This newly identified species was found in the Philippines and named Homo luzonensis after Luzon, the island where bones and teeth from individuals of this species were excavated from Callao Cave. Specimens of H. luzonensis were dated to minimum ages of 50,000 and 67,000 years old, which suggests that the species was alive at the same time as several other hominins belonging to the genus Homo , including Homo sapiens , Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo floresiensis .
Okay good. I didnât want to edit any slides anyways. Itâs much easier to have the position where Neanderthals, Denisovans, Naledi, etc. are just pre/post flood lineages of humans that lie outside modern variation or had some kind of deficiency/mutation.
Some researchers question whether the evidence is enough to warrant a new species designation. âI think it is a really interesting set of remains, but itâs really at the lower end of the amount of evidence that you would want to base a new species on,â says Bernard Wood, a professor who studies human origins at George Washington University and wasnât involved in the study.
Thatâs a tricky one since population groups become more and more different over time after not interbreeding. But even then, what is a species anyways? Itâs not anything real but a word to describe a demarcation between two population groups with a certain amount of morphological (how much?) and genetic (how much?) diversity.
Which perhaps should constitute a ânew species.â
That depends on the definition of species you use; which could be a thread of its own. Currently H Sapiens can encompass from an African pygmy to a tall blonde Scandanavian. This new find appears to be within that range.
Youâre right, species is a classification of convenience rather than a fundamental biological group. Not only can we get breeding between different species but also between genera, so thatâs probably an artificial division as well. The fundamental division is most likely the Biblical Kind.
Even if the species designation is premature, these remains add to the evidence of an ancient race of dwarves living in southeast Asia. Legends of such creatures are found all over Indonesia.
I wonder if viruses were a biblical kind? Is multicellular a more essential kind distinction than that between the plant and animal kind? It doesnât seem the switch in terminology evades any of the thornier issues.
I note that the number of kingdoms is up since I first studied biology. The splitters seem to be winning. Not only are there more of them but they too have been divided into (so far) two super kingdoms. That the two kingdoms of bacteria should require a separate super kingdom makes me wonder why bacteria generally should be considered more different from everything else than a sponge is different from a redwood is different from an algae is different from me?
Doesnât it have to do with the structure of the cell? Sponges are very different from humans, but when you get down to the cellular level, they are both eukaryotes, which are very different from prokaryotes. It is considered the most important distinction between organisms.
Isnât it interesting that the Philippines is one of the places where they have myths/folklore of a little people?
From Wikipedia
Little people have been part of the folklore of many cultures in human history, including Ireland, Greece, the Philippines, the Hawaiian Islands, New Zealand, Flores Island, Indonesia, and Native Americans.
Just because something is myth doesnât mean there is no basis for it in historical fact. On the other hand, humans have a strong tendency to embellish the facts even when it is about something historical.
That is an interesting question. As a lay person in the field, I would have no idea as to how to recognize human from nonhuman. I can see that they have measurements that graph out and compare to other know examples, and those measurement provide a relatively objective way to determine what species it came from. That doesnât really answer the question of âIs it human?â After all, what does it mean to be human?
Incorrect. It is this being within the range of existing populations which is irrelevant. It is the difference between the averages that characterize identifiable groups.
