This stuff fascinates me.
Sort of wondering how this new discovery ties into the Neanderthal puzzle.
Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/05/22/europe-birthplace-mankind-not-africa-scientists-find/
The study discovered what is possibly our earliest known common ancestor with apes...a species that was likely still more ape than human. The only evidence of clear members of the human family (Homonids) are from Africa.
It's big news, but being exaggerated (not by the scientists, but by reporters).
DNA science shows that man kind originated in Africa. Hard to refute blood linkage. But there is so much we don't know that things could change with each discovery.
Fascinating subject, thanks for the heads up.
But there are some really interesting things coming out right now:
1) Evidence of humans found in California 100k years before the earliest time thought before:
Sorry, tried to embed video unsuccesfully. Here's the link:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/video/broken-bones-hint-at-earlier-human-arrival-in-the-americas/
2) Those tiny "Ancestors" found in the cave in South Africa may only be a couple hundred thousand years old, implying that homo sapiens may have coexisted with a number of closely related species for a time (not just neanderthals).
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-evidence-of-mysterious-homo-naledi-raises-questions-about-how-humans-evolved/
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I worked with a guy from S.Korea. He had never heard of the Out of Africa Theory of humankind's origins. He had only ever heard that humans originated on the Korean Peninsula and spread throughout the world from there. I thought that was kind of funny, but it did make me wonder how universal the scientific theories are that we hear. The guy has a Ph.D. ... in engineering, not anthropology or the like, but he is nonetheless very educated, so I was surprised.
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and not evolved from a common ape-like ancestor at all.
I am not sure much is known about the origins of the asians.
National Geographic's produced. Be sure to see the second one. I have the first one, but it is out dated.
Also a great book to read is The great Human Diasporas. The authors are a father-son team named Sforza.
Published in 1993--English translation was in 1995.
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He reminds me of a Vonnegut novel.
Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore reportedly has had a change of heart on ethanol, telling a conference on green energy in Europe that he only supported tax breaks for the alternative fuel to pander to farmers in his home state of Tennessee and the first-in-the-nation caucuses state of Iowa.
Speaking at a green energy business conference in Athens sponsored by Marfin Popular Bank, Gore said the lobbyists have wrongly kept alive the program he once touted.
"It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first-generation ethanol," Reuters quoted Gore saying of the U.S. policy that is about to come up for congressional review. "First-generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small.
"One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president," the wire service reported Gore saying.
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...then we can start bitching about U.S. industries.
The second biggest problem is that viable food production farmland is being gobbled up to produce a weak fuel substitute.
China and India can burn coal, pollute the ocean, whatever because they're an "emerging economy", meanwhile we'll regulate ourselves into financial ruin while also not "saving the planet."
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!