Experimental Blog # 166

Notes and comments from "Last Ape Standing" - The Seven-Million-Year Story of How and Why We Survived by Chip Walter

"Despite its academic-sounding name, a good deal of brawling often goes on within the field of paleoanthropology."
"Today hominid refers to all great apes, including gorillas and chimpanzees, but hominin refers specifically to ancient and modern humans who split off from a common chimp ancestor seven million years ago, or thereabouts."
The first of the genus Homo, Homo habilis, arose about 2,350,000 years ago.
"Between 160,000 and 200,000 years ago the first anatomically modern humans emerged, probably near Ethiopia. {But there is anything but universal agreement on this}."
As many as 12 other species of Homo have also been found.
Seven other genera of hominin, going as far back as 7 million years, have also been found; but there are probably, if not certainly, very many other undiscovered genera and species.

"...between 4 percent and 6 percent of the genomes of the people of Papua New Guinea and Bougainville Island contain Denisovan DNA."
" ..most of the human race from Europe to the islands of Southeast Asia{and probably farther}is part Neanderthal! That Africans seem not to share any Neanderthal blood indicates that these two families mated after the wave of Homo sapiens departed Africa, but before their descendants headed into Europe and Asia."
"How many more species and hybrids might we find now that DNA analysis has opened so many genetic doors?"
"It is not as crazy as it might once have been thought that a more modern descendant of Homo erectus was still living as recently as twenty-five thousand years ago."

"Nearly every waking moment we describe what is going on in our minds to ourselves ..."
Does this describe the human mind as a speaker and a listener? This life-long conversation with ourselves must be, by far, our most important conversation.
"When you are thinking, and talking, to yourself, the you that you are speaking to is a symbol."
"We are not only an animal that can explore a life not yet lived, and dream of a future we desire, we can also take hold of these dreams and make them come true. Out of a chaotic flux of random events in nature that have no agenda and are utterly incapable of making any plans, we have evolved into a planning, agenda-making, dream-conjuring creature."
"And don't we all live in imaginary worlds of our own making - in the tomorrows that we plan; the lives that we lay out; the conversations we imagine having with friends or enemies?"