According to the BBC journal " A mysterious new species could be the earliest humans" (2016), the BBC Earth spoke to Prof. Chris Stringer at London's Natural History Museum, where the reconstructed hand and jaw of Homonaledi about new discoverable species of the early human evolution H. naledi discovered in 2013. The thousand bones of a new species of extinct hominin were discovered in the Rising Star Cave in South Africa and unveiled to the world in September 2015. The previously-unknown species of extinct hominin has mix features between derived features and primitive features, in comparison, Homo naledi has a primitive small brain-case with human-like hands and feet which as being similar in size and weight to a small modern human, furthermore, had several unique feature of their skull. The new species has not been dated, but some researchers believe it could belonged to the genus Homo that led to us.
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My Yes/No question is:
Do you think that that mystery fossils could be the earliest humans?
My answer is:
Yes, they are. H. naledi could be an earilest humans because they relate with modern humans and extinct human species. They also have mix and similar features between hominins(pre-homo) species and modern humans.
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Reference
I don't think I'm qualified to answer Earlgrey's question. I generally rely on respected scientists for my beliefs on such technical matters. I mean scientists respected by other scientists in their field. If they are respected by looney Christians who reject evolution because of religious, that is, superstitious, reasons, I would not be inclined to trust them.
ReplyDeleteBut Earlgrey's sources look solid, so if they think the new fossils are our ancestors, I'm happy to take that on faith - faith in science is sensible because it has a solid record of making progress and correcting mistakes.
I think one of the great things about science, in contrast to dictatorial religions, is that science makes mistakes and learns from them when they are corrected by later generations who do new research or get new ideas to be able to correctly say of past ideas: "We all believed that, and we were all wrong." For example, 120 years ago, everyone believed Newton's theories of gravity and motion, but today we know he was wrong thanks to people like Einstein. But we still admire the genius of Newton, even while seeing his mistakes. The same for Aristotle, for Plato and every other great thinker: they don't stop being great just because they got a lot of things wrong.
And that reminds of an idea in Hartmann's next reading, which I rather like. I wonder if you'll agree with me when you read it tonight.
And our thanks to Earlgrey for an interesting blog post to respond to, even though I haven't said much on her topic. I was going to, but somehow sentence led on to sentence and I got led away from my initial comment plan.
Maybe a new comment with the afternoon coffee.
Definitely, I like your reasoning of the perspectives between science and religion, especially in your 2 paragraph. I concur with you.
DeleteFrankly speaking, I also have no much knowledge related to this field. Thus, I would say that it might be because the professional researchers in this news support their reliable reasons. It would be pretty exciting if that fossil is associated with the first humans, possibly leading to solve the riddle about our species and evolution.
ReplyDeleteThough I may have studied some about fossils, I can't definitely say whether it could be or not; but my answer would be yes. As it has many similar features, such as brain-case, hands and feet, to the modern humans, it would probably be the primitive humans. The supporting theories from biology class and previous samples also lead me to this answer.
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