Toothy Tree-Swinger May Be Earliest Human

[n2doc]

The 3-foot tall Homo gautengensis had large teeth for chomping plants and spent a lot of time in trees, but likely had no language skills.

By Jennifer Viegas
Fri May 21, 2010 08:43 AM ET

A newly-found human, Homo gautengensis, is declared the world's earliest recognized species of human.

This new early Homo species spent much of its time in trees and had big teeth for eating plants.

The discovery shakes up human evolutionary history, putting emphasis on Ethiopia as the cradle of humanity.


Your family tree has a new and colorful member, Homo gautengensis, a toothy, plant-chomping, literal tree swinger that was just named the world's earliest recognized species of human.

The new human, described in a paper accepted for publication in HOMO-Journal of Comparative Human Biology, emerged over 2 million years ago and died out approximately 600,000 years ago. The authors believe it arose earlier than Homo habilis, aka "Handy Man."

http://news.discovery.com/human/human-ancestor-tree-swinger.html

[aquart]

1. Big teeth? Tree adapted? BRANCH.

Don't they even look at their dates? WE were a whole other creature by then.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. They do 'look at their dates', but this article may not make that clear

Homo gautengensis was found in South Africa; and the scientist who has named the species says this strengthens his belief that our ancestors evolved in East Africa.

De Ruiter of Texas A&M University and his colleagues proposed that A. sediba was the transitional species between Australopithecus africanus (a non-human not in our genus) and Homo erectus -- "Upright Man."

The newly identified human, however, throws a wrench into that theory since A. sediba was "much more primitive than H. gautengensis, and lived at the same time and in the same place," according to Curnoe. As a result, "Homo gautengensis makes Australopithecus sediba. look even less likely to be the ancestor of humans."

Curnoe instead proposes that Australopithecus garhi, found in Ethiopia and dating to about 2.5 million years ago, is a better possibility for the earliest non-Homo direct ancestor in the human evolutionary line.

Curnoe still regards East Africa as being the cradle of humans, "because it has the oldest fossil record, going back to about 7 million years, but we are clearly learning now that there was much greater diversity in our evolutionary tree than we realized for a long time."

From the University of New South Wales' magazine:

Homo gautengensis seems to have been a
more specialised omnivore adapted to life
on solid ground, whereas the more ape-like
Australopithecus africanus, for example,
had longer arms and other adaptations for
climbing trees.

Like the other prehistoric southern African
hominins, Homo gautengensis petered out and
became extinct.

Although it thrived for a long time, Curnoe
believes it is unlikely that either Homo
gautengensis, or Berger’s Australiopithecus
sediba, were in our direct human line. They
were indeed early hominins, but not ones that
gave rise to our own species, Homo sapiens.

http://www.unsw.edu.au/news/pad/uniken/2010/uniken_mayjune_2010.pdf

[aquart]

5. First they need to explain what they mean by "specialized omnivore."

Because that does have me scratching my head.

[xchrom]

2. I'm listed in HOMO journal as the earliest homo. Nt

[Peace Patriot]

3. I love thinking about the first thought.

It's kind of like the enjoyment you get from watching a baby--seeing a baby discover its dextrous hands, focus on objects, experiment with sounds, engage in games, "hide," seek hidden objects, throw things down to learn about distances and what things do when they're thrown, and try, ever so diligently, to LEARN. You can SEE first thought, in a baby. You can SEE "hiding" creating time, a sense of the future.

Ancient humans must have gone through all of these stages of experimenting with the world and getting a feedback loop going, not just to satisfy immediate needs but to anticipate, to plan, to think into the future--ultimately to produce cities, civilizations, mathematicians, poets, engineers, great ships, reliable farming, washing machines, suspension bridges and all that we are, have and do. How did it begin? What was the first thought? 'Ouch!'?? ('Hey, that red-orange-blue glowing god is HOT! Watch out!') No, before that. Maybe, 'If I jump down from this tree, then all those bananas on the ground are MINE. But if I jump down, then I've got to deal with the tiger. Hm. WHEN does it roam over here?" Ancient human takes time-stamped pictures with her iPhone, morning, noon and night for a week, calculates the safest time to jump down and get all the fallen bananas, shares her observations with her friends, and soon they're walking upright, cuz you can't carry a load of bananas and text at the same time, if you walk like a chimp.

Something like that. A practical problem, solved by observation, experiment and anticipating the future. What was it? Was it one thought, or a complex of thoughts? Was it communal? Was it one individual? Babies alone shut down. They need interaction. In fact, they can DIE if they don't get interaction. So probably it was interaction, some communal thing that happened--the formation of the future. All critters plan. You can't watch critter documentaries, or watch critters, and not know that. They have goals. Many even use tools (which involves knowing ahead of time what you're going to use the tool FOR). But something happened in humans that was MORE than planning. Maybe just BIG planning. ('If we all go to the next forest, maybe we'll find MORE bananas than there are here! Come on! Let's go see if that hypothesis proves true!') Or maybe a reflection on planning. ('That idea about the next forest was just stupid! Now all we have to eat are these cocoanuts! And HOW are we going to do THAT? Hm?'). (Like a baby, somebody throws one down from high up, just for the hell of it; it cracks open; they don't starve to death; they don't drive the hypothesizer off the island; she writes a book about it and passes her sense of adventure to future generations.)

Like I said, I love thinking about the first thought. And other thoughts.