Conflicting ideologies in hominin taxonomy, nomenclature, and species concept

Conceptual issues in hominin taxonomy:
Homo #heidelbergensis and an ethnobiological reframing of species
Dr Sheela Athreya
@sathreya3
Dr Allison Hopkins
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajpa.24330

300 Kya #heidelbergensis adults and children foraged by lake with elephants and rhinos

Fossil footprints at the late Lower Paleolithic site of Schöningen (Germany): A new line of research to reconstruct animal and hominin paleoecology
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277379123001427

At my home university, there is the mandible of the type specimen of Homo heidelbergensis. You can't see the real one, as it is kept in a museum's vault. But there is a replica in the museum of the Department of Geosciences in Heidelberg where I took this photo in 2022 ☺️

Please read the interesting article here, telling you more about the Homo heidelbergensis mandible:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2023-03-12/homo-heidelbergensis-jawbone-kristina-eck-human-fossil-mandible/102035416?utm_campaign=abc_news_web&utm_content=link&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_source=abc_news_web

#heidelbergensis #palaeontology #Heidelberg

@HWiesenmueller
I misunderstood something in your quote from the pub-sci article so I searched and read the paper https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-022-01970-1

I had thought, the quote implied, anatomically modern humans were somehow involved in the cache of 500+ manufactured obsidian tools 1.2ma.
Which ofc they weren't. The earliest bones from anatomically modern humans known today come from a cave in Jebel Irhoud in Morocco and 300ky old, published 2017.

The earliest remains (known in 2016) from H.heidelbergensis / H. rhodesiensis (or H.bodoensis to cancel the connection to corrupt sociopath C. Rhodes ) were from a site in South #Africa #Elandsfontain and are 700ky old.

Incredible what I used to have in mind when thinking of #Neanderthals / #heidelbergensis: brutal groups, barely human, unable to communicate beyond grunts.
But not even language acquisition was reserved for "anatomically modern humans" – a term I find increasingly useless the more I learn of what is known of #pleistocene humans.

#Tegtmeier #Pleistocene #
Wrt origins of modern humans.
Oi! What a rabbit hole!

I wrote, modern humans had been around for 300ky and came from Southern Africa. But it turns out, this history is 1) wrong (sorry!😁 ) and 2) not written in stone yet, at all. #Archeology is still developing an agreement of what distinguishes modern humans culturally from their archaic ancestors for one thing, and the other thing is, 50+ years-old excavation sites still reveal unthought-of new twists.

Eg. in 2016, Mirazone-Lahr and Foley on "Human Eevolution in Eastern Africa" https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marta-Mirazon-Lahr/publication/301232255_Human_Evolution_in_Late_Quaternary_Eastern_Africa/links/59e33487aca2724cbfe36a63/Human-Evolution-in-Late-Quaternary-Eastern-Africa.pdf ( https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-017-7520-5_12 )

published this handy chart below. X-axis is in kiloyears since 800ky. Above the x-axis are the ice ages and interglacials in form of the well-known temperature curve. Left y-axis splits the continent into North, East and South Africa; the right y-axis lists names of archeological sites of the finds.
The coloured dashes within the chart area highlight where remains have been found, and when they lived, and to which homo kind they belonged, Anatomically Modern Humans (red), H. #heidelbergensis (blue), and an advanced form of H. heidelbergensis with larger brain sizes sometimes known as H. #helmei (green).

Very handy chart. From 2016.
But...!

Conflicting ideologies in hominin taxonomy, nomenclature, and species concept

Conceptual issues in hominin taxonomy:
Homo #heidelbergensis and an ethnobiological reframing of species
Dr Sheela Athreya @sathreya3 Dr Allison Hopkins
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajpa.24330

#Lunchtime!
with John Gurche's #Heidelbergensis
@NMNH
https://twitter.com/MU_Peter/status/1613222995442696192

#homo #bodoensis #erectus #heidelbergensis #sapiens #acheulian #hominins #human #evolution #phylogenetics

Conflicting ideologies in hominin taxonomy, nomenclature, and species concept

Conceptual issues in hominin taxonomy:
Homo #heidelbergensis and an ethnobiological reframing of species
Dr Sheela Athreya Dr Allison Hopkins
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajpa.24330

Conflicting ideologies in hominin taxonomy, nomenclature, and species concept

Conceptual issues in hominin taxonomy:
Homo #heidelbergensis and an ethnobiological reframing of species
Dr Sheela Athreya Dr Allison Hopkins
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajpa.24330

Those #Neanderthal (!) #footprints (!!) Huelva (#Spain) may be much older than previously thought. Like: 275,000 (!!!) years old. 😲🤯

Are they even still belonging to (very early) #Neanderthals or did Homo #heidelbergensis once wandered here? 🤔

https://theconversation.com/recently-found-neanderthal-footprints-in-the-south-of-spain-could-be-275-000-years-old-195346

Conflicting ideologies in hominin taxonomy, nomenclature, and species concept

Conceptual issues in hominin taxonomy:
Homo #heidelbergensis and an ethnobiological reframing of species
Dr Sheela Athreya Dr Allison Hopkins
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajpa.24330

Conflicting ideologies in hominin taxonomy, nomenclature, and species concept

Conceptual issues in hominin taxonomy:
Homo #heidelbergensis and an ethnobiological reframing of species
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajpa.24330