Text 25010, 95 rader
Skriven 2006-11-12 22:34:22 av John Hull (1:123/789.0)
  Kommentar till text 25007 av Mimi Gallandt (1:123/789.0)
Ärende: Good Book
=================
Mimi Gallandt -> John Hull wrote:
 MG> John Hull -> Mimi Gallandt wrote:
 JH>> Mimi Gallandt -> John Hull wrote:
 MG>>> John Hull -> Mimi Gallandt wrote:
 JH>>>> Mimi Gallandt -> VERN HUMPHREY wrote:
 MG>>>>> I'm reading a book I think you would like. It's called Where G-d
 MG> was
 MG>>>>> Born (there's no hyphen in the title, some habits die hard or
 MG> not at
 MG>>>>> all) by Bruce Feiler. He wrote about his traveling the paths of the
 MG>>>>> bible(s). I'm learning things about the Middle East that I never
 JH>> knew
 MG>>>>> before, it's really interesting. It has caused me to ponder a
 MG>>> question
 MG>>>>> that Google isn't answering for me, but I bet you could; which
 JH>>>> fossil is
 MG>>>>> older Lucy or Peking Man?


 JH>>>> Lucy is one of three major fossil examples of Australopithicus
 MG>>> Aferensis
 JH>>>> which have come of the Great Rift Valley in the horn of Africa.
 MG> Lucy
 JH>>>> was found first, then a male dubbed AL 444-2 was found; and the
 MG>>> last is
 JH>>>> called the Dikika Baby, also a female.  The baby is oldest at 3.3
 JH>>>> million years, with Lucy and the male slightly younger.  The baby
 JH>> is a
 JH>>>> nearly complete skeleton, about 3 years old at time of death.  They
 MG>>> are
 JH>>>> distinctly gorilla-like in appearance, though many human features
 MG> are
 JH>>>> evident in the bone structure.  The November 2006 issue of National
 JH>>>> Geographic has an excellent article on the Dikika baby.

 JH>>>> "Peking Man" is an example of Homo Erectus, and are between 500,000
 MG>>> and
 JH>>>> 300,000 years old.  Go to www.chineseprehistory.org/index for more
 JH>>>> information and pictures of the fossils.  Homo Erectus is the
 MG> last of
 JH>>>> the so-called proto-human species of hominid.

 JH>>>> You may also be interested to know that the skull of a baby was
 MG>>> found in
 JH>>>> Chad (central Africa at the southern end of the Sahara) that pushes
 MG>>> the
 JH>>>> date for proto-humans back to about 7.2 million years.

 MG>>> Wow, thanks. So it's a pretty good bet that Mesopotamia really was
 MG> the
 MG>>> cradle of civilization.

 JH>> Well, no, it isn't.  There was a DNA study a couple years ago (a major
 JH>> US university and one of the European centers of study of early man)
 JH>> that traced mitochandrial DNA from all over the world to determine not
 JH>> only the geographical origins of mankind, but to trace ancestry and
 MG> how
 JH>> humanity spread across the world.

 MG> My thinking was that it would have been more likely that humans migrated
 MG> to Mesopotamia and founded civilization than for them to migrate from
 MG> China. Maybe my perception of civilization requiring the presence of
 MG> laws and learning is different than yours?


Now we're talking about two different things.  What I've been talking about is
the very earliest human species.  They were at the time Lucy was alive nothing
more than glorified apes.  Strictly hunter gatherer type small bands that had
no more civilization than a group of gorillas. The migrations took place as
random bands followed the food supply as the ice retreated north.  Where the
animals went, they followed.  The glaciers had only retreated enough to expose
southern Europe, the Balkans, and southern Asia and China by the time the
Neanderthals started to appear.  The earliest species couldn't move north so
they spread out east and west.  All of this took place over roughly 7 million
years.  Civilization, ie. cultivation of crops, domestication of cattle, sheep,
dogs, establishment of abstract religion, codification of laws, etc., only
occurred in the last 100,000 years or so.  By that time, the continents were
more or less where they are today, and the migrations were mostly over.  I
think the Bering land bridge was the last physical link between continents in
that regard.

Even Neanderthals, who were millions of years in the future in Lucy's time,
were still cave dwellers and moved constantly following their food supply.  It
wasn't until about 100 thousand years ago that the current species, Homo
Sapiens, started living in village groups and cultivating wild grains.  That
was the beginning of civilization in more or less modern terms. By the way, the
notion that Homo Sapiens killed off the Neanderthals is a fallacy.  When the
last of the glaciers retreated from Europe, the climate changed to one of open
steppes and grasslands.  The Neanderthals, superbly adapted for harsh, cold
forested country, were not physically equipped for that type of environment,
and died out because they couldn't compete with Homo Sapiens for the food they
needed as their environment shrank.

--- Thunderbird 1.5.0.8 (Windows/20061025)
 * Origin:  (1:123/789.0)