Wednesday, November 18, 2009
The Story of How We Came To Be Us
You'd think that the first Adam and Eve would have been happy eating fruits and veggies in their garden, but oh no, they may have been meat eaters. At least Neanderthal was.
We separated from apes 6 million years ago. 50,000 years ago there were four different kinds of sub-humans.
1,300,000 years ago homo erectus left Africa. Their bodies were similar to ours. An 8 year old boy's skeleton was found in Belgium. He was not an ape and was built more like a human. 20,000 years ago was the ice age with people living in caves and painting in them. We came along about 25,000 years ago. No wonder we invented clothing.
We came from 600 homo sapiens and spread out all over the world. We pushed out Neanderthal who had been around for about 300,000 years. We were able to do that because though they had been around for so long, they never stopped eating just meat. Their brains had never developed to our capacity. They couldn't get past the close fighting dagger, and had not developed the bow and arrow and long distance throwing spears. They ate themselves out of life as it took a lot of meat for their short squatty bodies with bigger brains than ours. They looked different from us in that they had a low elongated skull. You have to give them credit, though. They hung around for 400,000 years, and vanished about 25,000 years ago when we appeared. We've just started. I hope we don't destroy ourselves.
The climate changed 200,000 years ago. It became desert-like and ice-like. Neanderthal couldn't handle or adapt. We did.
Having 600 people in the beginning is called a bottle neck. There may have been more but 600 survived and that's who we stem from. Africa had become uninhabitable and people found refuge along the coast and in the highlands. Homo sapiens came out of Africa while the Neanderthal had already left and gone to Europe. The fox P2 gene has been found in Neanderthal giving him a chance to speak. Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens had a common ancestor with this gene. Scientists say there is no clear evidence of Neanderthal and us interbreeding, but I wonder sometimes.
So out of the 600 from a bottleneck we Jews sprouted from four Jewish females from another bottleneck and survived.
Now I think it's quite possible that we humans can cause our own bottleneck by using atomic weapons to destroy each other. Iran gives me cause to worry. They are not adapting to the modern period but are trying to remain in the status quo; something like old Neanderthal.
Reference: www.PBS.org 4 part series on being human.
We separated from apes 6 million years ago. 50,000 years ago there were four different kinds of sub-humans.
1,300,000 years ago homo erectus left Africa. Their bodies were similar to ours. An 8 year old boy's skeleton was found in Belgium. He was not an ape and was built more like a human. 20,000 years ago was the ice age with people living in caves and painting in them. We came along about 25,000 years ago. No wonder we invented clothing.
We came from 600 homo sapiens and spread out all over the world. We pushed out Neanderthal who had been around for about 300,000 years. We were able to do that because though they had been around for so long, they never stopped eating just meat. Their brains had never developed to our capacity. They couldn't get past the close fighting dagger, and had not developed the bow and arrow and long distance throwing spears. They ate themselves out of life as it took a lot of meat for their short squatty bodies with bigger brains than ours. They looked different from us in that they had a low elongated skull. You have to give them credit, though. They hung around for 400,000 years, and vanished about 25,000 years ago when we appeared. We've just started. I hope we don't destroy ourselves.
The climate changed 200,000 years ago. It became desert-like and ice-like. Neanderthal couldn't handle or adapt. We did.
Having 600 people in the beginning is called a bottle neck. There may have been more but 600 survived and that's who we stem from. Africa had become uninhabitable and people found refuge along the coast and in the highlands. Homo sapiens came out of Africa while the Neanderthal had already left and gone to Europe. The fox P2 gene has been found in Neanderthal giving him a chance to speak. Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens had a common ancestor with this gene. Scientists say there is no clear evidence of Neanderthal and us interbreeding, but I wonder sometimes.
So out of the 600 from a bottleneck we Jews sprouted from four Jewish females from another bottleneck and survived.
Now I think it's quite possible that we humans can cause our own bottleneck by using atomic weapons to destroy each other. Iran gives me cause to worry. They are not adapting to the modern period but are trying to remain in the status quo; something like old Neanderthal.
Reference: www.PBS.org 4 part series on being human.
