There’s a lot of hype about “Dragon Man”
There’s a sudden flurry of news articles about a “Dragon Man” skull. Supposedly from a possible archaic human species, the skull has an odd and perhaps suspect provenance:
Dragon Man (Homo longi) is an extinct species of archaic human identified from a nearly complete skull in Harbin, on the Northeast China Plain, dating to at minimum 146,000 years ago during the Middle Pleistocene…[A]rchaeologists [in China] considered modern humans to be more closely related to H. longi than to the European Neanderthals, which may force a revision of the current scientific consensus.
H. longi is broadly anatomically similar to other Middle Pleistocene Chinese specimens, and potentially represents the enigmatic Denisovans, though this is unconfirmed. Like other archaic humans, the skull is low and long, with massively inflated brow ridges, wide eye sockets, and a large mouth…The brain volume was 1,420 cc, within the range of modern humans and Neanderthals…
A local laborer found a nearly complete skull at the riverbank of Songhua River in 1933 when he was building the Dongjiang Bridge…for the Japanese-aligned Manchukuo National Railway. Recognizing its importance, likely as a result of public interest in anthropology recently generated by the Peking Man in 1929, he hid it from the Manchukuo authorities in an abandoned well…
Before his death, the third generation of his family learned of the skull, and reclaimed it in 2018. Later that year, Chinese paleoanthropologist Qiang Ji persuaded the family to donate it to the Hebei GEO University for study, where it has since been stored.
The lack of information about the exact location of the find complicates the dating. And the idea that this specimen is more closely related to modern humans than Neanderthals are sounds highly speculative at this point.
And why would Dragon Man be considered a new species? Sounds like quite a leap, and perhaps a publicity-seeking move. I’m not alone in my skepticism about the “new species” aspect of the find:
Many researchers prefer not to name new human species for several reasons, including the fact that DNA evidence shows that “species”, including Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, interbred. Most academics prefer to refer to the Denisovans as a “group” or “lineage” rather than a distinct species. “You can be a separate lineage and not have achieved species status,” says Bailey.
“I do think that the one type of analysis they use isn’t conclusive enough to say that there’s a new species,” says Sheela Athreya at Texas A&M University.
I took several college courses in physical anthropology, although I don’t remember many details and whatever details I do remember would be somewhat “archaic” themselves. Nevertheless, I think I retain enough information to have concluded quite some time ago that a lot of these claims of new species being discovered won’t hold up over time.
I suspect we’ll end up getting a fair amount of Han Chinese supremacy out of this ‘find’.
The resemblance to Winnie the Poo is uncanny (not). Or maybe it is Dong Jingwei? 🙂
If it is female contact Hunter Biden.
My naive understanding was that separate species couldn’t interbreed. Here’s a good article on that:
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Thus the problem is not with Neanderthals and modern humans and all the other species that interbreed with each other, but with the biological species concept itself. It is only one of dozens of suggested species concepts, and one that is less useful in the genomic age, with its profuse demonstrations of inter-species mixing. The reality is that in most cases in mammals and birds, species diverge from each other gradually. It may take millions of years for full reproductive isolation to develop, something that clearly had not yet occurred for H. neanderthalensis and H. sapiens.
In my view, if Neanderthals and Homo sapiens remained separate long enough to evolve such distinctive skull shapes, pelvises, and ear bones, they can be regarded as different species, interbreeding or not.
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/are-neanderthals-same-species-as-us.html
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So perhaps it doesn’t matter if Dragon Man is a separate species or not, aside from bragging rights.
I like that the history of humans keeps getting more complicated.
When I was a teen I read Loren Eisely’s “The Immense Journey” (1957), a history of humanity, and fell in love with the sense of wonder Eisely conveyed. Though largely forgotten today, Eisely was an anthropologist and writer whose books sold well and he received many awards.
In one chapter Eisely told the story of “Strandlooper,” a South African skull from 10,000 years ago with a small face and large cranium, which to Eisely suggested a highly intelligent human group which had died out, perhaps due to its intelligence, in competition with more aggressive, primitive humans. Poetic stuff.
It turns out that even in 1958 Strandlooper, a “Boskopoid” human, had been discredited.
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Later, when a more systematic inventory of archaeological associations was entered into evidence, it became clear that the “Boskop race” was entirely a figment of anthropologists’ imaginations.
https://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/brain/paleo/lynch-granger-big-brain-boskops-2008.html
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Oh well. So much for poetry.
Dogs , wolves and coyotes are considered different species yet they can breed.
See Pattison, “Fossil Men” about the hunt for even earlier types in Ethiopia. I used to think I knew a few things about the issue and in the first hundred pages, half the names were familiar. After that…..
Wonderful book about the expeditions, the backbreaking work, the jealousies and….a new species is something like filing a successful patent. Not bad money, either.
Nobody wants to dig up the eleventh iteration of something Leakey found sixty years ago.
But if you’ve been digging up H. Sap all your career and come to….Peewee Herman….or Andre the Giant….
How unfortunate that Loren Eiseley has become obscure. Not merely poetic, his prose had the uncanny effect of embedding readers inside his exploring mind, as though they themselves were experiencing this unusually gifted man’s quests. While teaching at UPEnn, he lived in my childhood neighborhood, and sometimes included those surroundings in his writings. How beneficial it would be if, like Huxley, young people (or anyone!) were to walk a mile, many miles, in Loren Eiseley’s shoes.
I had never even heard of Eiseley. Bezos further enriched. So much to learn from these comments. Thanks!
How unfortunate that Loren Eiseley has become obscure.
Le Mot Juste:
Agreed.
I was introduced to Eiseley by a supplement to the Great Books program, which I had conned my mother into buying. (F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Diamond as the Big as the Ritz,” also in that supplement, which I recommend as well.) From there, I got a copy of “The Immense Journey” and read it all.
In retrospect I see the Great Books program, Loren Eiseley, the Leonard Bernstein TV shows, Isaac Asimov and so much more as parts of the Great Glorious American Middlebrow Aspiration to Culture and Science in the 50s and 60s.
Which could be seen as corny and status striving, and to some extent was, but by God it was still a good thing. It instilled in the youth of that time, at least me and my friends, a real hunger to learn real things about Western Civilization.
Then, the hippies came along (I was one) and said that Western Civ was about to collapse and rightfully so, so we need to need to shitcan the whole trip, go live in the woods and build a new, better world.
Which turned out to be unnecessary (fortunately) and the later Gen XYZs, said, well, it’s a lot easier and more fun just to be cool and get an earring, some tats and listen to the right music.
I’m bummed.
But if you’ve been digging up H. Sap all your career and come to….Peewee Herman….or Andre the Giant….
Richard Aubrey:
You made me laugh there. I wonder about that too.
I had never even heard of Eiseley. Bezos further enriched. So much to learn from these comments. Thanks!
Zaphod:
You’re welcome!
When I talk about the 50s and 60s, I sometimes feel like I’m describing an ancient, extinct civilization.
Arguably I am.
@Huxley:
“When I talk about the 50s and 60s, I sometimes feel like I’m describing an ancient, extinct civilization.”
You are.
We haven’t evolved to deal with this pace of baseline societal evolution.
huxley.
Not only would there be some anatomical conundrums, but it would speak of “opportunity” to one person and….”nuts” to another.
I again recommend Pattison’s book. Among other things, you’ll find Ethiopia has paleoanthropology as part of its GDP.
“I again recommend Pattison’s book. Among other things, you’ll find Ethiopia has paleoanthropology as part of its GDP.”
Wakanda!
(I know, I know.)
Seal Team a couple of seasons ago had an op in the “Wakanda Gap”. I hadn’t heard of it at the time. Thought it was a real thing someplace between Russia and China.
You may not be interested in Wakanda, but Wakanda is Interested in You.
Bring back the Fulda Gap!
I loved Eisley’s books. He was a very good writer and excellent stylist.
The Chinese Piltdown man?
Remember Ashli Babbitt!
Zaphod. You can keep it. When I was in, the place had the potential to get really noisy.
@Richard Aubrey:
No fond memories of doing exercises in NBC suits? I know a guy who comes from military family and spent part of his teen years in Germany. He said that he learned pretty fast not to push the envelope on days when his father came home from work wearing NBC kit!
Eiseley: so, a poet and polymath. In other words, a fossil from a better age. Never read him, but this thread has made me want to. Off to AbeBooks. He wouldn’t get anywhere in academe today. White male privilege.
John Updike and Richard Wilbur were two other mid-century writers who grew up on the outskirts of town, isolated, close to nature (Updike in Pennsylvania, Wilbur in New Jersey). Like Eiseley, Wilbur rode the rails as a young man. Here he is talking about and then reading a poem inspired by those experiences:
https://www.webofstories.com/play/richard.wilbur/49
https://www.webofstories.com/play/richard.wilbur/50
Wilbur served with the 36th (“Lone Star”) Infantry Division in WWII.
With Peking Man making a cameo, one wouldn’t want to overlook good old Lucy (I mean, diversity, right?)
Always wondered whether she (xhe?) was the inspiration for the character in Peanuts….
Anyway, here’s the Lucy wing of the Republican Party getting back up to speed after having been smacked around a bit by, um, reality. (Can’t keep ’em down, I guess….)
https://justthenews.com/government/congress/senate-republicans-say-they-trust-biden-after-infrastructure-deal-walkback
I recall reading that (at least proposition) as a kid. Probably from an old library book.
It seemed a fascinating and strange prospect; that an unusually intelligent species of hominid would flourish, only to inexplicably die out.
But then, in an era when lost civilizations were the stuff of typical childhood reading, it seemed no less plausible.
Speaking of lost civilizations, given the readership here, many will have certainly noticed the big resurgence of interest the last decade or so in the collapse of the Bronze Age. Michael Wood, was on top of this of course some decades ago; and then there were the fascinating discoveries of Manfred Korfmann. But the interest reflected by way of Internet coverage is relatively conspicuous … if you are looking.
@DNW:
Good point. First we got a crap ton of bloviation about the Peloponnesian War back during reign of Bush II (Bill Clinton being Cut Rate Alcibiades). Now it’s the Bronze Age Collapse.Well we have Sea Peoples and Palace Economies and Santorini Real Estate is booming.
It’s the Thinking Man’s version of Flying Saucer Movies and then later Zombie Blockbusters.
Must go load up the Kindle with Lovecraft.
zaphod
When I was in college–Sixties–I knew guys who had half their growing up overseas. Okinawa to Italy to France.
Saw a couple of 2LT meeting each other once… Couldn’t shake that they’d met before. Turns out they’d played in the all-Nato Bowl or something. One from Graf, the other from….who knows.
So you’re on a train in….Chateau Roux….. Thirty burly guys, obviously American young men but not, maybe, soldiers are on. Also cheerleaders. Due to a number of European miscalculations, such men as remain are not particularly hearty.
My first platoon commander (tac) at Benning had met his fiancee–cute gal–when he was on a high school team on Okinawa and she was a cheerleader. Didn’t work out.
Speaking of military families: I was at Home Depot, checking out through the service desk for some reason. The young lady there asked if I were former military. Some kind of discount, iirc I feigned outrage. Does it still show, it’s been fifty years. Grinning. She smiled, “I’m from a military family. I can tell.” Do we walk around with some kind of aura visible to the elect?
I recall Eisley’s description of the Strandlooper. Delicate dentition or some such.
And, for some reason, there was a movie made whose protagonist was some not quite H. Sap, being pursued down, iirc, the coast of Africa by some nasty looking white H. Saps with nothing else to do. Took days, but eventually they caught him and killed him. No dialogue. By “movie” I mean footage on public television someplace.
Some of the pre-Auel cave man novels had H. Nean standing in for the peaceful Vietnamese farmers and H. Saps coming on like American paratroopers. Pretty obvious.
For catastrophes, see Blom, “Nature’s Mutiny” about the Little Ice Age. He’s right on about the physical issues. Gets over his skis on the effects on theology and philosophy. But the physical side is brutal.
@Richard Aubrey:
“Speaking of military families: I was at Home Depot, checking out through the service desk for some reason. The young lady there asked if I were former military. Some kind of discount, iirc I feigned outrage. Does it still show, it’s been fifty years. Grinning. She smiled, “I’m from a military family. I can tell.” Do we walk around with some kind of aura visible to the elect?”
This kind of in-group recognition is good.. and even better if some nepotism and mutual aid involved is not a bad thing at all, given what’s coming down the pike.
I hammer my Racial Hobby Horse ad nauseum because I’m all for ripping up Third Rails and beating them into needful swords. Probably neglecting the Class angle too much. Class is back bigger and better, too. The Managerialists have become self-aware as a distinct class and have utter disdain for the various sub-categories of BadWhites — and I’m sure one of those cubbyholes is Serving and Ex-Military. So much the worse if multi-generational.