Where We Came From

For John, BLUF:  If we accept the sciernce of evolution we know that our descendents 100,000 years from now may not look as we do today.  What will the future bring?  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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How mankind really evolved:  Top geneticist DR ADAM RUTHERFORD says simple diagram of ape changing to man is 'so wrong' it should be removed from school books - and reveals the far messier Ascent of Man

Here is the sub-headline:

• Dr Adam Rutherford discusses why 'The Road To Homo Sapiens' is wrong
• He describes it as a 'convenient shorthand' to depict the evolution of man
• Discovery of a new skull suggests linear evolution of man is wrong, Dr Rutherford says

From The Daily Mail, by Dr Adam Rutherford (Geneticist) 4 July 2021, 05:46 EDT.

Here is the lede plus seven:

It's one of the most famous images in the history of scientific endeavour.  The Road To Homo Sapiens, by American-based artist Rudolph Zallinger, is a convenient shorthand to show the gradual evolution from primitive crawling apes to upright walking mankind.

The image was created for a children’s book in the mid-1960s and has since appeared in humorously subverted versions everywhere, from T-shirts to The Simpsons.  But the past few days have seen a new discovery which perfectly illustrates what scientists such as myself have long known:  the image is completely wrong.

A week ago, a huge prehistoric skull that had lain hidden in a Chinese well for 85 years resurfaced. Inconveniently, it doesn’t easily fit into the famous image, which shows us getting bigger and bigger brains as we evolve.

The head was first discovered in 1933 by workers building a bridge over the Songhua River in Harbin, northern China.  The labourers wrapped it in cloth and hid it in an old well to stop it falling into the hands of Japanese soldiers occupying the province.<

There it remained until 2018, when one of the workers told his grandson about the secret.  The grandson recovered the skull from its hiding place and gave it to researchers at Hebei Geo University, who declared it to be at least 146,000 years old.

They believe it comes from an unknown hominid – an early human species.  Once again, our species finds that we are going to have to rethink the story of humankind to fit in with new scientific discoveries.

Evolution by natural selection was Charles Darwin’s big idea and this year sees the 150th anniversary of the publication of his great book, The Descent Of Man, in which he applies his theory to humans.

Swathes of evidence have been amassed since Darwin’s time, from fossil bones to, more recently, DNA analysis.  This gives us a broader picture of our evolution, which we often imagine as a tree with different species branching off at different times since life on Earth began.

You have to go to the link to see the revised path of progression, as proposed by Dr Rutherford.

Hat tip to my Wife.

Regards  —  Cliff