https://www.newscientist.com/article/2484822-we-finally-know-what-the-face-of-a-denisov...

"The Denisovans, a mysterious group of ancient humans originally identified purely from DNA, finally have a face.

"Using molecular evidence, Qiaomei Fu at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing and her colleagues have confirmed what many researchers suspected: that a skull from China known as “dragon man” belonged to a Denisovan.

"This fits with other evidence suggesting that the Denisovans were large and stocky. “I think we’re looking at individuals that are all [around] 100 kilos [of] lean body mass: enormous, enormous individuals,” says Bence Viola at the University of Toronto in Canada, who was not involved in the study.

"The Denisovans were first identified in 2010. In Denisova cave in the Altai mountains of Siberia, researchers found a sliver of finger bone from an unidentified ancient human. Preserved DNA revealed that it wasn’t a modern human (Homo sapiens), nor a Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis), but something hitherto unknown.

"Genetic evidence also revealed that Denisovans had interbred with modern humans. Today, populations in South-East Asia and Melanesia carry up to 5 per cent Denisovan DNA, which implies that Denisovans were once widespread in Asia.

***

"Fu says it was extremely difficult to get preserved molecules from the Harbin cranium. Her team’s attempts to obtain DNA from the bone proved fruitless. However, they did manage to get 95 proteins, which included three variants that are unique to Denisovans.

"Feeling that this wasn’t enough to be certain, Fu began testing dental calculus, the hard plaque that forms on teeth. This yielded mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited from the mother. It was a “tiny amount”, she says, but enough to confirm that the remains were Denisovan.

“'That’s an incredible result, and fantastic that they even tried,” says Samantha Brown at the National Research Center for Human Evolution in Burgos, Spain. “I think most researchers would overlook dental calculus for genetic studies.”

***
"It may be that the Denisovans changed over time. Fragments from Denisova cave reveal two groups: one from 217,000 to 106,000 years ago, and the other from 84,000 to 52,000 years ago. The Harbin cranium is at least 146,000 years old, and Fu found that its proteins and mitochondrial DNA matched the older group. But we don’t have confirmed large fossils of the more recent Denisovans, so we don’t know what they were like.

“'There’s just lots of different groups of these guys who are moving around the landscape, kind of independently, that are often separated from each other for probably tens of thousands of years,” says Viola. We shouldn’t expect them to all look alike, he says."

Comment: finally more good Denisovan evidence making them out as big bulky folks like the Neanderthals. That skull was mentioned here before, and now we know its relationship.

https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/evidence-is-building-that-people-were-in-the-am...

"The age of "rarely preserved" ancient human footprints dotting the landscape at White Sands National Park in New Mexico has been hotly debated for years. Now, a new study has found that these footprints really are around 23,000 years old — but the date isn't accepted by everyone.

"If the 23,000-year-old age is accurate, it would mean that humans were in North America around the peak of the Last Glacial Maximum, the coldest part of the last ice age — far earlier than archaeologists had previously thought.

"In the new study, the researchers radiocarbon-dated organic sediment in core samples from the site, which provided dates for the footprints as well as for the entire paleolake and river system that once existed there. The analysis was done in labs unaffiliated with earlier studies.

***

"The saga of dating the roughly 60 footprints goes back to 2021, when a study reported the discovery of the footprints and dated them to between 21,000 and 23,000 years old. However, a 2022 rebuttal took issue with using the seeds of ditch grass (Ruppia cirrhosa), a water plant, for radiocarbon dating. Water plants get their carbon from underwater, which can be much older than carbon from the atmosphere. This can skew the levels of carbon 14, a radioactive version of the atom, in the samples, making the plants appear older than they really are.

"So, in 2023, researchers redated the site with optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating, which revealed when quartz or feldspar grains in the tracks were last exposed to sunlight, and radiocarbon dating of ancient conifer pollen from the footprint layer — which proved to be another way to use carbon 14 without relying on water plants.

***

"Now, the new study offers more evidence that the footprints date to the Last Glacial Maximum, when the area was a vast wetland inhabited by ice age animals. The footprints likely came from hunter-gatherers who arrived in the Americas after traveling along the Bering Land Bridge, which connected Siberia and Alaska when sea levels were lower, research suggests.

"For decades, researchers thought the earliest Americans were the Clovis, who lived in North America around 13,000 years ago. But the footprint discovery and others are slowly revealing that Indigenous people reached the Americas much earlier than thought.

***

"When added together, there are now a total of 55 radiocarbon-dated samples of mud, seeds and pollen from the footprint layer that support the 21,000- to 23,000-year-old dates, Holliday said."

***

Comment: There have been Central and South American findings that human were there in the same time frame.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ancient-proteins-hominid-molecular

"An ancient, distant human cousin from southern Africa called Paranthropus robustus has for the first time revealed molecular clues to its evolutionary status.

"Protein sequences preserved in four partial P. robustus teeth from different individuals that lived roughly 2 million years ago indicate that larger and smaller fossils of this hominid species cannot always be classed as male or female, as previously thought, researchers report in the May 29 Science.

"Sequences of a protein derived from a gene located only on the Y, or male, sex chromosome in present-day humans enabled the scientists to identify two teeth as having belonged to males, molecular biologist Palesa Madupe of the University of Copenhagen and colleagues say. One of those teeth was previously thought to have come from a female, based on its small size. Closer analyses of the two teeth lacking that male-specific protein indicated that those fossils, which are around the same size as the smaller male tooth, came from females.

“Paleoanthropologists have long known that our use of tooth size to estimate sex was fraught with uncertainty, but it was the best we had,” says paleoanthropologist Paul Constantino of Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, Vt. “Being able to accurately identify the sex of fossils using proteins will be hugely impactful.”

"Proteins survive far longer in fossils than DNA does, especially in hot climates where genetic material degrades rapidly. The oldest DNA recovered in Africa dates to around 18,000 years ago.

"Analysis of another protein indicated that one of the four fossil teeth came from a P. robustus individual more distantly related to the other three species members, the researchers say.

***

"Those signs of genetic diversity suggest that distinct groups of P. robustus inhabited southern Africa, the scientists conclude. Mating among different groups may have resulted in the range of protein variants observed in the four fossilized teeth, or perhaps the tooth identified as a protein outlier came from another Paranthropus species. Protein analyses of a larger number of P. robustus specimens are needed to explore those possibilities, the researchers say."

Comment: amazing new advances in DNA studies. It seems upright forms developed early in several areas of Africa, as if we were destined to appear at some latter point.

https://www.livescience.com/archaeolognewly-discovered-ghost-lineage-linked-to-ancient-...

"A 7,100-year-old skeleton from China has revealed a "ghost" lineage that scientists had only theorized about until now, a new study finds.

"Researchers made the discovery while studying ancient skeletons that could help them map the diverse genetics of central China. The DNA of this ghost lineage individual, an Early Neolithic woman who was buried at the Xingyi archaeological site in southwestern China's Yunnan province, also holds clues to the origins of Tibetan people.

"There likely were more of her kind, but they just haven't been sampled yet," study co-author Qiaomei Fu, a paleontologist at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology.

***

"'Ancient humans that lived in this region may be key to addressing several remaining questions on the prehistoric populations of East and Southeast Asia," the researchers wrote in the study. Those unanswered questions include the origins of people who live on the Tibetan Plateau, as previous studies have shown that Tibetans have northern East Asian ancestry along with a unique ghost ancestry that has mystified researchers.

"The oldest person the researchers tested was found to be the missing link between Tibetans and the ghost' lineage."

Comment: we'll just have to wait for more confirmatory studies. Currently another lineage in the Sahara from 7,000 year go:

https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/unknown-human-lineage-lived-in-green-sahara-7-0...

"wo 7,000-year-old mummies belong to a previously unknown human lineage that remained isolated in North Africa for thousands of years, a new study finds.

"The mummies are the remains of women who once lived in the "Green Sahara," also known as the African Humid Period. Between 14,500 and 5,000 years ago, the now-inhospitable Sahara was a humid and verdant savanna, home to humans who hunted and eventually herded animals alongside lakes and rivers.

"DNA from the two mummies revealed that the never-before-seen North African lineage was distinct and isolated from populations living in sub-Saharan Africa around the same time. The findings, reported April 2 in the journal Nature, suggest there was little genetic exchange across the Green Sahara during this time, though some cultural practices may have spread through the region.

***

"To obtain this genome-wide data, the researchers extracted preserved DNA from the mummified remains and compared it with DNA from about 800 present-day individuals from Africa, the Near East and southern Europe, along with 117 ancient genomes from the same regions.:

Comment: since we wandered all over little subgroups developed. We just need to wait.

888

https://www.wsj.com/edition/resources/documents/print/tSzqN5mQq6ynJFdUa8D2-WSJNewsPaper...

"one of the most unique aspects of our species, he said. What began as a tree branch
gripping organ in a long-dead common ancestor with great apes evolved into something
that can carry us upright for many miles at a time. Our cushioned heels strike the
ground, and an arched sole transfers weight toward the front of our feet, propelling us
forward. Our robust big toes push off into the next step, the final note in an efficient
stride for long-distance locomotion.

***

"Homo erectus, bigger in limbs and brain size than other ancient relatives in our lineage, became one of the longest-lived early human species, persisting from roughly two million years ago until 110,000yearsago. Its modern gait and longer strides may not have been the
secret to Homo erectus longevity as a species a Dartmouth College paleoanthropologist not involved in the study—but it would have helped the species expand its range significantly and in crease the diversity of its diet, ultimately leading it to become cosmopolitan.

***

“'The more territory you have, the more stuff you can munch on, and the more stuff you can munch on, the greater input of energy into the system, which can fuel a growing brain,” he added.'"

Comment: another aspect of our exceptionality. Mobility.

https://phys.org/news/2025-05-homo-erectus-seabed-archaeological-discoveries.html?utm_s...

"Archaeological finds off the coast of Java, Indonesia, provide insight into the world of Homo erectus, 140,000 years ago. Skull fragments and other fossil remains provide a unique picture of how and where these early humans lived, says Leiden archaeologist Harold Berghuis.

"During dredging operations in the Madura Strait, archaeologists found the fossilized remains of 36 vertebrate species. This is the first discovery of fossils from the seabed between the Indonesian islands.

"This area, called Sundaland, was once a vast lowland. Among the finds are two skull fragments of Homo erectus. Together, the finds provide a unique image of a prehistoric ecosystem and the position of Homo erectus in this ecosystem.

***

"The new finds show that the Javanese Homo erectus dispersed over the surrounding lowlands of Sundaland during periods with lower sea levels.

"The species probably spread along the major rivers. "Here they had water, shellfish, fish, edible plants, seeds and fruit all year round," says Berghuis. "We already knew that Homo erectus collected river shells. Among our new finds are cut marks on the bones of water turtles and large numbers of broken bovid bones, which point to hunting and consumption of bone marrow."

"The new finds show that the Sundaland Homo erectus actively hunted healthy, strong bovids. "We didn't find this in the earlier Homo erectus population on Java, but do know it from more modern human species of the Asian mainland. Homo erectus may have copied this practice from these populations. This suggests there may have been contact between these hominin groups, or even genetic exchange."

***

"In prehistoric times, what we know as the Indonesian archipelago was an extensive lowland in periods with lower sea levels, with the current islands as mountain ranges. "We call this area Sundaland," says Berghuis. "Homo erectus could disperse from the Asian mainland to Java." The vast majority of Sundaland is now a shallow sea, and until now, fossils had never been found in this area.

"'This makes our discoveries truly unique," says Berghuis. "The fossils come from a drowned river valley, which filled up over time with river sand. We have been able to date the material to approximately 140,000 years ago. That was the penultimate glacial period. Large parts of the northern hemisphere were covered by glaciers, and so much water on Earth was stored in ice caps that the global sea level was 100 meters lower than today."

"At that time, Sundaland resembled today's African savannah: a fairly dry grassland with narrow strips of forest along the major rivers and a rich fauna including various species of elephants, bovids, rhinos and crocodiles.

"'Most of these species are extinct, whereas others are the ancestors of species that still occur in the region, but whose survival is seriously threatened. The Asian hippo is extinct. Carnivorous Komodo dragons are now restricted to the islands of Komodo and Flores, and river sharks are extremely rare in the major rivers of India and Thailand.

"'But all these animals were thriving in ancient Sundaland. This knowledge is hugely important to our understanding of the biodiversity of the whole of Southeast Asia.'"

Comment: more evidence of how Erectus migrated over Southern Asia.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09002-1

"Abstract
Humans have evolved an extraordinarily expanded and complex cerebral cortex associated with developmental and gene regulatory modifications1,2,3. Human accelerated regions (HARs) are highly conserved DNA sequences with human-specific nucleotide substitutions. Although there are thousands of annotated HARs, their functional contribution to species-specific cortical development remains largely unknown4,5. HARE5 is a HAR transcriptional enhancer of the WNT signalling receptor Frizzled8 that is active during brain development6. Here, using genome-edited mouse (Mus musculus, Mm) and primate models, we demonstrated that human (Homo sapiens, Hs) HARE5 fine-tunes cortical development and connectivity by controlling the proliferative and neurogenic capacities of neural progenitor cells. Hs-HARE5 knock-in mice have significantly enlarged neocortices, containing more excitatory neurons. By measuring neural dynamics in vivo, we showed that these anatomical features result in increased functional independence between cortical regions. We assessed underlying developmental mechanisms using fixed and live imaging, lineage analysis and single-cell RNA sequencing. We discovered that Hs-HARE5 modifies radial glial cell behaviour, with increased self-renewal at early developmental stages, followed by expanded neurogenic potential. Using genome-edited human and chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes, Pt) neural progenitor cells and cortical organoids, we showed that four human-specific variants of Hs-HARE5 drive increased enhancer activity that promotes progenitor proliferation. Finally, we showed that Hs-HARE5 increased progenitor proliferation by amplifying canonical WNT signalling. These findings illustrate how small changes in regulatory DNA can directly affect critical signalling pathways to modulate brain development. Our study uncovered new functions of HARs as key regulatory elements crucial for the expansion and complexity of the human cerebral cortex."

Comment: It is not clear why HAR's should exist unless we assume God as our designer. Our brain is the most unusual item in the universe.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/stone-age-seafarers-hunter-gatherer

"Prehistoric hunter-gatherers were likely skilled seafarers who could make long and challenging journeys.

"Stone tools, animal bones and other artifacts unearthed in Malta indicate that humans first inhabited the Mediterranean island 8,500 years ago, about a thousand years earlier than previously thought, researchers report April 9 in Nature. To reach Malta, these hunter-gatherers seemingly crossed at least 100 kilometers of open ocean, the team says.

"The findings add to an emerging picture of systematic seafaring in the Stone Age. “There’s this new world of Mediterranean crossings in the Mesolithic that we didn’t know about,” says archaeological scientist Eleanor Scerri of the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany.

***

"From 2021 to 2023, Scerri and colleagues excavated a sinkhole at a site in northern Malta called Latnija (pronounced “Lat-nee-yuh”). They found sediment layers containing traces of human habitation: ashes from hearths, 64 stone tools and wild animal remains that bear signs of butchering.

"Radiocarbon dating of 32 charcoal pieces and one animal bone suggest that hunter-gatherers occupied the site for a millennium beginning about 8,500 years ago. The stone tools were typical of those used by hunter-gatherers on the European continent around the same time, the team says, suggesting that’s where they came from.

***

"Genetic evidence from a recent study also lends support to the seafaring narrative. A DNA analysis of an 8,000-year-old individual from Tunisia shows European hunter-gatherer ancestry, another group of researchers reported March 12 in Nature. That ancestry could be from people coming south across the Mediterranean, from Malta. The implication, Scerri says, is that hunter-gatherers were “seafaring all over the place'”.

Comment: we were amazingly clever back then.

https://phys.org/news/2025-03-genetic-reveals-hidden-chapter-human.html?utm_source=nwle...

"Modern humans descended from not one, but at least two ancestral populations that drifted apart and later reconnected, long before modern humans spread across the globe.

"Using advanced analysis based on full genome sequences, researchers from the University of Cambridge have found evidence that modern humans are the result of a genetic mixing event between two ancient populations that diverged around 1.5 million years ago. About 300,000 years ago, these groups came back together, with one group contributing 80% of the genetic makeup of modern humans and the other contributing 20%.

"For the last two decades, the prevailing view in human evolutionary genetics has been that Homo sapiens first appeared in Africa around 200,000 to 300,000 years ago, and descended from a single lineage. However, these latest results, reported in the journal Nature Genetics, suggest a more complex story.

***

"'Our research shows clear signs that our evolutionary origins are more complex, involving different groups that developed separately for more than a million years, then came back to form the modern human species," said co-author Professor Richard Durbin, also from the Department of Genetics.

"While earlier research has already shown that Neanderthals and Denisovans—two now-extinct human relatives—interbred with Homo sapiens around 50,000 years ago, this new research suggests that long before those interactions—around 300,000 years ago—a much more substantial genetic mixing took place.

"Unlike Neanderthal DNA, which makes up roughly 2% of the genome of non-African modern humans, this ancient mixing event contributed as much as 10 times that amount and is found in all modern humans.

***

"While the researchers were able to identify these two ancestral populations, they also identified some striking changes that happened after the two populations initially broke apart.

"'Immediately after the two ancestral populations split, we see a severe bottleneck in one of them—suggesting it shrank to a very small size before slowly growing over a period of one million years," said co-author Professor Aylwyn Scally, also from the Department of Genetics.

"'This population would later contribute about 80% of the genetic material of modern humans, and also seems to have been the ancestral population from which Neanderthals and Denisovans diverged."

"'However, some of the genes from the population which contributed a minority of our genetic material, particularly those related to brain function and neural processing, may have played a crucial role in human evolution," said Cousins.

***

"'What's becoming clear is that the idea of species evolving in clean, distinct lineages is too simplistic," said Cousins. "Interbreeding and genetic exchange have likely played a major role in the emergence of new species repeatedly across the animal kingdom."

'So who were our mysterious human ancestors? Fossil evidence suggests that species such as Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis lived both in Africa and other regions during this period, making them potential candidates for these ancestral populations, although more research (and perhaps more evidence) will be needed to identify which genetic ancestors corresponded to which fossil group.'

Comment: this extensive study tells us how various hominins may have mixed to make us as the sole surviving form. It does not satisfy dhw's quest for a full theory as to the development of bipedalism.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2473159-a-radical-new-idea-for-how-our-ancestors-i...

"When ancient humans first invented stone tools, they may have been trying to emulate naturally formed sharp stones, meaning they would not have needed a huge leap of inspiration.

***

"One of the defining features of hominins is their ability to both make and use stone tools, which are useful for butchering animals and opening hard fruits. Creating a stone tool requires hitting two rocks together in precise ways, knocking flakes off one of them in order to shape it into a cutting edge.

"This is called “knapping”, and hominins have been doing it for at least 2.6 million years. There are even older stone tools from Lomekwi in Kenya, dating back 3.3 million years, but these were made using a simpler method: bashing a single stone on the ground.

“'It’s been traditionally thought that the very first stone flakes were produced intentionally or by accident, and then early hominins started to look for things to cut with these new sharp implements,” says Eren. He says this story doesn’t make sense. “For a creature to start to use an item, or to invent an item, there has to be a selective pressure first.”

"Eren and his colleagues argue that hominins found naturally sharp stones, which they used as cutting tools. By doing so, they developed a habit of cutting and began seeking out such stones.

“'Mother Nature is producing knives all over the place,” says Eren. He calls these raw blades “naturaliths”.

"The team has compiled multiple examples of naturaliths. Eren has studied stones from Antarctica, which resemble hominin tools but must have been made by natural processes, since no hominin ever lived in Antarctica. Experiments have also shown that tool-like artefacts can be produced when large animals like elephants and horses trample on stones. Monkeys sometimes accidentally knock flakes off stones. There are also processes that don’t involve living animals, such as waves crashing on rocky shores, frost fracture and glaciers grinding over bedrock.

"If naturaliths were available in hominins’ habitat, says Eren, it would be easy to start using them. “All they need to do is pick them up.”

"For Eren, the appeal of this hypothesis is that it doesn’t require a “eureka moment” of inspiration. “It shortens the cognitive distance between every step in the origin of technology,” he says. He calls it “the most parsimonious proposal” for how hominins invented stone cutting tools.

***

“'I think it’s a really intriguing proposal,” says Briana Pobiner at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. “Maybe the invention of stone tools wasn’t this major cognitive leap,” she says, but instead a “natural extension of what hominins were already doing”. She also says that the biggest challenge will be testing the idea, in particular figuring out whether an apparent tool was made by a hominin, an animal or a non-biological process.

***

"...in a 1994 study Gregory Westergaard and Stephen Suomi reported that captive capuchin monkeys used stones as cutting tools and modified the stones by striking them against hard surfaces. If capuchins could make and use stone tools, presumably hominins could too. In a series of studies published in 2022, Tennie’s team showed that orangutans could make and use stone tools without training; that wild gorillas sometimes bash stone-like objects together, a prerequisite for knapping; and that humans can figure out basic knapping without help.

***

“'Even if hominins were clever enough to spontaneously invent stone tools at will, that does not negate our hypothesis that Mother Nature helped them along,” he says."

Comment: we have a tendency to assume our ancestors were dumb. They may well have invented knapping stone tools after seeing examples in nature or directly invented the process. Now we have both proposals. Animal use of stone tools support the idea that naturaliths were the first step.

Direct design versus the intelligent cell

DAVID: I do not see God designing, designing cells. It is secondhand design which is more work than direct design.

dhw: Direct design means that every single mutation leading to every single new species, and every single solution to every single problem, and every lifestyle and every natural wonder must have been designed 3.8 billion years ago or, alternatively, that your God has to pop in on every occasion in order to perform the necessary operations or to give the necessary instructions. Designing intelligent cells to carry out all these tasks independently sounds to me like almost infinitely less work than you impose on your do-it-all-yourself God!

Which is simpler? Telling someone how to do job or directly doing it yourself?

The human brain

DAVID: I am convinced our very special brain was designed.

dhw: I agree that our brains are special, as is clear from our massively enhanced intelligence, but it also seems reasonable to me that all brains were specially designed, namely by the different cell communities which were responding to new requirements, using their own perhaps God-given forms of intelligence. Or alternatively, do you think your God personally operated on all non-human and pre-sapiens brains as well as on the legs and pelvises of our ancestors? If so, why do you think he chose such a roundabout method of designing the only brains he wanted? No need to answer. You’ve already told us that he’s a messy, cumbersome and inefficient designer.

I have no idea why He chose His method.

The savannah theory

DAVID: The savannah theory is now unsupported by the new findings but still a logical theory.

dhw: It is “unsupported” by the new findings because the new findings have nothing to do with the question of sapiens’ origin! You have said yourself that no-one knows the origin, so all we can have is unsupported theories, including your own, which attributes the origin to your God performing operations on individual pelvises, legs and possibly brains, though your post above suggests he left brains to design their own evolution until he decided to pop in and do a sapiens special.

Lucy became Erectus and Erectus became sapiens is all we know.

DAVID: You want natural evolution. I have God the designer.

dhw: And now you try to ignore your own agreement and all the above arguments by introducing a totally false representation of my approach. Back we go. Read the bold in my first statement: “Don’t you think it would be less of a chore for him if he just created a mechanism that would perform the same functions?” All my theories allow for God the designer – in this case, as you have agreed, he would have designed the mechanism for complexification (and of course I include enlargement). Please stop pretending that my theories are atheistic, even though you keep agreeing with them!

DAVID: It is you who keep pointing at natural causes for evolutionary changes.

dhw: You keep using the term “natural” as if it was the opposite of “designed by God”. If your God designed a mechanism whereby cells did their own designing, the process itself would become natural, but it would still be your God’s design. You are desperately pretending that my (Shapiro’s) theory is atheistic. No it’s not.

DAVID: I do not see God designing, designing cells. It is secondhand design which is more work than direct design.

Direct design means that every single mutation leading to every single new species, and every single solution to every single problem, and every lifestyle and every natural wonder must have been designed 3.8 billion years ago or, alternatively, that your God has to pop in on every occasion in order to perform the necessary operations or to give the necessary instructions. Designing intelligent cells to carry out all these tasks independently sounds to me like almost infinitely less work than you impose on your do-it-all-yourself God!

The human brain

DAVID: I am convinced our very special brain was designed.

I agree that our brains are special, as is clear from our massively enhanced intelligence, but it also seems reasonable to me that all brains were specially designed, namely by the different cell communities which were responding to new requirements, using their own perhaps God-given forms of intelligence. Or alternatively, do you think your God personally operated on all non-human and pre-sapiens brains as well as on the legs and pelvises of our ancestors? If so, why do you think he chose such a roundabout method of designing the only brains he wanted? No need to answer. You’ve already told us that he’s a messy, cumbersome and inefficient designer.

The savannah theory

DAVID: The savannah theory is now unsupported by the new findings but still a logical theory.

It is “unsupported” by the new findings because the new findings have nothing to do with the question of sapiens’ origin! You have said yourself that no-one knows the origin, so all we can have is unsupported theories, including your own, which attributes the origin to your God performing operations on individual pelvises, legs and possibly brains, though your post above suggests he left brains to design their own evolution until he decided to pop in and do a sapiens special.

DAVID: You want natural evolution. I have God the designer.

dhw: And now you try to ignore your own agreement and all the above arguments by introducing a totally false representation of my approach. Back we go. Read the bold in my first statement: “Don’t you think it would be less of a chore fo him if he just created a mechanism that would perform the same functions?” All my theories allow for God the designer – in this case, as you have agreed, he would have designed the mechanism for complexification (and of course I include enlargement). Please stop pretending that my theories are atheistic, even though you keep agreeing with them!

DAVID: It is you who keep pointing at natural causes for evolutionary changes.

dhw: You keep using the term “natural” as if it was the opposite of “designed by God”. If your God designed a mechanism whereby cells did their own designing, the process itself would become natural, but it would still be your God’s design. You are desperately pretending that my (Shapiro’s) theory is atheistic. No it’s not.

I do not see God designing, designing cells. It is secondhand design which is more work than direct design.

The savannah theory

Human evolution: adding to our genome

DAVID: We are stuck with we came from Erectus, who came from someone who came from Lucy,etc.

dhw: Agreed. That is why none of the articles you have presented can in any way disprove the perfectly logical savannah theory regarding the origin of sapiens. You have even supported it yourself with the above theory concerning God’s leg, pelvis and brain operations.

DAVID: The savannah theory is now unsupported by the new findings but still a logical theory.

dhw: It is “unsupported” by the new findings because the new findings have nothing to do with the question of sapiens’ origin! You have said yourself that no-one knows the origin, so all we can have is unsupported theories, including your own, which attributes the origin to your God performing operations on individual pelvises, legs and brains.

I am convinced our very special brain was designed.

DAVID: Yes, God put a complexification process into each stage of brain development.

dhw: He would only have needed to do so at the beginning, as it has been in use ever since with every stage. I’m delighted that you now agree with the above, just as you did when we discussed it some time ago.

DAVID: Yes.

Thank you Subject closed till the next time you forget your agreement!

DAVID: The Erectus brain covered many complex problems, but could not handle today's requirements. Even though ours is 315,000 years old it works just fine. That is anticipation of needs.

dhw: In fact, the erectus brain gradually expanded until it came very close to our size. Something triggered the final expansion to our size, and from then on, complexification has coped with all new needs, as it did with every other species until additional cells were required. Each expansion is a response to new needs; the additional cells are not the result of crystal-ball gazing and then hanging around for thousands of years, in our case waiting to invent railways and rockets! They are in constant use, and complexify as and when required to do so. Currently demonstrated by the examples of the illiterate women and taxi-drivers.

DAVID: You want natural evolution. I have God the designer.

dhw: And now you try to ignore your own agreement and all the above arguments by introducing a totally false representation of my approach. Back we go. Read the bold in my first statement: “Don’t you think it would be less of a chore fo him if he just created a mechanism that would perform the same functions?” All my theories allow for God the designer – in this case, as you have agreed, he would have designed the mechanism for complexification (and of course I include enlargement). Please stop pretending that my theories are atheistic, even though you keep agreeing with them!

DAVID: It is you who keep pointing at natural causes for evolutionary changes.

You keep using the term “natural” as if it was the opposite of “designed by God”. If your God designed a mechanism whereby cells did their own designing, the process itself would become natural, but it would still be your God’s design. You are desperately pretending that my (Shapiro’s) theory is atheistic. No it’s not.

The savannah theory

Human evolution: adding to our genome

DAVID: We are stuck with we came from Erectus, who came from someone who came from Lucy,etc.

dhw: Agreed. That is why none of the articles you have presented can in any way disprove the perfectly logical savannah theory regarding the origin of sapiens. You have even supported it yourself with the above theory concerning God’s leg, pelvis and brain operations.

DAVID: The savannah theory is now unsupported by the new findings but still a logical theory.

It is “unsupported” by the new findings because the new findings have nothing to do with the question of sapiens’ origin! You have said yourself that no-one knows the origin, so all we can have is unsupported theories, including your own, which attributes the origin to your God performing operations on individual pelvises, legs and brains.

The human brain

DAVID: Yes, God put a complexification process into each stage of brain development.

dhw: He would only have needed to do so at the beginning, as it has been in use ever since with every stage. I’m delighted that you now agree with the above, just as you did when we discussed it some time ago.

Yes.

DAVID: The Erectus brain covered many complex problems, but could not handle today's requirements. Even though ours is 315,000 years old it works just fine. That is anticipation of needs.

dhw: In fact, the erectus brain gradually expanded until it came very close to our size. Something triggered the final expansion to our size, and from then on, complexification has coped with all new needs, as it did with every other species until additional cells were required. Each expansion is a response to new needs; the additional cells are not the result of crystal-ball gazing and then hanging around for thousands of years, in our case waiting to invent railways and rockets! They are in constant use, and complexify as and when required to do so. Currently demonstrated by the examples of the illiterate women and taxi-drivers.

DAVID: You want natural evolution. I have God the designer.

dhw: And now you try to ignore your own agreement and all the above arguments by introducing a totally false representation of my approach. Back we go. Read the bold in my first statement: “Don’t you think it would be less of a chore fo him if he just created a mechanism that would perform the same functions?” All my theories allow for God the designer – in this case, as you have agreed, he would have designed the mechanism for complexification (and of course I include enlargement). Please stop pretending that my theories are atheistic, even though you keep agreeing with them!

It is 5you who keep pointing at natural causes for evolutionary changes.

The savannah theory

Human evolution: adding to our genome

DAVID: We are stuck with we came from Erectus, who came from someone who came from Lucy,etc.

dhw: Agreed. That is why none of the articles you have presented can in any way disprove the perfectly logical savannah theory regarding the origin of sapiens. You have even supported it yourself with the above theory concerning God’s leg, pelvis and brain operations.

The savannah theory is now unsupported by the new findings but still a logical theory.

DAVID:I have no idea how God enlarges brains or increases the complexity. But each increase provides for the present and future needs.

dhw: How else could he do it without some kind of individual operation? Don’t you think it would be less of a chore for him if he just created a mechanism that would perform the same functions? Your second sentence fits in perfectly with the history I have presented: each enlargement is a response to new requirements that exceed the present capacity for complexification; the same size is maintained till the next requirement that exceeds the capacity, and so on until we reach sapiens, and as further expansion is not possible, it is enhanced complexification that copes with all future requirements. You’ve got it! (dhw's bold. See later.)

DAVID: Yes, God put a complexification process into each stage of brain development.

He would only have needed to do so at the beginning, as it has been in use ever since with every stage. I’m delighted that you now agree with the above, just as you did when we discussed it some time ago.

DAVID: The Erectus brain covered many complex problems, but could not handle today's requirements. Even though ours is 315,000 years old it works just fine. That is anticipation of needs.

dhw: In fact, the erectus brain gradually expanded until it came very close to our size. Something triggered the final expansion to our size, and from then on, complexification has coped with all new needs, as it did with every other species until additional cells were required. Each expansion is a response to new needs; the additional cells are not the result of crystal-ball gazing and then hanging around for thousands of years, in our case waiting to invent railways and rockets! They are in constant use, and complexify as and when required to do so. Currently demonstrated by the examples of the illiterate women and taxi-drivers.

DAVID: You want natural evolution. I have God eh designer.

And now you try to ignore your own agreement and all the above arguments by introducing a totally false representation of my approach. Back we go. Read the bold in my first statement: “Don’t you think it would be less of a chore fo him if he just created a mechanism that would perform the same functions?” All my theories allow for God the designer – in this case, as you have agreed, he would have designed the mechanism for complexification (and of course I include enlargement). Please stop pretending that my theories are atheistic, even though you keep agreeing with them!

The savannah theory

Human evolution: adding to our genome

QUOTE: "The ancestors of all modern humans split off from a mystery population 1.5 million years ago and then reconnected with them 300,000 years ago, a new genetic model suggests. The unknown population contributed 20% of our DNA and may have boosted humans' brain function.".

DAVID: sort of clarifies dhw's question about our origin.

dhw: Not really. There are no details given. Were they a group of African tree-dwellers who descended to the savannah? Or you yourself might ask if they existed in several groups, to each member of which your God personally gave new legs, a new pelvis and a new brain before they descended.

DAVID: We are stuck with we came from Erectus, who came from someone who came from Lucy,etc.

Agreed. That is why none of the articles you have presented can in any way disprove the perfectly logical savannah theory regarding the origin of sapiens. You have even supported it yourself with the above theory concerning God’s leg, pelvis and brain operations.

DAVID:I have no idea how God enlarges brains or increases the complexity. But each increase provides for the present and future needs.

dhw: How else could he do it without some kind of individual operation? Don’t you think it would be less of a chore for him if he just created a mechanism that would perform the same functions? Your second sentence fits in perfectly with the history I have presented: each enlargement is a response to new requirements that exceed the present capacity for complexification; the same size is maintained till the next requirement that exceeds the capacity, and so on until we reach sapiens, and as further expansion is not possible, it is enhanced complexification that copes with all future requirements. You’ve got it!

Yes, God put a complexification process into each stage of brain development.

DAVID: The Erectus brain covered many complex problems, but could not handle today's requirements. Even though ours is 315,000 years old it works just fine. That is anticipation of needs.

dhw: In fact, the erectus brain gradually expanded until it came very close to our size. Something triggered the final expansion to our size, and from then on, complexification has coped with all new needs, as it did with every other species until additional cells were required. Each expansion is a response to new needs; the additional cells are not the result of crystal-ball gazing and then hanging around for thousands of years, in our case waiting to invent railways and rockets! They are in constant use, and complexify as and when required to do so. Currently demonstrated by the examples of the illiterate women and taxi-drivers.

You want natural evolution. I have God eh designer.

Human evolution: adding to our genome

QUOTE: "The ancestors of all modern humans split off from a mystery population 1.5 million years ago and then reconnected with them 300,000 years ago, a new genetic model suggests. The unknown population contributed 20% of our DNA and may have boosted humans' brain function.

DAVID: sort of clarifies dhw's question about our origin.

dhw: Not really. There are no details given. Were they a group of African tree-dwellers who descended to the savannah? Or you yourself might ask if they existed in several groups, to each member of which your God personally gave new legs, a new pelvis and a new brain before they descended.

We are stuck with we came from Erectus, who came from someone who came from Lucy, etc..

DAVID:I have no idea how God enlarges brains or increases the complexity. But each increase provides for the present and future needs.

How else could he do it without some kind of individual operation? Don’t you think it would be less of a chore for him if he just created a mechanism that would perform the same functions? Your second sentence fits in perfectly with the history I have presented: each enlargement is a response to new requirements that exceed the present capacity for complexification; the same size is maintained till the next requirement that exceeds the capacity, and so on until we reach sapiens, and as further expansion is not possible, it is enhanced complexification that copes with all future requirements. You’ve got it!

DAVID: The Erectus brain covered many complex problems, but could not handle today's requirements. Even though ours is 315,000 years old it works just fine. That is anticipation of needs.

In fact, the erectus brain gradually expanded until it came very close to our size. Something triggered the final expansion to our size, and from then on, complexification has coped with all new needs, as it did with every other species until additional cells were required. Each expansion is a response to new needs; the additional cells are not the result of crystal-ball gazing and then hanging around for thousands of years, in our case waiting to invent railways and rockets! They are in constant use, and complexify as and when required to do so. Currently demonstrated by the examples of the illiterate women and taxi-drivers.

The savannah theory

dhw: May I take it that you now agree that the savannah theory concerning the origin of sapiens is as logical as any other theory, including your own, in which your God operated on a group or groups of legs, pelvises and brains?

DAVID: Yes the savannah theory is logical. But the real story is unknown.

Thank you. We are in agreement.

Human evolution: adding to our genome

QUOTE: "The ancestors of all modern humans split off from a mystery population 1.5 million years ago and then reconnected with them 300,000 years ago, a new genetic model suggests. The unknown population contributed 20% of our DNA and may have boosted humans' brain function.

DAVID: sort of clarifies dhw's question about our origin.

Not really. There are no details given. Were they a group of African tree-dwellers who descended to the savannah? Or you yourself might ask if they existed in several groups, to each member of which your God personally gave new legs, a new pelvis and a new brain before they descended.

The human brain

DAVID: God guided brain enlargement and complexity as needed by the new environmental changes. (dhw’s bold)

dhw: At least you now agree once more that complexity and enlargement occur IN RESPONSE to environmental changes, and not in anticipation. How does one “guide” enlargement and complexification? Did your God pop round to each pre-sapiens in the group with his X-Ray machine and scalpel, making sure the cells were arranging themselves in the right order?

As usual, you have ignored my question.

I have no idea how God enlarges brains or increases the complexity. But each increase provides for the present and future needs.

DAVID: Just because I didn't mention anticipation our 315,000 brain shows just that.

dhw: “As needed by the new changes” does not mean “as will be needed by changes that will not happen until two or three thousand years later”. […]. Once more: A response to new requirements does not entail anticipation.

DAVID: Our 315,000-year-old brain seems to handle all new requirements from its appearance when little was required of it. Of course that is anticipation.

dhw: What is anticipated? You have said that your God enlarged and complexified all stages of brain “as needed by new changes”, and that he does not intervene in complexification. So did he look into his crystal ball 315,000 years ago and decide he’d better give us a bigger brain so that we could invent writing, railways and rockets? I agree with you that each enlargement, including our own, arose out of need for a response to new conditions, and of course each enlargement would have led to future complexifications and future enlargements for the same reason. But in our case, further enlargement was replaced by an increased capacity for complexification. Your God may have designed the mechanism for complexification and enlargement, but it would hardly require divine “anticipation” to realize that each new brain would be used in the future!

The Erectus brain covered many complex problems, but could not handle today's requirements. Even though ours is 315,000 years old it works just fine. That is anticipation of needs.

The savannah theory

dhw: May I take it that you now agree that the savannah theory concerning the origin of sapiens is as logical as any other theory, including your own, in which your God operated on a group or groups of legs, pelvises and brains?

Yes the savannah theory is logical. But the real story is unknown.

https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/mystery-population-of-human-ancestors-gave-us-2...

"The ancestors of all modern humans split off from a mystery population 1.5 million years ago and then reconnected with them 300,000 years ago, a new genetic model suggests. The unknown population contributed 20% of our DNA and may have boosted humans' brain function.

"'The fact that we can reconstruct events from hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago just by looking at DNA today is astonishing, and it tells us that our history is far richer and more complex than we imagined," study co-author Aylwyn Scally, a geneticist at the University of Cambridge, said in a statement.

"In a study published Tuesday (March 18) in the journal Nature Genetics, researchers presented a new method of modeling genomic data, called "cobraa," that has allowed them to trace the evolution of modern humans."

Comment: sort of clarifies dhw's question about our origin.