How China is rewriting the book on human origins
nature.com
nature.com
We're soon going to release a much stronger version of the site guidelines and start making it a lot clearer how unacceptable such behavior is on HN. If you want to abuse each other or blast your views at enemies, please go elsewhere. There's no intellectual curiosity in any of this, and the vast majority of us are here to avoid it.
The Out-of-Africa narrative has to be understood in this context, that it is a very positive narrative, that humans-as-humans developed just once in this tiny spot in Africa and then spread out around the world very recently, never interbred with other hominid species so they're all gone, and therefore we're all pretty much exactly the same.
What has been emerging especially now that genetic sequencing is becoming rapidly cheaper and more advanced at picking human genomes out of the genetic diaspora found in old fossils, is a much more complicated picture. The Chinese obviously have little need to adhere to US political correctness, so they're beginning to push the evidence that Asian hominid genes contributed to the emergence of modern humans/civilization.
The emerging picture to me is one of multiple waves of hominin advances spreading in a varied way and admixing with existing local populations. So there's pretty clearly an ancient Out-of-Africa wave of homo erectus(who were far more advanced than previously acknowledged), a possible evolution of "homo erectus+" and wave out of Asia, and likely an "Out of Arabia" mix of neanderthals and AMHs in the Levant, all of which intermixed imperfectly. The Neanderthals themselves look plausibly responsible for some advances in human civilization (Mousterians)
What you wind up with is a far more complex picture of human evolution and far more significant and long-standing difference between human populations, which I think requires a new narrative and philosophy for what human equality means and a way to ground it on something more fundamental than a wished-for genetic similarity.
I also love following the human origin story (it's probably the scientific topic outside my field of study I read up on the most), and I have to admit I really don't like the way you framed your comment. You are following the pattern of many other anti-academics who paint a strawman of simple-minded scientists who miss obvious conclusions for some ulterior purpose. I'm sure you're not purposefully doing it, but you have to understand that 1000s of people have devoted their life to studying this topic, and there isn't some conspiracy to hide the truth.
It's been known for years that modern humans have bred with other hominid species, and the theories have been changing to reflect this. A lot of evidence of early human settlements are 20 feet under water today, so it's a surprisingly tough study of topic. You're right that genetic testing has been changing our understanding of things, but this is a recent development. No one is trying to hide anything or avoid topics of study; everything is widely written about, including in pop-literature like this excellent book (which has a very candid chapter on variations in human intelligence, btw): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/014303832X
No man, or woman, on this planet, is free from ideological bias.
They led a life with prevalent poverty and lack of food, and almost any kind of living supplies. They all need to work hard. I am not surprised that an older generation Chinese call most US people lazy.
As for whether there is a racism judgement, I dont know. You are most close to your dad. :)
I'm sorry but that sounds mighty dangerous. Human equality was never grounded in genetic similarity; you do not need to know that your salad mix of ancestors are different to others to understand that every human today deserves equality. Sure groups of people may be different - like culture - but once we start thinking that one is better than the other, we get hierarchy, and we get superiority. It's not as if it doesn't exist today at varying degrees but careful that it doesn't gain mass momentum. It's a slippery slope and one we've gone down far too often.
As with so many sociological effects caused by technology and knowledge, there's a tradition of science fiction that deals with this concept. Is a human level AI intelligence human, or something else? If it's something else, does it deserve the same rights as a human? If we uplift a species, do we expand the classification of "human" to cover that as well? What does it mean to be human? We can inch along and slowly change our laws based on the understandings we have right now, or we can attempt to leap-frog that thinking and provide a framework for protecting intelligent species (to whatever degree) and try to take a more holistic approach to this before it becomes a mess. This is a problem we will have to deal with eventually, should we be so lucky to survive that long.
Here's a less extreme (but still wild) scenario: A tribe of neanderthals is discovered. Do they deserve human rights? I could see some not very good things happening in the short time before consensus formed around that answer, but what, really makes neanderthals more deserving than Gorillas, dolphins, cows, or cats and dogs? We, as a species and as nations (mostly, there are exceptions) have been able to punt on this question because it may upset the way we currently function, but we owe it to ourselves to answer why we should care more about a neanderthal than a cow (if we should).
How is this the top comment?
The call is coming from inside the house.
Out of Africa is true, but on a different timescale than more recent adaptations like skin color. You can walk back from eastern Asia to South Africa in well under a year. Assuming migration was completely in one direction is a laymen misunderstanding of long standing theory's. It's a density argument where you need populations in an area before there is any trace over these timescales.
Consider some early hominid decides to follow the rising sun and ends up in Beijing. Great, well unless he finds someone else there he is going to live out his life and die without children. Even a small group does the same, without sufficient genetic diversity or immigrants they die out fairly quickly or are simply overwhelmed by the next wave.
Also, 'humans' tend to make it safer for other humans in the area by killing off large predators, finding edible plants etc.
PS: 70,000bce - 1,600,000bce is a very long time period. But, 1.6 million years ago South East Asia already had human ancestors and fire use is ~1.5 million years old.
I think there is a history of contorting facts about world to work well with moral or political goals, often well meaning. There’s the connection between homogenous Out Of Africa humanity to promote egality and fraternity, directly opposite nazi race theories. The Nazi race and culture theories were themselves contortions to support nazi political and moral agendas.
Feminism did it, with the nature-nurture stuff. To some extent, gay rights did it with the “born like this slogan.”
The effects on our theories of the world, popular or scientific, can outlast the political need by generations.
What I don't understand is, the article also says the genetical picture still points to the established ("old") theories centering on Africa? As someone only reading about the subject on the side whenever something interesting comes up I'm slightly confused by this aspect of the article.
I'm not confused about there not being a linear but a convoluted story - I never thought there was (except when I was fresh out of an East German school quite some time ago and everything being a linear progress story eventually leading to communism was quite clear :) ).
Also always worth remembering that the classification as eg sapiens, heidelbergensis or erectus is not one checklist that always ticks the same boxes. In each of these groups defined by us on the basis of some common features but there is much variation. And of course there are regional or temporal differences within eg sapiens.
Then you have parallel evolutions, interbreeding, fakes, unclear dating, and you never know if a particular specimen that you find really has 'typical ' features and genes for that time and space, eg it could have been that one lady/guy that happened to have wandered far from where the rest of its group remained, or could have been somewhat different. Eg imagine the only specimen that remains from our era is an inbred Egyptian pharaoh or someone with down syndrome. Those are bad examples as you could probably figure such things somewhat from the DNA, but it's not so clear for every condition, eg if epigenetics* had some bigger effect.
* = A layer on your genes that De/activates or strengthens/weakens their effects and that we barely understand. The famous example is that data on Danish military recruits, which were measured upon entry into service, showed that if a man suffers starvation/malnutrition in his childhood his sons (!) will on average be less tall than others of their generation. One generation is not enough for genetic selection, so it must be a change in epigenetics.
Chimpanzee and human DNA are 96 to 99% identical. Does the 97% DNA match between human and the African fossil have any significance at all?
It is clear that just a couple of percent different is a HUGE difference in animals (I am including humans as animals).
So, while it is clear that there is some relationship, the percentage of DNA matches does not seem like strong evidence of "this follows from that" and seems more like "this and that share common previous DNA".
And of course there is a political and social-responsibility component to this, even though people pretend like scientist are immune to politics or social trends.
My takeaway is that there is new fossil evidence, which I think should excite researchers everywhere. Instead, the article ends on a researcher expressing cautionary restraint.
What am I missing? Is fossil evidence not reliable? Does this new evidence challenge conventional wisdom about human evolution?
> Some Western researchers suggest that there is a hint of nationalism in Chinese palaeontologists' support for continuity. “The Chinese — they do not accept the idea that H. sapiens evolved in Africa,” says one researcher. “They want everything to come from China.”
> Chinese researchers reject such allegations. “This has nothing to do with nationalism,” says Wu. It's all about the evidence — the transitional fossils and archaeological artefacts, he says. “Everything points to continuous evolution in China from H. erectus to modern human.”
> But the continuity-with-hybridization model is countered by overwhelming genetic data that point to Africa as the wellspring of modern humans. Studies of Chinese populations show that 97.4% of their genetic make-up is from ancestral modern humans from Africa [...]
> “If there had been significant contributions from Chinese H. erectus, they would show up in the genetic data,” says Li Hui, a population geneticist at Fudan University in Shanghai.
It's basically the equivalent of climate deniers vs climate change, with the deniers' funding basically coming from a single government.
There's intense nationalism (and racism) at play here, and the Chinese government isn't funding pure science so much as it is funding science with the intent of finding a specific result.
I'm not a paleontologist, but I've lived and studied International Relations in China (at Tsinghua University, where many of China's leaders studied), and I saw first hand how research was corrupted and self-regulated to draw certain conclusions that agreed with the Government's known or perceived position. This was often felt to be necessary to protect funding and academic positions (one professor of mine in private confessed to me that "80% of what I say is true, and the rest I say for reasons we all know").
I know there is strong nationalistic beliefs around human origins in China as well, and suspect strongly the same forces that affect IR academic research are at play here.
Fake fossils are also extremely common in China[1][2], and widespread racism, especially toward black people, is difficult to overstate[3] (which leaves many Chinese refusing to believe they may have originated in Africa).
There's a good reason many paleontologists outside of China are taking many of these studies and theories with a China-sized grain of salt. That isn't to say that there isn't good science being done in China as well. But sometimes it can be difficult to separate the 20% from the 80%, and when findings seem to draw conclusions that the Government wanted to see all along, they're rightly viewed highly suspiciously.
[1] https://www.paleodirect.com/fake-chinese-fossils-fossil-forg...
[2] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-fake-fossils-p...
[3] http://thediplomat.com/2016/06/racism-with-chinese-character...
When China was promoting the idea of it controlling the South China Sea, suddenly my feed was full of bullshit academic articles about finding Chinese culture artifacts on those not-really islands. As well as a fabled 600 year old book that no longer exists. Its clear this was done by the CCP to help their claim of those islands.
Back in the old days China made propagandist attacks on western medicine and cooked the books on its traditional medicine, which was administered at the time and still today in many/some cases. It was almost all fraud. They weren't claiming a little bit of zing from Ginseng or a bit of pain relief from massage or acupuncture but cancer cures and such using roots and stews.
No, it's not. That "one researcher" made an opinion that he thinks nationalism is at play. “They want everything to come from China.” is literally an opinion.
> but I've lived and studied International Relations in China (at Tsinghua University, where many of China's leaders studied), and I saw first hand how research was corrupted and self-regulated to draw certain conclusions that agreed with the Government's known or perceived position.
That's anecdotal. The snippet I included, directly after the nationalist's opinion, is a Chinese guy (part of the "they" I assume) at a Chinese university, disagreeing with him. Do you have actual numbers of how widespread the nationalist agenda on this particular issue is? Or is this just more opinion? Also, that sounds similar to lots of PhD's lives trying to get funding from their government.
>I know there is strong nationalistic beliefs around human origins in China as well, and suspect strongly the same forces that affect IR academic research are at play here. Fake fossils are also extremely common in China[1][2], and widespread racism, especially toward black people, is difficult to overstate[3] (which leaves many Chinese refusing to believe they may have originated in Africa).
I could replace "China" with "Japan", who aren't exactly strangers to a similar agenda, heck even the NYT commented on it. But I don't claim to assume the whole country thinks that way because I doubt there are numbers on it.
On the other hand, it is moronic to think it "comes down" to nationalism. It is utterly disrespectful to dozens of scientists devoting their careers to the research. As the article says itself, it is a 'fuzzy picture', as many fields still are, like evolutionary biology. Darwin's theory of natural selection is regarded as mostly correct. That doesn't mean Lamarck's theory is completely wrong. If you have studied epigenetics, you would have re-considered all you had learned on evolutionary biology. That is how science progresses.
Quote from the Chinese researcher. Essentially they're saying that the modern human evolved in China, even though:
"Studies of Chinese populations show that 97.4% of their genetic make-up is from ancestral modern humans from Africa, with the rest coming from extinct forms such as Neanderthals and Denisovans"
> Essentially they're saying that the modern human evolved in China
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0214/14022014-inter...
Unless you're saying that two identical homo sapiens groups evolved in parallel in Africa and Asia, they're saying homo sapiens came from Asia.
http://www.nature.com/news/535218a-i2-jpg-7.37680?article=1....
So its about Asians being on their own branch (also out of Africa, earlier) according to this, not Asia as the original origin.
From the text:
> Stringer even suggests that H. heidelbergensis might have originated in Asia and then spread to other continents.
> But many researchers, including most Chinese palaeontologists, contend that the materials from China are different from European and African H. heidelbergensis fossils, despite some apparent similarities.
So I read this that the Chinese opinion is explicitly not that they are the origin for all, only that they are on their own branch.
And this is quite clear:
> Most Chinese palaeontologists — and a few ardent supporters from the West — think that the transitional fossils are evidence that Peking Man was an ancestor of modern Asian people.
It says "of modern Asian people".
> In this model, known as multiregionalism or continuity with hybridization, hominins descended from H. erectus in Asia interbred with incoming groups from Africa and other parts of Eurasia, and their progeny gave rise to the ancestors of modern east Asians, says Wu.
Prominent Japanese archaeologist Shinichi Fujimura has been caught red-handed burying artifacts at a site, prompting demands for a review of the nation's Palaeolithic record. Nicknamed "God's Hands" by colleagues who marveled at his luck in locating ancient sites, Fujimura was senior director at the Tohoku Paleolithic Institute. His discovery of artifacts dated to the early Palaeolithic period (600,000-120,000 years ago) at the Kamitakamori ruins in Miyagi Prefecture in 1994 established the site as Japan's oldest. Fujimura's team recently made headlines again following discovery of postholes that provided evidence for early Palaeolithic dwellings at Kamitakamori.
Fujimura's hoax, occurring less than a month after his team's headline-making posthole discovery, was exposed by Japan's Mainichi Shimbun newspaper, which published three photographs on its front page of him deliberately burying 61 artifacts on the Kamitakamori site. The artifacts were taken by Fujimura from earlier excavations. He has also confessed to deliberately burying artifacts at the Palaeolithic site of Soshinfudozaka, but insists his other discoveries were authentic.
A lot of questionable finds and outright hoaxes tie into ethnic, nationalist, or local pride. (2)
China has a record of attempting to use historical/archeological artifacts to establish modern-day territorial claims (3):
China’s archaeological work in disputed islands also extends to the Spratly Island chain, which it disputes with the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan. China has identified roughly 200 different underwater “cultural heritage sites” between the Spratlys and the Paracels, and has been conducting archaeological explorations in the Spratlys since at least 2013.
Maritime archaeology seems like an innocuous enough field. Yet Kaogu-01’s deployment close to the site of a battle between China and Vietnam in an island chain still claimed by the latter, as well as ongoing archaeological work in the disputed Spratly Island chain, indicate that China may see a secondary, political purpose in expanding its maritime archaeological industry, namely strengthening China’s claims to disputed areas in the South China Sea.
1. http://archive.archaeology.org/0101/newsbriefs/godshands.htm...
2. http://www.anonymousswisscollector.com/2014/10/faking-the-pa...
3. http://thediplomat.com/2015/07/archaeology-and-the-south-chi...
1. They have had a highly developed culture since at least 5000 years (but please don't tell them that their bone carvings can't compete with what the Egyptians had)
2. Their culture developed totally independent and without exchange with other cultures and civilizations in the West. (Don't mention for example the Tarim mummies, this is insulting for Chinese: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarim_mummies )
3. Chinese always hated and rejected the idea that they developed from African/black ancestors. So this is really a question that is asked in China with a very strong bias.
They're not very far behind the West in that regard. Piltdown man was only discredited in 1953...
> Despite the different interpretations of the Chinese fossil record, everybody agrees that the evolutionary tale in Asia is much more interesting than people appreciated before. But the details remain fuzzy, because so few researchers have excavated in Asia.
> When they have, the results have been startling.
> ...
> But all agree that Asia — the largest continent on Earth — has a lot more to offer in terms of unravelling the human story. “The centre of gravity,” says Petraglia[0], “is shifting eastward.”
Note that the person cited last telling you about a shift to the East is not Chinese.
[0] Prof. Michael Petraglia: An archaeologist at the University of Oxford, UK. - http://www.arch.ox.ac.uk/MP1.html and http://www.shh.mpg.de/178394/petraglia
China is a one party state with dictatorial control over pretty much everything. Do you really think those guys have any check against CCP thugs telling them what to publish? Being a good scientist takes a back seat to your survival and the survival of your family. Most people aren't willing to be tortured or killed for their views.
For example, in the article, Dr. Li Hui apparently disagrees with the continuity-with-hybridization model. Dr. Li Hui works in Fudan University, Shanghai.
I did biology research in Beijing for two years in 1990's. My advisor openly challenged the research of a "government-sponsored" professor in department meetings. Many professors supported her, my advisor. I don't think she got any "special" treatments from the government. The last time I heard from her, she was enjoying her time after retirement.
There are problems with scientific freedom in the U.S. related to funding and job retention. Even if the situation in China isn't as bad as it used to be, it's still not good.
Authorities also tightened press restrictions. The State Administration of Press Publication, Radio, Film, and Television issued a directive in July requiring that Chinese journalists sign an agreement stating that they will not release unpublished information without prior approval from their employers and requiring that they pass political ideology exams before they can be issued official press cards.
In July, the CCP’s disciplinary commission announced that researchers at the central Chinese Academic of Social Sciences had been “infiltrated by foreign forces” and participated in “illegal collusion” during politically sensitive periods. The party subsequently issued a rule that would make ideological evaluation a top requirement for assessing CASS researchers; those who fail are to be expelled.
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2015/country-chapters/china...
Academic Fraud in China:
http://www.chinesemedicalnews.com/2015/03/academic-fraud-in-...
The open access publisher BioMedCentral has this week announced the retraction of 43 medical journal publications by Chinese researchers after it discovered widespread peer review fraud. Most of the articles were submitted by medical researchers at universities in China, including China Medical University, Sichuan University, Shandong University and Jiaotong University Medical School.
Including uncivil swipes like that in your arguments here will eventually get you banned, so please be scrupulously civil from now on, especially when commenting on inflammatory topics and/or when you think someone else is wrong.