Fossils of possible new human species found in China

[AquaEyes]

Funny you brought up hobbits... I was watching the 3-DVD "LOTR" movie all weekend and just finished "Return of the King" earlier tonight.
My own speculation goes along the lines of chickened's. It seems to me that these were perhaps an isolated "anomaly" group of people, maybe either an inbred island population with mutations, or banished there (like the Hansen's Disease/"leprosy" people exiled to an isolated Hawaiian island) for their deformities. It doesn't seem like they are part of a larger population.

But then again... possible that a subspecies or different species of genus Homo could have lived side by side with H. sapiens sapiens... Though I'd expect to have seen some skeletons of hybrids in that situation. Or that one would have ended up being "lunch" for the other, and its gnawed bones would be in the kitchen midden of dominant species.

Proponents of the "separate species" idea say that the "hobbit" evolved from Homo erectus or a related species, not as an offshoot of Homo sapiens. The article about the "hobbit's" feet mentions this a bit. If they lived side-by-side with our species, it was only after that species had been evolving on the island for a long time. I think that as each species or population left Africa, it encountered previous emigrants along the way -- and either interbred with them, out-competed them, or killed them off (or a combination). Flores was probably a bit more "off-track" for later emigrants, and so the "hobbits" were left alone for a long time. But, again, it's still very much up in the air.

 

[AquaEyes]

As a slight aside, has anyone following this read Anne Rice's The Witching Hour and its sequels, Lasher and Taltos? I know they were fiction, but she did a beautiful job of injecting her story into a historical reference. She created the Taltos species as being somewhat similar in appearance to humans but very distinct, and living among them for some time in the (relatively) recent past. She gave them unique physiological and psychological characteristics that distinguished them from humans.

I was fascinated by the idea of another species being cognitively equal to our species but different in how it interprets the world. I guess that's why the idea that these "possible new species of humans described from fossils" which may have lived alongside our species is so intriguing to me. It's one thing to learn how the world looks through the eyes of a person from another culture, but a whole other story when that "person" is of a different but still sentient species.

 

[GardenerGal]

I also find that fascinating -- to have more than one very intelligent species co-existing. Perhaps we actually do if you're not talking others of our genus (since we're the only Homo species these days), as we have not yet fully explored the intelligence of, for example, parrots (is that you with the psitticine on your shoulder in the avatar photo?). Here in Massachusetts, there's an animal behavior biologist, Dr. Irene Pepperberg, who has done a lot of work with African grey parrots. You have probably heard about her and her stellar subject, Alex.

Also, we don't know the full capacity of the bottlenose dolphin's intellectual abilities, nor of bonobos and chimps, though a lot of research has been done.

The problem is that even our most dedicated scientists can't help but view intelligence through the filter of H. sapiens sapiens. We are terrestrial, bipedal, dextrous, binocular mammals whose sensory perceptions are affected by our very nature and physcial traits, of course. Parrots and dolphins, in particular, have very different physical structures and occupy quite different environments than we, so their sensory perceptions will be interpreted in different ways by different means (living in saltwater has its own set of rules, for instance).

One thing we share in common with chimps/bonobos, parrots and dolphins, is that we all are social species. That's why we can impose our language stuff on them, and they seem capable of perceiving it in various ways and to varying degrees.

 

[AquaEyes]

I also find that fascinating -- to have more than one very intelligent species co-existing. Perhaps we actually do if you're not talking others of our genus (since we're the only Homo species these days), as we have not yet fully explored the intelligence of, for example, parrots (is that you with the psitticine on your shoulder in the avatar photo?). Here in Massachusetts, there's an animal behavior biologist, Dr. Irene Pepperberg, who has done a lot of work with African grey parrots. You have probably heard about her and her stellar subject, Alex.

Also, we don't know the full capacity of the bottlenose dolphin's intellectual abilities, nor of bonobos and chimps, though a lot of research has been done.

The problem is that even our most dedicated scientists can't help but view intelligence through the filter of H. sapiens sapiens. We are terrestrial, bipedal, dextrous, binocular mammals whose sensory perceptions are affected by our very nature and physcial traits, of course. Parrots and dolphins, in particular, have very different physical structures and occupy quite different environments than we, so their sensory perceptions will be interpreted in different ways by different means (living in saltwater has its own set of rules, for instance).

One thing we share in common with chimps/bonobos, parrots and dolphins, is that we all are social species. That's why we can impose our language stuff on them, and they seem capable of perceiving it in various ways and to varying degrees.

Yes, my avatar is a pic of me and my DYH Amazon, Sammy. I was a follower of the Alex studies with Dr. Pepperberg (she was working out of Arizona initially if I remember correctly). It was very sad for me when Alex died -- he and I were the same age (I was also "hatched" in 1976).

I understand that there are species which have been able to communicate with people using artificial means (sign language, lexigrams, or learning human speech, for example), but what we are able to get from them is very basic. As far as we know, we are the only species able to engage in meta-cognition -- thinking about how we think. If there was another species which could do so, it'd be fascinating to engage in a philosophical debate. So much of what we think about logic and reason is based on how our species thinks -- I wonder how different a logic and reason system would be if it evolved along an independent path in another species. Is our method based on concepts that would be shared with any other sentient being, or is it funneled through our own limitations at perception?



ETA -- Oh, yes, forgot about the social part. In some of my ethology classes, social cognition was often presented as a driving force for evolving greater intelligence in many species -- the benefits of living in a social group outweighed living alone, but the challenges of living in a social group required increasing intelligence as the group dynamics became more complicated. Herd animals may flock together simply for safety, but animals living in social groups must be able to recognize individuals and learn dominance relationships to reduce injuries resulting from aggressive interactions. It's an interesting pathway to be explored.

 

[rufus]

Not only living socially, but being able to pass learned information from one generation to another ignited a technological quantum leap for mankind. We can access information from previous generations. Each new generation does not have to start from ground zero.

Rufus