Comments on: 100,000-year-old human skull found in Henan, China

By: Daniel Rosenthal

Daniel Rosenthal — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 09:30:59 +0000

Judging from the photos, it seems to show many similarities to the Steinheim skull from Germany.
Both should be assigned to late Homo heidelburgensis.

By: Daniel Rosenthal

Daniel Rosenthal — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 09:27:51 +0000

Judging by the photos, it seems to show many similarities to the Steinheim skull from Germany. Both should be classified as late Homo heidelburgensis.

By: Kambiz

Kambiz — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 19:20:39 +0000

Haha, nice one Terry!

By: TerryT

TerryT — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 08:42:21 +0000

Hunk wrote:

“the bible also speakes of when the angles were created.”

Right angles, acute angles, obtuse angles or all of them?

By: hunk

hunk — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 17:49:34 +0000

Modern man started about 6000-7000 years ago as we know today. So the question is what is this so called early mankind? We know the earth is very old compared to our time span much older then the first life.

The question comes up many times of the bible . We know Jesus was the 1st born {made by almighty God} Genis also speak’s of when creation was made ” lets us make man in our image” also ” all things were made through him and for him” {jesus was there with God in the beginning} “they were made for his pleasure” so the dinosaur’s, early designs of mankind, other species design long gone very well could have been made for teaching purpose. God almighty with his son Jesus, after all the bible also speakes of when the angles were created and Jesus was there, and all the universes.

So yes early forms of mankind life could have lived and then modern man was created. Look around how similar is many life forms to each other yet different not related.

By: Kambiz

Kambiz — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 01:53:16 +0000

Bert, wouldn’t we all like to see an accurate date on this fossil? But unfortunately carbon dating can only date materials up to about 60,000 years ago. So, unfortunately you’re not gonna see what you’d like to see.

By: Bert Gold

Bert Gold — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 23:20:46 +0000

I’d like to see the raw carbon dating data.

Bert Gold
National Cancer Institute

By: hrdonka

hrdonka — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 07:00:52 +0000

TerryT and Kambiz, thanx for your comment. This ‘multiregional’ tone comes from Chinese, i think its kind of political stuff. As for DNA, i don’t believe 100k years sample will bring some results, moreover this sample is fossilized. I think the oldest sample of mtDNA was from 40k years of Australia Mungo man. BTW: this Mongo man sample was the proof of intermixing – its mtDNA was somewhere between moder human and neanderthal, while the skull was anatomically modern.

By: Kambiz

Kambiz — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:49:51 +0000

Terry, thanks for the comment. In regards to your concern,

“I can’t see how examining the DNA will help though. The fossil is almost certainly older than any existing Y-chromosome lines and probably older than any mtDNA surviving outside Africa.”

mtDNA can resolve back after 100,000 years. Currently, mitochondrial Eve, the name given by researchers to a woman who is defined as the matrilineal most recent common ancestor for all currently living humans has been calculated to have lived about 140,000 years ago based on correlating elapsed time with observed genetic drift. Y-chromosomal Adam is calculated to have been around 60,000 years ago.

Both these individuals are thought to be of African origin, but that doesn’t mean we can’t find mtDNA surviving outside Africa. Advances in ancient DNA extraction, will fill in this gap. Also, I’m not doubting that African origin of modern humans, but the reason why we don’t think of genetically modern humans outside of Africa prior to 140-100,000 years ago could be because of the sample of people that were screened.

By: Kambiz

Kambiz — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:36:02 +0000

hrdonka, being that it was just discovered about a month ago, I think it is premature to estimate a final consensus on what the fossil is classified as. I most likely think it's a sapiens, because most Homo erectus disappeared from the fossil record roughly 400,000 years ago. But fossils such as the hominids from Ngandong and Sambungmacan, Central Java represent H. erectus and persisted up until 50,000 years ago. I just raise the possibility that this Henan hominid could be an erectus specimen because it falls at an uncertain time in the Asian human fossil record. Off topic, did you catch the 'multiregional' tone in the Guardian Unlimited article?