Wow. Great stuff. The tangled web makes it really not surprising in hind site that something "recent" like Homo naledi or Homo floresiensis should exist.
Great episode. I really like the tangled web concept. As a palaeoclimatologist and having had the privilege of visiting "early man" sites on fieldtrips to East Africa, South Africa and China, it makes a great deal of sense to me given the large Quaternary fluctuations in climate and habitat.
I read his book, “Cro Magnon,” and it’s excellent. I purchased it after seeing your earlier interview. As soon as I saw a new video with Prof. Holliday was out, I clicked and listened. Fascinating! I will watch for the next book.
Thanks for the upload. It's always a pleasure to listen to Prof Holliday. And I just want to add the loss of body hair and the development of sweat glands as possible criteria between the two genera _Australopithecus_ and _Homo_ and their different ecology (woodland/savannah).
Inter-specific hybridization definitely seems to be a potential path to major evolutionary changes. Considering the radical and relatively quick changes of the homo genus I think it is fair to assume there is gene mixing between different species driving these changes.
Another brilliant show. That just unlocked a number of doors in my brain. I can finally grasp just how diagnostic teeth can be and why they are such prized specimens. Thank you.
the human part of the world (& probably the rest as well) would have a happier time of it if non-scientists had the same devotion to self-doubt that scientists do
and unmerited self-certainty isn't??? self-doubt is an individual liability when surrounded by arrogant fiction addicts offended by realism about evidence, common sense, and learning from experience
I think one identifying characteristic of the human ape, and may distinguish us among the animals, though probably not testable in the fossil record, is our ability to willingly submit to dentistry without being knocked out…
I would vote habilus in homo. The being's dentition showed it was probably an obligate tool maker, compared to previous Australopithecus. It might have had short legs and made a nest in trees each evening, and did a fair amount of scavenging, but that tool-making seems convincing as the key human development. I know lots of animals can make tools, but they are not obliged to. Just my pop-science viewpoint.
The origin of "tangled web" could be from a very old saying: Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. I doubt anyone can legitimately complain about using that phrase.
Thanks for a very interesting conversation for the both of you. 42:39 ...about neanderthal cold adaptation. How about a fully functional fur coat for cold adaptation! Just like all the rest of European ice age megafauna such as mammoths, rhino's, horses, musk oxen, cave lions, cave bears, bison, hyena, wolves etc. etc. Probably there is some subconscious bias even amongst scientists that says: modern humans have no fur coat, neanderthals look a lot like modern humans, therefor neanderthals have no fur coat. Due to climate change we have thawing of the permafrost and increased accessibility of the arctic. I predict that within a decade we will have discovered at least one neanderthal ice mummy from Siberia having a fully functional fur coat. Woolly mammoth, woolly rhino, woolly man!
We have enough knowledge of Neanderthal genetics now to be pretty certain they were not unusually hairy. All evidence points to fur being lost before the the split of Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens. We have substantial evidence that they wore clothing. Fur would also interfere with sweating. Between these two things I'd say fur is unlikely to re-evolve. Hairy or not though, a Neanderthal ice-mummy would be a hell of an exciting find!
I thought the term bro-magnon was dead these days. We should add as far as we know. Always more specimens out there to find, which may push our line back further
Hi-- thanks for watching! I believe KNM stands for Kenya National Museums. The ER possibly refers to erectus (initial finds in the area were originally classified as Homo erectus).
I once knew a coworker whose hands more closely resembled a chimpanzee's hands. His thumbs were shorter, closer to the palm, less able to spread out or rotate & it looked like the thumbs were missing a joint. (They weren't actually missing a joint. It just appeared to be missing. He had no problems with a precision grip & his grip was strong.)
Apes may not be human but it is my belief that apes descended from some branches of the human family. This can be supported by the close DNA relationship.
Try not to determine a clade (e.g. genus) by a few to a dozen traits. Run a phylogenetic analysis. After analysis Australopithecus nests between Pongo and Pan + Gorilla. Homo is derived from a lineage of genera that never knuckl-walked: Sahelanthropus, Hylobates, Oreopithecus, Ardipithecus and Homo floresiensis. That makes 'Lucy' bipedal by convergence. One other extant ape walks bipedally when terrestrial: Hylobates and kin. So that 'problem' is resolved. Gibbons already have a gracile build, small face, side-to-down facing nares, eyebrows, fight with fists (not teeth) and lack fertility swelling. Deep time genomics tend to follow continental areas (e.g. Afrotheria) and tend to too often nest untenable taxa together. Keep gibbons in the picture. Test with traits.
Just to clarify, you are NOT trying to say that gibbons are more closely related to homo than are gorillas or chimps, but simply that the common ancestor of all modern apes was not a knuckle walker? Obviously the former flies in the face of genetic evidence, but the latter seems possible to me. This would imply that the whole lineage was largely arboreal up until the spit between homo and pan. Even if we say Australopiths split off before chimps, this could still leave bipedalism as something that only truly evolved once. In this case, the common ancestor of Australopiths, chimps, gorillas, and homo was a species that was in transition to a ground-dwelling existence. They walked upright on the ground but spent a lot of their time in trees. As this species radiated, multiple lineages adapted to be largely ground-dwelling, with some developing knuckle walking and others further developing upright walking. Of course this still would leave Lucy's full bipedalism to be convergent to some extent. All interesting to consider.
The tree of life is no longer a tree; nor is it a bush, as it has recently been described. It appears that both species and genome have many mergers, diversions, and dead-ends. It is neither tree nor bush, but a tangled, ever changing capillary system that emerges from several points of obscurity, but always leads back to one point… planet Earth.
