Seems to stem from the discovery of the Peking Man: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peking_Man
Apparently there are many people that are more incline to just smile and nod rather than arguing. Probably the geographical location of these is not really important. They're equally distributed across the globe
It was a simple comparison point on the previous comment that, by my standard was also wildly off base (given that he said dumb to a whole country basically)
the fact is that the west seems to be so attached (weirdly) to communism despite even those who implemented it already abandoned.
Are you scared of ghosts or what?
Died at an old age, surrounded by loved ones? In contrast to Gulags, secret executions, and man-caused famines?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mass_killings_under_commu...
The answer, as one would expect, is that it's an entirely pointless exercise, largely used as a coping mechanism for recovering communists.
The West is "weirdly" attached to communism for many reasons, the foremost being that the past 50 years has been spent trying to clean up the mess left by communist regimes.
Do you ever stop and wonder what Russia could have been like had the Bolsheviks not terrorized it? Does it scare you to face just how badly your ideology has globally failed, and will be forever remembered as a point of shame in the grand story of human development?
Nowhere in my comment I said that communism is good
The thing is that my comment couldn't be anyhow related to today's situation (I've used the past tense) since communist doesn't exist anymore (not the way it used to) and most of the country that implemented it widely abandoned it (probably the only exception is perhaps North Korea)
I'm not sure what you mean with 'the west', but in Western Europe communist political parties were allowed just like any others. When I went to high school in the 80's it was even kind of fashionable to have communist sympathies. This was before the fall of the iron curtain though, once it went down it became clear how terrible communism had really been.
If you haven’t experienced communism first hand, you have no idea how bad it is, even the watered-down communism of 80s.
true, because the citizens of these countries are already uninformed enough about communism that they are indeed the one that make it sound dumb
Just point out well known facts, in balanced manner, and that's more than enough.
Humans do horrible stuff to each other in the name of ideology. Systems are just one of the ways they rationalize it.
Heavens know how many died during the Great Leap Forward. Estimates are between 30 million to 55 million.
You can see it yourself if you look closely enough, go to let's say Vienna, and then go to Bratislava or further east. Even after 34 years. I don't mean financial aspect of difference, I mean everything else that makes healthy society thriving.
In capitalism, you always have freedom of thinking, traveling, freedom to not have a job for example. You can bash it as much as you prefer, and its leaders. Your parents won't be put in gulag or uranium mines for 10 years because of that. My friend, you frankly have no idea what you write about...
The track record of communism is so insanely bad that it is literally the second worst ideology of the 20th century, beat only by facism which caused the instant self-immolation of every country to ever try it (while inflicting terrible harm on their neighbors).
In the US, it's a bit different. 40% of Americans still believe that humans and the Earth were created 10,000 years ago by God.[0] Now that's wacky.
Edit: I will get downvoted for my statements but the statement I was responding to won't get downvoted despite being on the same spectrum in terms of accusations. If you're going to downvote this comment, fine. At least downvote the comment above mine too.
[0]https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/4-10-americans-...
When it comes to Archeology I always find it a bit confusing too. I doubt some randos from thousands of years ago would identify much with modern nation states, ethnic groups or etc, and yet that's often how arguments about such things go..
Even in democratic countries, you sometimes get a degree of weirdness around archaeology and to some extent geology; during the Bush II era, some pressure was put on US national parks to push creationist stuff, say (doesn’t early-noughties right-wing behaviour seem quaint, now?)
Only old people answer random phone call surveys
Still doesn't make my statements any less true though.
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/beijing-draws-...
This disagreement is interesting to me. Do you know of any evidence that could support this part of your assertion?
I lived in China for 10+ years. Most recently a few years ago. Lived in the US for 20+ years.
In China, I never met a single person who was anti-science. None.* Everyone knew that to get ahead in life, they had to get educated. Part of that education requires learning sciences.
Meanwhile, in the US, anti-Science is part of the culture. It even starts early in school. In the US, if you liked science as a kid, you were labeled as a nerd or uncool. In China, being good at science in school gave you more social status, not less. In the US, religion is also a huge blocker for many towards sciences. In China, people aren't religious at all or that their religion does not contradict with the sciences.
I think people here see how far behind China was in the 19th century and conclude that people there must be anti-science. China had different reasons for being far behind in science in the 19th century. Being anti-science is not one of them.
* I should clarify that of course there are people in China who are anti-science. I’m mostly referring to “normal” people. IE. people who contribute to society, have jobs, went to college, etc.
That’s a pretty crude definition of “pro-science”.
As a nerd that did break out of that label, let me tell you that if you had any emotional intelligence or social skills, you don't lose social status in American schools for being smart, in science or any other subjects.
If you did other 'cool' things successfully - perhaps soft rebellion against teachers or administrators, music, athletics, parties, dance or cheer, or were physically attractive (took care of yourself and followed basic fashion), and had good social skills you don't stay at the bottom of the social ladder here, even in the Social Darwinism of middle and high school.
Competency and accuracy are the lowest form of interpersonal skills. If no other interpersonal skills or interests are cultivated outside of science, even the most competent and accurate individuals are likely to fail socially, which will also effect their career outcomes. Competency is used too often as a display of dominance or defensive mechanism. As bragging. As self-delusion. Connections with a diverse set of people outside of the competency only group will increase social skills and status, and with those connections comes a higher chance of success.
The people who are labeled nerds and derided for it constantly generally do not try or care to try to make these outside connections for fear of ridicule or oversensitivity, and occasionally physical safety. Non nerds see this as a superiority complex, and find overly sensitive and defensive people difficult. So they are devalued socially.
That is to say - make lots of friends and cultivate various interests outside of your core interests. Be interested in others and their accomplishments. Engage in the social jousting and own being the butt of a joke every once in a while. Don't lean on intelligence and academic achievement for everything. You don't have to win every debate to prove how smart and deserving to lead you are. You have more value than just being right all the time.
These values fit our American cultural ideals, where our leaders are typically selected on the basis of all their skills rather than a singular aptitude.
In the US the camps are FIRMLY pro or against science or many other topics, so things get alot more polarized.
In China there are plenty of anti-vaxxers as well as a large number who would balk at anything implying being gay is biologically normal. They can't really form groups for this sort of thing, obviously, so you don't hear about it as much.
Cue Western governments' reaction to the most recent pandemic. Too bad for the bank accounts of some of the people who dared to go out to the streets in order to protest against those wacky theories.
We do share a common ape ancestor with chimpanzees. It lived between 8 and 6 million years ago.
I never considered that this makes a ton of sense: of course we didn't evolve from apes, after which the apes just stopped evolving and froze their DNA and never had mutations again. Of course they'll be different from their ancestors. But that doesn't mean that our common ancestor was an alligator or something and we developed all ape-like features independently of each other. That's what I took it to mean (when I heard this, idk, maybe as a teenager more than ten years ago), but your comment makes a lot more sense.
I can't read minds but they may have intended to point out that while humans did not evolve from any of our modern cousins (modern apes, modern monkeys) we all evolved from some common ancestor (generally classed | accepted as an 'ape' albeit not a modern one) and it's conceivable that common ancestor may have had its own diaspora from which various human groups evolved in differing regions of the world.
Not my argument, mind you.
This all being distinct from Snopes trial era memes, etc.
The conflict this thread is discussing is between the (strong) multiregional human origin model (MRO/MRE) that used to argue that these aboriginal are where modern dispersed populations come from. This view is now considered completely dead on the basis of genetic evidence alone, with dozens of other lines of evidence refuting it. Weaker versions still exist though.
The oppositional view was that humans evolved solely in a small part of Africa and spread from there, with no little/no admixture from other archaic humans, called the recent single origin model (RSO). This view is not widely held today either.
Modern anthropologists and evolutionary biologists usually believe that humans evolved out of a complex mix of archaic humans broadly distributed across Africa into anatomically modern humans (AMHs). Eventually AMHs left Africa and admixed with other archaic humans in a fairly minor way, forming modern human populations. Differences between academics usually come down to what they think of that within-Africa population structure, or thetiming/significance of archaic admixture. Chinese academics tend to follow in the footsteps of Xinzhi Wu, a prominent Chinese academic that was a strong MRO advocate before his death. That includes the authors of this paper.
These were all extended trips for the kids.
Race is a bad idea to begin with. There is no major difference, we are all human.
The actual definition of species is essentially arbitrary and, when applied to humans and the possibility of different human subspecies or species, the question is essentially political.
It becomes even more obvious when you look into previous proto-human groups like neanderthals, denisovans, etc, as far back as you want; one can ask what counts as a subspecies, what counts as a species, and struggle to apply that in a self-consistent way today between Chinese, neanderthals, Australian aborigines, African pygmies, denisovans, native Americans, etc.
Don't let anyone trick you into thinking there is some clean science answer here - biology is far too messy.
Human "races" are in not different enough to be called races from a scientific point of view.
I’m saying dogs have “races” - yes, just as humans do. Whatever you call that grouping it is based on the comparison I made on my original post which is logically correct.
"'Race' is a legitimate taxonomic concept that works for chimpanzees but does not apply to humans (at this time)."
Genetics. In case of humans the differences are tiny.
> There’s clearly physical differences of magnitude and measurement.
By that logic two brothers would be different races if one is tall and one is short.
Its not a good thing though and hardly something to claim pride from or for. Nobody wants to be on team wheel chair.
> primarily descended from local hominids
More like 'secondarily' descended from local hominids, but there was mixing for sure.
That being said, Noah Yuval Harari has very forward thinking writing along these lines. He uses the context of potential AI superior to our own intelligence, and how they will treat humans, to advocate for animal rights.
> Groups of chimpanzees within central Africa are more different genetically than humans living on different continents
> Our genetic homogeneity implies that anatomically modern humans arose relatively recently (perhaps 200,000 years ago) and that our population size was quite small at one time (perhaps 10,000 breeding individuals).
> approximately 90% of genetic variation can be found within [continents], and only about 10% of genetic variation separates the populations.
Calling us different species is laughable. We’re the genetic equivalent of putting 2 rabbits in a box and opening it up to find 300.
(To be 100% clear, I’m just quoting what a person who thinks this way would say, just as slave holders in the US used to say)
But the field has gained a lot of complexity in the last decades. There are ring species, and cryptic species, and sometimes the DNA of a parent is entirely discarded. Changing our point of view is possible with better data, except that we need to find this data first.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gynogenesis
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgenesis
[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybridogenesis_in_water_frog...
Not necessarily a clone because sometimes happens in several steps. For example, horse x donkey hybrids are sterile in principle, but if just by chance they produce an ovule keeping only the DNA of one of their parents, it can be fecundated. A female mule can deliver a foal that is either a pure horse or a pure donkey, never another mule.
Regarding Denisovans:
A 2011 study found that Denisovan DNA is prevalent in Aboriginal Australians, Near Oceanians, Polynesians, Fijians, Eastern Indonesians and Mamanwans (from the Philippines); but not in East Asians, western Indonesians, Jahai people (from Malaysia) or Onge (from the Andaman Islands). [1]
Way more then any known population in Western Eurasia, from what I've seen at least.
It does seem a bit odd as it's the opposite of the popular stereotypes.
[1]https://www.crownrelo.com/intl/en/article/four-toughest-plac...
[2]https://thediplomat.com/2023/06/riding-the-tiger-ethno-natio...
[3]https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/npr/2023/03/02/1160441919...
I don’t think westerners put a lot of stock in China’s claim to be communist, nor do I think many westerners would deny that it’s an ethnonationalist country.
> China serves as home to 56 official ethnic groups. The largest group, the Han, makes up over 92% of China's vast population, and it is the elements of Han civilization regraded as "Chinese culture"
>Xi Jinping has celebrated majority Han culture as the timeless “soul of the nation”, gradually shifting ethnic policy from formal inclusion of 56 ethnic groups to cultural nationalism. Influential political economist Hu Angang called fusion a means of making China a strong and prosperous state again, while anthropologist Ma Rong considers “teaching barbarians” a revival of imperial tradition. These arguments emerged following mass violence in 2009, sparked by the murder of Uighur labourers by Han colleagues in a Guangdong factory accused of using coerced labour.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/05/china-...
But I don't get it ~~ what's the motivation to branch off as distant rather than share some common ancestor?
Who and why would want to promote that? I don't get it.
> Most people consider the multiregional origin theory highly motivated reasoning
As if the Out of Africa theory isn't highly motivated?
> and also completely garbage science.
But genetic evidence has proven that we all have different hominin dna. Science backs the revised multiregional model.
This reminds me of the clovis theory. The agenda driven people always front run any criticism of the clovis theory because they were on the wrong side of history and science.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiregional_origin_of_mode...
This theory holds that humans in different parts of the world are primarily descended from local hominids vs the commonly accepted theory that humans are all primarily and recently descended from a population somewhere in East or South Africa with a small amount of admixture with local hominids.
Most people consider the multiregional origin theory highly motivated reasoning and also completely garbage science.