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I've been reading up on human evolution and basically following up from where I left off at uni. Came upon this fairly recent article, fascinating reading for those who are interested. Still don't know where we came from... and where we're going.

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/3774 ... rica-first

Guan

Hey awesome article !
Maybe some ancestors to Olmec culture (who do not have "mongoloid" type of faces) ?

What country is your picture from Francis?

I feel we're living in very interesting times, so much chaos and destruction but also discovery and new learnings, isn't life an amazing thing?

Guan

Olmecs are from meso-America... south of Mexico.
They are anterior to Mayans & Aztecs in about the same region.
Mayan & Aztec civilisations rely a lot on Olmecs' inventions (mathematics, glyphic writing, cosmology, astronomy, calendar, rituals...) but they do not seem to have the same "genetic" roots however.
These big stone heads are typical of their civilisation.

Edit : though the article linked funnily enough does not mention Olmecs at all... despite their "non-mongoloid" type of face.
Maybe they jumped too fast to the conclusions that Oz'Aboriginal people arrived, rather then link these skulls to "Olmecoids" ?
(linking Olmecs to Oz'Aboriginals would then be the next question, but not the first one)

Hi Francis,

Do you know of human skeletons that have been unearthed of the Olmec people?

If my reading is correct, the article I linked to is saying that the peopling of the New World might be different to the current hypothesis, which is that early humans crossed into what is now North America through the Bering Straits. The skeletal finds in South America show morphological similarities to Australian Aboriginal people and they are different to the Native American morphology, but I'd love to know about genetic studies on these skeletal remains if they can extract enough useful DNA for analysis.

I'm still very curious about the peopling of Australia, some things just don't add up...

Guan

I don't know about Olmec un-earthed people... and don't have enough time on my hands right now to "dig that up"
What I know is there's always arguments about who discovered America first ? Colombus ? The Vikings before him ? Egyptians ? Even Chinese sailors are said to have gone there.
Bering's strait passage is one sure answer and the "mongoloid" people who walked through (it is said they were chasing horses and other animals to eat in these cold days and places).
But it's lesser known that Indians did discover Europe !!!
A few indian canoes were found on French Britain and Scotland's shores during 15th century, before the official discovery of America !!!
Dead indians were also found in the canoes... meaning those poor chaps didn't return to tell their friends what they discovered... and perhaps they were dead before even seeing the shores and just thrown there by the tides...
But this doesn't exclude the probability that some did the trip and returned... nor does it include it either... Anyway, we're on a big balloon and if some fellas have managed to travel the big oceans, some other before them must also have been able to do the same !
(otherwise how the heck could the people from Rapa Nui even have been there ?!)

+ the fact that during ice-ages, sea-level was lower almost everywhere > more terrestrial passages.

Speaking about interesting times... We recently know that we all (I'm not sure all but many of us) coming from cro-magnon and neanderthal people.

Hi Anthony,

Are you sure? The latest I heard is that there is some remnant Neanderthal genetics in today's human population, I don't know about Cro-Magnon. Do you have a reference or link we can have a look at?

Guan

I was at a conference at The Natural History Museum in London last week where this was dicussed with their resident Paleoanthropologist Dr. Chris Stringer and Jean M Auel, author of the Earth's Children Series of books (The Clan of the Cave Bear being the first one).

Cro-magnon were European Early Modern Humans so there is a direct link between modern populations of European descent and those called 'Cro-Magnon'. As far as the Neanderthal genes that remain in modern European populations are concerned, there's a question as to whether or not these were picked up through interspecies breeding or if they were acquired by both species from an earlier, shared ancestor. The consensus at present is that it is likely that there was some crossbreeding, which would explain why these genes are more prominent in Europeans than in our African counterparts. Very interesting stuff!

Kyle

Thanks for that Kyle, I know about Cro-Magnons but just not the genetics linking them to modern human populations, they were anatomically-modern humans much like today's people based on skeletal examination. The whole field of human evolution is one giant jigsaw puzzle for sure, there were 2 main theories when I was studying this at uni which was the out of Africa model and the Multiregional Hypothesis. I think in due time we'll learn that there's truth in both these models and also possible other scenarios. Anyone heard of the ancient astronaut theory? JUst putting it out there...

Guan