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| Hominin skulls at Dmansi – 1.77 million years old |
In the Science article "Meet the frail, small-brained people who first trekked out of Africa", Ann Gibbons reports on 25 years of research on early human fossils from a four hectare dig at Dmanisi in modern Georgia (2016). According to Gibbons, the human skulls and other bones, almost 2 million years old, have raised many doubts about older theories about how our ancestors spread out from our origins in Africa more than two million years ago. She reports that we are uncertain why the move occurred, and the mounting evidence suggests that only very simple stone tools were needed for humans to spread everywhere, with our meat eating, which caused appalling dental health, being a major advantage in strange new lands, where we were also often eaten by other animals.
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| How we got everywhere |
I could only very briefly mention it in my summary, which was approaching the 135 word limit, but Gibbons gives a fairly detailed description of the awful condition of our ancestors' teeth and mouths: broken, rotten teeth that were never cleaned, that were covered in plaque fed by the meat, often raw, that our ancestors ate, even from carcasses past their expiry dates. With infected teeth and gums leading to jaw damage and even death from bad teeth, it was not a pretty image to imagine with my morning coffee. At least I wasn't eating dinner at the time. On the other hand, it certainly helped Gibbons to hold my attention as she told of the changing paleoanthropological theories about how we came to be where we are today: for me, having the morning coffee in central Bangkok before I review and revise the day's lesson plan for teaching at AUA. I'm glad I don't have to hunt down a filthy, verminous animal and eat it raw on a bitterly cold steppe before doing whatever our ancestors then did for the rest of the day – I suspect curl up and try to keep warm and not think about the aching ,rotten teeth. But I'm even more glad that they did do what they did: I'm the end result of all of that very long chain of evolution, and had any link not appeared, I would not be here typing on my computer.
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| Today, there is a Christian monastery at the Dmanisi site |
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Reference
- Gibbons, A. (2016, November 22). Meet the frail, small-brained people who first trekked out of Africa. Science. Retrieved from http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/11/meet-frail-small-brained-people-who-first-trekked-out-africa
Theories have been changing from one to another when new evidence have been introduced. Well who knows whether these skeleton were even our ancestors. Perhaps they became extinct and don't have any blood related to us at all.
ReplyDeleteEating "carcasses" doesn't sound good at all. They might even eat their own kind.
The trail of evidence seems strong enough that there is no reason, for now, to doubt that they were our ancestors. I don't think any expert has doubted for some decades now that all human beings are the descendants of Africans. In fact, science agrees that every single living thing is related because we are all the descendants of one ancestor about 3.5 billion years ago. All the things we normally think of as alive, all animals, plants, fungi, insects, and so on, are the descendants of a single ancestor about 1.0 billion years ago, when our type of cells (with a separate nucleus and mitochondria) first evolved.
DeleteBut it's good that science is open to being corrected as new evidence comes in. That is healthy in the search for truth.
It appears I need to update some of my beliefs: I just did a quick check of Eukaryote onWikipedia, and it appears that Eukaryotes have been found in the fossil record a bit earlier, certainly by 1.65 billion years ago, and possibly 2.0 billion.
DeleteSO I've learned something new today, and had a mistaken belief corrected.