[HN Gopher] Fragment of a human face aged over one million years...
___________________________________________________________________
Fragment of a human face aged over one million years discovered
Author : docmechanic
Score : 63 points
Date : 2025-03-23 19:33 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencedaily.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencedaily.com)
| docmechanic wrote:
| 'The discovery of a human facial fragment aged over one million
| years represents the oldest known face in western Europe and
| confirms the region was inhabited by two species of human during
| the early Pleistocene, finds a new study.'
| llm_nerd wrote:
| Didn't humans first leave Africa 100,000 years ago by high
| estimates? To Western Europe 40,000 years ago?
|
| Doesn't this completely upend early humanity?
| eesmith wrote:
| Homo but not Homo sapiens.
|
| > "The evidence is still insufficient for a definitive
| classification, which is why it has been assigned to H. aff.
| erectus. This designation acknowledges Pink's affinities with
| Homo erectus while leaving open the possibility that it may
| belong to another species." -
| https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/mar/fragment-human-face-aged...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| No. Human here means a species in the Homo genus. That includes
| a lot more than just _modern_ humans.
| diddlybopshubop wrote:
| Modern humans did. Other human species left Africa and
| populated the rest of the old world much, much earlier.
|
| I'm not up-to-date on my research these days but it's only
| within the last 10K years or so (maybe even more recent) where
| there's been one extant human subspecies.
| kingofthehill98 wrote:
| The craziest thing for me is that there's a lot of evidence
| for claiming that Sapiens interbred with other Homos, such as
| the Neanderthal.
| danielbln wrote:
| Why is that crazy? Looking at human history, this doesn't
| come as much of a shock, does it?
| checkyoursudo wrote:
| Humans do like to fuck.
| dmd wrote:
| rishathra
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Interbred is putting it mildly. More like killed the men
| and raped all the women. This was repeated again with the
| Yamnaya from the Caucasus a few millennia ago where they
| again killed all the men and raped all the women.
| im3w1l wrote:
| How certainly do we actually know that? If the evidence
| you claim is that there are no Y-chromosomes from other
| hominids, an alternative explanation could be that
| hybrids with Y-chromosomes from other hominids did exist,
| but disappeared gradually over the centuries/millenia
| either because they were less fit or through pure chance.
|
| Are there any now living people with mt-dna from other
| hominids?
|
| Having a minority non-autosomal genotype could be an
| issue as there might be recurring "compatibility
| problems", given that the autosomal dna would mainly
| evolve to work with the majority mtdna and ydna.
| ginko wrote:
| The genetic evidence points into the other direction:
|
| > There is considerably less Neanderthal ancestry on the
| X-chromosome compared to the autosomal chromosomes, which
| similarly suggests that admixture with modern humans was
| primarily the result of mating between modern human
| females and Neanderthal males.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_genetics#Parent
| age
| gigachad69 wrote:
| a lot of evidence as in most europeans, eurasians and east
| asians have some percentage of neanderthal genes in their
| DNA
| wincy wrote:
| If you've seen Star Trek the Original Series it shows you
| precisely how much humans are into humanoid subspecies.
| They could be green for all a dude who hasn't seen a woman
| in a week could care!
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > They could be green for all a dude who hasn't seen a
| woman in a week could care!
|
| Not a great example; the green women are specifically
| shown to exert pheromonal control over alien males.
| encipriano wrote:
| Isnt neanderthal sapiens. Also, not all modern humans
| kbrannigan wrote:
| What if the literature of God Created men(mankind) in his
| image came to differentiate Homo sapiens from others.
|
| Or the history really began once the other Humans were no
| more ?
|
| Just passing thoughts
| cdblades wrote:
| There are at least several thousand years between the last
| non-modern human hominids dying out and the first writing
| emerging.
| nkoren wrote:
| About 20,000 years in fact.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| I've been thinking about this a lot, by coincidence, as I
| read Unsong by Scott Alexander (unsongbook.com). It's a
| beautifully written somewhat comic and somewhat tragic
| story about the kabbalic-turned-capitalist search for the
| powerful Names of God.
|
| It occurred to me that, if the Abrahamic God exists, and
| the origin of Adam is anything more than a mere metaphor,
| God must have had to make a decision at some point.
| "There!", He/She/It said as the last vital chromosome fell
| into place in generation Aleph-1, "All this work is finally
| done. Whew! I could use some rest." Or something.
|
| But maybe it's all metaphor (except for the God existing
| part). Maybe the Garden of Eden was Us (big-us, all the
| hominids) co-existing without technology, and the rise of
| flint-knapping/agriculture/representational art/whatever
| was the "eating of the fruit and gaining of knowledge".
|
| Or any other variation you like, as long as you're not
| intentionally bound from thinking by a literalist view of
| the Torah's Book of Genesis. In which case, I have bad
| news: "Adam" wasn't even named that in the early writings,
| presumably closer to God's word. So, your translation is a
| bad start for you.
|
| So, maybe the "Twelve Tribes of Israel" are themselves
| metaphoric for the whole set of hominin branches. Maybe
| "Ham" was Paranthropus. Accepting that "seven" in the bible
| sometimes implies "an important big number", maybe "seven"
| generations later (give or take a few 100) Paranthropus
| died out completely. Poor Ham. He was just checking to make
| sure Dad didn't oversleep.
|
| Or maybe, there is no God, and it's just fun to play with
| myths, which are culturally powerful.
| dmonitor wrote:
| It's not hard to see how "leaving the garden" can be
| interpreted as us leaving nature. We're the only animal
| that doesn't really jive with the rest of the ecosystem.
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| > "Adam" wasn't even named that in the early writings,
| presumably closer to God's word.
|
| Citation needed. What was he named in the early writings?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Other human species left Africa and populated the rest of
| the old world much, much earlier.
|
| Usually those would be called hominids, not humans.
| sightbroke wrote:
| Article says this skull fragment is possibly Homo Erectus.
|
| This says they left Africa within in that time:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_erectus
|
| This has further details on human evolution:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human#Evolution
|
| This covers in more detail the time modern humans migrated from
| Africa:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_African_origin_of_moder...
| ge96 wrote:
| > Ah-ha! But no one has found the missing link between ape
| and this so called Homo habilis
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Using the term "missing link" instantly flags you as not
| having a serious evolutionary background.
|
| We don't find "missing links". Ever, really. They existed,
| but the fossil record is far too small a sampling to gift
| us like that.
| ge96 wrote:
| It's a joke/quote from Futurama
| jyounker wrote:
| Context: https://comb.io/osyksW
| dyauspitr wrote:
| No the homo genus includes everything from something barely
| distinguishable from an gorilla all the way to modern humans.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Only if you can't tell a gorilla from a chimpanzee.
|
| Neither are first-cousins to Homo, which is descended from
| genii since the split from the shoot that Bonobos came from.
| codingwagie wrote:
| You dont still believe that do you?
| eesmith wrote:
| More info in the press release from UCL at
| https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/mar/fragment-human-face-aged...
| echelon wrote:
| Institutional source with photos:
|
| https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/mar/fragment-human-face-aged...
|
| Paper with many photos and figures:
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08681-0
| mac3n wrote:
| now, run that through an AI face de-ager!
| ghostly_s wrote:
| Oh, facial _bones_. Now Im less confused. I think the layman
| would call that a skull fragment.
| dzdt wrote:
| Agreed. I was the same place: do they mean an imprint of a
| face? Or a partially preserved ancient artwork? No, they mean
| fossilised bone fragments comprising upper mouth and
| cheekbone areas of a human skull.
| BrenBarn wrote:
| Yeah I was confused as well. "Face" isn't really a body part,
| it's more of a perceptual unit. It's just a piece of the
| front of someone's head.
| erellsworth wrote:
| They don't look a day over 900,000 years.
| mjd wrote:
| Insert Joan Rivers joke here
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-03-26 23:02 UTC)