Modern human brain organization emerged only recently

Re:Modern human brain organization emerged only recently by ZeroGravitas on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @05:05AM (#16264142)

Your use of "African" seems confusing here. In particular the line "evidence of there being people in Australia before African peoples had left the Middle East" seems to suggest you think Denosovan people didn't originate in Africa.

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Re:Modern human brain organization emerged only recently by dalbasal on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @11:29AM (#16266570)

We (sapiens) and perhaps late model erectus are the African species/subspecies of the archaic human group. Denisovans are Asian and neanderthals are European.

It's all based on migration theories which are far from certain, currently. The story gets more complex with every find.

The morrocan find is a spanner, as it "proves" a wide distribution of sapiens early on. This essentially excludes the idea of a migration out of the horn of Africa 200kya, the original out of Africa theory. Modern variations have gotten bigger.

In the Levant neanderthals follow sapiens in the archeological record. The early sapiens are a little more neanderthal looking, especially the brows. This has lead some to a theory that neanderthals evolved from sapiens, and arboreal subspecies.

The Australian story is even more confusing. 70kya is before behavioural modernity. But, seagoing boats are unmistakably modern behaviour. If modernity is strongly genetic, did (almost identical evidence) modernity evolve separately in Oz?...

A lot of mystery still. We have very few finds.

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Re:Modern human brain organization emerged only recently by danieltillett on Wednesday January 31, 2018 @08:12PM (#16279001)

You are making a very large assumption about the evolution of modernity in Australia.

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Re:Modern human brain organization emerged only recently by dalbasal on Friday February 02, 2018 @07:24AM (#16289999)

What assumption? The only assumptions I (well, prominent theories) I make are that (a) people got there 45-70kybp and (b) they achieved behavioral modernity (art, tools etc.) around that time or shortly after.

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Re:Modern human brain organization emerged only recently by danieltillett on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @06:44AM (#16264515)

Well the Denosovans really originated in East Asia somewhere as their ancestors left Africa a long time ago.

We don't really have a good name for the ancient sub-Saharan humans that have contributed most of the genetic background to all living humans.

The problem with the peopling of Australia is the time has been push back so far now (80K BCE) that it is before the ancient sub-Saharans really got much further than the Middle East.

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