[meteorite-list] Zamanshin impact and Homo Heidelbergensis

From: E.P. Grondine <epgrondine_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat, 5 Dec 2009 16:02:49 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <486795.78037.qm_at_web36902.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Hi Sterling -

Once more the voice of quiet reason. The madmen in the room always seem to find me, whether its Zubrinite Mars nuts, cultists, nu-agers, or simply less than secure anthropologists. Hell, I even mentioned erectus in the footnotes, but did they care? No. The taxonomy was a mess, and I said so. I was a space journalist reeling from a stroke, and not a physical anthropologist.

Now has anybody (hint, hint) apologized yet for their remarks? No.

A 1,100,000 Hiroshima impact and 1.8 billion tons of vaporized rock will have effects. Like splitting a hominid group into two parts, which then follow different evolutionary paths. The death range must have exceeded 100-200 miles. And all of the game animals (food) and useful plants and trees would have been killed as well.

The impact explains the plains.

And still no one is looking at the Malaysian impact and the early sapien fossils from there.

Ed

--- On Sat, 12/5/09, Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net>
> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Zamanshin impact and Homo Heidelbergensis
> To: "E.P. Grondine" <epgrondine at yahoo.com>, meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
> Date: Saturday, December 5, 2009, 4:06 AM
> 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
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > http://www.meteoritecentral.com
> > Meteorite-list mailing list
> > Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
> > http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
>
>
>


      
Received on Sat 05 Dec 2009 07:02:49 PM PST