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A comment on Archaeologists in China Discover the Oldest Stone Tools Outside Africa.

Re:Archaeologists in China Discover the Oldest Stone Tools O... by tomlock on Saturday July 14, 2018 @07:59PM (#17533014)
As I understand it there's a strong belief amongst Chinese nationalists that the Chinese diverged early from other humans. It makes me suspicious of this announcement, as it may be playing to those beliefs. However, I'm not sure it is untrue, doesn't bother me either way.
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Re:Archaeologists in China Discover the Oldest Stone Tools O... by garmaine on Saturday July 14, 2018 @08:41PM (#17533151)
Well, to that end the very first sentence of this article is wrong. These weren't carved by ancestors of anyone living today. This was homo erectus, a distant cousin.
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Re:Archaeologists in China Discover the Oldest Stone Tools O... by alecco on Sunday July 15, 2018 @04:03AM (#17534297)
Well, many Chinese scholars claim the Chinese are descendants from Homo Erectus.

It's even shown on a BBC documentary, they get disappointed when DNA analysis disproves their skull-shape "evidence".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredible_Human_Journey#2...

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Re:Archaeologists in China Discover the Oldest Stone Tools O... by garmaine on Sunday July 15, 2018 @05:34PM (#17537219)
The fact that I have healthy half-chinese kids puts the nail in the coffin of that idea... among many other things. It's about as serious an idea as a flat earth or "intelligent design".
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Re:Archaeologists in China Discover the Oldest Stone Tools O... by laretluval on Saturday July 14, 2018 @11:06PM (#17533598)
I don't think even the strongest Chinese nationalist would claim that the Chinese diverged from everyone else 2 million years ago!
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Re:Archaeologists in China Discover the Oldest Stone Tools O... by johnzim on Saturday July 14, 2018 @11:36PM (#17533663)
Actually there was a very significant amount of money ploughed into researching that exact topic in the PRC.

With significant and predictable sadness when the results didn't go their (the CCP and Chinese nationalists) way.

A google search gives a good paper on the topic:

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/28941533.pdf

TLDR: CCP, seeking to shore up ethno-nationalism (not an especially rare occurance in Chinese history) spent a LOT of time and research trying to prove that Han Chinese are in fact originally descended from Homo erectus Pekinensis rather than the African Homo Sapiens. (EDIT: Spelling)

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Re:Archaeologists in China Discover the Oldest Stone Tools O... by laretluval on Sunday July 15, 2018 @12:48PM (#17535979)
Homo erectus pekinensis isn't 2 million years old.

Go back 2.1 million years, like these stone tools, and it's not even clear that there is a genus Homo.

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Re:Archaeologists in China Discover the Oldest Stone Tools O... by powerapple on Monday July 16, 2018 @03:04AM (#17539314)
what's wrong with trying to prove something? As long as it is research, I can see nothing wrong with it. Especially if they want to understand where they are from.
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