What Homo Naledi Means for the Study of Human Evolution

That is certainly true, but as I pointed out later, it seems that, at least in some parts of the world, the human capacity to establish complex relationships and behaviors was already present by 300 thousand years ago. How long it took for those behaviors to emerge is uncertain but control of fire, at 500 thousand years ago, was certainly part of it. I contend that the cultural shift had already happened. If, as we suspect, the European H. heidelbergensis populations are the successors to African H. ergaster populations, then it is at least possible that these behaviors were present in Africa as well. We cannot know that until more information is uncovered in South Africa, but it at least raises the possibility.

Whatever it means, it is pretty humbling to realize these relatively small brained humanoids lived and thrived in an environment that would kill most of us in short order.

Yes. In some ways, our approach to our own evolution reflects our preoccupation with ourselves. We cannot “think outside the box” very easily. What H. floresiensis and H. naledi tell us is that we are far more diverse than we either thought or even, perhaps, wanted to think.

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George, judging from @AntoineSuarez response of 5/27, he and I are in close, but not exact, agreement. In his first two Positions, Antaoine states “This evolutionary selfishness and corresponding ‘propensity to sin’ was within A&E and is within all other human persons from the very moment of creation, and causes them to be in need of Redemption.” I am in total agreement with this Position.

And yet, in Position III, which Antoine says he prefers, he states that: "Their sin was NOT motivated by any ‘propensity to sin’ coming from the selfishness intrinsic to the process of evolution: God bestowed A&E with strength of will and intellect to overcome such selfishness."
But then Antoine goes on to state:

[quote=“AntoineSuarez, post:76, topic:35442”]
they lost mastery over evolutionary selfishness and acquired “propensity to sin” in particular through concupiscence.

Thus it appears to me (and Antoine can correct me it I am wrong) he implies (as does St. Augustine) that the intrinsic weakness ‘of the flesh’ was lust. Surely King David did: Ps.51:5 "In sin did my mother conceive me." (Putting blame on his mother when when it really belonged on himself and Bathsheba in conceiving Solomon.) Judging from past history, where the Vatican chastised both Teilhard de Chardin and Mathew Fox for proposing the replacement of Original Sin with Original Blessing, it would appear that any proposal that God Himself chose a method of creation that contained a strong component of selfishness (i.e. Darwinian evolution) would ‘put the blame on God’ and let A&E 'off the hook’. This argument no longer holds. Science (even Richard Dawkins science) now supports the statement by Pope John Paul II "all other life on earth is a product of what is known as 'Darwinian evolution, but humankind is an exception.

So why don’t we all rejoice and try to live up to the challenge we have been given: accept the offer to be Co-Creators with Him, and strive to be worthy as Image Bearers. This decidedly would alter our NooGenetics, which are now of greater importance than our BioGenetics.
Al Leo

@aleo (and @AntoineSuarez !)

Right from the get-go, I gave my position on his approach:

If I were any kind of Young Earth Creationist, I would adopt his approach instantly. I think it makes the most sense… in recognizing the job of making souls belongs to God, and pointing out that God is the one who planned this whole thing, so God must be the one who wanted to insert this “defect” in the souls of all Humanity.

Just like they say in Law & Order: M.M.O.

Only He had the Means.
Only He had the Motive.
And only he had the Opportunity!

But since I’m an Evolutionist, where the Eden story is a spiritual allegory, I have to go with the idea that the story highlights the flawed nature of flesh from the onset. Evolution wasn’t designed to make perfect life forms. And I think we can call it a day with the conclusion that this is what Genesis is telling us.

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Dear Al Leo,
I have published a new posting in the thread about “Transmission of original sin”:

I would like to suggest we discuss your interesting idea there to facilitate referencing.

Very true, @aleo.

But his vehicle for the transmission of sin is flesh … but the soul that God makes for each human, which is now pre-packaged with the guilt of original sin! As I said, if I were going to be a Creationist, I would adopt @AntoineSuarez’s “Papal-borrowed” scenario. It’s brilliant!

[[quote=“Shawn, post:20, topic:35892”]
I’ve wondering the same thing–how naledi managed to coexist alongside more intelligent species of Homo. Maybe they had managed to carve out a somewhat isolated niche.
[/quote]
I don’t think it’s that much different than the way various species of primates may live in relatively close quarters. But larger species of Homo with larger brains require more energy, so I would speculate that their food sources might not completely overlap.

As above, we’re all just speculating to a certain degree right now. Several key pieces of research are yet to be published and vetted.

Still, there is a huge difference between what we think of as “language” and the method of communication used by early hominids. Certainly, it was more advanced than the vocalizations and gestures of chimpanzees, but it was not anything approaching modern language, which is the opposite end of the continuum. (And make no mistake: it is a continuum.) In order to move from one end of the continuum to the other, first the brain must develop along certain lines, and the anatomy of the throat must develop along certain lines, etc., but these anatomical changes only make speech possible, and speech is not the same thing as language. We have a hard time conceiving what early proto-languages might have been like because we have a language, and it shapes the very way that we think.

Steve Mithen had an interesting proposal in “The Singing Neanderthals,” although, as @Jimpithecus noted, Neanderthal language capabilities are hotly disputed.

Consciousness is overrated.

Totally agree, but it takes more than a complex thought to have a conscience, as well. H. heidelbergensis does seem to have exhibited many of the complex behaviors (“planning depth,” hunting large game, division of labor, etc.) that paleoanthropologists associate with “modern human behavior.” In that context, it certainly makes sense to say, as you do, that this represents the roots of modern human behavior. However, what is absent from Schöningen is evidence of purely symbolic behavior, such as geometric patterns and the like. The distinction that I am making is not intended to say that H. heidelbergensis was or wasn’t “human.” Rather, I’m simply pointing out the same continuum – from behaviors that exhibited the roots of modern human cognitive abilities (300kya) to the first expressions of symbolic behavior (100kya) to cognitively modern humans (50kya).

The point is, many Homo species played their part in making us who we are, both cognitively and genetically.

Given that my comment has nothing to do with the main content of this excellent article, I was hesitant to assume my role as geographical nitpicker again, but I can’t let this sentence go without a response:

Additionally, we know from the evidence in the Russian state of Georgia that the range of early Homo was vast both geographically and chronologically.

I assume that the author’s intent was to prevent readers from thinking he is referring to the state of Georgia in the U.S., but identifying it as “the Russian state of Georgia” is problematic. Georgia is an independent state in the Caucasus region. There was a Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, but since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Georgia has been independent. It does not share strong historical or cultural ties to Russia, and only a very small percentage of its population is of Russian ethnicity.

Particularly given Russia’s recent actions in the Crimea and eastern Ukraine and their ongoing conflict with Georgia regarding Abkhazia and South Ossetia, I think it is worth correcting this error. Perhaps a better wording would simply be “the country of Georgia.”

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@Jay313

Ha.

Without Consciousness, everything is meaningless.

I cannot correct the error at this point because I have no access to the original but your concern and correction are so noted. Sorry for the error.

That is correct, and to be sure, intellectual complexity was an incremental process that took place over a considerable period of time. One of the problems with saying that there is no evidence of symbolic behavior at Schoeningen is that there is the chance that we might not recognize it for what it is. It might be there, it might not. Every year, we discover something that the Neandertals did that surprises us. Whether or not symbolic thought extends back more than 100 k years, I don’t know but I don’t want to rule it out just yet. For some reason the system is not letting me attach any links. Here are two examples:

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Apropos of nothing, I learned something interesting that I thought I’d pass along to the other non-professionals. I’ve always used “hominids,” but I finally bothered to look up the distinction between “hominid” and “hominin” at the Australian Museum. For word geeks like me, here are the highlights:

New definitions
The most commonly used recent definitions are:

Hominid – the group consisting of all modern and extinct Great Apes (that is, modern humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans plus all their immediate ancestors).

Hominin – the group consisting of modern humans, extinct human species and all our immediate ancestors (including members of the genera Homo, Australopithecus, Paranthropus and Ardipithecus).

Previous definitions
Current use of the term ‘hominid’ can be confusing because the definition of this word has changed over time. The term ‘hominid’ used to have the same meaning that ‘hominin’ now has. It was therefore a very useful term to designate the line leading to modern humans and was used when referring to various members of our human evolutionary tree.

‘Hominid’ has now been assigned a broader meaning and now refers to all Great Apes and their ancestors. This new terminology is being used in many scientific journals already, and it is only a matter of time (but possibly many years) before everyone catches up to using the new term.

The problem for students and teachers is that a lot of texts still use the old system and many internet sites also haven’t caught up, even those of many reputable scientific establishments. So students/teachers will need to be aware that ‘hominids’ can mean two different things depending on how up-to-date a reference is with regard to incorporating these taxonomy/classification changes.

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Obviously the discovery of H. naledi is ground breaking and hopefully instructive for scientific analysis going forward. The discovery of a “lost” side branch that coexisted with H. sapiens up until roughly 250,000 years ago I would think should not be completely surprising considering our experience recently with other “lost” side branches. Why this particular branch continued to exist opens up fascinating lines of inquiry of how it was so. Usually geographic separation facilitates genetic divergence in some manner such as the 2 million year separation of Bonobo’s and Chimpanzee’s (how long have they been genetically static since our divergence with them 7 million years ago?

We know that H. erectus left Africa around 2 million years ago and appears to have had pockets of existence possibly up until 100,000 years ago. The same goes for the pockets of Neanderthals and Denosavians side branches. We still have diversity in Africa in size; compare the Pygmy to the Maasai. It might be more instructive to compare H. naledi to Pgymy morphology including cranial size than to more robust versions of H. erectus and sapiens.

Concerning some of the discussion regarding the “Image of God”. I believe Darrel Falk is heading us in the right direction with the implication that Middleton embraces. As a NT Christian I tend to take my definitions of “Image of God” from Paul primarily and it seems clear that he interprets and applies it theologically to infer that through the endowed “Holy Spirit” we emulate the highest qualities of God’s characteristics. Simply put it means; we can choose to set our minds on the flesh (lower attributes of humanness) or we can set our minds on the spirit (higher nature of God as illustrated through Christ who is Gods Image). This implication I believe is what underscores the meaning in Genesis 1:26 and it should be considered the great prophetic desire of God and not some biological implication as biblical literalist often infer.

Could H. naledi if we brought one to life today embrace dependent living through God? Could H. erectus or H. Neanderthal or archaic H. Sapiens 200,000 to 300,000 years ago also? Or do we have to wait until the Adamic individual arrives? Biblically IMO the Adamic individual is a literary attempt to express that humanity as far as the biblical writers comprehended was a God seeker. Well we should know that humanity has had this ability for at least 100,000 years. I say this because that attribute is found in Native American’s who separated and eventually made their way and they definitely have that ability. Pauls’ answer was to take it to everyone because everyone was capable of drawing near to God if only they could hear the message. How far back do we have to go to discover this attribute? I doubt we will ever determine this issue since we can’t go back in time and recreate these individuals. Perhaps if we could clone a H. Neanderthal and see; then we might be surprised. :wink:
Norm

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Well said. Just a couple of minor quibbles:

The earliest fossils of anatomically modern H. sapiens are about 200,000 years old. The H. naledi remains are dated 236-300,000 years before the present. Obviously, H. sapiens did not “poof” into existence 200 kya, and it’s unlikely that those naledi fossils represent the very last survivors of their species. Nevertheless, it seems to me that we cannot say for sure how much, if any, overlap there may have been. I’ll let the experts weigh in on this if I’m off base.

Fixed it for you.

Fixed. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

CC @Jimpithecus

Thanks Jay,

I actually originally contemplated whether to stick with the 250,000 year statement or to go with the more conventional 200,000 year date and change the wording accordingly toward your idea. I chose the former to push the envelope a bit toward where I see H. sapiens DNA dating leading recently. I still should have been less dogmatic so your point is appreciated. :slight_smile:

Here is a recent article that comes close to what I inferred, however “early humans” could posssibly infer archaic H. saipiens or perhaps more recent H. erectus.

I also fixed the “can’t to can”; should have just quoted Romans 8 instead of trying to paraphrase it. :wink:

You’re probably right…

You are quite right, that AMHS did not “poof” into existence, so what we have at Omo and Bouri are just representatives of an evolution that must have begun to occur earlier. One thing that I did not consider initially is that, while we have H. ergaster and (maybe) H. erectus in south and East Africa, it is north Africa where the first AMHS appears. Omo and Bouri are both in the Afar Triangle, in Ethiopia. What this means is not entirely clear but it may be that one of the reasons that H. naledi was able to continue undisturbed for so long is that AMHS did not make their way down that far. Just a thought.

I honestly haven’t had time to even read the article, let alone the sources, but I saw this story in an email on my lunch break. I figured a number of you would be interested.

http://www.nature.com/news/oldest-homo-sapiens-fossil-claim-rewrites-our-species-history-1.22114?WT.ec_id=NEWSDAILY-20170607

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