This image depicts the "linear evolution theory" and is called the "March of Progress" image. However, the evidence of many groups of archaic humans living at the same time requires a new hypothesis. The linear evolution theory was dismissed 50 years ago. If similar images appear in science texts, it reveals how most textbooks are 40-50 years behind the front edge of the sciences.
Dr. Alice C. Linsley
Paleoanthropologists recognize that there were many groups of archaic humans. Among them were the Neanderthals and the Denisovans. A recent genome study revealed that the Denisovans "diverged from Neanderthals 400,000 years ago and that at least two distinct Denisovan populations mixed with ancestors of present-day Asians."There are limited physical remains of Denisovans. These include a finger bone, three teeth, and a skull fragment from the Denisova Cave; and a jawbone and the Xiahe mandible from Baishiya Karst Cave at the northeastern Tibetan Plateau.
In a November 8, 2024 interview, Dr. L. Ongaro said, “It’s a common misconception that humans evolved suddenly and neatly from one common ancestor, but the more we learn the more we realize interbreeding with different hominins occurred and helped to shape the people we are today."
Richard Leakey long ago abandoned the linear evolution misconception, saying:
Current findings on human evolution have brought us to the position where much of what we believed to have theoretically happened proves to be incorrect. Much that is in the textbooks, much that is still being taught in universities about human evolution is no longer true, but it continues to be taught because the implications of recent discoveries are insufficiently understood.
It was principally Weidenreich, Le Gros Clark, and a few of the people of that generation, just previous to mine, who put forward and strongly defended the idea that man had gone through a very simple series of stages of evolution: the pongid stage, an Australopithecine stage, a Pithecanthropus stage, and then man as we know him today. Theoretically, this had always seemed highly unlikely to some of us, since it meant that man had done something which no other mammal had done: evolved in a single straight line instead of having one main branch, with many experimental side branches which failed to make the grade. Yet the old theory persists. Linked with it is the concept, still very, very widely taught and very widely believed, that man in the relatively near past was at a pongid or ape stage of evolution. In such a very short time, three or four million years, as the books and many of my colleagues put it, we are supposed to have lost our huge canine teeth, lost our simian shelves, lost our long, brachiating arms, ceased to dwell in the trees, and many other similar but, I fear, erroneous concepts. These were theories which in the light of current facts no longer stand up."
Anthropologists such as John Hawks note that there is a wider range of anatomical features among Neanderthals than is generally recognized. Hawks also believes that there are limits to what can be determined by genetic tests of archaic fossils. He relies on morphological studies.
The story of human origins cannot be understood from DNA alone. That can take us back only to about 500,000 years ago. What about the humans who lived before that? We have artifactual evidence of humans that date to over 500,000 years ago. Some human fossils found in Eastern Africa date to well before 500,000 years ago.
The discovery of a complete fourth metatarsal of A. afarensis at Hadar that shows the deep, flat base and tarsal facets that "imply that its midfoot had no ape-like midtarsal break. These features show that the A. afarensis foot was functionally like that of modern humans." (Carol Ward, William H. Kimbel, Donald C. Johanson, Feb. 2011)
The Ward, Kimbel and Johanson study reveals how scientists can change their minds. Donald Johanson was the person who announced to the world that Lucy was "ape of the South" or Australopithecus. Has he since reconsidered that assessment?
Excavations at the Boker Tachtit archaeological site in the Negev Desert revealed that modern humans and Neanderthals lived together.
In 2011 researchers discovered jaw bones and teeth of four individuals in the Afar region of Ethiopia that date to between 3.3m and 3.5m years. These archaic humans were alive at the same time as other groups of early humans, suggesting that it is time to abandon the linear evolution hypothesis. Clearly, there were more archaic humans living 3 million years ago than is generally recognized. How they may be related is the great question facing paleoanthropologists.
Related reading: A look at the Neanderthal from Altamura, John Hawks; Can Molecular Models be aligned with Human Morphology?; Many Groups of Archaic Humans (video)
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