4 thoughts on “Meganthropus palaeojavanicus – The Early Years of Palaeoanthropological Research (1942 – 1955)”
Here is the original article that this post is a discussion of:
https://cennathis.com/2015/02/06/meganthropus-palaeojavanicus-the-early-years-of-palaeoanthropological-research-1942-1955/comment-page-1/#comment-322
Prehistoric Fiction Writer (josephlayden)
JULY 11, 2016 AT 6:42 PM
First you say that Meganthropus is only used in modern times by Creationists, then you say that Arjuna 9 was described by scientists. So are these scientists creationists?
I think not.
From the description you have provided alone anyone with common sense can tell that a large, basal subspecies or “ethnic” group of homo erectus must have lived on Java between 1.6 million and 700 k ago.
And you don’t even bother to mention the double sagittal crests on several of the specimens or the tooth size, which is only rivaled by Denisovans and the Red deer Cave people.
No one believes Creationist, not even the majority of Christians. Why do people tell lies that hurt science in an effort to debunk them?
There were species of Heidelberg that were 7 foot tall on average. there were probably species of homo erectus that were really big too.
It’s a fact.
Don’t try to change it just because you don’t like that some people call them Nephilim.
The world is still a lot older than 5000 years and the process of evolution is still evident in the fossil record.
REPLY
Charles T.G. Clarke
JULY 11, 2016 AT 9:03 PM
Hello Joseph. I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your constructive criticism. I will now respond. Please note, that I leave the modern usage of the term to the end of the article. The majority of the article is about how the term came into existence and it’s torturous use to the present day. I do feel you are unnecessarily jumping to conclusions. Early palaeoanthropologists had a habit of naming anything they saw. Today, palaeoanthropologists spend less time arguing over names and more time on more important questions. Nowhere, do I suggest von-Keonigswald was a creationist. I have not investigated his personally held beliefs, so I’m not qualified to comment. The idea of subspecies in hominin evolution is not a generally accepted position. The last time a new hominin subspecies was proposed scientifically in 2003 by Timothy D. White’s team – Homo sapiens idaltu – but we have barely seen this in the scientific literature since then. That’s a sure sign, so self-respecting palaeoanthropologist would accept such a taxonomic appellation.
The “Red Deer People” was first described in 1979 and Darren Curnoe of the University of New South Wales headed a re-analysis of the specimens . To start, the majority of palaeoanthropologists find Curnoe very odd. In 2010, he published a paper in an obscure journal claiming that one of the South African skulls is a new species of human – Homo gautengensis – in conversations with skilled palaeoanthropologists in the aftermath of the publication, I got the impression that, that paper hurt the reliability of Curnoe. So, he is a troublesome character. He attempted and failed to give a new species status to the Red Deer People, so he resorted to using public media to his advantage, by ensuring that the catchy “Red Deer People” would flood broadsheets and tabloids. It worked and unfortunately confused many of my friends who did not know the nuances of the paper published.
With regard to Denisova, all we have is are two teeth and a phalanx. This is why we do not have Homo denisova. Archaeogenetics is powerful, but not powerful enough to name a new species. No palaeoanthropologist would think it worthwhile to compare Denisova, the RD people and the javan hominins to eachother. Where do I start here…………….Dating. They all date to different points in the Pleistocene. Not to mention the sites from which these fossils came are notoriously difficult to date.
You make a slight error, saying Sagittal crests, you mean sagittal keels. The double sagittal keel was first described in 1991 (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02435533#page-1) and applied to Sangiran 31. There was no evidence of double sagittal keeling on any of the other hominins. Not that it makes much difference, in the long run, due to the fact this is mere human variation.
It is very unfair to characterise my article as lies that hurt science. This article for starters is not a mega-hit, written by a pulitzer prize winning author. It is a public science article that hopefully enlighens about the world of palaeoanthropology.
I was horrified to read the Wikipedia article on Meganthropus to find it poorly written and confusing and unscientific. This article was an attempt to counter that.
No palaeoanthropologist would ever suggest that the Mauer Mandible came from a 7ft tall human. You cannot gauge body size by mandible’s alone. As far as speculation is concerned, the Mauer Mandible (often attributed to Homo heidelbergensis) belonged to your average sized human around 5ft 6″.
Homo erectus IS a species. There is no such thing as species of Homo erectus. I recommend this book (http://www.thamesandhudsonusa.com/books/the-complete-world-of-human-evolution-softcover-second-edition) to help you refresh and update your flawed understanding of hominin evolution.
Some historians suggest that the Nephilim was inspired by the fossil record. So, fossil mammoth have been found all over the world. These finds may have inspired the Cyclops and the Nephilim. Using religion was a handy yet flawed method to explain these discoveries away.
After reading your entire comment, it appears you need to read a little deeper, but I find the last few lines comforting.
Thanks ever so much for offering your constructive criticism to this article. I hope I have given you an adequate response. Please do follow and don’t forget to share this article as far as you can. Thanks again. Your contribution is always appreciated.
REPLY
Prehistoric Fiction Writer (josephlayden)
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
JULY 28, 2016 AT 6:49 AM
Charles, I appreciate your very thorough explanation. . However, I disagree that my view is flawed. I understand that it is no longer academic or politically correct to put hominids in a subspecies, and that is a major problem for the field. There are many subspecies of white tailed deer, subspecies of zebra with varying chromosome numbers. But no subspecies for hominids, despite how different we are from idaltu? Why do humans get special pleading?
There is absolutely no way that Red Deer Cave people came solely from homo sapien sapiens. There is absolutely no way that anything less than an archaic hominid with several several hundred thousand years of evolution separate from our own could have evolved those archaic traits. Floresiensis can not have evolved from anything else but a very early member of homo, along a separate lineage from our own. Only gorillas, Bili apes, and Paranthropus have sagittal keel. If two specimens in Java have sagittal keels and all the rest of homo doesn’t, it most likely means that those Javan specimens evolved straight from an advanced austro and not erectus, which don’t have sagittal keels. The “meganthropus” skull we’re discussing is bigger than a paranthropus, bigger than a human, bigger than a Bili ape, and bigger than a gorilla and if he was no taller than them then he had the biggest head of any primate known to science. We only have teeth and jaws of Giganthopithecus, but it’s prerfectly acceptable for scientists to agree on him being 10 to 12 feet tall. But meganthropus is a human and it might excite the dumb creationists so let’s not apply the same science to it. Several prominent scientists have said that there were populations of heidelberg that avergaed near 7 foot tall, and I cannot imagine what you would find so fantastic about that. The chinese have recently reported a find of the ancestors of the Qang avergaing 7 feet tall, and there’s good evidence that the Anaste in America were that tall too. No big deal and totally expected by anyone with common sense who realizes that height between separate genomes varied widely before the melting pot of the agricultural revolution, when 90% of Y haplogroups were exterminated or went extinct due to environmental pressures (and the genetic evidence suggests the former).
The idea that mammoths and elephants inspired legends of giants is devoid of common sense, because man has been killing and skinning elephants since the Upper Paleolithic and knew very well what their bones looked like.
One laughable thing I recently read was that the Tutsi were once reported to be 7 foot tall, but a more scientific assessment was done AFTER THE BANTU INVASION that found that they were only around 6 foot on average. Well duh. Don’t scientists know that Bantu were short? Don’t they know what happens when one tribe takes over another? The colonists of georgia claimed that the Yamacraw stood 6’6 on average, and that Tomochichi was over 7 foot, while the women averaged 5’2. There’s only one way that kind of sexual dimporphism can exists in a population of homo sapiens- you kill the short Yuchi men and keep the short yuchi women after a few generations they would have returned to normal man/woman height ratios. The reason I think some attitudes hurt science is because 50% of people believe in ancient aliens, and it’s not their fault. We see elongated skulls, red deer cave skulls, massive cro-magnon bones, little people with austro/ardi wrists who lived only 50k ago. Palu hominids who look even stranger…but scientists try to tell us that they are all just HSS from an African mother 180k ago. You might be able to create a theory for Palau hominids reverting back to suite of erectus, soloensis, and floresiensis traits in only 2000 years while Andaman Islanders stayed the same for 20 to 60 thousand, but only book worms will believe you- those with common sense and street smarts with experience observing things in the real world are going to reject it on instinct and probability and look for answers elsewhere that make some kind of sense. We have found one chimp fossil in what, 3 to 6 million years of chimp evolution?
It’s a partial tooth.
It stands to reason, then, that we have very little of the puzzle.
I can’t think of any other reason for academics to claim that Palau is from HSS alone... except for their insistence that only HSS was around by 5000 years ago.
What gives them the omniscience to think this? Of course more hominids were around for a lot longer than we have bones for! That’s just common sense.
It's also common sense that last tall cro-magnon bones weren't the last of their race, and that some tall, robust hunter gatherers were still around after the agriculturalist underwent the thousand-year shrink that comes with agriculture. We even have evidence that they did...it's just not PC to take their average measurements into account anymore....unless you live in China.
To clarify about the elongated skulls I mentioned. If you read what most scientists say about them, you get the impression that people woke up one day all over the world 5,500 years ago and said “Hey! Let’s warp our babies’ heads today for no good reason!” I guess they communicated it to each other by way of psychic powers or Sheldrake’s morphic field? And now they’ve found one in that shape in Korea with no signs whatever of artificial elongating. Well…we’ve got plenty of dolicephalic skulls in the fossil record they could have been partially descended from and who they might have been emulating. The Shanidar neanderthals were even once thought to have practiced head-binding, but now we know they were naturally like that. No surprise, because India seems to exude long skulled hybrids through most of the paleolithic.. We know that a hominid that split off from our line 1.2 million years ago was assimilated by homo sapiens in SE Asia 37 thousand years and has since spread microcephalin d to 70% of the planet, and that SE Asian hominids had elongated skulls. Where you see elongated skulls 5500 years ago after the last rapid sea rise, you also find a suite of common lithics, according to Oppenheimer, Wilhelm, and Paul Kekai Manansala. How could it be any easier to connect the dots?
Instead, the mainstream says, “Nothing to see here, move along,” and so the public flips on Ancient Aliens because they have the common sense to know that there is an answer somewhere. I find it frustrating, because they find the wrong one.
josephlayden
JULY 11, 2016 AT 6:53 PM
Are you claiming that The Journal of Human Evolution is a creationist organization? They used the term Meganthropus to describe a species in Java separate from “classic” erectus, so I guess you are:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047248483801262
REPLY
Charles T.G. Clarke
JULY 11, 2016 AT 8:08 PM
Hello Joseph, thanks for your constructive criticism. I would like to respond. Any scientific journal, does not support one hypothesis over another. Think of a peer-reviewed journal as a regulated platform to get your hypothesis out into the scientific sphere. While the Journal of Human Evolution did publish your above mentioned article in December of 1983, not only is the article 33 years old and it’s subject, a rarity, but the Journal did not support or reject it. Thanks for commenting. Please do follow and share my articles with your friends and colleagues. Your support is greatly appreciated.
REPLY
Prehistoric Fiction Writer (josephlayden)
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
JULY 28, 2016 AT 8:01 AM
I understand, but would like to say that 33 years is only out of date if a follow up study has been done that destroys the findings utterly. It looks to me very much like the skull has been ignored since then.
To clarify about the 7 foot heidelbergs, it wasn’t a comment on a single skull. “According to Lee R. Berger of the University of Witwatersrand, numerous fossil bones indicate some populations of heidelbergensis were “giants” routinely over 2.13 m (7 ft) tall and inhabited South Africa between 500,000 and 300,000 years ago.” This can be found in these three papers
Burger, Lee (November 2007). “Our Story: Human Ancestor Fossils”. The Naked Scientists.
^ Jump up to: a b “Homo heidelbergensis essay”. Institute of Human Origins. Retrieved October 29, 2015.
Jump up ^ “Scientists Determine Height of Homo Heidelbergensis”. Sci-News. June 6, 2012. Retrieved November 29, 2015.
As far as there being no “species” of homo erectus…the terminology has been so jumbled up it’s hard to communicate with.
If I say “species of homo” then I’m including Homo habilis, rudolphensis, gautengensis, flores, archaics, neanderthals, sapiens (and austro garhi according to some). I mean only hominids that have been called erectus and ergaster in the past, without glaring austro traits like those of habilis, modjokertensis, meganthropus, georgicus and the hobbit, and I think those populations made up more than two distinct genomic populations and possessed very different traits from one another. They possessed the second OAS1 brain gene duplication and not just the first, may have possessed the third already, and we find their traces in a part of the Denisovan genome, in Denisovan-like introgression in Papuans, in the Denisovan-like genes of homo antecessor, in Microcephalin D, and in African archaic introgression…all of these point to a split 1.2 million years ago. That was when the various subspecies of advanced erectus were assimilating the subspecies of early homo. I think it’s important to differentiate them, but the PC police have screwed that up so you that you can only refer to single fossil specimens by numbers and letters that are impossible to remember.
Maybe we won’t hurt any extinct hominids feelings now, or anyone who might have their introgression.
A simpler way to put all this:
Scientist must understand that if the NBA were isolated with the NWBA for a period of several thousand years in a place of moderate temperature and terrain, then it would likely create an ethnic group that was well above 6 foot tall on average. In 500,000 years and lots of population isolation, the laws of probability grant that tall people must have been stuck together at least once. Early cro-magnons were several inches taller on average than late cro-magnons, and some populations of african “heidelberg” were taller than even they were. So why do scientists think that any population with an average height that’s higher than modern is some kind of fantasy? 70% of Y haplogroups went extinct during the agricultural revolution. That’s when the many took over the few and killed their men. They took over all kinds of forest people, the tall tribes and the short tribes, and then staple food malnutrition shrank them down some more, and we’re only now recovering due to modern tech. Over the past 3 million years, there have always been two types of hominids in every ecological zone- a gracile one and a robust one, a short one and a tall one, one with big canines and one with flatter teeth, each presumably exploiting a slightly different niche. The only thing that changed that was the abandonment of those niches somewhere at the end of the ice age..
One last comment on this subject…if I were a 5’4 natufian tending my garden with my rotten teeth and my frail wheat-sick bones, and a group of robust 6’6 hunter gatherers rolled up on me and took my wife…I’d call that a giant attack.
The Chinese are claiming 7 1/2 feet tall on average for their recent Sichuan finds dated to less than 5k ago, and there were groups in China at that time that averaged 5’4 among males..
Joe Lyon Layden is a prehistoric fiction author and primitive musician. To receive a free copy of this entire novella "The Man from Parkho Khatune Bears Favor," as well as three free songs and monthly updates, freebies, and discounts on Joe's ongoing work, please sign up for the newsletter below.
Here is the original article that this post is a discussion of:
https://cennathis.com/2015/02/06/meganthropus-palaeojavanicus-the-early-years-of-palaeoanthropological-research-1942-1955/comment-page-1/#comment-322
Prehistoric Fiction Writer (josephlayden)
JULY 11, 2016 AT 6:42 PM
First you say that Meganthropus is only used in modern times by Creationists, then you say that Arjuna 9 was described by scientists. So are these scientists creationists?
I think not.
From the description you have provided alone anyone with common sense can tell that a large, basal subspecies or “ethnic” group of homo erectus must have lived on Java between 1.6 million and 700 k ago.
And you don’t even bother to mention the double sagittal crests on several of the specimens or the tooth size, which is only rivaled by Denisovans and the Red deer Cave people.
No one believes Creationist, not even the majority of Christians. Why do people tell lies that hurt science in an effort to debunk them?
There were species of Heidelberg that were 7 foot tall on average. there were probably species of homo erectus that were really big too.
It’s a fact.
Don’t try to change it just because you don’t like that some people call them Nephilim.
The world is still a lot older than 5000 years and the process of evolution is still evident in the fossil record.
REPLY
Charles T.G. Clarke
JULY 11, 2016 AT 9:03 PM
Hello Joseph. I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your constructive criticism. I will now respond. Please note, that I leave the modern usage of the term to the end of the article. The majority of the article is about how the term came into existence and it’s torturous use to the present day. I do feel you are unnecessarily jumping to conclusions. Early palaeoanthropologists had a habit of naming anything they saw. Today, palaeoanthropologists spend less time arguing over names and more time on more important questions. Nowhere, do I suggest von-Keonigswald was a creationist. I have not investigated his personally held beliefs, so I’m not qualified to comment. The idea of subspecies in hominin evolution is not a generally accepted position. The last time a new hominin subspecies was proposed scientifically in 2003 by Timothy D. White’s team – Homo sapiens idaltu – but we have barely seen this in the scientific literature since then. That’s a sure sign, so self-respecting palaeoanthropologist would accept such a taxonomic appellation.
The “Red Deer People” was first described in 1979 and Darren Curnoe of the University of New South Wales headed a re-analysis of the specimens . To start, the majority of palaeoanthropologists find Curnoe very odd. In 2010, he published a paper in an obscure journal claiming that one of the South African skulls is a new species of human – Homo gautengensis – in conversations with skilled palaeoanthropologists in the aftermath of the publication, I got the impression that, that paper hurt the reliability of Curnoe. So, he is a troublesome character. He attempted and failed to give a new species status to the Red Deer People, so he resorted to using public media to his advantage, by ensuring that the catchy “Red Deer People” would flood broadsheets and tabloids. It worked and unfortunately confused many of my friends who did not know the nuances of the paper published.
With regard to Denisova, all we have is are two teeth and a phalanx. This is why we do not have Homo denisova. Archaeogenetics is powerful, but not powerful enough to name a new species. No palaeoanthropologist would think it worthwhile to compare Denisova, the RD people and the javan hominins to eachother. Where do I start here…………….Dating. They all date to different points in the Pleistocene. Not to mention the sites from which these fossils came are notoriously difficult to date.
You make a slight error, saying Sagittal crests, you mean sagittal keels. The double sagittal keel was first described in 1991 (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02435533#page-1) and applied to Sangiran 31. There was no evidence of double sagittal keeling on any of the other hominins. Not that it makes much difference, in the long run, due to the fact this is mere human variation.
It is very unfair to characterise my article as lies that hurt science. This article for starters is not a mega-hit, written by a pulitzer prize winning author. It is a public science article that hopefully enlighens about the world of palaeoanthropology.
I was horrified to read the Wikipedia article on Meganthropus to find it poorly written and confusing and unscientific. This article was an attempt to counter that.
No palaeoanthropologist would ever suggest that the Mauer Mandible came from a 7ft tall human. You cannot gauge body size by mandible’s alone. As far as speculation is concerned, the Mauer Mandible (often attributed to Homo heidelbergensis) belonged to your average sized human around 5ft 6″.
Homo erectus IS a species. There is no such thing as species of Homo erectus. I recommend this book (http://www.thamesandhudsonusa.com/books/the-complete-world-of-human-evolution-softcover-second-edition) to help you refresh and update your flawed understanding of hominin evolution.
Some historians suggest that the Nephilim was inspired by the fossil record. So, fossil mammoth have been found all over the world. These finds may have inspired the Cyclops and the Nephilim. Using religion was a handy yet flawed method to explain these discoveries away.
After reading your entire comment, it appears you need to read a little deeper, but I find the last few lines comforting.
Thanks ever so much for offering your constructive criticism to this article. I hope I have given you an adequate response. Please do follow and don’t forget to share this article as far as you can. Thanks again. Your contribution is always appreciated.
REPLY
Prehistoric Fiction Writer (josephlayden)
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
JULY 28, 2016 AT 6:49 AM
Charles, I appreciate your very thorough explanation. . However, I disagree that my view is flawed. I understand that it is no longer academic or politically correct to put hominids in a subspecies, and that is a major problem for the field. There are many subspecies of white tailed deer, subspecies of zebra with varying chromosome numbers. But no subspecies for hominids, despite how different we are from idaltu? Why do humans get special pleading?
There is absolutely no way that Red Deer Cave people came solely from homo sapien sapiens. There is absolutely no way that anything less than an archaic hominid with several several hundred thousand years of evolution separate from our own could have evolved those archaic traits. Floresiensis can not have evolved from anything else but a very early member of homo, along a separate lineage from our own. Only gorillas, Bili apes, and Paranthropus have sagittal keel. If two specimens in Java have sagittal keels and all the rest of homo doesn’t, it most likely means that those Javan specimens evolved straight from an advanced austro and not erectus, which don’t have sagittal keels. The “meganthropus” skull we’re discussing is bigger than a paranthropus, bigger than a human, bigger than a Bili ape, and bigger than a gorilla and if he was no taller than them then he had the biggest head of any primate known to science. We only have teeth and jaws of Giganthopithecus, but it’s prerfectly acceptable for scientists to agree on him being 10 to 12 feet tall. But meganthropus is a human and it might excite the dumb creationists so let’s not apply the same science to it. Several prominent scientists have said that there were populations of heidelberg that avergaed near 7 foot tall, and I cannot imagine what you would find so fantastic about that. The chinese have recently reported a find of the ancestors of the Qang avergaing 7 feet tall, and there’s good evidence that the Anaste in America were that tall too. No big deal and totally expected by anyone with common sense who realizes that height between separate genomes varied widely before the melting pot of the agricultural revolution, when 90% of Y haplogroups were exterminated or went extinct due to environmental pressures (and the genetic evidence suggests the former).
The idea that mammoths and elephants inspired legends of giants is devoid of common sense, because man has been killing and skinning elephants since the Upper Paleolithic and knew very well what their bones looked like.
One laughable thing I recently read was that the Tutsi were once reported to be 7 foot tall, but a more scientific assessment was done AFTER THE BANTU INVASION that found that they were only around 6 foot on average. Well duh. Don’t scientists know that Bantu were short? Don’t they know what happens when one tribe takes over another? The colonists of georgia claimed that the Yamacraw stood 6’6 on average, and that Tomochichi was over 7 foot, while the women averaged 5’2. There’s only one way that kind of sexual dimporphism can exists in a population of homo sapiens- you kill the short Yuchi men and keep the short yuchi women after a few generations they would have returned to normal man/woman height ratios. The reason I think some attitudes hurt science is because 50% of people believe in ancient aliens, and it’s not their fault. We see elongated skulls, red deer cave skulls, massive cro-magnon bones, little people with austro/ardi wrists who lived only 50k ago. Palu hominids who look even stranger…but scientists try to tell us that they are all just HSS from an African mother 180k ago. You might be able to create a theory for Palau hominids reverting back to suite of erectus, soloensis, and floresiensis traits in only 2000 years while Andaman Islanders stayed the same for 20 to 60 thousand, but only book worms will believe you- those with common sense and street smarts with experience observing things in the real world are going to reject it on instinct and probability and look for answers elsewhere that make some kind of sense. We have found one chimp fossil in what, 3 to 6 million years of chimp evolution?
It’s a partial tooth.
It stands to reason, then, that we have very little of the puzzle.
I can’t think of any other reason for academics to claim that Palau is from HSS alone... except for their insistence that only HSS was around by 5000 years ago.
What gives them the omniscience to think this? Of course more hominids were around for a lot longer than we have bones for! That’s just common sense.
It's also common sense that last tall cro-magnon bones weren't the last of their race, and that some tall, robust hunter gatherers were still around after the agriculturalist underwent the thousand-year shrink that comes with agriculture. We even have evidence that they did...it's just not PC to take their average measurements into account anymore....unless you live in China.
To clarify about the elongated skulls I mentioned. If you read what most scientists say about them, you get the impression that people woke up one day all over the world 5,500 years ago and said “Hey! Let’s warp our babies’ heads today for no good reason!” I guess they communicated it to each other by way of psychic powers or Sheldrake’s morphic field? And now they’ve found one in that shape in Korea with no signs whatever of artificial elongating. Well…we’ve got plenty of dolicephalic skulls in the fossil record they could have been partially descended from and who they might have been emulating. The Shanidar neanderthals were even once thought to have practiced head-binding, but now we know they were naturally like that. No surprise, because India seems to exude long skulled hybrids through most of the paleolithic.. We know that a hominid that split off from our line 1.2 million years ago was assimilated by homo sapiens in SE Asia 37 thousand years and has since spread microcephalin d to 70% of the planet, and that SE Asian hominids had elongated skulls. Where you see elongated skulls 5500 years ago after the last rapid sea rise, you also find a suite of common lithics, according to Oppenheimer, Wilhelm, and Paul Kekai Manansala. How could it be any easier to connect the dots?
Instead, the mainstream says, “Nothing to see here, move along,” and so the public flips on Ancient Aliens because they have the common sense to know that there is an answer somewhere. I find it frustrating, because they find the wrong one.
josephlayden
JULY 11, 2016 AT 6:53 PM
Are you claiming that The Journal of Human Evolution is a creationist organization? They used the term Meganthropus to describe a species in Java separate from “classic” erectus, so I guess you are:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047248483801262
REPLY
Charles T.G. Clarke
JULY 11, 2016 AT 8:08 PM
Hello Joseph, thanks for your constructive criticism. I would like to respond. Any scientific journal, does not support one hypothesis over another. Think of a peer-reviewed journal as a regulated platform to get your hypothesis out into the scientific sphere. While the Journal of Human Evolution did publish your above mentioned article in December of 1983, not only is the article 33 years old and it’s subject, a rarity, but the Journal did not support or reject it. Thanks for commenting. Please do follow and share my articles with your friends and colleagues. Your support is greatly appreciated.
REPLY
Prehistoric Fiction Writer (josephlayden)
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
JULY 28, 2016 AT 8:01 AM
I understand, but would like to say that 33 years is only out of date if a follow up study has been done that destroys the findings utterly. It looks to me very much like the skull has been ignored since then.
To clarify about the 7 foot heidelbergs, it wasn’t a comment on a single skull. “According to Lee R. Berger of the University of Witwatersrand, numerous fossil bones indicate some populations of heidelbergensis were “giants” routinely over 2.13 m (7 ft) tall and inhabited South Africa between 500,000 and 300,000 years ago.” This can be found in these three papers
Burger, Lee (November 2007). “Our Story: Human Ancestor Fossils”. The Naked Scientists.
^ Jump up to: a b “Homo heidelbergensis essay”. Institute of Human Origins. Retrieved October 29, 2015.
Jump up ^ “Scientists Determine Height of Homo Heidelbergensis”. Sci-News. June 6, 2012. Retrieved November 29, 2015.
As far as there being no “species” of homo erectus…the terminology has been so jumbled up it’s hard to communicate with.
If I say “species of homo” then I’m including Homo habilis, rudolphensis, gautengensis, flores, archaics, neanderthals, sapiens (and austro garhi according to some). I mean only hominids that have been called erectus and ergaster in the past, without glaring austro traits like those of habilis, modjokertensis, meganthropus, georgicus and the hobbit, and I think those populations made up more than two distinct genomic populations and possessed very different traits from one another. They possessed the second OAS1 brain gene duplication and not just the first, may have possessed the third already, and we find their traces in a part of the Denisovan genome, in Denisovan-like introgression in Papuans, in the Denisovan-like genes of homo antecessor, in Microcephalin D, and in African archaic introgression…all of these point to a split 1.2 million years ago. That was when the various subspecies of advanced erectus were assimilating the subspecies of early homo. I think it’s important to differentiate them, but the PC police have screwed that up so you that you can only refer to single fossil specimens by numbers and letters that are impossible to remember.
Maybe we won’t hurt any extinct hominids feelings now, or anyone who might have their introgression.
A simpler way to put all this:
Scientist must understand that if the NBA were isolated with the NWBA for a period of several thousand years in a place of moderate temperature and terrain, then it would likely create an ethnic group that was well above 6 foot tall on average. In 500,000 years and lots of population isolation, the laws of probability grant that tall people must have been stuck together at least once. Early cro-magnons were several inches taller on average than late cro-magnons, and some populations of african “heidelberg” were taller than even they were. So why do scientists think that any population with an average height that’s higher than modern is some kind of fantasy? 70% of Y haplogroups went extinct during the agricultural revolution. That’s when the many took over the few and killed their men. They took over all kinds of forest people, the tall tribes and the short tribes, and then staple food malnutrition shrank them down some more, and we’re only now recovering due to modern tech. Over the past 3 million years, there have always been two types of hominids in every ecological zone- a gracile one and a robust one, a short one and a tall one, one with big canines and one with flatter teeth, each presumably exploiting a slightly different niche. The only thing that changed that was the abandonment of those niches somewhere at the end of the ice age..
One last comment on this subject…if I were a 5’4 natufian tending my garden with my rotten teeth and my frail wheat-sick bones, and a group of robust 6’6 hunter gatherers rolled up on me and took my wife…I’d call that a giant attack.
The Chinese are claiming 7 1/2 feet tall on average for their recent Sichuan finds dated to less than 5k ago, and there were groups in China at that time that averaged 5’4 among males..
Joe Lyon Layden is a prehistoric fiction author and primitive musician. To receive a free copy of this entire novella "The Man from Parkho Khatune Bears Favor," as well as three free songs and monthly updates, freebies, and discounts on Joe's ongoing work, please sign up for the newsletter below.
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