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Author | Topic: Homo floresiensis | |||||||||||||||||||||||
The Dread Dormammu Inactive Member |
I was always under the impression that chimps gorillas and humans were more closely related to eachother than any of them are to orangutans. As such classing the "apes" as seperate from humans is a mistake.
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Quetzal Member (Idle past 5899 days) Posts: 3228 Joined: |
This is true. Which is why, in point of fact, that there continues to be some discussion on reclassifying at least the two species of Pongids as hominids. If we are simply looking at genetic distance, then there is some validity to the classification of Homo troglodytes. However, there is also some validity to making the current classification system stick - ex. Homo spp are all obligate bipedal, have substantially greater brain/body ratios and neurological complexity than our nearest genetic relatives, fashion tools designed for more than one-time useage, etc. IOW, a case can be made that Homo spp represent a unique ecomorph and are justifiably classified in their own genus. At what point (or even if) we draw the line depends on what we're measuring, IMO. I honestly haven't settled on an opinion one way or the other - although I lean to the reclassification based on genetics.
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Ben! Member (Idle past 1425 days) Posts: 1161 From: Hayward, CA Joined: |
A nit:
Actually, 'brain power' (without defining what it is) would be dependent both on volume and surface area:- the number of neurons depends much more on surface area than volume - the white matter connections between neurons depends much more on volume than surface area. But you're right; 'brain power' (operationally defined most often by our numerous 'intelligence tests') doesn't correlate with brain volume OR neuron number, and the smaller size of this creature's brain doesn't present any problem for explainin tool-making behavior. Here's a link to the abstract of an excellent article which uses comparative neuroanatomy and neuroscience to investigate just this type of thing.
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Ben! Member (Idle past 1425 days) Posts: 1161 From: Hayward, CA Joined: |
Since:
then it seems to me that the current classification scheme, which is basically a reconstruction of evolutionary history, is the one to use. But I do agree that, ideally (i.e. if we had mappings of these functions to genetics), genetic classification would be the best.
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1432 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
chimps are the closest, bonobos next, then gorillas ... (according to my latest info anyway )
bencip: thanks for the info. we are limited in our ability to understand by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}
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The Dread Dormammu Inactive Member |
I thought Bonobo's were closer than standard chimps. Where is this latest info you speak of? Did something change? I'm very interested.
By the way Welcome to the forum Bencip.
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The Dread Dormammu Inactive Member |
I had a Biology teacher who was intent on proving that birds should not be put in the same class as reptiles. He argued, quite perswasively, that we should abolish class Avis because all of the derived characteristics birds display can be found in reptiles. Migration, feathers, territorial songs, flight, warmblooded-ness, care for young etc.
Nevertheless becase birds seem so "unreptile-like" we decide to put them in an almost honorary class. Perhaps a similar thing is happening here? If we were able to look at apes and humans more objectively we might not have these problems. Is genetic analysis objective enough? Or does it miss the "important" differnces in functional abilites as bencip seems to suggest?
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Ben! Member (Idle past 1425 days) Posts: 1161 From: Hayward, CA Joined: |
Dread,
First off, thanks for the welcome to the forum. Since I don't know too much about the classification system and the , I am currently reading more about it. It's confusing... anyway, I'll post a reply after I've done a better job educating myself. I have been trying SO HARD to read before I speak, but this is an instance where I failed (in reply to Quetzal's post). So, time to read. Ben
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The Dread Dormammu Inactive Member |
Well thats the problem with cladistics in general isn't it? We can do genetic mapping and come up with a bunch of nice clades and we can compare morphology and come up with clades that usualy match up pretty nicely. OR we can do waht Aristotle did and classify things by how we think in our gut they ought to be classified. When we do this starfish wind up being more closely reated to earthworms than they are to us birds aren't reptiles and everythings a mess.
I have a strong hunch that our reluctance to place floresiensis closer to sapiens is more of the latter kind of cladistics.
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Quetzal Member (Idle past 5899 days) Posts: 3228 Joined: |
Hey bencip! Let me add my welcome to EvCForum.
then it seems to me that the current classification scheme, which is basically a reconstruction of evolutionary history, is the one to use. But I do agree that, ideally (i.e. if we had mappings of these functions to genetics), genetic classification would be the best. The issue is the "current classification scheme", based on morphology mostly, is being rapidly replaced by cladistics, which strives to come closer to the actual evolutionary relationship between different species, with a given clade representing the last common ancestor and all descendents. I think that cladistics probably in general provides a closer match with reality than the "old" style of taxonomy. However, The Great D put his/her finger directly on one of the more unusual and recent problems with cladistics: Class Reptilia is polyphyletic, and hence is invalid. If we go by the way cladistics is supposed to work, then just about everything from crocodilians to birds to shrews to monkeys to humans falls under Reptilia - as reptiles were everybody's last common ancestor. Cladists have thus had to invent new terms (such as Eutheria, Afrotheria, etc) to fix this and similar problems. However, we still use "Reptilia" and "Aves", for example, in "common useage" or perhaps as working terms because they are familiar, I guess. As to your comment concerning our current inability to map genetics to phenotype (which is what I assume you meant by "functional abilities"), I don't disagree with you. This is one of the main critiques of re/classification based solely on genetic distance. OTOH, genetics does at least provide a quantitative (vice interpretative morphology) basis for classifying different organisms - something that has been sadly lacking in taxonomy since Linnaeus. It's still early in the game. I consider the state of play to be analogous to the state of play of ecology back when MacArthur and Wilson developed the first mathematical model for ecology in the '70s - it might be incomplete or flawed, but at least it places things on a solid theoretical footing rather than the ad hoc way things have been done up to now.
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1432 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
I had thought so too, but was corrected here. It was Sylas and is in the discussion about neander DNA and how close to human the neander and chimps are relatively speaking.
http://EvC Forum: Comparisons of Neandertal mtDNA with modern humans and modern chimpanzees complex relationship not all on the same "baseline". we are limited in our ability to understand by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}
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John Williams Member (Idle past 5025 days) Posts: 157 From: Oregon, US Joined: |
Hopefully this remarkable find gets all the scientific study it deserves. I don't like the idea that Indonesian professor Jacob is keeping them (the bones of 7 tiny individuals) in a safe, locked away from other scientists. He May be correct that these bones represent a 100% human species, but if he is too ignorant to hand the bones over for study among international scientists, he is a fool. People like Jacob are the type of individuals who pose great obstacles to Science and knowledge. Hopefully Jacob will come to his 80-year old senses.
Tuff old birds like Jacob, are so selfishly ignorant and brainwashed in their own imaginations nothing could change them. I really hate how politics controls these sorts of things.
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Andya Primanda Inactive Member |
Hey! Let's not be too hard on him okay?
The fact is he signed a letter that stated he'd return those bones by 1 January. Prof Teuku Jacob's had enough international condemnation, thank you, and although I'm not in favour of his or the Australians' opinion, just give him the chance okay? He might even be correct! Besides, you must know that the Australian team had the bones for 1 year and they didn't even mention this to most of the Indonesian scientific community (except for the ones on their team). They could be considered as keeping a national treasure for themselves. How's that compared to Prof Jacob just borrowing the bones for a few months?? This message has been edited by Andya Primanda, 12-08-2004 12:21 PM
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John Williams Member (Idle past 5025 days) Posts: 157 From: Oregon, US Joined: |
hmm... I never thought of it that way.
I guess the thing that made me suspicious of Prof. Jacob was that he allegedly was known to keep skeletons in his closet(figuratively and literally). Perhaps it is really the media paintong him out to be an Ogre when in reality the Australians themselves are the ones who had the bones for a year without telling us. Why didn't the Australians test for DNA back then?
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Andya Primanda Inactive Member |
Well, he do has the reputation of keeping fossils for himself, but I hope all the media attention would persuade him to return the fossils after he's done with them.
Besides, Prof Jacob is familiar with both H. erectus and local archaic H. sapiens fossils while the Australians are archaeologists (Mike Morwood is a rock painting expert). Let's just keep track of the proceedings for the time being. And the DNA test... who knows, maybe they failed to recover any?
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