[meteorite-list] Zamanshin impact and Homo Heidelbergensis

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat, 5 Dec 2009 04:06:19 -0600
Message-ID: <E9AEA387E7374596862C7AA29C358CC1_at_ATARIENGINE2>

Hi, EP, List,

I strongly suggest you not worry about taxonomy
and being criticized for it. Genus Homo taxonomy
is presently in a state of colossal mess and nobody
agrees with anybody except themselves.

Homo heidelbergensis has been applied to many
distinctly different sets of remains, ranging from
200,000 years old to 1.2 million years. The name was
first applied in 1907 to a set of very archaic H. sapiens
or (more likely) H. erectus remains about a half
million years old.

There is long argument as to whether Homo
heidelbergensis is an advanced Homo erectus or a
primitive Homo sapiens, as useless as any argument
can get. Is he the world's tallest midget or the world's
shortest giant?

Homo heidelbergensis survives as a name because a
rule in taxonomy called "sinking." The oldest name has
newer finds "sunk" into it, even if it somewhat changes
the original definition of the creature. Today, the trend
is to "sink" Homo heidelbergensis into the later Homo
erectus form, even though it's against the "rules."

The point is nobody can criticize you for following the
strict rules of taxonomy. Homo heidelbergensis is the
older name for archaic Homo sapiens (or H. erectus).
It is the taxonomically correct name, and is still in wide
use today. Ignore the criticism.

I am relying here on the 2035 pages of Wilfried Henke and
Ian Tattersall's "Handbook of Paleoanthropology" (2007), the
most recent comprehensive work in publication. They do
not offer definitive assignment of species but explain the
various assignments of others, which at least looks as if
they were being reasonably objective. (They're not, but it
looks that way.)

Of that little Dmanisi fellow, they say most assign him as
an early form of Homo erectus, which some have called
Homo ergaster. He is nevertheless quite different from the
other fossils with the same species assignment (just as
many of them differ greatly from each other). He was
originally called Homo georgicus, but nobody much uses
that name anymore.

He is way too old to be your "split" man, as he is twice
as old as the Zamanshin crater and far too primitive (at
1.8 million years) to be the direct ancestor of Neanderthal
and Sapiens. THAT fellow would be Homo heidelbergensis.

Just like you said.

There are two urges at work here. Some taxonomists want
to "lump" all the Homo erectus-like critters into one species
with one name and a lot of variations. Other taxonomists
want to "split" each group with distinctive characteristics
into separate species with separate names. It should come
as no surprise that those exhibiting these two tendencies
are called the Lumpers and the Splitters.

Right now (this decade) the Splitters are winning, because
we keep finding new and distinctive hominids that simply
don't fit into the dominant model developed in the 1980's
and 1990's. There appear to have been lots of different
kinds of humans. and some that are weird beyond belief
(like Homo floresiensis).

Henke and Tattersall are not without their oddities: they
think Homo floresiensis is a deformed dwarf (WRONG).
They spend a lot of time on the Homo habilis versus Homo
rudolfiensis dispute, which is like the arguments between
the Laputan Big Enders and Little Enders in "Gulliver's
Travels," utterly insane nonsense. This is the kind of
argument that occupies people (do taxonomists count?)
with too much time on their hands.

Don't worry about people criticizing your taxonomy.
Someone always will, because you cannot satisfy a
roomful of madmen.

Given the dating of Zamanshin (900,000 +/- 100,000
years), Homo heidelbergensis or Homo erectus is equally
good at nominating the men of the times.

Moving on...

What I can't understand is why a nine-mile-wide crater
should (or could) "split" mankind into two non-interacting
groups resulting in two species of Homo. OK, the impact
kills folks for up to 1-2 hundred miles or so around the
impact site. I don't see that as an "obstacle." Hominids
lived in widely scattered bands. There are hundreds of
miles of open plains north of Zamanshin, the great wide
Russian steppes, and all of Southern Asia, well, to the south.

Why is a nine-mile-wide crater in the middle of a continent
with 1500 miles of non-cratered terrain on every side of
that crater an obstacle of any kind to anybody with feet?

As for the impact creating the divide between Sapiens
and Neanderthals...

The earliest Neanderthal-like hominids, called Proto-
Neanderthals, don't appear until about 300,000 years
ago. "Proto-Neanderthal" is a slippery concept; how
is it different from its Homo heidelbergensis ancestor?
Not much, maybe not at all. Not everybody believes in
"Proto-Neanderthals," you see. Look up a picture of
the Petralona skulls to see. Neanderthal? Erectus?

The first hominids with traits that suggest Neanderthals
only appear about 130,000 years ago and the "classic"
Neanderthals don't appear until 70,000 years ago and the
full classic suite of traits doesn't manifest until about
50,000 years ago.

As for a "split," when these Neanderthals and near-
Neanderthals appeared, there were no "Sapiens" alongside
to contrast them with. There were Neanderthals in Europe
and spread across Asia where they were side-by-side with
Homo erectus, or Homo heidelbergensis, as we've been
calling him for a century now. Oh, yes, there are folks that
keep calling Homo heidelbergensis "archaic" Homo sapiens,
but take a look at, say, the Petralona skulls and tell me if
they look much like your late Uncle Herbert?

Homo sapiens is an easily identified species, very distinct
from Homo heidelbergensis or Homo erectus or anybody
else in the family. They're freakishly different. The oldest
Homo sapiens look just like us, and very little like the
ancestors, Homo heidelbergensis or erectus. The Homo
sapiens skull is smooth, light-boned, gracile, even fragile
by comparison.

So, the Homo heidelbergensis in Europe slowly became
more Neanderthal-like. Homo sapiens didn't begin to
enter Europe until about 34,000 years ago, about
halfway through the time of the Classic Neanderthal.
That's not a "split" between the two in my book. By
28,000 years ago, there were no more Neanderthals.
Whoops!

So, there was no event 1,000,000 years ago that split
Sapiens and Neanderthals apart because they didn't
split, then or at all, and whatever happened to create
Neanderthals, it was a long 700,000 to 870,000 years
later, after Zamanshin. Neanderthals were merely a
recent adaptation to recent Ice Ages and have nothing
to do with impacts.

And lastly, there were both Neanderthals and Homo
heidelbergensis (or Homo erectus) on both sides of a
N-S line through Zamanshin crater at all times when
there were both species in existence. There is no great
East-West divide in populations and never was.

Anyway, Zamanshin is a pothole. You walk around it
without knowing or caring. Even if you're Mr. Homo
heidelbergensis. Like I said, they had feet, I'm pretty
sure of that.



Sterling K. Webb
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "E.P. Grondine" <epgrondine at yahoo.com>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Friday, December 04, 2009 8:18 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Zamanshin impact and Homo Heidelbergensis


> Hi -
>
> While this is far from meteorites, it does concern impacts, and
> specifically the Zamanshin impact.
>
> I received grief for using the term Homo Heidelbergensis in my book
> for this fellow, even though I added in a footnote that the taxonomy
> was confused:
>
> http://archaeologica.boardbot.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2381
>
> Note that no name is given for this homonid right now.
>
> This homonid was likely the common ancestor for sapiens and
> neanderthal, with the two populations split by the Zamanshin impact.
>
> E.P Grondine
> Man and Impact in the Americas
>
>
>
>
>
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Received on Sat 05 Dec 2009 05:06:19 AM PST