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The Evolution of Man
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Palaeoecological implications of Neanderthal occupation at Unit Xb of El Salt (Alcoi, eastern Spain) during MIS 3 using small mammals proxy Fagoaga et al., 2017
Abstract: "Nearly 250 small mammal remains from Unit Xb of El Salt Middle Palaeolithic site have been studied in order to reconstruct the palaeoecological conditions during a phase of Neanderthal occupation in this locality at 52.3 ± 4.6 ka. A total of 7rodents (Microtus arvalis, M. agrestis, M. (Terricola) duodecimcostatus, Microtus (Iberomys) cabrerae, Arvicola sapidus, Eliomys quercinus and Apodemus sylvaticus), 4 insectivores (Erinaceus cf. europaeus, Crocidura sp., Sorex sp. and Talpidae indet.) and 1 lagomorph (Oryctolagus cf. cuniculus) have been identified. Applying the Mutual Ecogeographic Range and Habitat Weighting methods, Unit Xb may correspond to a relatively cold (−3.3 °C in comparison with present values) and slightly more humid (+113.3 mm in comparison with present values) period. The environment was mainly composed of open woodlands (58%) followed by dry (20%) and humid (14%) meadows. These results suggest that supramediterranean conditions were present in the surroundings of the site at 52.3 ± 4.6 ka instead of mesomediterranean conditions present today." 
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010...thropology
This meant, says Fagan, that we learned to use local materials – antler, bone and ivory – in ways Neanderthals simply could not imagine. In one case, this resulted in "one of the most revolutionary inventions in history: the eyed needle, fashioned from a sliver of bone or ivory," he adds. While Neanderthals shivered in rags in winter, humans used vegetable fibres and needles – created by using stone awls – to make close-fitting, layered clothing and parkas: the survival of the snuggest, in short. *In my own words - IMO - Neanderthals were much better adapted physically to the frozen world of Ice Age Europe that Cro-magnon man. He had no knowledge of sewing hides together. If a modern man was to try to live outdoors in Alaska or Siberia today with no actual clothing but merely by having animal hides draped over him like a blanket, he would not last a Winter. For this reason, I believe that Neanderthals were very fat and very hairy; perhaps even fur. This is not so far fetched; they were not a different race but a different species. Compare an Indian elephant with a woolly mammoth; same comparison. Neanderthal probably did drape animal hides over themselves, but they had less real need of clothing than Homo sapien.
I know that there is a "human origin" topic somewhere; but I couldn't find it... https://www.newsoneplace.com/6117261712/...ead-humans
The Homo sapiens has made its journey out of Africa much earlier than we previously thought.
Now the oldest fossil for Homo sapiens was discovered in Morocco which dated about 300,000 years ago. And I also wouldn’t be surprised if the ancestral species of Homo sapiens actually managed to migrate to Eurasia, then migrated back to Africa and eventually evolved into Homo sapiens and migrated out of Africa again.
The Homo sapiens was probably evolved from the back migration population of Homo heidelbergensis, since the earliest known fossil for Homo sapiens was discovered in Morocco, so this also coincides with the back migration theory of Homo heidelbergensis. And Homo heildelbergensis itself was native in Europe and being a sister species to the Neanderthal. Their common ancestor was Homo antecessor which was also native in Europe. However, the ancestor of Homo antecessor was Homo erectus ergaster which was again native in Africa.
  *This image is copyright of its original author My theory: Homoerectus divided into two branches one from morocco migrated to europe became Neanderthals and second Homosapiens. Later Homo-sapiens from Asia migrated towards europe and mated with Neanderthals (Pure White race).
Both Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis derived from Homo (erectus) ergaster AKA the African Homo erectus.
(04-01-2018, 10:11 PM)Vinay Wrote:(04-01-2018, 09:04 PM)GrizzlyClaws Wrote: Both Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis derived from Homo (erectus) ergaster AKA the African Homo erectus. The 100,000 years old Homo sapiens from Israel with some minor Neanderthal admixture.  *This image is copyright of its original author
This video has a very interesting hunting behavior. The use of spears (very primitive weapons), dominant behavior, absence of fear, violence and the terror imposed on animals, made me imagine the hunting behavior of our ancestors (be they Homo Erectus, Homo Ergaster or the recent ones called Homo sapiens Archaic). Usually we have that vision of small groups of hominids leaving open spaces in the African savannah, with reckless looks, faltering and accelerated movements, unprotected, waiting to be hunted by any predator, denoting that at this stage these beings were weak and devoid of dominant predatory attitudes. This view can be a grotesque mistake. By no means do I believe that all these beings I shall call prehumans have adapted and conquered the nature that enveloped them as passive collectors or hesitant hunters. These hunting attitudes we see in the video may originate at times much earlier than the current consensus.
To reinforce this point of view a bit I present this Link: https://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/23/scien...itual.html I would add to the content of the report the possibility of a "ritual of domination." Make those who threaten our prey. This discovery made in 1981 is still open to many interpretations. This dating between 400,000 and 700,000 years is no longer endorsed in later studies, evidencing an even older dating, up to 800,000 years old. Pleistocene Hominins as a Resource for Carnivores: A c. 500,000-Year-Old Human Femur Bearing Tooth-Marks in North Africa (Thomas Quarry I, Morocco)
 *This image is copyright of its original author
Abstract
In many Middle Pleistocene sites, the co-occurrence of hominins with carnivores, who both contributed to faunal accumulations, suggests competition for resources as well as for living spaces. Despite this, there is very little evidence of direct interaction between them to-date. Recently, a human femoral diaphysis has been recognized in South-West of Casablanca (Morocco), in the locality called Thomas Quarry I. This site is famous for its Middle Pleistocene fossil hominins considered representatives of Homo rhodesiensis. The bone was discovered in Unit 4 of the Grotte à Hominidés (GH), dated to c. 500 ky and was associated with Acheulean artefacts and a rich mammalian fauna. Anatomically, it fits well within the group of known early Middle Pleistocene Homo, but its chief point of interest is that the diaphyseal ends display numerous tooth marks showing that it had been consumed shortly after death by a large carnivore, probably a hyena. This bone represents the first evidence of consumption of human remains by carnivores in the cave. Whether predated or scavenged, this chewed femur indicates that humans were a resource for carnivores, underlining their close relationships during the Middle Pleistocene in Atlantic Morocco. Introduction
Large carnivores are present in almost all Plio-Pleistocene archaeological sites, and bone damage (tooth and cut marks) among the faunal deposits indicate their close coexistence with hominins [1–5]. The increase of meat and fat in the diet of early Homo (c. 1.9 My), not only had an impact on brain and molar size [6,7], but also on their eco-ethological relationships with other predators or scavengers. The infiltration of hominins into the carnivore guild may have resulted in different forms of interactions or co-evolutionary processes, including direct competition for resources as well as passive confrontations, dispersals, extinctions, partitioning of resources, dependency, commensalism and eventually domestication during the Late Pleistocene [8–13]. Changes in hominin subsistence strategies might be the result of these interactions. Meat providers or dangerous competitors, large predators are considered alternately as either facilitating, or reducing the success of the very first human dispersals [14–19]. Inversely, humans had significant role in the extinctions of various carnivores in North America at the end of the Pleistocene [20] or much earlier in the Lower Pleistocene of East Africa [12]. As another example, the drastic decrease of the sabre tooth cats and giant hyenas and the establishment of the modern-day carnivore guild in the Early Middle Pleistocene on both sides of the Mediterranean are contemporaneous with the first long-term hominin settlements [21–23,14,16]. At that time, hominins hunted in groups and relied on new effective weapons; these two improvements allowed them to slaughter larger gregarious preys and to handle encounters with dangerous competitors [24–29,9,10]. Still, this was a period of stiff competition between large carnivores and hominins and many Middle Pleistocene mixed assemblages containing materials modified by humans and a diverse array of carnivores are recorded (e.g. [30,31,11]).
Nevertheless, although during the Plio-Pleistocene hominins and carnivores shared the same landscapes and competed for resources and natural shelter, there is poor evidence of direct confrontation, such as serious or lethal bone damage, before the Upper Paleolithic, when carnivore hunting became widespread [32,33]. Two earlier cases have been reported: the SK 54 australopithecine cranium of Sterkfontein (South Africa) [1] and the CN42174b Neanderthal parietal fragment of Cova Negra (Spain) [34,35], which both bear two holes that match the spacing of the canines of a leopard and were described as representing large felids attacks. However, most of the purported cases of predation by carnivores on humans, or vice-versa, are mostly inferred from indirect data: taxa frequency, age of death, location of tooth-marks or cut-marks on the carcasses (primary or secondary access) [36–38]. Whether tooth-marks on human bones or cut-marks on carnivore bones, we can only identify consumption marks without confidently discriminating between hunted animals and scavenged carcasses. In Plio-Pleistocene sites, human remains showing tooth-marks are often associated with the rest of the fauna consumed by carnivores. Examples include, Swartkrans [1], FLK 22, FLK-NN1 and NN3 at Olduvai [39,40] in Africa. In the Middle and Upper Pleistocene of Eurasia, examples are more numerous including those of Zhoukoudian [41,42], Atapuerca (Sima de los Huesos) [43], Grotta Guattari [44,45], Rochelot [46,47], Rochers-de-Villeneuve [48], Grotte de la Tour [49], Les Pradelles [50], Gruta da Oliveira [51], and Grotte du Bison at Arcy-sur-Cure [52], among many others. Such associations may suggest either direct predation on humans or scavenging on their remains. In the early Middle Pleistocene (up to c.500 ky) of North Africa, successful large predators such as the sabre-tooth cat Homotherium, lived alongside leopards and lion-sized felids. These large cats were associated with increasingly modern canids and hyenids (e.g., Crocuta and Hyaena replacing Pliocrocuta), which were effective hunters and carcass consumers [53]. At that time, hyenids largely dominated carnivore spectra in caves as in open-air sites, whereas large canids (Lycaon and Canis) remained rare, unlike in the European carnivore guild [14,15,19], jackals (Lupulella) and foxes being more common. All these carnivores alternately occupied the living spaces with hominins and exploited the hunted or scavenged resources brought by their competitors [54]. Once again, there is no convincing evidence of carnivore action on Middle Pleistocene human remains in North Africa, although this hypothesis was put forward for the Sidi Abderrahmane fossils in Morocco [55,56], whose discovery in a supposed hyena den led Biberson to hypothesize a contribution by this large carnivore. A newly recognized Middle Pleistocene human femoral diaphysis from the stratigraphic Unit 4 of the Grotte à Hominidés at Thomas Quarry I, in Casablanca, Morocco, is the first definite example of this kind... Link: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0152284
Homo rhodesiensis was the direct biological ancestor of Homo sapiens, since the earliest known Homo sapiens was also from North Africa back in 300 kya.
I do believe that Homo rhodesiensis itself was descended from the back migration of Homo heidelbergensis in Europe.
@GrizzlyClaws
In the genus Homo, I do not know to what extent we can frame one subspecies as descending or ascending from another. When some scientists established the nomenclature "Archaic Homo Sapiens", it was an attempt to treat all the fossil records of that time as variants of the same species (Homo). Otherwise, we would have a dozen names for the findings and the confusion would be magnified. Differentiating Homo Heildelbergensis and Homo Rhodesiensis in the evolutionary paths is an ongoing task, and it is believed that the latter never left Africa (both "subspecies" developed in parallel - this is a theory - your reasoning is perfectly plausible. Africa can be the cradle of everything - beginning, middle and end). I am not very aware of new diagnoses in this field, so I do not know to what extent there is already a reconstruction of directional selection patterns necessary to bring some "subspecies" to the final result of our species. I prefer to follow the current of thought that sees Homo Sapiens Sapiens as a result of the natural connection of these "subspecies", which are the direct result of the environmental forces shaping our formation (ecosystem in which each population is geographically located).
One important point, I think, is cultural adaptations, enabling these human groups to better cope with environmental difficulties. This "soup of subspecies" followed evolutionary paths and / or adaptive paths being condensed to produce our present form (morphologically so diversified) whose result could not be obtained from an experiment with few variants. There are two very important steps to be understood: the first is the transition from Australopithecus to the genus Homo, tthe second is this we are trying to understand. Both are, to a greater or lesser degree, the result of evolutionary innovation the effect of which was the emergence and coexistence of a diversity of forms. The complexity of human thought may have been the catalyst that produced so many variations.
The ultimate origin for the genus Homo was indeed Africa.
However, some species like Homo heidelbergensis was known for back migration. I am wondering if the modern Homo sapiens were descended from the Homo heidelbergensis who migrated back to Africa?
These two studies present good insights.
Temporal Change in Functional Richness and Evenness in the Eastern African Plio-Pleistocene Carnivoran Guild
*This image is copyright of its original author
We analyze functional richness and functional evenness of the carnivoran guild in eastern Africa from 3.5 Ma to 1.5 Ma, and compare them to the present day. The data consist of characters of the craniodental apparatus of 76 species of fossil and extant carnivorans, divided into four 0.5 Ma time slices from 3.5 to 1.5 Ma, together with the modern fauna. Focus is on large (>21.5 kg) carnivores. Results show that the large carnivore guild has lost nearly 99% of its functional richness since 3.5 Ma, in a process starting prior to 2 Ma. Measurement of functional evenness shows the modern large carnivore guild to be unique in being randomly distributed in morphospace while in all past time slices there is significant clustering of species. The results are analyzed in the light of known changes to climate and environment in eastern Africa. We conclude that climate change is unlikely to explain all of the changes found and suggest that the evolution of early hominins into carnivore niche space, especially the evolution of derived dietary strategies after 2 Ma, played a significant part in the reduction of carnivore functional richness. Genome Digging: Insight into the Mitochondrial Genome of Homo
*This image is copyright of its original author
Background A fraction of the Neanderthal mitochondrial genome sequence has a similarity with a 5,839-bp nuclear DNA sequence of mitochondrial origin (numt) on the human chromosome 1. This fact has never been interpreted. Although this phenomenon may be attributed to contamination and mosaic assembly of Neanderthal mtDNA from short sequencing reads, we explain the mysterious similarity by integration of this numt (mtAncestor-1) into the nuclear genome of the common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans not long before their reproductive split. Principal Findings Exploiting bioinformatics, we uncovered an additional numt (mtAncestor-2) with a high similarity to the Neanderthal mtDNA and indicated that both numts represent almost identical replicas of the mtDNA sequences ancestral to the mitochondrial genomes of Neanderthals and modern humans. In the proteins, encoded by mtDNA, the majority of amino acids distinguishing chimpanzees from humans and Neanderthals were acquired by the ancestral hominins. The overall rate of nonsynonymous evolution in Neanderthal mitochondrial protein-coding genes is not higher than in other lineages. The model incorporating the ancestral hominin mtDNA sequences estimates the average divergence age of the mtDNAs of Neanderthals and modern humans to be 450,000–485,000 years. The mtAncestor-1 and mtAncestor-2 sequences were incorporated into the nuclear genome approximately 620,000 years and 2,885,000 years ago, respectively. Conclusions This study provides the first insight into the evolution of the mitochondrial DNA in hominins ancestral to Neanderthals and humans. We hypothesize that mtAncestor-1 and mtAncestor-2 are likely to be molecular fossils of the mtDNAs of Homo heidelbergensis and a stem Homolineage. The dN/dS dynamics suggests that the effective population size of extinct hominins was low. However, the hominin lineage ancestral to humans, Neanderthals and H. heidelbergensis, had a larger effective population size and possessed genetic diversity comparable with those of chimpanzee and gorilla. link: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0014278 |
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