Sorry, can't let that one go without challenge.

What is the nature of the evidence for "rapid alteration within a single generation"?

Some reading for you to consider:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section5.html#genetic_rates

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090720163716.htm

Explains rapid change in bacterium.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2475321/

Which is interesting in illustrating we are still at the very beginning of understanding DNA and what was formerly referred to as "junk DNA".

Vitamin D synthesis in sunlight is greater in pale skins than dark. People in gloomier places tend to paler skin. Especially in places that are also cool-enough to necessitate lots of clothing.

It is not the only factor in skin pigmentation but to go on at length about skin colour, and not to mention Vitamin D synthesis at all, is strange.

For all that Darren writes of the variety of disciplines studying human evolution, it seems to me that there must be sod-all communication between most of them, most of the time.

I am not a student of human evolution but an animal biologist upgrading my quals so I can't comment on the human sciences as any sort of expert at all.
I understand what you are saying about the Vit D evidence but I deliberately chose not to discuss prevailing theories much, because I think they ignore the very considerable impact of predation in the natural world, which an animal biologist automatically looks for right off the bat.
Also the "people in gloomier places tend to paler skin" bit I don't think holds up generally in the natural world. There is a classic case of the Butterfly in an industrial zone in Britain that became very dark due to pollution, whilst the same species remained light colored in other areas.
Animals in arid areas tend to be lighter colored, and those in darker areas such as forests tend to be darker. And a lot of the time those and other types of animal coloration schemes are based on predation and thus camouflage e.g. Zebra stripes. However they have side benefits such as reproductive benefits (attractiveness), and I think Vit D is just one of those.
There is now an entire movement called "Biomimicry" where that concept is being applied more to the human race and its offshoots. Don't ask me, I'm not a human biologist, biomimicry as I know it applies to camouflage in butterflies and birds, so you will have to google it!
Therefore it may be better to state that for all the variety of disciplines studying various types of biology, such as animal versus human biologists, the left hand does not talk to the right hand. Which is precisely what I think has happened here, that human biologists have ignored the vast amount of evidence available from my sphere of biology!
However that is not the first time, I have recently studied soil science about which I also know next to nothing (like human biology) and I was simply incredulous at the way the science seems to be marching off into its own realm as though none of the rest of we biologists existed, thus rediscovering the Ark.
There is no doubt in my mind at all that the whole progress of science would greatly be enhanced by a good deal more interdisciplinary communication. In fact, so would the management of bushfires, which seems to have evolved into a science that is totally independent of the ecology of the forest or other ecosystems it affects, and as far as I know fire scientists never talk to forest ecologists (and apparently neither does the government)!
I am therefore just about at screaming point on the issue of interdisciplinary communications at the moment, and am greatly pleased that a platform such as the Conversation allows me to vent on the matter at least, if not achieving cross-communication, which I hope it will eventually improve!
Because as you pointed out it sure is desperately needed. Do you reckon we could ever talk to the Hobbit??

I commented earlier on the startling inability or unwillingness of the various "experts" to look sideways. Is it inherent in the way we do science: our need to narrow the question, reduce the number of variables, to find significant results in any field?

The lack of wider vision makes me wary of the data Ron cites on relative populations of H. sapiens and H.neanderthalis. What evidence we have of Ice Age people is from those who lived on higher ground. A lot of the World's population is likely to have live in the areas within 70 or 100 metres of the sea shore; areas that were hospitable to human life during the Ice Ages but are now below the sea.

Those areas were also below the sea except in the other interglacial periods, such as around 40,000 years ago. Funny that there seems to be sudden evidence of new human abilities at that point in time that we have no trace of earlier.

Neanderthals do seem to have been better adapted to the relatively-stable Ice Age environment, as Ron points out. I suspect it was when conditions changed that H. sapiens had a big adaptive advantage.

Had to check on the moth Biston betularia. Last I heard there was dispute about the validity of the data but the criticism appears to have come from sources less reliable than the data.

However the vitamin D synthesis business remains a highly likely factor in skin colour. Paler skins are very likely to have evolved after the use of clothing, so the camouflage effect would have been very much less. Nor am I convinced that dark skin is good camouflage against an arid landscape, for instance, or that pale skin is better camouflage in the majority of European environments.

Another factor is the protective value of darker skins against sunlight. Where the sunlight is less-intense, there is less protective value in dark skin. As an aside, this will not simply be latitude-dependent because air humidity has a protective value against solar UV.

A lot of factors do appear to be interacting in skin colour, and their relative influence will differ from environment to environment.

There is an abundance of reasons Hobbits might have disappeared. Isolated populations are vulnerable to change, particularly if the group has evolved closely to a specific environment.

It appears that H. floresiensis had lost a lot of mental capacity - and hence capacity to adapt - in what may have been easy conditions for a time. Possibly free of significant predators and a steady, but probably not overly-abundant, supply of food.

I think it was John Gribben who conjectured that the ancestor of modern apes, including human beings, may have been cleverer than chimpanzees or gorillas. However those apes stayed in easy environments that did not require as much nutritionally-expensive brain power.

I suspect it might have been possible to chat to a Hobbit but probably not to get much sense out of one. As David Attenborough pointed out recently, Vervet monkeys chatter, and it appears to substitute for grooming in keeping the group together. Chatter does not does need huge intellection, it seems.

I dont dispute your arguments at all here John. If anything the last fifty odd years has shown about this subject, it is that, as I had tried to indicate, based on very scanty evidence and speculations made by some scientists for political reasons, to enhance their financial backing. You speak of Gribben (and his wife)...they are amongst the most speculative generalist science writers about these and other issues and are just making big hunches. But even more qualified Neanderthal experts like Paabo, was saying definitively only 10 years ago, that there was no way humans and Neanderthal's mated, until they found what seems to be an early hybrid, I think in Iberia where Paabo comes from

You are correct that huge areas of the ocean were land during the Ice Age. The vast thousand kilometre wide Beringia creating the corridor between Siberia and Alaska, the vast sub continent bigger than India that is now the Indonesian Archipelago, and a stretch of land between Borneo and the string of Island, Sumatra, Bali, Lomboc etc that had vast plains and river systems and some think may be the source of the Mu mythology. The huge linking of New Guinea and Tasmania to the Australian mainland leaving a huge fresh water sea in the Gulf of Carpentaria, the vast area now the North Sea and the linking of England with France, a vast river valley where the Persian Gulf now exists, the land between Italy and Africa almost splitting up the Mediterranean, the huge fresh water sea that is now the salt water Black Sea, the linking of Japan to Korea where vast under water structures have been found, and almost the linking of The Phillipines with Indonesia, vaster islands in the Caribbean, the narrowing and almost closing of the Red Sea, which is one route humans may have travelled over to reach Asia.

Yes John the drop of sea levels by about 120 metres during the Ice Age did expose huge areas yet investigated that may reveal a whole lot of new truths. And certainly early humans did tend to remain near the sea for their food. There were even large inland seas in Africa and Australia because though precipitation world wide was as much as 50% less, evaporation was also much lower because of colder climates, so there was a lot of fresh ground water about. In fact before man arrived in Australia, Australia had only small deserts, and had vast grasslands and loose forests where the megafauna thrived.

Yes John, I agree totally. We are just guessing at this stage. I suspect far far more is still to be discovered before we really know what happened, than has been so far discovered, and present theories, including those I have indicated, may very well be turned on their head....exciting isnt it?

Ancient mammoths marooned by riding sea levels on small islands evolved into dwarf mammoths, I recall reading somewhere. Feral cats here are evolving into bigger and bigger animals. There is a theory that species moved to smaller habitats will evolve smaller, conversly in moves to wider habitats.

Perhaps H.fl. evolved from normal H.sap. through being marooned on a small island.

Humans are absolutely NOT Carnivora. They are not classified in that group because they do not have the teeth, claws and other characteristics which define the Cat and Dog groups.
Carnivora are quite possibly why we are like we are and why Neanderthals are no longer with us (see my other post).
Humans are however another type of killer, from the Primate group. Thus occasional killing by Chimpanzee became an artform for us, but originally we were probably more gatherer than hunter, like Chimps.
Carnivora hold the world in check, otherwise there would be a complete overutilisation of resources. At some point they failed to keep a certain type of primate in check as a result of which.....

Wasnt intending to identify humans as Carnivora, but merely to indicate that since they have became increasingly carnivorous as omnivores, their increased reliance on meat had caused them to reduce in number compared to their simian siblings until the latter stages of the last Ice Age or Ice Epoch which ever way you wish to refer to the 100,000 year Ice Age cycle we've been in for the past 3-5 million years

Plausible contention. Any real evidence?

Only fossil finds compared with other species. A lot is conjecture, but modern humans in fact seem to have been 70000 years ago no more than a few thousand in number world wide, though environmental factors contributed to that (see Mt Toba explosion). Chimps and gorillas seem to have maintained relatively stable populations until we started diminishing their territory. Chimps in fact could well have been in the millions.

However it is noted that the simian population world wide has been gradually diminishing over the past 5-10 million years since the great world wide forests started to disappear and the 'Planet of the Apes' was no more.

Actually, if any Homo species were to be regarded as a carnivore it would be the neanderthals. Food remains from caves and coprolites (fossilised faeces) showed their diet was close to that of a wolf for the proportion of meat consumed. The suggestion is that this was an adaptation for living close to the ice of ice-age Europe. High metabolism, much stronger (infered from bone density and muscle attachments), high energy diet required. The V8 muscle cars of humans.
The southern species (IE us in africa) were more generalist, more warm adapted, better able to cope with less energy dense diet if we had to (the light sports car model). When the climate warmed Homo sapiens expanded its territory first turning right out of Africa and when it was warmer still expanding north into Europe. It seems the speciation from isolation from previous expansions had not been complete so all non-african modern populations picked up a bit of neanderthal and/or denisovan DNA on the way.
Aside from that and minor very recent local DNA variation, it is worth noting that the genetic diversity outside africa is mostly a subset of the diversity within africa. This indicates relatively small founder populations not carrying the full range of african diversity into the populations elsewhere IE we are all africans.

Replying to myself here. While modern humans are not as far to the right on the carnivore spectrum as the neanderthals seem to have been, we are not as far the other way as modern chimps. In spite of very close similarity our digestive tract is shorter and has a harder time getting adequate nourishment out of rougher food.
I saw a documentary once in which a zoo kept some humans (volunteers) on the same diet that kept the chimps in excellent health. The humans found it very hard to get through the sheer bulk of raw fruit and veg and were not getting adequate nutrition. The suggestions was that having some meat, fat, and partial predigestion of vegetable matter by cooking were innovations that allowed us to put more resources into other activities than just eating and digesting, and that was presumed to be an advantage in certain environments.

I think William of Occam's consideration would sent it the other way. What is the chance of finding a colony of weird mutant but modern humans? From casual, non-expert reading on this topic my impression was that there were plenty of non-modern features while a range of things didn't tally with the early suggestion of microcephaly of a modern human. Perhaps, with one skeleton, but not when more of them showed up. So, Occam would have to deal with a population exhibiting a defect that never shows up among the vastly more abundant current population of modern humans.
As the article suggests, some people like the idea of an inexorable, linear rise to modern humans as the peak of evolution but that is a very old-fashioned view and not how it works.

" As the article suggests, some people like the idea of an inexorable, linear rise to modern humans as the peak of evolution but that is a very old-fashioned view and not how it works."

I believe this is a cultural hangover even non-religious scientific minds may still carry, not deliberately or even consciously; that humans are somehow the apex of evolution, that we are not merely another branch of a complex system, which is what we are - our little 'branch' could even become an evolutionary dead-end.

Our own arrogance frequently prevents us from seeing the forest for trees.

Now would that the the "inexorable", the "linear" or the "rise" you'd be questioning there Ms A?

How can any country boasting the likes of Barnaby Joyce as a likely national leader talk about any sort of "rise" to modern humanity?

Heh, heh Mr O.

Definitely "inexorable", whereas "linear" and "rise" are somewhat mutually exclusive. However, I was responding to the 'intent' of the paragraph Mr C's comment.

As for Barnaby Joyce - scientists have found some Neanderthal DNA in our mix - although I understand that Neanderthals were highly capable intelligent people. The explanation for Joyce and his ilk lies elsewhere, we simply haven't found the fossils of a race of deliberately ignorant people who believe they were born-to-rule.

Recent theories suggest that during the last Ice Age, no more than a few tens of thousands of years ago, there may have been as many as four or five different species or sub species of humans living on this planet. As well as Homo Sapiens, there were the Neanderthals, the 'Hobbits', a group newly discovered in Siberia called the Denisovans, and perhaps another species in Africa Homo Sapiens replaced, all living perhaps simultaneously until about 30,000 years ago. It is the exception to the rule that only one species of human now lives on this planet.

When humans first left Africa about a million years ago, they appear to have spread all over Europe and Asia and perhaps beyond. We call them Homo Erectus, but within a brief few hundreds of thousands of years they were diverging into various species and sub species. One, as theory has it, returned to Europe and Africa as Home Ergaster and became the forebears of modern humans and Neanderthals. But even those that returned to Africa may have not only replaced the existing homos but diverged into several versions of near modern humans. There's all sorts of wondrous names for these divergences such as rhodensiensis and idalter.

But the point is, even when we talk of tens of thousands of years ago, we are still in the realm of guess work based on a few scraps of bone and fossil. There is no doubt a very rich and diverse history of the various Homo species and sub species and though we obviously came from one branch of homo, even that is tainted by genes of inter-subspecies liaisons that have resulted in Neatherthal genes in most modern Europeans and Asians, and apparently Denisovan genes in most modern South Asians and Pacific Islanders.

As a species we are 'fruit salads' of Homo's selection alternatives in several directions, just as today we intermingle with different groups from around the World thereby inheriting very slight genetic differences and enriching our individual genetic diversity. Natural selection ensures the 'fittest' genes survive to meet the needs of specific environments and the more options that exist in a species, the better chance of survival.

No doubt we will increasingly discover this extraordinary collage of Homo characteristics we have inherited from many divergent Homo species and sub species. And who knows what extraordinary surprises are about to greet us, that may turn what we presently believe entirely on its head.

And who knows, but one day we may even discover a small group of living human cousins somewhere on this Earth, secluded, isolated. And they may even be more intelligent or even 'fitter' to survive Earth's changing environment than we are and may even replace us. Or perhaps it will be a separate modern human group with particularly special genes.

We are not the end product and we are not necessarily the 'fittest' Homos on the block. We exist for today, but tomorrow, another Homo version may replace us...or perhaps something not even human.

Ms A, we have only failed to find such physical evidence of an ignorant born-to-rule species (Homo ignmoramus) because we are legally discouraged from excavating the cathedrals and chapels where the English ruling class encrypt themselves. :) God knows what sort of hobbits and gnomes we'd find under St Pauls or St Georges chapel.

Probably a good thing - sometimes the truth is more than we can handle.

Am picturing a race of beings who look rather like this:

http://www.mattcleary.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/hill-banter-howard.jpg

Surely every species, given the capacity to think the thought, would regard itself as the acme of evolution.

Deriding the abilities that have given us such evolutionary success is a deep hangover from religion. The same dreaful load of sin, the same notion of original sin.

It is the mindset that perpetuated the feudal system. A mindset of a static society, and totally unsuited to a time of change and challenge.

It is our human capabilities that give us not only the multiple crises we face today, but the unique capacity to act together to turn things around in a fraction of a human lifetime.

In broad terms, speciation occurs only when there is enough separation to prevent interbreeding for long-enough for it to become impossible.

By that definition, it is a long time since there was more than one Homo species. It would appear that groups such as H. sapiens and H. neanderthalis and other strands of H.erectus were all capable of interbreeding.

On the other hand, it may be that it is only anthropocentrism that has us excluding chimpanzees, and possibly gorillas, from the same genus as ourselves. By broader zoological convention we would seem to be insufficiently different to warrant a separate genus.

That would mean that there still are several Homo species surviving at present.

Ron well summarised appraisal but you need to be aware that species is Capital C (small l) letter, that is, Homo sapiens not Homo Sapiens. Homo is the genus, and sapiens is the species, and the whole thing is broadly referred to as the species name, and the words should either be in italics or underlined, which is impossible in these posts due to editing restrictions. Anything after that is subspecies variety etc which is why you get about 5 words after various cultivated flowers!
It is very interesting about the Homo sapiens denisovans, but I am not sure if the discovery refers to subspecies or variety. However just as we have Neanderthal genes, the First Australians here also have the denisovan genes apparently, so they are 5% Siberian. Most people don't realise that although they are dark skinned, since they left Africa 70000 years ago and presumably went through Asia to pick up the denisoven genes, the Aboriginal people are the least like the Africans as they have the longest divergence. That is, we are more black African than the First Australians living here. And they are more Eurasian/European than previously understood!
Another point is that the American Indian tribes, including South American, are descended from, you guessed it, Siberian tribes. That makes First Aussies and First Yanks second cousins in my book! It would also makes the discoveries of ancestral skeletons found in Mexico that the woman (forgot researcher's name) argued were very like Australian Aborigines, completely understandable as there may be some shared genetic heritage, so the link is genetic rather than the idea that the Aborigines jumped in a boat and went there!!
As caucasians although we are not terribly well evolved from our African ancestors, a few groups around the world have been getting up to quite a bit in our absence! Those Russkis sure do breed well! I reckon its a plot!
The next concept that I wrote about elsewhere is the idea of predation. As the physicist Lawrence Krauss put it on Monday night on Q & I (ABC TV), were Tigers running around the plains where we evolved.....
or was that lions, Dr Krauss?? Anyhow you see Ron we all get it wrong sometimes, even experts. I have previously heard something like that from an African American person before and am generally coming to the conclusion that animals are only something that one shoots over there in second cousin land.
My view is that the entire concept of predation is completely underestimated, Homo sapiens idioticus is the only effect we consider when discussing extinction of the Neanderthals- i.e. did we or did we not wipe out the Neanderthals or did we just breed with them etc. etc. etc.
What about Felis very large pussycatus plus a pack of hungry wolves? No??? Perhaps the reason our particular subspecies of sapiens came to dominate is that the others were gradually wiped out by predators, thus we could have a survival tool, such as use of fire or caves or something else, that meant we were better able to survive kitties claws.
Therefore the reason that Neanderthals ended up restricted to the coast of Portugal and the few survivors bred with us, is that the rest of them were eaten.
Quite normal in speciation for subspecies to become isolated and die out, due to predation, disease etc. Wouldn't be a big surprise.

My apologies for the clumsiness in how I was expressing myself Caroline. I am quite aware of most of what you are stating here, but thank you for the clarification.

I was trying, in a clumsy way to avoid the genera issue because for so long for example there was a dispute over how to identify Neanderthals, and whether to use the appellation Homo Neanderthals(is) or Homo Sapiens Neanderthals(is) thereby making modern humans not just Homo Sapiens but Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Same would apply to the Denisovans, probably becoming Homo Sapiens Denisovansis. Of course as you point out I'm no expert in this, just read a lot of it. Perhaps in fact the genera should not be Homo Sapiens but rather Homo Ergasta, given that seems in recent terms to be the commonality between the three. All in the name I guess.

And while noting your comment about Australian Aboriginal people being the furthest genetically from Africans from those who left Africa maybe 70000 years ago, in fact that is partly correct given Australian Aboriginal peoples are a collage of at least three migrations spanning tens of thousands of years and then intermixing. Their forebears seem likely to be also linked with the Indian Dravidian population, and specifically with small offshoot populations there who are directly linked to the earliest Australian Aboriginal people.

Further, the earliest separations of modern humans occurred in Africa itself so that Eastern Africans, in the area around Kenya, Somalia etc are genetically closer to all Europeans, Asians, Australian Aborigines, America Indians, etc than they are to Western Africans who are the genetically the most distant peoples from the rest of us, according to recent genetic testing, if we do not include the Neanderthal and Denisovan elements.

Actually I wasn't trying to point out that you weren't an expert, as I certainly am not in any position to do that! Actually you seem to have read rather more than I have.
BUT as a biologist I can tell you the genera can NEVER be Homo Sapiens, the genus is (cap H) Homo, and the species is (SMALL S) sapiens.
However perhaps you were being a little facetious, I'm not sure, but it is completely incorrect to use two cap letters, that is all I was trying to let you know if you did not.
I agree with you on the other stuff about whether Neanderthals should be a subspecies etc. Personally I'm not sure if I think Neanderthals should be a subspecies which would be
Homo sapiens neanderthalus (BUT NEVER Homo Sapiens Neanderthalus) or just a variety e.g. H. sapiens sapiens var. neanderthalus.
I would rather leave that to the actual experts in this field, with a codicile that I would prefer it to be backed up by genetic evidence

As I indicated Caroline I am no expert in these fields but I try to keep up to speed through various science journals and books I access usually from overseas..

My speciality, as you can determine from my previous employment, is human behaviour and my interest in Ice Age humans and human 'cousins' is from that perspective. I'm particular influenced by the manner in which Jared Diamond (Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee and others) views humanity, that being from a zoological perspective, thereby seeking to diminish the bias regarding the claimed superiority of the human species.

But I have no more than lay knowledge of biology and obviously have not the specialist's inclination for exacting use of terms in those areas. And this is not being facetious Caroline.

However I have for years had a particular interest is Ice Age humans, how they survived their conditions, their culture and especially who were the Neanderthals. Have tried to keep up to date with the latter and have read a reasonable number of books on them, so I know a little about what they were about.

Interesting that only recently have authors finally rid themselves of the bias regarding modern humans supposed 'survival superiority' over the smaller and sparsely populated Neanderthal family groups. In fact Neanderthal was far better adapted to Ice Age conditions than modern humans, having lived through several of the 100,000 year Ice Age cycles quite comfortably. Modern humans in fact seem to have struggled at first in Eurasia and were in fact for a time replaced by Neanderthals over tens of thousands of years before technological advances, probably larger tribal groups allowing specialisation and better social networking and sheer weight of numbers tipped the balance of survival against what the Neanderthal in Eurasia had achieved and survived through for hundreds of millennia.

But then I'm raving on about an interest of mine. My purpose was to acknowledge that my terminology limitations.

The more I learn about Neanderthals the more I wonder if they actually went extinct as a species or simply became blended with Homo sapiens.

As you have noted they were extremely well adapted to the cold northern climes, strong with large brains.

As some scientists have demonstrated, put a Neanderthal in contemporary clothing and s/he would blend in with the rest of us.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com.au/news/2012/10/121012-neanderthals-science-paabo-dna-sex-breeding-humans/

Why not a small human evolving in isolation? African Pygmies are real.

http://news.discovery.com/human/genetics/pygmies-genetics-short-120427.htm

Glad you tracked down Paabo, Dianna, I couldn't remember the name or enough tags to trace him.

His research point to the possibility that H. sapiens might have been far better at collaborating (and copying), hence adapting faster to changing conditions.

I suggest that this is likely to have been the origin of H sapiens encephalisation. We were forced to start collaborating in order to adapt fast-enough to devastatingly-fast change. That then led to the evolution of a brain better fitted to that kind of collaboration.

As Robin Dunbar bas pointed out, human brains are highly specialised in networking. It is more likely the core of our cephalic development, than a later add-on after we became clever.

Change in behaviour shifted culture which then shifted genes. Genes are a relatively-slow response to environment. Patterns of learned behaviour, in a word, culture, help birds and mammals evolve their responses thousands of time faster than animals whose behaviour is genetically-determined can adapt. The interactive intelligence of human beings allows us to respond thousands of times faster still.

The likely point of behavioural adaption was around 200,000 years ago, a time of profound climatic oscillations in the Rift Valley area of Africa. A time shown by genetic research to have been a very tight pinch point for the human population that evolved into modern H sapiens. Perhaps as few as one or two tribes.

If the genetic evolution followed a strong change in behaviour, then culture, we might expect genetic change to take a few tens of thousands of years. Recent finds show H sapiens with modern cranial capacity at around 170,000 years ago. A reasonable fit.

That leaves the question the lack of evidence of technological or artistic advance between that time and 40,000 years ago.

Firstly, a lot of it would be below the oceans, as mentioned earlier.

Second, paintings in protected places such as those at Altamira and Lascaux required serious levels of technology. You cannot draw and paint by the light of a burning branch. I have watched a lot of artists working and have a pretty good idea how long it takes, even with modern and convenient media. You need candles or oil lamps, the same technologies that the Romans used so much later and were still the predominant lighting technologies until the Nineteenth Century. If that technology took so long to update, why should we assume it was quick to be developed in the first place?

People may have been painting for a hundred thousand years before that on materials as evanescent as oil on canvas or acrylic on board. Very few modern works of art are likely to be around in 40,000 years time, let alone 150,000.

Technological technology increases hyperbolically. It can take an awfully long time to get the basics in place. Then, as various technologies feed off each other, the rate increases. Witness the phenomenal rates of change of the past two centuries.

Also a key factor was the long, slow development of trade, both the social skills and the trade routes. As more materials became available, more could be done. Much stone used in tools travelled very large distances to point of use, even very long times ago.

A key point is that we are likely to understand far more about early H sapiens by extrapolating from modern human behaviour than from that of other primates. After the critical change in behaviour, we are clearly dealing with people, not apes.

And Ms A with a shave and a haircut one could even end up leading the Nationals in the Australian Senate.

Enough with the dissing of the Neanderthal - OK?

Maybe it is the Neanderthal part of our genes which tends to be more egalitarian. One wouldn't describe the leader of the opposition as red haired and heavily browed, yet he appears to have missed out on the finer aspects of humanity.

Both mice and galahs are very successful; mice have managed to go where ever we humans have and galahs are one of the native species not endangered. All depends on what you think is success.

Most of humanity's remora do very well thank you very much. Rats, mice, dogs, cats, horses, water buffalo, camels, llamas, goats, sheep, cattle, cockroaches, flies, flees, lice, mosquitoes, lawn grasses, a huge variation of certain flowering plants and trees, silk worms, rabbits, various birds, cane toads and lets not forget a vast variation of bacteria and viruses. I'd say their Christmases came all at once when humanity came on the scene

We are but vehicles for our passengers Ron ... and arguably nothing but a collection of fellow travellers. Even at the cellular level.

LOL Ron & Peter.

Some more for Mr Harland's edification:

"Yep, it's true. We humans are mostly made from other life forms.

So here's the really weird part.

Only about 10 per cent of the cells in your body actually belong to you. These add up to about 1–10 trillion cells.

The other 90 per cent of the cells in your body belong to other living creatures. The vast majority of these other living creatures are the 10–100 trillion single-celled beasties (such as bacteria) living in your gut.

In total, these bacteria and their little friends weigh about 1.5kg. The reason that they weigh so little, even though there are so many of them, is that these cells are much smaller than human cells.

The result is that each of us is a strange bacterial-human hybrid. On a cellular level, we are more microbe than man."

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2009/03/10/2512401.htm

Shhhh Ms A .... if everyone knows that how can we ever get them back on public transport?

I certainly bow to your expertise on the subject Professor Henneberg and certainly my comments come from reading material alone and without any personal knowledge of the issues.

My concern though is your unequivocal rejection of the find. I'm not saying its true or false. I certainly dont know and rely on those learned people such as yourself to reveal the truth to us.

But surely the purpose of science is to remain open minded to proposals put forward. Too often scientists in the past have dismissed new ideas, such as continental drift, ice age cycles, the existence of bacteria, only to find later that they have been in error. Surely this is no different than the Catholic Church's attitude to discoveries made by Galileo and Copernicus, because it rocked the boat of established beliefs long held as infallible.

As I said I dont know the answer to the question of whether the Hobbit' is another 'Piltdown' hoax, or misidentification, but surely its important the remain open to the possibility that it may just be a valid find instead of just dismissing it because it doesnt fit existing theories about human ancestry.

Besides, surely anyway the 'Hobbit' find whether true or false, has in fact given palaeoanthropology a boost in interest that can only enhance future research into early humans and their offshoots..

Human Evolutionary Biology Will Survive Fables and Foibles

Robert B. Eckhardt, Ph.D.
Professor of Developmental Genetics & Evolutionary Morphology
Laboratory for the Comparative Study of Morphology, Mechanics, and Molecules
Pennsylvania State University

This reply addresses Darren Curnoe's concerns about paleoanthropology being a "science in crisis."

I will begin by noting that I have reason to hold Dr. Curnoe's professional ethics in high regard. When the Festschrift was being organized to honor lifelong contributions to the study of human evolution by Alan Thorne, Dr. Curnoe included my chapter, "Apportioning human variation: the regional dimension of biomedical research," even though the chapter's contents were strongly at variance with Dr. Curnoe's views on the subject as summarized above.

Against this background, there remain reasons for me to express serious reservations about what Dr. Curnoe has written here.

I will begin by agreeing that paleoanthropology is in a deep conceptual crisis, noting that at the time of the 2007 conference in Yogyakarta that was held to discuss the skeletons from Liang Bua Cave, Flores, I gave a paper titled "Paleoanthropology: a science in need of a theoretical framework." That need still has not been filled.

In its attempts to get beyond the "Synthetic Theory of Evolution," which Curnoe derides as an insufficient but which nonetheless has been updated since the mid 1940s in many ways, chiefly from the side of genetics, both molecular (DNA, RNA of various sizes and functions, introns and exons, etc., etc.) and developmental (homeobox genes and many other fundamental insights), what has paleoanthropology offered by way of breaking new ground? I would say little if anything in the theoretical realm at all. Here I dismiss such celebrated concepts as "punctuated equilibrium," which was implicit in Darwin's Origin of Species.

Instead of genuine new theoretical formulations, paleoanthropology has substituted an approach that resembles strongly the logic of Rudyard Kipling's "Just So Stories." Along with "How Did the Bear Lose His Tail" and "How Did the Leopard Get His Spots" we now have is "How Did the Hobbit Get Its Tiny Brain"?

Nearly all approaches to the Liang Bua Cave skeletons start with acceptance of "the Hobbit" or "Homo floresiensis" and then proceed to explain the phenomenon from that point, accepting the new species as real -- rather than confronting the primary data.

Our working group started from the beginning by examining in detail first the published findings, and then the skeletons themselves (I did so in February of 2005, along with Maciej Henneberg, Alan Thorne [sadly, now deceased] and Teuku Jacob [sadly, also deceased]). This work was done in the spirit that a traditional approach in science is to attempt to replicate experiments or observations before launching new theoretical formulations on the basis of unconfirmed findings.

From the beginning we found that many of the reported "data" simply did not stand up to scrutiny. I could give many examples, but here is one simple enough for everyone to grasp. The first paper published in Nature in October of 2004 by Peter Brown and his colleagues discussed and figured a "right" femur as part of the holotype description of the "new species." Our own observations left no doubt that this bone was a LEFT femur, which we pointed out in a brief note to Nature in 2005, along with several other equally baffling misstatements, such as the braincase of LB1 being "long and low" and hence similar to that of Homo erectus, which it is not. Nature rejected our paper that would have set the record straight and raised other legitimate questions early on (how about that charge of "censoring debate"?). Correction in print of the mis-identified femur had to wait until our paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (Jacob, et al., 2006). Then, amazingly, in the trade book titled A New Human, by Michael Morwood and Penny van Oosterzee published in 2007 we all can see a photograph of what is said to be the "right" leg bones of LB1. However, again, the bones shown are those of the LEFT leg! Repeated publications of elementary errors should shake confidence in scientists and members of the public who believe that primary data are important. Data, and honest, competent reporting of them, are central to real science.

Many more instances of this sort could be cited, and some of them are critically important to understand what the Liang Bua Cave skeletons really represent. I will add one more example (among a great many that already are documented) on this point. Among our earliest and most important observations on the LB1 skull were its craniofacial asymmetry, again documented and figured in the PNAS paper by Jacob, et al. (2006). Asymmetry is a tellingly diagnostic feature of developmental abnormality. Yet for several years paleoanthropological paper after paper was published denying that LB! was asymmetrical. Then asymmetry was admitted, accompanied by attempts to "talk down" its magnitude and significance. In this context I recall the statement made by the U.S. statesman, Daniel Patrick Moynihan: "You are entitled to your own opinions -- but not your own facts!" The primary data -- facts -- on asymmetry are undeniable, and their implications are serious: The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature bars as type specimens individuals that are teratological (i.e. developmentally abnormal). I have made this observation before in scientific meetings, and it may be what Dr. Curnoe is referring to obliquely when he writes "Homo floresiensis [sic] must be seen for what it is and those who would attempt to censor debate or argue for moratoriums on naming new species in the face of obvious diversity in our evolution need to be exposed for the reactionaries that they truly are." But surely Dr. Curnoe should be seen as engaging in no more than florid rhetoric and ad hominem tactics here. Pointing out real data (craniofacial and post-cranial asymmetry) and stating the implications of those data surely should be within the realm of permissible scientific discourse, and it should be stressed that none of our group ever have attempted to shut down debate.Quite the opposite is the case. Such attempts (ad hominem attacks, efforts to block publication, etc.) have come repeatedly from the supporters of "Homo floresiensis."

Still on the subject of data and their importance, Dr. Curnoe referred to "the latest cannonade from the 'pro' camp" on wrist bone anatomy, referring to the paper by Caley Orr. Examination of the canonical variate scores on the capitate and hamate place these bones in the middle of orang and chimp specimens and not particularly close to the australopithecines and early hominids. This is exactly what one would expect for atavistic variation of the sort that is documented over and over again in the orthopedic medical literature.

Is there any hope for paleoanthropology? Sure. What it needs to do is to accept that that subdiscipline is part of a larger discipline of human biology, which recognizes the great extent and patterning of human variation, and realizes that in science, formulation and testing of hypotheses trumps pat "just so" stories about cute little "hobbits" for which a single specimen, LB1, is the basis for all of the supposed "species" attributes.

What about the interplay of data and theory? Dr. Curnoe wrote that "My last tally of the number of theories to explain the evolution of our bipedalism (two-footed locomotion) was close to 200. None of these can be "proven" and most are untestable. Such a formulation implies that one theory is as good (or bad) as any other -- so, hey, why not favor the most charmingly colorful "just so" story?

The antidote to that kind of thinking is to realize that science commonly progresses by breaking seemingly intractable problems into subunits within which rational hypotheses can be framed and tested. In the realm of bipedal locomotion, one of my research groups did just this in the several years immediately before the Flores saga started. In Science, Galik, et al. (2004) showed that CT scans of partial femora from Kenya, dated to 6 million years ago, showed a pattern of cortical bone deposition in the femoral neck that resembled more closely that of later humans rather than of chimpanzees or gorillas, showing that by such an early date -- two million years earlier than previously documented -- bipedal locomotion was part of our ancestors' behavioral repertoire. Having a better date for a critical event such as the origin of bipedalism cannot winnow out all of the various weak theories or guesses that purport to explain the origin of upright posture and bipedal locomotion, but cannot help but to narrow the field somewhat. I will add here that our key paper on this subject makes available all of the primary data (CT scans), so that no one need take our results on faith. This is an evident contrast to the situation surrounding the Liang Bua Cave skeletons, to which access is restricted and to who are skeptical of the "new species" story.

In passing, for some reason Dr. Curnoe feels that it is worth mentioning that "The next big discovery may also bring for it’s [sic] discoverer media interest, fame, and public notoriety [sic - he probably means fame], peer recognition, easier access to scarce research funding, and maybe that long sought after promotion." It is difficult to understand how this bears negatively on those who are skeptical of the "new species" interpretation of the Flores remains. Among those who are most consistently skeptical of the "new species" approach, both Dr. Henneberg and I are tenured full professors in solid and supportive academic positions, so have neither need nor expectation of further promotion (the reverse seems to have been the case for Drs. Brown and Morwood). Neither Professor Henneberg nor I has received any external funding for our research on the Flores skeletal remains (the reverse seems to be the case for Drs. Brown and Morwood and thier adherents) and in fact we have expended substantial amounts of personal funds in support of our investigations. As far as public recognition, in general our experience so far has been more of the sort that Dr. Curnoe and others like him offer in his piece in The Conversation: distorted misrepresentation of our efforts and results.

Lighten up, Darren: paleoanthropology is unlikely to pass from the scene, but if it does it will be due to its own farcical standards of behavior rather than blood-soaked tragedy.

For those of outside the paleoanthropological field such as myself, it is difficult to ascertain what is correct or not without better familiarity with the issues. The femur issue however does seem a little difficult I must say! One indeed in science (I am in animal biology) must be prepared to look at all the evidence and at refuting arguments, and always hope to be disproven.
That even, dare I say it, applies in the case of global warming, which is of course now an international consensus of major proportions. However, it does help to try and look at that issue objectively from the geological time scale, in which case one is faced with the fact that there have been at least five previous major climate swings resulting in extinctions, largely from what I can see as the result of volcanics in most cases.
There is no doubt a lot we don't know. The latest I saw was a claim that most of the mammals arose AFTER the K-T boundary, which given marsupials arose more than 100 million years ago seems ludicrous. So all manner of facts support various theories which inevitably back up the particular outlook of the scientist, but those theories remain to be supported by hard evidence one way or the other in time, so your comments on the need for that seem right.
There is no excuse however for not EVALUATING all the evidence if it is available. My particular philosophical bent sends me on the path of pointing out that humans are not the major predators on the planet as so widely bandied about, in fact there is quite a case for us not being predators at all! There are however a number of species who have evolved different forms of killing to obtain food, and as such we may be thought of as having independently evolved from herbivores or weak omnivores to having a killing strategy for food which evolved to a killing strategy for other purposes such as clothes or entertainment, which is fairly unusual.
My bent further convinces me that we are pale due to the need to avoid the REAL predators, of which in Indonesia we are not only talking big cats but one very large lizard near Flores. The need to escape predators dominates the colour schemes of most animals on the planet, predator and/or prey, Animals in the desert regions tend to be pale to camouflage themselves and animals in forests tend to be dark, so that even individuals from the very same species can have colour morphs based on whether they are living in arid or mesic regions. For some reason that is supposed to be completely trumped by the need to produce vitamin D or other similar theories for our progress over time, any of which are evolutionarily disastrous if they trump the need to avoid being eaten!
Therefore I am stuck pondering the place and situation wherein we arose from an evolutionary standpoint. The Aborigines left Africa as the first Homo sapiens to do so according to DNA evidence, about 70,000 years ago, somehow breeding with the Siberian denisovans. But before that when our ancestors first evolved did they evolve in northern Africa as seems to be indicated by Kenyan and Ethiopian finds such as Lucy, or southern Africa as seems to be indicated by South African finds such as Ardi? Then we have to ask why did the early progenitors cease to climb trees, and later diverge into darker and lighter skins, to the point where some darker skinned people seem to have been the first to have left the continent?
Plenty of carnivores in Africa, and a very strong need to avoid them through coloration, and some of them are in trees e.g. Leopard. However other factors must be considered, and perhaps we evolved to cease climbing trees due to drought and fire decreasing the tree numbers such as in savannahs, or even less trees in grasslands as promoted by elephants. Elephants and big cats could be the entire raison d'etre for the human species, but I never hear that discussed in depth, However the presence of tall grass and deep water bodies may explain the later need to become more upright and also the need for our brains to accumulate omega fatty acids i.e. those from fish not beef. So it is a process, a process based on the conditions of the habitat back then, not nowadays, and the animals that they were affected by, not the things that affect humans now.
So let's say kitty up the few trees in the savannah sent us to the ground, then kitty could spot us from miles away until we "blended in" on the savannah, whilst meantime some H. sapiens made a life in the forests so blending in meant remaining/becoming darker. There is another possibility which is that we spent a lot of time avoiding kitty in the caves, which are suitably gloomy for any Vit D hypothesis!
Eventually we evolved to the modern H. sapiens, then conditions got so rough that the Aborigines who may have been forest dwellers, in their wisdom took off from Africa altogether, leaving the rest of us to kitty, the fires and the droughts. There are no big cats in Australia, only big snakes, which don't eat us, so don't require "blending" to the arid regions which are the majority of the country (65%) and which Aborigines duly colonised every part of, so no colour change required. Then presumably other Homo sapiens left well afterwards, maybe 20000 years later and ended up breeding with Neanderthals who as we know now were not that hopeless after all! The whole modern human scenario seems to be centered on paintings in Europe, forgetting that the human race already got to Australia by 50000 years ago, 20000 years after they left, and began painting. They are not only the First Australians, they are the first to colonise the world, the First Colonisers!
Some ancestors however seem to be a bit of an anomaly, such as the ones on Flores or the ones in Georgia, the latter which I call the "Little People". Others posted above that due to the island effects identified by MacArthur and Wilson (1967) it has been shown that animals on islands sometimes grow small. It is quite possible it seems to me that the Flores individuals may be transitional and thus be evolving into another species which is a smaller prototype, which may account for asymmetry or defects, as the process of gradual evolution is often not at all perfect, and to make gains in some areas (e.g. smallness) it may be necessary due to genetic linkage, to lose features in another area such as symmetry, and even resistance to particular diseases or deformations. Believe it or not, if the selection pressure from predation is great enough a crooked nose matters hardly at all if you need to be small to be fast or something else.
The Hobbits are no longer with us so either they got eaten by the big lizard, they bred with us, or they got a disease (which may otherwise explain defective factors). If they bred with us and thus disappeared, by definition they are not a separate species, but a subspecies at most. Neanderthals must, as we have been found to have Neanderthal genes, also be not a separate species.
Although I agree with the need for the proper examination of all facts, what I see in some branches of science is an isolation from other parts of biology that ends up leaving the field without the bigger picture. That bigger picture is Darwinian gradualism and the impact of climate and predators, and on islands that generally means isolation from predators, allowing increase in size, because it is ok to be big and lumbering if you haven't got anything chasing you, although decrease in size may also occur depending on food availability. But on Flores it might have meant being as fast as possible to avoid the big lizard, so small size may have been essential. It might have also meant the lizards ate so many people that the few remaining to breed would have produced inbred progeny, which again promotes genetic abnormalities.
Jared Diamond is absolutely right to draw connections between the landscape and human evolution, although I think he emphasises the role of sexual selection too much, and not other types of selection, of which the foremost are predation and habitat including climate.
However paleoanthropology is not alone in its inability to see the human picture not from the point of view of general biology, but from within its own sphere. Soil science is positively polarised in the argument about soil carbon between those who see it as a physical dilemma, involving largely physicochemical processes, and those who believe the soil system is virtually run by the biota. Never the twain shall meet. The picture of the system components, both biotic and abiotic, evolving together to result in both physicochemical outcomes (such as soil carbon) and complex bacterial and fungal communities (which are responsive to levels of C and N etc.) seems to have completely escaped the entire entrenched warfare of the debate. Never mind the idea of GAIA (from the chemist James Lovelock) in which the system as a whole has evolved to be ONE (like the Buddhist view!). The biota and the abiotic seem to be totally and utterly separated in all the arguments.
Thus we get back to the climate change debate between those geologists who see the evolution of the Earth as a physicochemical or abiotic process and those such as the broad consensus who support the IPCC position that a species can indeed influence abiotic processes- to the point where they may actually shift the whole cycle from deposition to atmospheric release. Again never the twain shall meet, although one must note that climate scientists are in general physical rather than biological scientists, and not all geologists (e.g. USGS) have an entirely abiotic centred position.
The MODERN human should NOT be the starting point of any debate about why any humans or relatives of them are the way they are (e.g. the need for suncream and krill oil!) but should be viewed from the point of view of the conditions in which those ancestors lived, AND THAT MEANS should be seen from the point of view of evolutionary constraints which cause them to be modified in the way that they are. The debate here seems to be hamstrung by anthropocentric arguments both from the scientific and the lay community about the evolution of humans as though they were in isolation from the world at large! Thus evolution as a process is discussed, in terms of developmental criteria such as bones, but selection pressures are largely ignored, even though it is the latter that actually causes the former, and so by examining the latter a lot more progress may be made on the former.
From paleoanthropology discussions, I hear the details, and they should be discussed and deliberated in depth no doubt e.g. bones and genetics etc., and all available evidence should be examined and evaluated as referred to in the post.
But I don't often hear the discussion that really needs to be had, other than as one-liners, which is about the conditions of the landscape and the biota that INFLUENCED that evolution.
What do we know about the conditions that the Flores person endured? Was the largest and most dangerous lizard in the world present on the island at the same time? Was it rainforest? Was it dry and so had little food to sustain big animals? Did they starve and become inbred as a result, or did being eaten reduce their numbers? Were they evolving due to habitat conditions and isolation on an island, but in a state that did not preclude being bred with by other humans, like apparently the Neanderthals and Denisovens were?
Where is the REAL discussion that forgets that Vitamin D and omega fatty acids are a big deal to us now and the shark and the big cat and even droughts and fires are virtually side issues?There will be no solution if we look at this from our somewhat comfy vantage point, and for Flores not to even realise that a lizard could be the major issue in the whole debate seems negligent.
Therefore if I have any criticism of palaeoanthropology it is that, if you will excuse the way I put it, that it needs to pull its head out of the sand and look at the world around it.
But that is not nearly so serious as the need to examine the extent of the influence of the biota on the abiotic system globally, and indeed whether that extent means that the system virtually works as one. Without that knowledge, it seems spurious to try to even work out what the results of climate change will be on soil carbon and weather, let alone to follow the trajectory of human evolution. However although the world spends billions on the examination of particles we can't actually see, which I do not oppose, it spends virtually nothing on Biological Syncotrons which examine the extent of the interrelationship between the biota and the physicochemical planet. Thus James Lovelock who is a believer that the relationship is virtually a 100% congruent biotic-abiotic system will die long before anyone spends a penny on a major global consortium to sort it out, and so will I and many others who realise that even if it isn't 100% it is a pretty intimate relationship.
Why doesn't paleoanthropology get that??

Great stuff Caroline and you make some interesting points. Great to see your acknowledgement of the writings and ideas of Diamond and Lovelock.

Just a few poinst i would like to raise in supplement, though I acknowledge my knowledge on the subject is quite limited and lay in nature.

I noted a few professors from South Africa on this forum virtually dismissing the 'Hobbit' discovery as another 'Piltdown' episode. In the end they may be right, but it troubles me that their position is so definite, given that they, in the same comments, laud the achievements of their predecessor Prof Raymond Dart, who was responsible for the Taung child discovered decades ago. Yet they forget Dart went through the same opposition regarding his discovery as these present specialists are now aiming at the 'Hobbit' discovery, and for the same reason, that it didnt fit the establishment's process of homo evolution.. Seems some things are never learned even by the academics.

A point often now forgotten was that early humans left Africa well before 70, 000 years ago. It is even being now surmised that the more modern aspects of human evolution occurred in Eurasia, not all in Africa.

As the suggestion goes, an early human left Africa maybe as far back as two million years ago, and maybe some early humans even further back. The 'Hobbit' may well be an early offshoot of this migration, that somehow managed to cross the ocean to get to Flores, perhaps during lower sea levels during one of the previous Ice Ages. They may therefore be a divergent human species, possibly experiencing dwarfism as a survival mechanism given limited resources.

Meanwhile in Eurasia, humanity evolved in various ways to meet the different environmental challenges developing into the apparently very successful Homo Erectus species of humanity and the precursor of the Neanderthal and Denisovans, and maybe other offshoots that developed over a 1-2 million year period.

But the scenario goes that a small number of these Eurasian evolved humans, somehow then made their way back to Africa and became locked again by the Sahara into southern and eastern Africa, where they replaced or interbred with the earlier homo population that had remained in Africa. Again they evolved over several hundreds of thousands of years into modern Homo Sapiens after which the first of this new human started making it way out of Africa, unsuccessfully at first about 130,000 years ago into the middle east, and then successfully about 60,000-70,000 years ago soon after the Mt Toba volcanic disaster. This latest scenario seems to fit the evidence better and the close genetic correlation of the modern human and the Neanderthal and Denisovans.

As for the lack of threatening predation in Australia for the first human settlers, I would suggest that wasnt always the case because there seems to have been some seriously vicious predators in the Australian Megafauna, that early humans would have been confronted with including the marsupial lion with the strongest known bite strength of any known present day predator, a carnivorous kangaroo. the marsupial tiger and crocs, snakes and other reptiles measuring as much as 7-8 metres long.

But as Diamond pointed out, these animals and their prey were unfamiliar with humans and in time because of human activities seem to have been unable to compete for resources and much of the Megafauna disappeared along with the extensive grasslands that supported them in many locations of central Australia.

Having said that I enjoyed your points Caroline.