Interesting discussion of this old question in the Guardian.

Just 300,000 years ago – a blink in evolutionary time – at least nine species of humans wandered the planet. Today, only our own, Homo sapiens, remains. And this raises one of the biggest questions in the story of human evolution: where did everyone else go?

“It’s not a coincidence that several of them disappeared around the time that Homo sapiens started to spread out of Africa and around the rest of the world,” says Prof Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London. “What we don’t know is if that was a direct connection.”

There are many theories around the disappearance of our human cousins, and limited evidence to decipher exactly what happened. But recent studies are providing tantalising clues.

Full Article

Bubblecar said:

Interesting discussion of this old question in the Guardian.

Just 300,000 years ago – a blink in evolutionary time – at least nine species of humans wandered the planet. Today, only our own, Homo sapiens, remains. And this raises one of the biggest questions in the story of human evolution: where did everyone else go?

“It’s not a coincidence that several of them disappeared around the time that Homo sapiens started to spread out of Africa and around the rest of the world,” says Prof Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London. “What we don’t know is if that was a direct connection.”

There are many theories around the disappearance of our human cousins, and limited evidence to decipher exactly what happened. But recent studies are providing tantalising clues.

Full Article

I agree that the article is interesting.

Michael V said:

Bubblecar said:

Interesting discussion of this old question in the Guardian.

Just 300,000 years ago – a blink in evolutionary time – at least nine species of humans wandered the planet. Today, only our own, Homo sapiens, remains. And this raises one of the biggest questions in the story of human evolution: where did everyone else go?

“It’s not a coincidence that several of them disappeared around the time that Homo sapiens started to spread out of Africa and around the rest of the world,” says Prof Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London. “What we don’t know is if that was a direct connection.”

There are many theories around the disappearance of our human cousins, and limited evidence to decipher exactly what happened. But recent studies are providing tantalising clues.

Full Article

I agree that the article is interesting.

I’ll give it a good read later.
Things to do.

Don’t worry soon Homo sapiens won’t be the last human species left¡

SCIENCE said:

Don’t worry soon Homo sapiens won’t be the last human species left¡

and we’ll take a lot of other species with us.

roughbarked said:

SCIENCE said:

Don’t worry soon Homo sapiens won’t be the last human species left¡

and we’ll take a lot of other species with us.

Why investigators are frightened to highlight the known homicidal tendencies of H. sapiens I really don’t know. Look what we do to our own species when there is the slightest difference in appearance and/or culture. You only need look at recent history with indigenous peoples and Europeans, or of the Nazis and the Jews, etc., etc., etc.

People of different cultures can live together for generations, then something happens and one culture will try to eliminate the other. Those cultures living in small groups are in the greatest danger from a neighboring culture living in larger groups and possibly having better weapons. The only reason some groups survive the genocidal assaults is due to farming, resulting in larger populations that are widespread and communication between groups much better.

Culture is one of the biggest bullshit justifications for doing anything.

I have a number of opinions about this.
Some contradictory.

If a critter has descendants, did it really go extinct?

dv said:

If a critter has descendants, did it really go extinct?

Good point.

dv said:

If a critter has descendants, did it really go extinct?

I think our descendants go way back before Homo. So how much DNA would make you a descendant?

PermeateFree said:

dv said:

If a critter has descendants, did it really go extinct?

I think our descendants go way back before Homo. So how much DNA would make you a descendant?

Did you mean ancestors?

It would be unrealistic to expect several different species of humans to still exist unless they’d managed to maintain sufficient geographic isolation to this day, which was never on the cards.

I think the reason Homo sapiens prevailed is because they were the best suited to living in large groups. Larger groups will absorb the smaller groups or push them to the inhospitable margins.

dv said:

PermeateFree said:

dv said:

If a critter has descendants, did it really go extinct?

I think our descendants go way back before Homo. So how much DNA would make you a descendant?

Did you mean ancestors?

or antecedents.

Bubblecar said:

It would be unrealistic to expect several different species of humans to still exist unless they’d managed to maintain sufficient geographic isolation to this day, which was never on the cards.

I think the reason Homo sapiens prevailed is because they were the best suited to living in large groups. Larger groups will absorb the smaller groups or push them to the inhospitable margins.

Or just the most violent and brutal and ruthless thus eradicating the competition as evidenced by current and recent international entertainment¡

Bubblecar said:

It would be unrealistic to expect several different species of humans to still exist unless they’d managed to maintain sufficient geographic isolation to this day, which was never on the cards.

I think the reason Homo sapiens prevailed is because they were the best suited to living in large groups. Larger groups will absorb the smaller groups or push them to the inhospitable margins.

And then you get a lone male living off his rat cunning and wits.

SCIENCE said:

Bubblecar said:

It would be unrealistic to expect several different species of humans to still exist unless they’d managed to maintain sufficient geographic isolation to this day, which was never on the cards.

I think the reason Homo sapiens prevailed is because they were the best suited to living in large groups. Larger groups will absorb the smaller groups or push them to the inhospitable margins.

Or just the most violent and brutal and ruthless thus eradicating the competition as evidenced by current and recent international entertainment¡

nasty, brutish and probably tall.

JudgeMental said:

dv said:

PermeateFree said:

I think our descendants go way back before Homo. So how much DNA would make you a descendant?

Did you mean ancestors?

or antecedents.

Would a condom be an anticedent?

SCIENCE said:

Bubblecar said:

It would be unrealistic to expect several different species of humans to still exist unless they’d managed to maintain sufficient geographic isolation to this day, which was never on the cards.

I think the reason Homo sapiens prevailed is because they were the best suited to living in large groups. Larger groups will absorb the smaller groups or push them to the inhospitable margins.

Or just the most violent and brutal and ruthless thus eradicating the competition as evidenced by current and recent international entertainment¡

Compared to chimpanzees, humans are actually very peaceable creatures. It is what allows us to live in large groups.

SCIENCE said:

Bubblecar said:

It would be unrealistic to expect several different species of humans to still exist unless they’d managed to maintain sufficient geographic isolation to this day, which was never on the cards.

I think the reason Homo sapiens prevailed is because they were the best suited to living in large groups. Larger groups will absorb the smaller groups or push them to the inhospitable margins.

Or just the most violent and brutal and ruthless thus eradicating the competition as evidenced by current and recent international entertainment¡

Not necessarily. no. In regard to conflict of that kind, they didn’t have to be the most habitually violent, just the most efficiently violent.

The fact that they were able to live in larger groups suggests that early H.sapiens were more effectively sociable, and thus better able to live relatively peacefully, but also able to organise more efficient aggression against other groups when such occasions arose.

SCIENCE said:

Bubblecar said:

It would be unrealistic to expect several different species of humans to still exist unless they’d managed to maintain sufficient geographic isolation to this day, which was never on the cards.

I think the reason Homo sapiens prevailed is because they were the best suited to living in large groups. Larger groups will absorb the smaller groups or push them to the inhospitable margins.

Or just the most violent and brutal and ruthless thus eradicating the competition as evidenced by current and recent international entertainment¡

They might have just got lucky. Not everything has an identifiable cause. Why did Australia beat India yesterday? Because of their superior eyebrow ridges and elongate occipital tori? Sometimes shit just happens.

dv said:

SCIENCE said:

Bubblecar said:

It would be unrealistic to expect several different species of humans to still exist unless they’d managed to maintain sufficient geographic isolation to this day, which was never on the cards.

I think the reason Homo sapiens prevailed is because they were the best suited to living in large groups. Larger groups will absorb the smaller groups or push them to the inhospitable margins.

Or just the most violent and brutal and ruthless thus eradicating the competition as evidenced by current and recent international entertainment¡

They might have just got lucky. Not everything has an identifiable cause. Why did Australia beat India yesterday? Because of their superior eyebrow ridges and elongate occipital tori? Sometimes shit just happens.

OTOH the differences in group sizes between these species is reasonably well attested by the evidence.

Your cricket analogy involves equal-sized teams.

party_pants said:

SCIENCE said:

Bubblecar said:

It would be unrealistic to expect several different species of humans to still exist unless they’d managed to maintain sufficient geographic isolation to this day, which was never on the cards.

I think the reason Homo sapiens prevailed is because they were the best suited to living in large groups. Larger groups will absorb the smaller groups or push them to the inhospitable margins.

Or just the most violent and brutal and ruthless thus eradicating the competition as evidenced by current and recent international entertainment¡

Compared to chimpanzees, humans are actually very peaceable creatures. It is what allows us to live in large groups.

Bonobo chimpanzees are very sociable, arguably more so than most people, but they have a matriarchal society.

Bubblecar said:

dv said:

SCIENCE said:

Or just the most violent and brutal and ruthless thus eradicating the competition as evidenced by current and recent international entertainment¡

They might have just got lucky. Not everything has an identifiable cause. Why did Australia beat India yesterday? Because of their superior eyebrow ridges and elongate occipital tori? Sometimes shit just happens.

OTOH the differences in group sizes between these species is reasonably well attested by the evidence.

Your cricket analogy involves equal-sized teams.

Fair dos.

Moreover it does seem that on a global scale at the time, H sap sap had the numbers and range. They remained the form that controlled the heartland in Africa, and they had already spread across much of Afro-Eurasia by the time the Neanderthals and Denisovians disappeared, whereas Neanderthals never expanded out of Europe and Western Asia, and the Denisovians never beyond Eastern and Central Asia.

dv said:

Bubblecar said:

dv said:

They might have just got lucky. Not everything has an identifiable cause. Why did Australia beat India yesterday? Because of their superior eyebrow ridges and elongate occipital tori? Sometimes shit just happens.

OTOH the differences in group sizes between these species is reasonably well attested by the evidence.

Your cricket analogy involves equal-sized teams.

Fair dos.

Moreover it does seem that on a global scale at the time, H sap sap had the numbers and range. They remained the form that controlled the heartland in Africa, and they had already spread across much of Afro-Eurasia by the time the Neanderthals and Denisovians disappeared, whereas Neanderthals never expanded out of Europe and Western Asia, and the Denisovians never beyond Eastern and Central Asia.

Woo up there pilgrim, I’m still working on occipital tori.

Peak Warming Man said:

dv said:

Bubblecar said:

OTOH the differences in group sizes between these species is reasonably well attested by the evidence.

Your cricket analogy involves equal-sized teams.

Fair dos.

Moreover it does seem that on a global scale at the time, H sap sap had the numbers and range. They remained the form that controlled the heartland in Africa, and they had already spread across much of Afro-Eurasia by the time the Neanderthals and Denisovians disappeared, whereas Neanderthals never expanded out of Europe and Western Asia, and the Denisovians never beyond Eastern and Central Asia.

Woo up there pilgrim, I’m still working on occipital tori.

She was in ninety thousand two hundred and ten.

Peak Warming Man said:

Bubblecar said:

It would be unrealistic to expect several different species of humans to still exist unless they’d managed to maintain sufficient geographic isolation to this day, which was never on the cards.

I think the reason Homo sapiens prevailed is because they were the best suited to living in large groups. Larger groups will absorb the smaller groups or push them to the inhospitable margins.

And then you get a lone male living off his rat cunning and wits.

H. redoubticus

dv said:

Peak Warming Man said:

Bubblecar said:

It would be unrealistic to expect several different species of humans to still exist unless they’d managed to maintain sufficient geographic isolation to this day, which was never on the cards.

I think the reason Homo sapiens prevailed is because they were the best suited to living in large groups. Larger groups will absorb the smaller groups or push them to the inhospitable margins.

And then you get a lone male living off his rat cunning and wits.

H. redoubticus

:)

On the other hand, Erectus also spread into Europe and Asia, and H. sap sap beat the shit out of it.

To contextualise this:
Sapiens, Denisovians and Neanderthals were all descended from Homo heidelbergensis. They diverged some 400000 and remerged through interbreeding in the last 100000 years. The extent of interbreeding suggests that we can accept that they were all subspecies rather than separate species per the biological species model definition. Heidelbergensis was pretty “modern human” compared to say Erectus or Ergaster.

Erectus and the Heidelbergensis line diverged more like 1.5 million years ago. There’s scant evidence of interbreeding and such evidence as exists is controversial. Although not much is known about Floresiensis, it’s clear enough that its line and ours diverged millions of years ago, and that it did not survive long after H sap sap showed up.

dv said:

On the other hand, Erectus also spread into Europe and Asia, and H. sap sap beat the shit out of it.

To contextualise this:
Sapiens, Denisovians and Neanderthals were all descended from Homo heidelbergensis. They diverged some 400000 and remerged through interbreeding in the last 100000 years. The extent of interbreeding suggests that we can accept that they were all subspecies rather than separate species per the biological species model definition. Heidelbergensis was pretty “modern human” compared to say Erectus or Ergaster.

Erectus and the Heidelbergensis line diverged more like 1.5 million years ago. There’s scant evidence of interbreeding and such evidence as exists is controversial. Although not much is known about Floresiensis, it’s clear enough that its line and ours diverged millions of years ago, and that it did not survive long after H sap sap showed up.

So H.sap is a genocidal racist?

roughbarked said:

dv said:

On the other hand, Erectus also spread into Europe and Asia, and H. sap sap beat the shit out of it.

To contextualise this:
Sapiens, Denisovians and Neanderthals were all descended from Homo heidelbergensis. They diverged some 400000 and remerged through interbreeding in the last 100000 years. The extent of interbreeding suggests that we can accept that they were all subspecies rather than separate species per the biological species model definition. Heidelbergensis was pretty “modern human” compared to say Erectus or Ergaster.

Erectus and the Heidelbergensis line diverged more like 1.5 million years ago. There’s scant evidence of interbreeding and such evidence as exists is controversial. Although not much is known about Floresiensis, it’s clear enough that its line and ours diverged millions of years ago, and that it did not survive long after H sap sap showed up.

So H.sap is a genocidal racist?

I think that being specieist is fine.