It also "muddies the waters" on long-standing assumptions that early humans dispersed from Africa, said Michael Petraglia, director of Griffith University's Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, who was not involved in the study.

"There's a big change potentially happening here, where east Asia is now playing a very key role in hominin evolution," he told the Agence France-Presse.

Yeah, I've always thought it was like how we thought there were "cavemen" when caves were just a great place to preserve archeological evidence.

Humans have been thru a lot of ice ages, and Africa is like the place to ride out an ice age. Especially the recent ones where the Sarrah was a rainforest.

It's incredibly possible that hominids evolved somewhere else, and just died out everywhere except Africa. And even more likely that if it happened once, it happened multiple times.

Doesn't change anything, all modern humans almost definitely came from Africa, it's just that we don't know for sure where we came from first. It's just kind of a chicken/egg thing anyways.

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 36 points 1 week ago (1 children)

we don't know for sure where they came from first

I mean the preponderance of evidence says Africa, great rift valley.

This "out of Asia" hypothesis has been pushed for decades with almost no evidence supporting it, while there is an enormous amount of evidence coming from Africa, which is and always has been the center of hominid diversity.

The thing about fossil evidence is that it is massively subjective in terms of it's interpretation. It's not cut and dry like DNA evidence. It fundamentally relies on manual, human interpretation. A bit less so for plant fossils because plant tissues have chemistry that fossilize far more effectively than animal tissues.

This is also not a particularly "good" fossil. It's not an intact or partially intact skull. It's a crushed skull. And look careful at the caveats the fairly salacious article gives, noting that scientists outside of the research group presenting the results don't agree with their conclusions.

[–] Akasazh@feddit.nl 8 points 1 week ago

China is heavily invested in promoting the 'out of Asia' hypothesis for a plethora of reasons, one of the main one is not wanting to be of African descent.

It's very healthy to be a bit sceptic about this type of research.

Note that I won't claim this research is faulty, being sceptic against bold claims is generally a good idea.

[–] Krudler@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I'm not an expert by any means, but I read the study linked, and this sounds like such a massive stretch. They have one data sample which they blended with a previous data sample, added in a huge amount of assumptions, then drew a conclusion they were looking for.

[–] Insekticus@aussie.zone 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Also, from a scientific point of view, Chinese research has a strong history of just making shit up. They're one of the biggest polluters in journal articles with irreproducible research, illogical conclusions, and major conflicts of interest.

When their autocratic government has its hands in everything, you can't trust anything.

Edit: just a little source before anyone asks https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2891906/

[–] Krudler@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

You're putting a lot more politely than I really was thinking lol

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

I mean, they were shit for a very long period of time. But at least in my domain they've (I think?) gotten much better. I wouldn't cite any Chinese research in my work from 10-20 years go. These days, I really need to scrutinize something. There is still definitely a paper mill aspect to what I read (I was reviewing a paper as a referee the other day and I swore I was missing it, until like, the 5th re-read, and yes. They had no N for their sample size), but like, there definitely has been a shift.

[–] T00l_shed@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Well, since you're source isn't from the Chinese government, it will be taken by some as western propaganda

[–] state_electrician@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 week ago

This is exactly my immediate reaction. Whenever they find something amazing in China I just assume they're making shit up again.

[–] ultranaut@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That's kind of how it works with these things. There's not many samples to work with. One of the big reasons there's been so much revision and change over the past few decades is more samples have been found or existing ones have been re-examined using new techniques. Those earlier ideas were frequently based off just a few bone fragments and a whole lot of extrapolation.

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

It was shocking to learn how few fossils and fragments we have, hominid and otherwise.

[–] 58008@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

If the first person to write this headline had patented it back in the day, they'd be richer than 10 Jeff Bezoses by now.