Patine
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This is the Colosseum, and not the Civ6 subforums.
Historical Argument That Was In the Wrong Forum
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Buster's Uncle
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Duuude, I'm trying to be under the radar here - the thread's at AC2
Patine
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I will thus finish this discussion by replying to this final point (as I highly doubt much fruitful conversation will emerge beyond it). What I said in my last post above this was reality, regardless of what you, "recognized," and it was not a, "tactic," but a sincere statement. In fact, it seems somewhat disingenuous to be arbitrarily declaring my statements as, "tactics."
Buster's Uncle
AC2 Owner
I really don't get why you're pursuing this. I don't want to be blunt, and I'm leaving.
Theologically speaking, Jesus doesn’t get any “genetics” or similar from God. He’s not half-human and half-divine, like a sort of demigod version of Mr Spock. He’s wholly human and derives all of his human properties from his mother alone, who is miraculously given the ability to provide them (which is why he isn’t a clone of her). His divinity comes from the fact that his human body and soul are assumed by the divine Son, not from his human body and soul being partly divine (that would be a heretical view).
Patine
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I know this. It was a hypothetical aside that I immediately countered with, "no credible references mentioning such." I was basically saying that, even if the hypothetical point had any plausible chance of being, the point I was countering would almost certainly still be untrue.
innonimatu
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Getting back to the out-of-africa failures, guess what, new finds keep being made that prove history was not ever really written on human evolution.
The world is huge, human remains are fragile, and early populations were small. There are many things we still do not know, have not found, and many that were lost to time. But from those already found it is clear that human evolution happened across the whole world accessible to early humans. As was bound to happened because they could walk across it!
How such a basic thing as the capacity of human, and necessarily also early human populations, to migrate was lost on previous researchers, one can only speculate. But at least science can advance a funeral at a time...
Adding to the fun, our older "predecessors" have also left skeletal remains out of Africa. Who could have guessed that monkeys could have lived and evolved also out of Africa huh?
Earlier homo sapiens spread will also in due time be "discovered", as it is equally logic that populations moved. If there aren't yet enough bones in stock in museums it is because they haven't been found yet. Absence of evidence was never proof of theories of absence.
It will be fun though if the reaction overshoots the other way, as the last piece previews:
Imo they are wrong in this last speculation. The continents were connected, the environment didn't prevent migrations and the groups of apes evolving to humans must have mingled all along though those millions of years. But it is right to mock the certainties of the "out of Africa" theories purpoting that there was a single "tree" for humans with a single region of origin, and I thing what this gentleman was doing in that last comment was a bit of mocking.
The world is huge, human remains are fragile, and early populations were small. There are many things we still do not know, have not found, and many that were lost to time. But from those already found it is clear that human evolution happened across the whole world accessible to early humans. As was bound to happened because they could walk across it!
How such a basic thing as the capacity of human, and necessarily also early human populations, to migrate was lost on previous researchers, one can only speculate. But at least science can advance a funeral at a time...
Adding to the fun, our older "predecessors" have also left skeletal remains out of Africa. Who could have guessed that monkeys could have lived and evolved also out of Africa huh?
Earlier homo sapiens spread will also in due time be "discovered", as it is equally logic that populations moved. If there aren't yet enough bones in stock in museums it is because they haven't been found yet. Absence of evidence was never proof of theories of absence.
It will be fun though if the reaction overshoots the other way, as the last piece previews:
Imo they are wrong in this last speculation. The continents were connected, the environment didn't prevent migrations and the groups of apes evolving to humans must have mingled all along though those millions of years. But it is right to mock the certainties of the "out of Africa" theories purpoting that there was a single "tree" for humans with a single region of origin, and I thing what this gentleman was doing in that last comment was a bit of mocking.
Once again, these articles don’t undermine the “out of Africa” theory at all. The second one is about the origins of African apes millions of years before hominins appeared on the scene: their ancestors evolved in the eastern Mediterranean region before moving to Africa, where later on some of them would evolve into hominins.
The “hominines” of the last paragraph you quote are African apes in general, not to be confused with “hominins”, a much narrower group within African apes. The quotation isn’t referring to human evolution at all but to the much earlier emergence of pre-hominin ancestors.
The first article you link to is entirely consistent with the hypothesis that, over millions of years, multiple Homo species evolved in Africa and then spread out of it in successive waves, with some of them then undergoing subsequent evolution in the places they had moved to. There’s nothing unusual about that - horses did much the same thing in North America.
As we said before, the “out of Africa” hypothesis has become much more complicated than it originally was, but it’s still broadly accepted by most researchers and is supported by a lot of evidence. You keep insisting that the “out of Africa” model is waning in popularity in favour of the multi-regional hypothesis, but the reality is closer to the other way around: the multi-regional hypothesis has, over the last three or four decades, been progressively watered down into a modification of the “out of Africa” hypothesis, as its adherents have recognised that the bulk of human evolution occurred in Africa.
The “hominines” of the last paragraph you quote are African apes in general, not to be confused with “hominins”, a much narrower group within African apes. The quotation isn’t referring to human evolution at all but to the much earlier emergence of pre-hominin ancestors.
The first article you link to is entirely consistent with the hypothesis that, over millions of years, multiple Homo species evolved in Africa and then spread out of it in successive waves, with some of them then undergoing subsequent evolution in the places they had moved to. There’s nothing unusual about that - horses did much the same thing in North America.
As we said before, the “out of Africa” hypothesis has become much more complicated than it originally was, but it’s still broadly accepted by most researchers and is supported by a lot of evidence. You keep insisting that the “out of Africa” model is waning in popularity in favour of the multi-regional hypothesis, but the reality is closer to the other way around: the multi-regional hypothesis has, over the last three or four decades, been progressively watered down into a modification of the “out of Africa” hypothesis, as its adherents have recognised that the bulk of human evolution occurred in Africa.
I posted this about some computer modelling of modern and archeological genetic data to reconstruct most probable human evolutionary trees published earlier this year. My quite possibly flawed summary would be a bit more "out of africa"y that some recent models, but very early divergence from the last common ancestor in africa.
Spoiler Legend :
innonimatu
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Strictly speaking out of Africa means the modern humans evolving in Africa.
What I was happy about are the beginnings of a re-acknowledgment that Africa was not an isolated continent and even the hominids of millions of years ago were widespread across the old world. The belief remains that homo sapiens evolved someplace in Africa and spread form there, wiping out all other hominids that might have started down the evolutionary path to intelligent species. But now there is this interesting question more clearly posed: and did the ancentrors of this homo sapiens move into Africa before? And if they could move in and out so easily, why is the out-of-Africa theory so set in stone?
My main issue with the out-of-Africa theory has always been that it does not make sense. One big wave of migration into tjhe world, and so near in the past? Humans can travel thousands of kilometers on foot in a single generation. How could most of a scientific community reasonably assume they stayed put across thousands of generations, evolving in one and only one region? Even if not in one generation, they had to have moved around. Ecosystem change alone forced that, and climate changed therefore ecosystems changed. Our ancestors were necessarily migrants, if not nomadic.
What I was happy about are the beginnings of a re-acknowledgment that Africa was not an isolated continent and even the hominids of millions of years ago were widespread across the old world. The belief remains that homo sapiens evolved someplace in Africa and spread form there, wiping out all other hominids that might have started down the evolutionary path to intelligent species. But now there is this interesting question more clearly posed: and did the ancentrors of this homo sapiens move into Africa before? And if they could move in and out so easily, why is the out-of-Africa theory so set in stone?
My main issue with the out-of-Africa theory has always been that it does not make sense. One big wave of migration into tjhe world, and so near in the past? Humans can travel thousands of kilometers on foot in a single generation. How could most of a scientific community reasonably assume they stayed put across thousands of generations, evolving in one and only one region? Even if not in one generation, they had to have moved around. Ecosystem change alone forced that, and climate changed therefore ecosystems changed. Our ancestors were necessarily migrants, if not nomadic.
Lexicus
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This is not what the out-of-Africa theory posits. It is a misunderstanding of DNA evidence. DNA evidence in fact leaves virtually no doubt that human populations alive today are descended from a single wave of migration out of Africa, roughly 50-60,000 years ago. Saying that therefore this was the only migration of hominids or humans out of Africa is a fallacy similar to saying that mitochondrial Eve must have been the only woman on Earth when she lived.
innonimatu
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What? DNA, weak as it still remains as a contribution to sorting out this past, shows that human populations are not simply descendants of that migration. Have you missed all the noise about the neanderthal DNA?
Look at an example of the latest revised popular science presentation of the out-of-Africa theory:
This is what I called epicycles on the aristotelian theory. They are clinging to the of theory of the late migration of a single new species, even as at the same time they acknowledged interbreeding with species that developed and spread across the whole old world much, much earlier!
Both these things cannot be true at the same time. If both mobility/migration and interbreeding is acknowledged, then a pure species of homo sapiens first emerging then later spreading is impossible. They would have been spreading and merging with other branches of evolution all along! Not just after some arbitrary imagined event that the theory present as the "out of Africa" step of the evolutionary history.
The narrative in this piece in fact specifically acknowledges migrations and interbreeding of populations within Africa. And it also acknowledges interbreeding with populations out of Africa. But it still clings to excluding migration and interbreeding out of Africa until some arbitrary event that would have happened after hundreds of thousands of years of evolution restricted to the Africa continent. This makes no sense. This hybrid confusion of a theory is an example of one-funeral-at-a-time evolution of science. We are still some funerals short of the out-of-Africa theory being dumped for one that truly overturns "the centuries-old notion that races are biologically discrete groups with separate origins." Even if the greater part of the genetic inheritance of modern humans originated from some evolution in one region (which I doubt, I think it is a belief born out of mere lack of archeological evidence still), that portion was just one part of a wider mosaic that makes up the modern humans.
The out-of-Africa theory depended, postulated, that a single branch had wiped out all the others. It was false, and has been shown false. And when the central thesis of a scientific theory is falsified, that sould be admitted. Not disguised with embellishments.
Look at an example of the latest revised popular science presentation of the out-of-Africa theory:
This is what I called epicycles on the aristotelian theory. They are clinging to the of theory of the late migration of a single new species, even as at the same time they acknowledged interbreeding with species that developed and spread across the whole old world much, much earlier!
Both these things cannot be true at the same time. If both mobility/migration and interbreeding is acknowledged, then a pure species of homo sapiens first emerging then later spreading is impossible. They would have been spreading and merging with other branches of evolution all along! Not just after some arbitrary imagined event that the theory present as the "out of Africa" step of the evolutionary history.
The narrative in this piece in fact specifically acknowledges migrations and interbreeding of populations within Africa. And it also acknowledges interbreeding with populations out of Africa. But it still clings to excluding migration and interbreeding out of Africa until some arbitrary event that would have happened after hundreds of thousands of years of evolution restricted to the Africa continent. This makes no sense. This hybrid confusion of a theory is an example of one-funeral-at-a-time evolution of science. We are still some funerals short of the out-of-Africa theory being dumped for one that truly overturns "the centuries-old notion that races are biologically discrete groups with separate origins." Even if the greater part of the genetic inheritance of modern humans originated from some evolution in one region (which I doubt, I think it is a belief born out of mere lack of archeological evidence still), that portion was just one part of a wider mosaic that makes up the modern humans.
The out-of-Africa theory depended, postulated, that a single branch had wiped out all the others. It was false, and has been shown false. And when the central thesis of a scientific theory is falsified, that sould be admitted. Not disguised with embellishments.
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Lexicus
Deity
But this is kind of what I'm talking about, this is a misrepresentation of what's being advanced by the out-of-Africa theory. There's nothing in the claim that all current human populations descend from a single wave of migration of modern humans out of Africa that precludes the interbreeding with other species of hominids outside Africa. The DNA evidence also shows that this interbreeding happened. But the spatial distribution of modern human genetic diversity makes any other explanation for human dispersal across the world untenable. Africa has by far the most genetically diverse human populations with diversity steadily decreasing as one follows the course of the migration wave, and diversity is least in the areas which, as far as we can tell, were reached last.
Now, you are correct that nazi-adjacent social Darwinists argued that modern humans had exterminated other populations they came across and this was taken much more seriously before the DNA evidence made it also untenable.
This is a confusion of issues. The out-of-Africa hypothesis could be compatible with "race" depending on the details. But DNA evidence also really disproves the idea that races are biological entities.
Patine
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"Races," really seem like just adaptations or reacted deveopments - to climate zones lived in for long periods at some point between the orginal migrations and more recorded historical epochs, as I understand it.
I think this model is specifically excluded this more recent study:
Abstract:
Such weakly structured stem models explain patterns of polymorphism that had previously been attributed to contributions from archaic hominins in Africa.
Writeup:
One previously proposed explanation for today’s human diversity is that H. sapiens mixed with other archaic human species that had branched off and become isolated. But Henn and her colleagues found that the weakly structured stem model was the better fit, giving a clearer explanation for the variation seen in humans today.
innonimatu
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I will try to read on that model carefully when I have the time. But I will be starting skeptical, models are a dime a dozen with so many people having to produce papers all the time for a living!
What would you replace models with? Actual evidence is widely scattered.
innonimatu
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I think what is needed in this field is the humility of acknowledging that most of this past is uncharted territory and avoid presenting hypothesis as "true theories" of the past.
And may remain uncharted. It is as with evidence of early civilization. The archeological vestiges are frail. Almost everything that was produced back then is lost already, vanished. Sometimes we get lucky and find bones most undisturbed and undecomposed in sheltered places like caves. Or wood and other perishables in bogs. But how many 100 thousand year bogs do we have in continuous existence in places where early humans evolved? Many portion of the history of early human evolution must be be entirely lost forever.
From my point of view, from what I saw so far, genetic evidence has been more useful for what it disproves than anything it may "prove". That will be speculative because we can not know what was lost, where mixed populations may have existed than then migrated away and left no surviving remains.
Bonyduck Campersang
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