Comments on: Saudi Arabia, where monkey became man?

By: ackbark

ackbark — Fri, 20 May 2011 00:00:20 +0000

#2 has an air of special pleading about him.

By: Gav

Gav — Tue, 17 May 2011 09:54:19 +0000

From now on I’ll always carry a knife & fork with me, on the off-chance of meeting an orangatang.

By: Robert

Robert — Mon, 16 May 2011 20:32:32 +0000

“But, Homo Neanderthal and lower types of hominids, like animals, when wounded or dying would crawl into dark and damp places to die or heal.”

Dark places maybe, but damp? Never heard of any primates that like being cold and wet. I certainly don’t.

By: Razib Khan

Razib Khan — Mon, 16 May 2011 19:57:19 +0000

and lower types of hominids, like animals,

lower type? you sound dumb.

By: Hal Barton

Hal Barton — Mon, 16 May 2011 19:46:17 +0000

It is quite true that Anatomically modern humans lived long before we have been able to find remains – there is no one who can definitively say that Homo Antecessor was not a modern human and she is at least 800,000 years old. Modern humans die in high and dry places and their remains are handled a lot by concerned relatives and friends – we don’t find many remains of them. But, Homo Neanderthal and lower types of hominids, like animals, when wounded or dying would crawl into dark and damp places to die or heal. There is a big mistake in Physical Anthropology, the “Mousterian Tools” they find near Neanderthals bones are not made by Neanderthals, but are merely the knives and forks we used to eat them – same as today we eat orangatangs and chimpanzees. Those are modern human tools and any objective scientist can easily see that fact.

By: ohwilleke

ohwilleke — Mon, 16 May 2011 16:12:12 +0000

To the extent that the assemblages are Mousterian, in a time and region where Neanderthal presence is well established, but modern human presence is marginal and disputed, I’d be quite hesitant to attribute this tool kid to modern humans.

On the other hand that point that a once more lush and habitable Saudi Arabian interior ca. 75,000 years ago before climate change turned it into the harsh desert that it is today makes an exclusive coastal corridor hominin epxansion out of African unnecessary is very credible.

Moreover, because deserts, while deadly, are also good environments to preserve certain kind of biological remains, the prospect of discoveries that will make these finds less ambiguous in the next few years seems pretty good. What a jackpot it would be to find some dessicated natural mummies in an Arabian desert!