Fossils of possible new human species found in China

[redhen]

I remember seeing a documentary on the Discovery or History Channel years ago,.. it was about the Yetti (somewhere) in Asia..
It wasnt like our hugeYetti that we claim to see,.. theirs is smaller in stature and (if i remember correctly) reddish in color.., .. .
They interviewed farmers in remote places,.. (so i'm SURE these folks havent heard of OUR Yetti stories.. )
They were adamant that they did exist and had for several family generations..
Interesting stuff..

 

[orientphoenix]

haha some people are funny

 

[redhen]

haha some people are funny

Why?

 

[AquaEyes]

I remember seeing a documentary on the Discovery or History Channel years ago,.. it was about the Yetti (somewhere) in Asia..
It wasnt like our hugeYetti that we claim to see,.. theirs is smaller in stature and (if i remember correctly) reddish in color.., .. .
They interviewed farmers in remote places,.. (so i'm SURE these folks havent heard of OUR Yetti stories.. )
They were adamant that they did exist and had for several family generations..
Interesting stuff..

I mentioned the Yeti reference because it seems that many cultures throughout the world have some sort of stories or myths about "wild-men" that lived nearby. Some people think that these stories and myths are sort of cultural relics that got passed down orally through many generations, but have a grain of truth at the base -- early encounters between modern humans and other "humans" or "almost-humans" that lived at the same time. Perhaps, as someone else said, that story was based on an encounter with a totally different species -- a bear, perhaps -- but morphed through time to sound like a "wild-man." Or perhaps it actually was a "wild-man" which has been extinct for thousands of years, but the stories survive. It's something that makes me wonder


As to why I asked to not turn this into an evolution vs creationism debate -- it's not to shut out discussion, it's because such discussion tends to lead to a thread being locked, and I don't want that to happen. Similarly, the threads asking for prayers would get shut down if someone chimed in debating the effectiveness of prayer -- to keep the threads open, we simply don't go there.

If we were able to start and maintain respectable debate regarding evidence from both sides that DIDN'T get overly personal or heated to the point of a mod shutting it down, I'd love to have one.....on another thread.

 

[AquaEyes]

I'm fascinated by extinct species. We learn about them from their remains, and try to piece together what they were like when they are alive. We do the best we can with what we can find, but there's always that element of the intangible that keeps alive some mystery and awe. Some species that died out during historical times may have preserved specimens and detailed accounts, but I, personally, will never be able to experience a flock of passenger pigeons that includes millions of individuals, or see the massive bulk of a Steller's sea cow swimming by.

That these remains are from a species closely related to us and that may have had encounters with our species makes it even more exciting for me -- how might they have perceived the world differently from the way we do? Could they be able to communicate their thoughts with our species? Think about how AWESOME it would be to do that with another species -- that is something we can't really do now (or possibly only in limited degrees via apes who can communicate with sign language or lexigrams), but the idea that it may have been possible is astounding. How might they view us?

THAT'S why I wanted to post this -- not to debate whether or not our species evolved from apes.

 

[AquaEyes]

I remember seeing a documentary on the Discovery or History Channel years ago,.. it was about the Yetti (somewhere) in Asia..
It wasnt like our hugeYetti that we claim to see,.. theirs is smaller in stature and (if i remember correctly) reddish in color.., .. .
They interviewed farmers in remote places,.. (so i'm SURE these folks havent heard of OUR Yetti stories.. )
They were adamant that they did exist and had for several family generations..
Interesting stuff..

I think you're thinking of the "wild-man" known as "Orang-Pendek." There are some researchers who are seriously investigating the possibility that they actually exist -- not as a "wild-man" per se, but either an unknown population of (or species related to) orangutans. That's what I meant in my post about there often being a "grain of truth" to local legends and myths. The mountain gorilla was unknown to modern science until about a hundred years ago, but their existence was investigated as a result of native stories about a "wild-man" that lived there. I used to be very into reading about cryptozoology, and while I didn't necessarily believe the stories to be literally true, I wondered about whether there could be a species unknown to modern science that formed the basis of the stories. This article brought back some of that excitement I had as a kid reading about those stories.

 

[redhen]

I think you're thinking of the "wild-man" known as "Orang-Pendek." There are some researchers who are seriously investigating the possibility that they actually exist -- not as a "wild-man" per se, but either an unknown population of (or species related to) orangutans. That's what I meant in my post about there often being a "grain of truth" to local legends and myths. The mountain gorilla was unknown to modern science until about a hundred years ago, but their existence was investigated as a result of native stories about a "wild-man" that lived there. I used to be very into reading about cryptozoology, and while I didn't necessarily believe the stories to be literally true, I wondered about whether there could be a species unknown to modern science that formed the basis of the stories. This article brought back some of that excitement I had as a kid reading about those stories.

 

[AquaEyes]

Going along with the theme of "extinct species that survived later than previously thought", many of us are familiar with the species of mammoth and mastodon that lived at various times long, long ago. Did you know that the most recently-extinct population of mammoths lived on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean until about 1650 BCE? That means they were alive during the times of the Greek and Roman civilizations. They're still extinct, but when we find out that the last of them didn't die off until that late of a date, it makes them so tantalizingly closer.

 

[punk-a-doodle]

My personal favorite 'living fossil' is this dude, the Laotian rock rat.

Not as big as a mammoth, but totally needs to be my recently-not-actually-extinct pet.

 

[AquaEyes]

I remember reading something about that in the last couple of years. That area of the world will likely bring about more discoveries as it becomes more explored. Much of what we know about the animal life there is limited to the writings of naturalists from a hundred years ago, since political instability made further exploration difficult or impossible.