This is so exciting. This is far earlier than we’d previously expected such complex behavior. Here we are debating how deliberately Neanderthals were when they left bodies in caves and whether that was a form of burial. Here’s some other species much earlier fashioning some sort of complex structure.
The only reason we don’t have lots more of the evidence of complex thought is because biological material rarely persists, thus an image of lunks using only stone tools has persisted until now. So cool.
Depends what you mean by human. If you restrict the term to homo sapiens you put yourself in a small minority. I’d say the fact that these people used tools in a sophisticated way pretty much defines them as human.
I mean, that’s why it’s so exciting! Who is human and who isn’t? I agree that a lot of folks who were our cousins could also be classified as human, but I think that requires re-examining the definition. That’s why this is so interesting to me. This find redefines a lot of expectations.
If we considered ourselves special because we alone did x, y, z things, we aren’t so special anymore.
Yet mounting evidence from fossil and archaeological discoveries, as well as DNA analyses, has experts increasingly rethinking that scenario. It now looks as though H. sapiens originated far earlier than previously thought, possibly in locations across Africa instead of a single region, and that some of its distinguishing traits—including aspects of the brain—evolved piecemeal. Moreover, it has become abundantly clear that H. sapiens actually did mingle with the other human species it encountered and that interbreeding with them may have been a crucial factor in our success.
Considering the fact that we interbred with H. neanderthalensis and H. denisova (and still carry the residual DNA to prove it), I think it’s pretty well proven that considering only H. sapiens to be “human” is overly narrow.
Personally, I would argue that anything within the Homo genus is human by definition (that’s what the word means!), and that anything non-human belongs in a genus like Australopithecus or Paranthropus instead.
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