Archaic Homo sapiens

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As archaic Homo sapiens (also: early anatomically modern humans ) are fossils of the genus Homo indicated that their dating and their appearance after (as an early, primitive "ancient" ) copies of the type Homo sapiens to be interpreted. The oldest finds so far come from the Djebel Irhoud ( Morocco ) and were dated to an age of around 300,000 years. With the help of long bones , the height of the early anatomically modern humans could be reconstructed; it was therefore approximately 177 cm.

Expansion of anatomically modern humans starting from East Africa (red, only the earlier route is entered; approx. 125,000 BC). The previous colonization by Homo erectus (yellow) and Neanderthals (ocher) - the Denisova man is missing due to the still uncertain data situation - are separated by color; the numbers are years ahead of today.

Although fossils and genetic material analyzes ( molecular clock ) can be used to deduce how long the anatomically modern human has already existed (genetic material analyzes prove the existence at least between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago), the period of time is not clearly defined as the epoch of this "Archaic" Homo sapiens is called. Therefore, some researchers describe certain finds - despite different species names for these fossils - as "archaic forms" of Homo sapiens (a procedure that would lead to morpho species in recent species ), while other researchers rate the same finds in terms of a chronospecies , so the assign older finds to a predecessor species to the younger one.

In 1903 Ludwig Wilser had also reintroduced the designation Homo primigenius ("original man") for a hypothetical prehistoric man in paleoanthropology , which Ernst Haeckel had already proposed in 1868 . This designation was used repeatedly in the following years - in connection with fossil finds that are today assigned to the Neanderthal - to classify the fossils in time.

Scientific name ( Homo sapiens ) and nomenclature type

The oldest surviving demarcation of humans from animals comes from Aristotle (384–322 BC). In his work On the Parts of Animals , he mentions in Book IV that instead of front legs, humans have arms and hands. In addition, humans are the only animals that stand upright - in accordance with their god-like nature and their god-like nature, to which it is due to think and to judge rationally. According to Aristotle, there are three main characteristics that distinguish humans from all other living beings: first, the release of the front extremities from direct assistance in locomotion , second, the upright gait, and third, intellectual abilities. After the "rediscovery" of Aristotle's writings, they became the basis of scholastic science practiced at universities in the High Middle Ages , but even open-minded naturalists such as Conrad Gessner and Francis Willughby fell behind Aristotle by placing people apart from any classification. Johannes Johnstonus, on the other hand, was one of the first European taxonomists in his work Thaumatographia naturalis in 1632 , who at least compared individual characteristics of humans with those of animals.

Description of the human being in the 1st edition of Linnés Systema Naturæ

It was not until Carl von Linné in his writing Systema Naturae in 1735 that humans were again assigned to the animal kingdom, initially in the order Anthropomorpha (human figures) introduced by John Ray , which was part of the Quadrupedia (four-footed) class. However, in contrast to his usual approach, Linnaeus also dispensed with a description of the genus Homo based on physical characteristics , but noted: "Nosce te ipsum" ("Know yourself"). Linnaeus therefore assumed - like, for example, the English lexicographer Samuel Johnson - that everyone knows exactly what a person is; Johnson defined “man” as a “human being” in his Dictionary of the English Language in 1755 and “human” as “having the qualities of a man”. Linné's system of humans only changed significantly in 1758, with the appearance of the 10th edition: on the one hand, he referred to humans as Homo sapiens for the first time and, on the other hand, now classified them in the order of primates within the class of mammals , but again without Diagnosis and without the reference to a specific individual, which only later became customary and which has been prescribed since 1999, as a scientific specimen copy ( holotype ). In a letter to Johann Georg Gmelin in 1747, Linnaeus justified the decision not to have a diagnosis as follows:

“I ask of you and of the whole world that you show me a generic characteristic on the basis of which one can distinguish between humans and apes. I don't even know of anyone with the utmost certainty. "

Linnaeus had never seen an ape, only a female Barbary ape. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach first tried to fill the gap left by him when, in 1775, in his dissertation De generis humani varietate nativa (“On the natural differences in the human race”), he described four “ varieties ” of humans, which - as evidenced by numerous gradual transitions - one common "genus" and whose common characteristics he pointed out: the upright posture; the broad, shallow basin; two hands; "Teeth lined up in the same order and standing lower incisors"; also: two feet with a large, non-opposable big toe, a short lower jaw with a clearly recognizable chin, as well as large lips and the existence of earlobes .

The botanist William Thomas Stearn only went one step further almost 200 years later and declared Carl von Linné himself ( Linnaeus himself ) to be a lectotype of the species Homo sapiens in 1959 . This definition is correct according to the current rules. Carl von Linné's remains (his skeleton buried in Uppsala Cathedral) are therefore the nomenclatory type of the modern human species.

In 1993, the paleontologist and dinosaur researcher Robert T. Bakker declared that he wanted to define the skull of the paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope as a type specimen of Homo sapiens by “subsequent designation” of a lectotype. As an admirer of Cope, he wanted to comply with his last will. Specifying a lectotype would contradict the rule of priority and the rule in the nomenclature code , according to which only those specimens that were part of the original type series can be selected as a lectotype, but Linnaeus (1707–1778) had not known Cope (1840–1897). Bakker could have specified a neotype provided that the previous lectotype had been demonstrably lost and that there was an expressly formulated, extraordinary need for it. Since the identity of Homo sapiens is currently not in doubt, such a definition of a neotype would not be valid from the outset. For a neotype there are other strict requirements that Cope does not meet, for example it would have to come from Sweden and the research institution in which the neotype is kept would have to be named - the skull of Cope does not seem to be found in the museum collection in question be. Bakker's intended type definition was not validly published by himself, but was only quoted in the book Hunting Dinosaurs by Psihoyos & Knoebber (1994), which in itself would not stand in the way of a valid type definition.

The characteristics mentioned by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach and the subsequent definition of a type specimen allow humans to be distinguished from other animals living today. However, they do not prove to be helpful in assigning the hominine fossils discovered since then to the species Homo sapiens or to differentiate them from it, because to this day there is no satisfactory morphological definition of the species: "Our species Homo sapiens has never been the subject of a formal morphological definition that would help us to recognize our conspecifics in any useful way in the documented fossil finds. "

The lack of diagnosis for Homo sapiens had - and still does - significant implications for the classification of hominine fossils into a particular species and for the differentiation between hominin species. For example, the first Neanderthals were interpreted as malformed individuals of the species Homo sapiens . Later, until the 1990s, the Neanderthals were then referred to as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis and modern humans as Homo sapiens sapiens , i.e. as closely related subspecies of Homo sapiens . As a result, there must have been a common ancestor of the species Homo sapiens , whose fossils looked "not modern". As a result, all finds that were sufficiently old and looked “not modern” were dubbed “archaic” Homo sapiens . After it had been recognized that Neanderthals and humans were related, but originated independently of one another from an African population of presumably Homo erectus , each was given its own species status: Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens .

Jeffrey H. Schwartz and Ian Tattersall published the most recent attempt to list the "unique features" ( autapomorphies ) of Homo sapiens , especially on the basis of features in the area of ​​the forehead (supraorbital region) and the chin .

Based on the designation of the biological species of humans, Homo sapiens , numerous names based on it have established themselves in other areas of science .

Homo erectus or Homo heidelbergensis ?

Parallel to the correction of the status of the Neanderthals - especially by US paleoanthropologists - the species Homo heidelbergensis , which was initially only related to the lower jaw of Mauer and later occasionally to all European ancestors of the Neanderthals, was used as a link between African finds (which until then were unanimously referred to as Homo erectus were designated) and the later Homo sapiens . The oldest African fossils , previously attributed to Homo erectus , have since been assigned to Homo ergaster , the younger ones to Homo heidelbergensis . This part of the paleoanthropologists classified Homo erectus as a purely Asian Chronospecies, so that from this point of view, Homo heidelbergensis emerged from the finds named Homo ergaster and was the last common African ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans. Consequently, these paleoanthropologists now refer to Homo heidelbergensis as "archaic" Homo sapiens ; an exact delimitation of its anatomical features from those of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals (a precise definition of its "unique selling points") has not yet been made.

Other US-American and especially European researchers, however, still use the term Homo erectus for the last common ancestors of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens , with the result that they themselves call the lower jaw of Mauer - which is the type specimen of Homo heidelbergensis - as Homo Erectus heidelbergensis . This in turn means that the 400,000-year-old or more recent African finds can be called later Homo erectus or archaic Homo sapiens , depending on the perspective .

Where did Homo sapiens originate ?

Both the paleoanthropological and the genetic findings have led to Africa being considered the continent of origin of Homo sapiens today. However, it has not yet been possible to identify a specific region that could be considered the region of origin. In a review published in 2018, it was argued that anatomically modern humans “do not come from a single founding population in a region of Africa”, but from various hunter-gatherer groups scattered across the continent and largely isolated from one another: “Separated by deserts and dense forests they lived in different habitats. Millennia of separation resulted in an astonishing diversity of human groups, the mixing of which ultimately shaped our species. "

For terminological confusion, however, may provide that certain late Asian finds of Homo erectus (280,000 before present), such as the Dali man "anatomically an intermediate form of Homo erectus and Homo sapiens and necessarily sometimes called, archaic Homo sapiens ' are classified “Although the first colonization of Asia by Homo sapiens did not take place until around 240,000 years later.

In addition, the name Homo rhodesiensis , which was chosen in 1921 for a fossil discovered in Kabwe (then Northern Rhodesia ), is now occasionally placed between the species Homo sapiens and Homo erectus to denote the archaic Homo sapiens . The oldest, undisputed find of Homo sapiens from Ethiopia, Homo sapiens idaltu , was not identified by its discoverers as "archaic Homo sapiens ", but as a "link" between archaic precursor species and later modern humans.

Nevertheless, it is only a question of perspective whether certain African fossil finds are designated as "later Homo erectus " or as "early Homo sapiens ", as the transition from one chronospecies to another was always smooth. In 1997, Friedemann Schrenk differentiated two stages of development from modern humans, "which are to be separated from one another due to the features of the skull" and assigned them to fossils from the following locations:

Other authors refer to the 200,000 to 100,000 year old finds, including the " Altamura man " discovered in Italy and Omo 1 , instead as early anatomically modern humans .

In 2010, dental finds from the Qesem Cave in Israel were discovered that were dated between 400,000 and 200,000 years ago and were attributed to Homo sapiens on the basis of morphological features . There are three teeth of a human upper jaw ( tooth formula C1-P4). According to the authors, there are great similarities with the finds from the Israeli caves of Skhul and Qafzeh , which are between 90,000 and 120,000 years old and have so far been considered the oldest anatomically modern people in the Levant . Although the finding has been confirmed by paleoanthropologists outside the Qesem working group, further independent reviews remain to be seen.

The characteristics of Homo sapiens apparently began to develop parallel to a desertification of East Africa, as has been shown by analyzes of the sediments of Lake Magadi .

Gene flow from other homo species to Homo sapiens

Since 2010 several studies have been published in which the result of analyzes of the genetic makeup of cell nuclei and mitochondria of fossils was reported. According to these studies, gene flow from Neanderthals to Homo sapiens occurred - probably around 110,000 to 50,000 years ago in the Middle East . Furthermore, there was gene flow from the Denisova people and from previously unknown African homopopulations to Homo sapiens .

The Swedish researcher Svante Pääbo and his team have made a significant contribution to the knowledge about hybridization between Homo sapiens and other human species (Neanderthals and Denisovans) . As early as 1997, Pääbo's Munich working group, in cooperation with the Rheinisches Landesmuseum and US scientists, compared the mitochondrial DNA of modern Homo sapiens with that of Neanderthals, but found no evidence of gene flow. In 2004, Pääbo and his team still saw no evidence of a significant gene flow from Neanderthals to modern Homo sapiens . These findings only changed after the use of new analytical methods with the result that gene flow probably took place with a measurable contribution of 4% Neanderthal genes to the gene pool of today's Europeans and Asians. Analysis data published between 2013 and 2015 on the Homo sapiens fossils from Peştera cu oasis in Romania and Ust-Ischim in Siberia underpinned these findings, whereby gene flow has so far only gone in one direction, mating of Homo sapiens men with Neanderthal women, has been proven.

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. José-Miguel Carretero et al .: Stature estimation from complete long bones in the Middle Pleistocene humans from the Sima de los Huesos, Sierra de Atapuerca (Spain). In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 62, No. 2, 2012, pp. 242-255, doi: 10.1016 / j.jhevol.2011.11.004
  2. 1. Early archaic Homo sapiens (approx. 500,000–200,000 years ago : Kabwe (= Homo rhodesiensis )), Saldanha 1 ( South Africa ), Ndutu , Eyasi ( Tanzania ), Bodo ( Ethiopia ), Salé ( Morocco ) and - due to more recent Dating - Florisbad 1 (South Africa = "Homo helmei") 2. Later archaic Homo sapiens (approx. 200,000–100,000 years): Eliye Springs ( West Turkana , Kenya), Laetoli (Tanzania), Djebel Irhoud (Morocco).
  3. ^ Ian McDougall et al .: Stratigraphic placement and age of modern humans from Kibish, Ethiopia. In: Nature. Volume 433, 2005, pp. 733-736, doi: 10.1038 / nature03258 .
  4. Max Ingman et al .: Mitochondrial genome variation and the origin of modern humans. In: Nature . Volume 408, 2000, pp. 708-713, doi: 10.1038 / 35047064 .
  5. Jeffrey H. Schwartz , Ian Tattersall : Fossil evidence for the origin of Homo sapiens. In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Volume 143, No. S51, 2010, pp. 94–121 doi: 10.1002 / ajpa.21443 (PDF download)
  6. Ernst Haeckel: Natural history of creation. Commonly understood scientific lectures on the theory of evolution in general and that of Darwin, Goethe and Lamarck in particular, on the application of these to the origin of man and other related fundamental questions of natural science. Georg Reimer, Berlin 1868, Chapter 19, ( full text )
  7. Ludwig Wilser : The races of the stone age. In: Correspondence sheet of the Anthropological Society. Volume 34, No. 12, 1903, pp. 185-188. In addition: Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald : Early Man: Facts and Fantasy. In: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. Volume 94, No. 2, 1964, pp. 67-79.
  8. ^ Samuel Johnson : A Dictionary of the English Language. First edition. Printed for W. Strahan and T. Cadell in the Strand, London 1755.
  9. on page 20 of his work; it is the first animal species that Linnaeus has listed in this work.
  10. ICZN Code: Chapter 4, Article 16.4
  11. ^ Letter to Johann Georg Gmelin dated February 14, 1747, quoted from: Hans Werner Ingensiep: The cultivated monkey. Philosophy, history, present. S. Hirzel, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-7776-2149-4 , p. 64.
  12. Hans Werner Ingensiep: The cultivated monkey, p. 65.
  13. ^ Johann Friedrich Blumenbach: About the natural differences in the human race. Leipzig 1798, p. 19 ff.
  14. ^ William Thomas Stearn : The Background of Linnaeus's Contributions to the Nomenclature and Methods of Systematic Biology. In: Systematic Zoology. Volume 8, No. 1, 1959, pp. 4-22, doi: 10.2307 / 2411603 .
  15. ICZN Code: Chapter 16, Article 74.1 (part of the syntype series), 74.3 (individual lectotype definition), 74.5 (use of the phrase "the type")
  16. Not my type. ( Memento of March 3, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  17. ICZN Code: Chapter 16, Article 74.1.1
  18. ICZN Code: Chapter 16, Article 74.1
  19. ICZN Code: Chapter 16, Article 75.1
  20. ICZN Code: Chapter 16, Article 75.3
  21. ICZN Code: Chapter 16, Article 75.2
  22. ICZN Code: Chapter 16, Article 75.3.6
  23. ICZN Code: Chapter 16, Article 75.3.7
  24. L. Psihoyos, J. Knoebber: Hunting dinosaurs. Cassell, London 1994, p. I-XVII [= 1-17], 1-267.
  25. Homo sapiens lectotype.
  26. Jeffrey H. Schwartz, Ian Tattersall: Fossil evidence for the origin of Homo sapiens. In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology. (= Yearbook of Physical Anthropology ). Volume 143, Supplement 51, 2010, pp. 94-121, doi: 10.1002 / ajpa.21443 . In the original: Our species Homo sapiens has never been subject to a formal morphological definition, of that sort that would help us in any practical way to recognize our conspecifics in the fossil record.
  27. ^ Smithsonian Institution: "basically meaning any Homo sapiens that didn't look quite modern." ( Memento from November 15, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  28. Jeffrey H. Schwartz, Ian Tattersall: Fossil evidence for the origin of Homo sapiens. In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology. (= Yearbook of Physical Anthropology ). Volume 143, Supplement 51, 2010, pp. 94-121. doi: 10.1002 / ajpa.21443 In the original: Our species Homo sapiens has never been subject to a formal morphological definition, of that sort that would help us in any practical way to recognize our conspecifics in the fossil record.
  29. This position can be seen, for example, from the database of the Human Evolution Research Center (Berkeley), which, in addition to a very old find from Israel, exclusively assigns European finds of the species Homo heidelbergensis : herc.berkeley.edu
  30. ^ Smithsonian Institution ( Memento of November 15, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) “Recently, it has been proposed to separate these individuals into a distinct species. For this purpose, the Mauer mandible, and the species name Homo heidelbergensis has seniority. "
  31. talkorigins.org "Heidelberg Man = Mauer Jaw = Homo sapiens (archaic) (also Homo heidelbergensis )"
  32. msu.edu: Homo sapiens (archaic) are also known as Homo heidelbergensis. ( Memento from October 8, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  33. ^ Jean-Jacques Hublin : Northwestern African Middle Pleistocene hominids and their bearing on the emergence of Homo sapiens. In: Lawrence Barham, Kate Kate Robson-Brown: Africa and Asia in the Middle Pleistocene. Western Academic & Specialist Press, Bristol 2001, ISBN 0-9535418-4-3 , p. 115.
  34. Experts question study claiming to pinpoint birthplace of all humans. On: sciencemag.org from October 28, 2019.
  35. Eleanor ML Scerri et al .: Did Our Species Evolve in Subdivided Populations across Africa, and Why Does It Matter? In: Trends in Ecology & Evolution. Volume 33, No. 8, 2018, pp. 582-594, doi: 10.1016 / j.tree.2018.05.005 .
  36. Our widely ramified African roots. On: mpg.de from July 11, 2018.
  37. Friedemann Schrenk : The early days of man. The way to Homo sapiens. 5th edition. Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-57703-1 , p. 103.
  38. This apparently convergent development of certain characteristics in Homo erectus in Asia and in the ancestors of Homo sapiens living in Africa led, among other things, to the controversial hypothesis of a multiregional origin of modern humans .
  39. Tim White , Berhane Asfaw et al .: Pleistocene Homo sapiens from Middle Awash, Ethiopia. In: Nature. Volume 423, 2003, pp. 742-747, doi: 10.1038 / nature01669 .
  40. Friedemann Schrenk: The early days of man. 5th edition. Beck, Munich 2008, pp. 115-116.
  41. Philipp Gunz et al .: Early modern human diversity suggests subdivided population structure and a complex out-of-Africa scenario. In: PNAS . Volume 106, No. 15, 2009, doi: 10.1073 / pnas.0808160106 .
  42. I. Hershkovitz, P. Smith, R. Sarig, R. Quam, L. Rodríguez, R. García, J.-L. Arsuaga , R. Barkai, A. Gopher: Middle Pleistocene dental remains from Qesem Cave, Israel. In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Volume 143, No. S51, 2010, doi: 10.1002 / ajpa.21446 , (PDF download; 922 kB) ( Memento from November 19, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  43. ^ R. Bernhart Owen, Veronica M. Muiruri, Tim K. Lowenstein et al .: Progressive aridification in East Africa over the last half million years and implications for human evolution. In: PNAS . Volume 115, No. 44, 2018, pp. 11174–11179, doi: 10.1073 / pnas.1801357115 .
  44. Richard E. Green et al .: A draft sequence of the Neandertal Genome. In: Science. Volume 328, No. 5979, 2010, pp. 710-722, doi: 10.1126 / science.1188021
  45. ^ David Reich et al .: Denisova Admixture and the First Modern Human Dispersals into Southeast Asia and Oceania. In: The American Journal of Human Genetics. Volume 89, No. 4, 2011, pp. 516-528, doi: 10.1016 / j.ajhg.2011.09.005
  46. Michael F. Hammer et al .: Genetic evidence for archaic admixture in Africa. In: PNAS. Volume 108, No. 37, 2011, pp. 15123-15128, doi: 10.1073 / pnas.1109300108
  47. Matthias Krings et al .: Neandertal DNA sequences and the origin of modern humans. In: Cell . Volume 90, No. 1, 1997, pp. 19-30, doi: 10.1016 / S0092-8674 (00) 80310-4 .
  48. The Neanderthals kept most of their genes for themselves. On: mpg.de of March 16, 2004.
  49. The Neanderthal in us. The analysis of the Neanderthal genome shows that humans and Neanderthals have mixed up. On: mpg.de from May 6, 2010.
  50. Early Europeans mixed with Neanderthals. On: mpg.de from June 22, 2015, with a picture of the lower jaw Oase 1
  51. Genome of the oldest modern human being decoded. On: mpg.de from October 22, 2014.
  52. The first million is sequenced. Max Planck researchers in Leipzig decode one million base pairs of the Neanderthal genome. On: mpg.de of November 16, 2006.
  53. Fernando L. Mendez et al .: The Divergence of Neandertal and Modern Human Y Chromosomes. In: The American Journal of Human Genetics. Volume 98, No. 4, 2016, pp. 728–734, doi: 10.1016 / j.ajhg.2016.02.023
    Did Neanderthals have inconsequential sex with humans? On: Spektrum.de from March 22, 2018