[HN Gopher] New ancient ape from Turkiye challenges the story of...
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New ancient ape from Turkiye challenges the story of human origins
Author : janandonly
Score : 66 points
Date : 2023-08-24 12:54 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| freedude wrote:
| If the evidence doesn't exist where it "aught" to be found it is
| also likely Darwin's theory is incorrect. It is a theory and not
| a law. Right?
| jl6 wrote:
| Darwin's theory is "just a theory" in the sense that all
| scientific theories are just theories, and could potentially be
| revised if new evidence comes to light. We think the sun will
| rise tomorrow but that's just a theory too.
|
| Darwin's theory happens to be the kind of theory that is very
| well evidenced and consistent with all observations to date, so
| it would take a truly remarkable discovery to overturn - and
| this ape ain't it.
| nradov wrote:
| That is illogical. Darwin's theory of evolution through natural
| selection doesn't contain any specifics on how or where
| hominids evolved. There is nothing in this article which is
| inconsistent with Darwin's theory.
| diego_moita wrote:
| "New ancient", today's funniest oxymoron.
| jmclnx wrote:
| I do not know why this keeps coming up :)
|
| If apes did evolve outside of Africa, why did they not radiate
| across Asia ? Getting over to East Asia would have been far more
| easier than migrating into Africa and continue evolving there
| after disappearing from Europe. Yes I know about orangutans, but
| I would think after 7 million years there would be more diversity
| of Apes in Asia than Africa.
|
| So I really find this hard to believe. All I can think is more
| fossils in the now dry environment of Turkiye probably survived
| than the humid areas of Africa.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Were there not a number of early human ancestors found in Asia?
|
| For instance, homo erectus, the neandrathals, Homo floresiensis
| liversage wrote:
| There are early finds of Homo in China but these do not
| predate the finds in Africa.
|
| Neanderthals and Homo floresiensis are not early ancestors
| and they lived at the same time as modern humans emerged. I
| believe that Neanderthals are a subspecies of Homo sapiens so
| they were able to interbreed with modern humans.
| opportune wrote:
| Gigantopithecus as well as many hominins besides Homo sapiens,
| did evolve and radiate across Asia?
|
| Homo Erectus/Heidelburgensis/Neanderthals/Denisovans were all
| widely distributed outside of Africa. Neanderthals and
| Denisovans in particular have no records of ever having their
| range include Africa (Neaderthals may have lived in parts of
| North Africa but they're firmly Eurasian). Homo Floresensis
| only ever lived in Flores.
|
| Gigantopithecus, a giant non-hominin Ape, only has evidence of
| living in China. It's thought to be related to Orangutans. You
| probably are dismissive of Orangutans because they are only a
| single ape (actually multiple species) outside of Africa in the
| present day but the Ponginae subfamily including Orangutans and
| Gigantopithecus had many other species, they are just now all
| extinct, but all were Asian:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponginae
|
| That said, I do think there is no evidence that Homo Sapiens
| "evolved outside of Africa" and I suspect most people who do
| push this are doing so for either nationalistic reasons (we
| found early hominin fossils in our country, we must be where
| humans evolved and are the "original" humans!) or racism (not
| wanting to be descended from "Africans"). But it's definitely
| possible there was gene flow from Homo Erectus outside of
| Africa back into Africa in a way that made it into the human
| genome, and many people have non-African human ancestry from
| Neanderthals and Denisovans
| civilitty wrote:
| Exactly. The oldest evidence of archaic human tool use in
| Java, Indonesia is over 1.5 million years old with _Homo
| erectus_ fossils going back 700 kYa [1], long before the
| earliest evidence of _Homo sapiens_. In Europe the oldest
| fossil remains date to 800 kYa at Atapuerca [2] (with
| cannibalism!).
|
| It's just cultural egotism. It's especially meaningless if it
| goes as far back as 8 million years because even half a
| million is enough for hominids to spread across several
| continents and come back as different species.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_Indonesia#Homo_
| ere...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeological_site_of_Atap
| uer...
| opportune wrote:
| Yeah, the fact it's an 8 million year old fossil really
| makes the tie to homo sapiens' origins ludicrous. The
| earliest evidence for Australopithecus (where humans
| started to diverge from other apes like Chimps) was 4
| million years old.
|
| And there are already 12.5 million year old Ponginae
| (Orangutan relatives) fossils from India. Since all
| Ponginae are Asian but none are in human ancestry, that'd
| imply even earlier radiation of early African apes - which
| have just as much a claim to possibly being early human
| ancestors if they were pre-Ponginae - into Asia than this
| would.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| There are very, very few ape species to begin with, and a large
| portion of them (from gibbons to Gigantopithecus) are Asian,
| extinct, or both.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| There's any number of reasons animals might migrate south
| rather than radiating in all directions. Lots of factors affect
| migration. It's certainly a question that needs answering, but
| far from a reason to dismiss the whole hypothesis.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "All I can think is more fossils in the now dry environment of
| Turkiye probably survived than the humid areas of Africa. "
|
| Lots of african land was humid before, but became arid or a
| desert as well.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Olduvai Gorge is pretty dry.
| tgv wrote:
| To be fair, all of it is hard to believe, or rather, unlikely
| when seen without further context. Climate may be a factor that
| influences fossil survival, but also one that influences
| migration. Especially if the rest (rhinos migrating from Turkey
| to Africa?) is also true. I guess we'll just have to wait for
| more information connecting the dots, if it's ever discovered.
|
| It does however show that all these popular ideas about the
| origin of man are not rock solid.
| pasoevi wrote:
| OK, now that everyone is done discussing spelling, what do you
| think about the story?
| lemper wrote:
| i always open to any new findings about it. if it turns out
| that it really is a new hominid, then great! scientists will
| have more than enough on their plates. if not, then it's also
| ok! just keep digging and digging and analysing until something
| worthy of closer inspection come up.
| opportune wrote:
| Finding early-early apes in Turkey is cool but it in no way
| challenges the out of Africa hypothesis unless you're really
| grasping at straws wanting that hypothesis to be false. I don't
| even know why that's part of the story. It's just as cool and
| much less speculative to frame it as chimp-like apes living in
| Turkey/Asia.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| My initial reaction was one of suspicion, but the story as it
| was laid out seemed pretty persuasive. One detail that swayed
| me was the reported lack of fossils in Africa of early hominin
| species:
|
| _While the remains of early hominines are abundant in Europe
| and Anatolia, they are completely absent from Africa until the
| first hominin appeared there about seven million years ago._
|
| Is there another explanation for why these fossils might have
| been missing despite early hominines inhabiting Africa?
| mabbo wrote:
| Lots of possible reasons.
|
| Turkiye may have an environment that is very suitable for the
| preservation of fossil, and one where said fossils remain
| near the surface. Africa is huge, but may lack areas that
| both has those hominids and preserved their fossils well.
|
| Fire example, there are very few footprints on sidewalks, but
| lots in the mud beside them - should we conclude people must
| prefer to walk in the mud?
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Except that eventually we do get hominin fossils there
| later. And I for one haven't heard of a lack of _other_
| fossils from the same time period.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >Is there another explanation for why these fossils might
| have been missing despite early hominines inhabiting Africa?
|
| Most biological and organic things decompose quickly. Every
| time we find a fossil, we are winning an insanely rigged
| lottery. We barely have significant remains from 10k year old
| towns, so you can't really take any info from a supposed lack
| of fossils
| nologic01 wrote:
| Why is the location so important?
|
| Does pinning down an origin help to fill-in gaps and reinterpret
| the (scarce) findings? I.e. use spatial proximity to infer
| biological relations?
|
| Given the enormous timescales and the fact one can walk across
| eurasia/africa many times over in a lifetime it feels a bit odd
| that territory seems to be treated as a defining factor.
| contingencies wrote:
| Precisely, it's ridiculous.
| jfengel wrote:
| You can walk across the continent in a lifetime, but you
| probably don't. You have no reason to.
|
| They probably spent their entire lives within a few tens of
| miles of their birthplace, possibly within mere miles. And the
| same applied to generations around them.
|
| It's not perfect, but that's how paleontology has to work. They
| make their best guesses based on the data they are able to
| (literally) dig up. That means sometimes making substantial
| revisions based on one new, tiny piece of data.
| nologic01 wrote:
| Many modern humans would travel for no good reason on a
| moment's notice.
|
| Ofcourse here are talking about our greater family tree and
| its entirely possible that more confined lifestyles (like
| e.g. the great apes of today) where more typical earlier on.
|
| I would think though bipetalism did not get selected just to
| increase the daily range from the home base. At some point
| some hominid species started roaming and reasons to do so
| would be abundand (overpopulation, drought, following animal
| migrations etc).
|
| The trouble is (starting already with archeology) that the
| stuff that survives the aeons to be found today is always
| "special" in some way. Like being burried in certain
| conditions, being in a collapsed cave etc.
|
| Nature is a great recycler and doesnt leave many traces of
| its pathways.
| ramblenode wrote:
| > They probably spent their entire lives within a few tens of
| miles of their birthplace, possibly within mere miles.
|
| While the land area required to support a single human or
| human ancestor might have been as little as a square mile in
| ideal conditions [0] that is very different from the range of
| a human or human ancestor over a lifetime. For simplicity we
| can consider hunter-gatherer humans who at least would have
| had similar caloric needs.
|
| For one, humans come in groups, which during most of our
| hunter-gatherer past would have been 150-300. If one is
| strictly gathering, this means all the resources around base
| camp would eventually be harvested and the group would need
| to migrate their base camp to another location. The group's
| foraging strategy could form a circuit where they return to
| their original base camp, but it's unlikely that every
| foraging location is as good as every other one, so the
| circuit will likely change over time, extending the lifetime
| range of a single individual.
|
| Secondly, there is a huge variation in hunter-gatherer
| lifestyle. Fishing communities are more sedentary while
| hunting communities are more nomadic and might travel
| hundreds of miles over a year. This is what one would expect
| from a generalist species like ourselves.
|
| [0] [David Pimentel and Marcia H. Pimentel, 'Food, Energy,
| and Society', third edition, (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press,
| 2008), p. 45-46.]
| Glawen wrote:
| off topic, but is Turkiye the new english spelling for Turkey ?
| lucretian wrote:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61671913
|
| possibly a populist move by erdogan, depending on who you ask.
| kevinstubbs wrote:
| At least in the UN (and the spelling is pushed by Turkish
| tourism too). Not sure about adoption beyond that, especially
| outside of Turkey. Personally don't see myself adopting the new
| spelling for a while.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2022/06/02/1102596510/turkey-changes-nam...
| Glawen wrote:
| I don't see it adopting it myself, because that would also
| means pronouncing it differently. Anyway, good luck with
| qwerty keyboard. I'm using azerty, so it is not so painful.
| yardshop wrote:
| You can type a u umlaut on a qwerty keyboard (and maybe
| many others) by holding down Alt, and typing 129 on the
| numeric keypad: u
|
| That works on Windows at least, don't know about other
| systems.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| You can type an umlaut (over a u) on a US-International
| QWERTY keyboard by typing a double quote followed by a u.
|
| And if you are using Windows with, say, US-English QWERTY
| as your default keyboard layout, its easy to add US-
| International and switch between them with ctrl-shift;
| they have the same layout (so your keycaps are still
| write), but some of the punctuation becomes dead keys
| that can function either for the punctuation or
| diacriticals depending on the following keypress.
|
| Because the relationship between the punctuation and the
| diacriticals they work for is mostly visually intuitive,
| I find it a lot easier than memorizing Alt-key codes.
| _Especially_ when using keyboards that don't have a
| separate numeric keyboard in the first place like small
| laptops, and big laptops with relatively powerful dGPUs
| (the former because of total space available, the latter
| because they use more space for venting).
| stuff4ben wrote:
| On Macs, you can long-press the "u" key and you'll see
| options for u u u u u. There's a number underneath, so
| just long press "u" and then type the number for the
| character you want.
| simiones wrote:
| So one would actually have to remember to call the
| country TALT-129kyie?
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| My understanding was that the name would be pronounced the
| same way, but as a native English speaker I don't even know
| what the umlaut does to the sound of the u. So I'm not even
| sure how the pronunciation would actually change.
|
| In any event, if the Turkish government wants me to stop
| using "Turkey" I'm more than happy to call it Anatolia
| instead.
| dghughes wrote:
| I beleive it is pronounced Took-ee-ayy. It's Turkish for
| Turkey so I can't see why non-Turks would be using that
| pronunciation.
|
| I don't say Spain in Spanish i.e. "Espanya"
| (phonetically) I just say Spain.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| Not a Turkish speaker, but I believe it's closer to tur-
| kee-yeh. It's pronounced almost the same in Arabic.
| asimovfan wrote:
| Not all of Turkey is Anatolia though
| catlover76 wrote:
| But Turks aren't originally from Anatolia anyways, and
| basically the only thing "Turkish" about the
| country/people is the language. :T
| Thrymr wrote:
| Is anyone "originally" from anywhere they live now,
| really, except maybe East Africa (at some point in time)?
| Anglo-Saxons came from the continent, "Americans" from
| Europe, Africa and elsewhere, Native Americans from Asia,
| etc.
| aiilns wrote:
| Greeks.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Dorian Greeks migrated into Mycenae in the early Bronze
| Age.
| paint wrote:
| It is pronounced differently to the English "Turkey". For
| once, it has three syllables. Anatolia is the name of the
| large peninsula encapsulating most of Turkey, not the
| country itself.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > My understanding was that the name would be pronounced
| the same way
|
| No, part of the rationale for the change is to reflect
| the different pronunciation (Turkiye) has three syllables
|
| > but as a native English speaker I don't even know what
| the umlaut does to the sound of the u.
|
| While there is a change to the first vowel sound, and I
| think an even more subtle change to the second, the
| biggest difference is the existence of the third
| syllable, which is pretty evident from the spelling, even
| to most native English speakers.
| evujumenuk wrote:
| I have solved this conundrum by calling the country
| "Turkiye", while calling the bird... also "Turkiye". Thus
| ensuring symmetry.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| The US embassy also uses the spelling.
|
| https://tr.usembassy.gov/
| readbeard wrote:
| The US State Department website has a note about that here:
|
| https://www.state.gov/countries-areas/turkey/
| cossatot wrote:
| Yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Turkey
| throwaway0208 wrote:
| It's the new official spelling, but with an umlaut it doesn't
| qualify as an english spelling.
| dizhn wrote:
| Turkiye is Turkey in Turkish. The country isn't saying this
| word is now English but rather call us by our Turkish name
| because sharing a name with a bird is worse than being run by
| an islamist dictator. (While calling India 'Hindistan' and
| calling the bird 'hindi')
| readbeard wrote:
| No. Erdogan started advocating for a switch to Turkiye a couple
| of years ago, and the UN recently adopted the Turkish spelling.
| The US State Department uses both spellings, while asserting
| (sensibly) that Turkiye should be used in "formal and
| diplomatic contexts." [0] English Wikipedia still uses the
| established English spelling. [1]
|
| Some Turks I know seem to think this whole thing was mostly
| cooked up as a distraction from other issues that have come up
| or worsened under Erdogan's leadership.
|
| [0] https://www.state.gov/countries-areas/turkey/ [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Of course not, but some people would like it to be so.
| [deleted]
| causi wrote:
| It might be the new globally-used spelling but I don't think
| you can call anything with an umlaut the "English spelling".
| You have to use an alt+ code to even get the character from an
| English keyboard.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| yes
| calderknight wrote:
| I don't think English has letters with multiple dots above
| them.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| never picked up an issue of the new yorker?
| calderknight wrote:
| I've read them on the internet yes. Good point. Different
| usage of the dots though.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| the "e" in "karaoke" also has a different usage in
| english. so what
| retrac wrote:
| It does. The English I was taught in school, includes the
| diaeresis as part of the writing system. Words like
| coordinate, reengage, Bootes, are spelled as I just spelled
| them.
|
| I don't adhere to it. It is old-fashioned, even a bit
| archaic. But it is still the preferred spelling in some style
| guides, and it is still used in some publications.
| rob74 wrote:
| The catch is that the diaeresis in Turkiye does something
| completely different that the diaeresis you mentioned, so
| actually it would be less confusing if English didn't have
| it at all.
|
| ...then again, even some Germans are using the diaeresis
| for this purpose, such as this guy
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernhard_Ho%C3%ABcker - and
| you can't blame him, because usually "oe" is a
| transliteration of "o", and then his name would mean "hump"
| (as in camel's hump).
| crazygringo wrote:
| Where did you go to school, if you don't mind me asking? I
| didn't realize that was ever something that was taught --
| I'm curious if it's a geographic thing?
|
| The only place I've ever seen the diaeresis used like that
| is in the New Yorker.
| retrac wrote:
| Ontario, Canada, in the '90s. We weren't required to use
| it but I do recall a brief lesson on co-operate,
| cooperate, cooperate, etc. being valid variants.
| lovich wrote:
| It's used to signal when you have a pair of the same
| letters but the second has a different pronunciation.
|
| So "deer" has two e's but no umlaut because they make the
| same sound but "coordinate" has the umlaut since the second
| o is a new sound.
|
| I personally like them and wish they would come back if
| only as a small push back against the horrific ambiguity
| that is the English language
| meepmorp wrote:
| > It's used to signal when you have a pair of the same
| letters but the second has a different pronunciation.
|
| That's a somewhat naive take.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| mkl95 wrote:
| naive
| stvltvs wrote:
| It does, but for a different reason, to mark when two vowels
| are pronounced separately. Like naive. Not often used, but
| the New Yorker does.
| Symbiote wrote:
| How naive.
|
| But that's the only not-foreign not-name word from the list
| I've seen written with the " in Britain. I have see Chloe and
| Zoe written with it too.
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_terms_spelle.
| ..
| mabbo wrote:
| The country has officially asked that it be referred to and
| spelled that way.
|
| If a friend asked me to refer to them with a different name,
| I'd sure look like a jerk if I made a point to not do so, even
| though I know it's their preference. Just the same, I try to
| remember that the country formerly spelled Turkey is now
| spelled Turkiye.
|
| Perhaps someday they'll say it doesn't matter, or they prefer
| the old way. Today isn't that day yet.
| tgv wrote:
| OTOH, a country is not a conscious, communicating being
| that's sensitive about its name. The name change follows a
| decision by a few civil servants and politicians.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Yes, that's what "the country" means, it's shorthand for
| "the government of the country".
| ayhanfuat wrote:
| Meanwhile, that friend is calling everyone whatever he likes.
| England: Ingiltere, Germany: Almanya, London: Londra, Munich:
| Munih.
| nurettin wrote:
| That's fine, his English friend isn't going to start
| calling Germany: Deutschland anytime soon.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| So what do you call that big country just west of France?
|
| Exonyms have been a thing for longer than I can remember....
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Or, the friend is ignorant of the constraints upon asking an
| entity without the tools (alphabet) to bend to their will.
| earthling8118 wrote:
| Yeah, it's an unreasonable request. I don't even know how
| to type that symbol. It isn't on my keyboard. Sure, I could
| probably find a way to type it or copy it from somewhere
| else. Or I could just keep calling it Turkey and move on.
| dryrun wrote:
| I find this take so odd. I presume your are from the US,
| which is a country with so many cultures flowing in, but
| from your post you will not accept that a friend of yours
| may have accents in their name, or that a dish may have
| accents in it, and will forever misspell them.
|
| When I have friends like that (well, my brother too), I
| make a point of typing it the way it's supposed to be
| written, out of courtesy and fun and proudness, like I'm
| clever enough to type any character I want with my
| keyboard, because I master it and I master other
| languages. The day I'll learn how to type Chinese
| characters fluently, I'll be so happy ! Not to boast, but
| it will mean I unlocked a whole new world!
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| That's great of you, the burden might be different when
| asking hundreds of millions of people.
| golemiprague wrote:
| [dead]
| ShrigmaMale wrote:
| fine. then every spanish speaker should call my country The
| United States of America, not Los Estados Unidos. be equal
| about this or don't even start.
|
| also: i will under no circumstances use a name that my
| keyboard cannot type with standard American english. no one
| besides the new yorker uses an umlaut in our language.
| psychphysic wrote:
| There is a vague movement to adopt countries preferred names
| and pronunciation.
|
| It's fairly patchy ultimately.
|
| Beijing/Peking, Mumbai/Bombay, Kyiv/Kiev, Czechia/Czech
| Republic.
|
| Foods seem unaffected funnily enough Peking Duck, Bombay Mix,
| Chicken Kiev.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Not that it's a big deal, but Turkiye uses the u, and
| autocorrect and spell checkers don't seem to have made the
| switch yet so it does require some extra effort to type or
| copy paste. It seem like the use of Mumbai hasn't even been
| universally adopted in India, so I'd expect Turkiye to take
| some time.
| tgv wrote:
| > spell checkers don't seem to have made the switch
|
| Right click > Add to dictionary
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Yeah, sure that works in the specific machine I happen to
| be using but this doesn't come up enough for me to
| remember to do it everywhere.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Iirc, Mumbai,Bangalaru, etc. were changes to decolonize, not
| to change the name foreigners called it as much as to change
| the name resonance called it.
| VincentEvans wrote:
| What is the english name and spelling of the new name Turkey goes
| by? Turkiye?
| Dragonai wrote:
| Yes. The Republic of Turkiye.
|
| https://www.un.org/en/about-us/member-states/turkiye
| VincentEvans wrote:
| Cool, ty!
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The English alphabet does not have u, so this is incorrect.
|
| Turkey insisting on using a name like is analogous to calling
| Germany Deutschland or China Zhong Guo .
|
| However, that doesn't mean it's not an interesting case of an
| authoritarian trolling the west.
| kingofpandora wrote:
| Well ... I don't know why non-English speaking countries get to
| decide how English speakers should pronounce/spell their names.
| Different languages have different names for each other. It's
| ok.
|
| And yes, I would have the same opinion if the UK somehow forced
| Turks to drop "Birlesik Krallik" in favour of its English name.
| VincentEvans wrote:
| My questions was actually precisely about this - what is now
| the name of what used to be Turkey in english and how is it
| spelled in english alphabet. I wasn't asking (though I am not
| opposed to hearing about it, it just wasn't my point) who
| came up with it, what the underlying agenda is, etc - but
| what is now the correct and acceptable way to call it.
|
| Just like there were other countries that have changed their
| names over time for this or that reason, I figured same thing
| could have happened to Turkey while I was not paying
| attention. Or hasn't. Hence the question.
|
| I admit to still calling it Turkey.
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(page generated 2023-08-24 23:02 UTC)