DNA is about skin colour. If it had any benefits beyond that, it would have made it's way back to southern africa.

That's where ginga's come from... now I remember.