40k-year-old bracelet made by extinct human species found (2015) | Hacker News Reader

40k-year-old bracelet made by extinct human species found (2015)

digitaljournal.com

158 pointsblfr36 comments

First off, the Denisovan people were named after the Denisova cave, not the other way around. Second, until very recently (in the last year or so) we did not have any intact bones confirmed to be Denisovan that are large enough to say anything about their morphology (the recent classification of some jaw bones as Denisovan is based on protein sequences, which are more stable than DNA). I’m skeptical of this article given the facts that I know that they got wrong and the lack of any evidence describing why the particular piece couldn’t have been made by some other Homo.

Pictures of the cave:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denisova_Cave

And the Denisova cave was named after this guy Denis, a hermit who lived there. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Denisova_Cave

Hermitage and having a human species named after you are not mutually exclusive.

It’s quoting Siberian Times and Daily Mail...I’d take the entire article with several grains of salt.

I really wish that these articles didn't run nonsense like the following:

> Shunkov explains:

> "All jewellery had a magical meaning for ancient people. Bracelets and neck adornments were to protect people from evil spirits, for instance."

Shunkov, you have no idea whatsoever whether or not jewelry had any magical meaning for ancient people, let alone that all jewelry had magical meaning for all ancient people. It's a wild-ass guess, and an embarrassing one, given the way it is qualified.

Fret not, Shunkov is just reciting the magical incantation meaning to keep the funds flowing, for instance.

I had a college professor in the nineties who took the whole “goddess culture” thing very seriously, that those many (many) figurines like the Venus of Willendorf were indisputable proof of a matriarchal prehistoric society.

Modern archaeologists have noticed that these figures are usually found in the junk heaps of digs along with broken things and animal bones, while the “treasures” — tools and jewelry — are found elsewhere, and speculate that the figures are just cast-off toys. I would love to hear what my professor thinks of this...

It could be like what happened in Egypt where a new leader/religion comes in to power and tries to remove all traces of the previous.

These figurines are found all over Europe and were made of a period of hundreds or thousands of years. It was a culture, I'll give the professor that much.

I do have a hard time taking some of archaeology's sweeping pronouncements seriously. They are prone to making big statements about a culture from the contents of their trash.

In a thousand years, someone will marvel at and create grand ludicrous theories about the meaning of the millions of AOL CDs that they have dug up in a landfill.

"The AOL COMPACT DISC was both unit of currency and status signaling apparel, as only the wealthiest could hope to accumulate and maintain a collection of these easily damaged, gaudily refractive, oversized coins. Serving neither to hold information nor any other useful purpose, AOL COMPACT DISCs are the hallmark of the AOL Culture historical period, which came to a close with the Sack of New York, circa 2001 on the ancient calendar."

>I had a college professor in the nineties who took the whole “goddess culture” thing very seriously, that those many (many) figurines like the Venus of Willendorf were indisputable proof of a matriarchal prehistoric society.

1000 years from now such a college professor would declare that we today were living in a “goddess culture” and matriarchal society based on the prevalence in the corresponding archaeological strata of the main cultural artifact of our time - Internet - of the depictions of women with the "Parts of the body associated with fertility and childbearing have been emphasized" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Willendorf#Interpreta...)

>Modern archaeologists have noticed that these figures are usually found in the junk heaps of digs along with broken things and animal bones

And the future archaeologists would probably also notice that the major collections of those supposedly "goddess culture" and the matriarchate related depictions were mostly kind of separate from the other artifacts of that ancient Internet.

I'm always reminded of David Macaulay's Motel of Mysteries. The great white porcelain sarcophagus, heart of the sacred inner chamber.

Casual historians and armchair archaeologists always underestimate the amount of leisure time and free resources ancient people had.

Especially because these are not even the same species as us.

This is a 2015 report, with these sources:

- https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3072094/40-000-year...

- http://siberiantimes.com/science/casestudy/features/f0100-st...

Year added above. Thanks!

This discovery doesn't tell us much about the skills, intelligence, and technology of the Denisovans in general. It only establishes an upper bound, which can be wildly at odds with the average. Especially in a time with no writing and terrible long-distance communication, isolated individuals or groups could have come up with amazing skills only to let it die out soon after.

There were individuals and/or small groups of Homo sapiens sapiens who built highly elaborate clockwork mechanisms with dozens of gears 2000 years ago. At the same time, a significant portion of the remaining population of Homo sapiens sapiens were picking berries in the forest. Even today, some of us can build billions of microscopic transistors and arrange them on a chip to do crazy things while others of the same species are just waiting for rain so they can grow something to eat. The evolutionary history of our own kind is already looking far from linear, and it's going to become even more complicated once we take seriously the fact that a species is nowhere near homogeneous in its skills and intelligence. Some of the things we've been placing on the timeline may have been outliers in the first place.

If by "some of us" you mean hundreds of thousands of scientists, engineers, managers, janitors, miners that dig the raw materials, shipping specialists and all sorts of professionals and billions of consumers (that allow for large scale production to be economically feasible), yeah, I guess collectively we are "smarter" than a self sufficient guy merely waiting for the right time the seeds to plant themselves, pests just killing themselves, the crops just harvesting themselves, the produce just storing itself, the next years seeds just setting themselves aside, the meals just preparing themselves and so on.

you're already cheating when you compare ancient vs modern methods of production.

technologies are basically extensions of human capabilities in reified form. so if you choose a method of production that relies heavily on advanced technologies, of course it's going to seem very impressive in comparison.

you personally might feel like a genius because you figured out how to piece together stackoverflow answers, bits of libraries, and algorithms that someone else wrote, but it doesn't actually mean that you're a genius. it just means that you have access to tools that augment your memory, your reasoning, and other abilities.

Those systems were all built by humans. Built by humans while other humans are relying on the vagaries of weather and chance for their long-term food supply. From 20K feet, that’s a huge gulf and 20K years from now, you’re liable to stumble across a CPU or phone vs a stone gristmill and get two very different views of what humans’ capability was.

I don’t think the point above was about individual heroism, but rather the spread of technological capabilities.

> The evolutionary history of our own kind is already looking far from linear, and it's going to become even more complicated once we take seriously the fact that a species is nowhere near homogeneous in its skills and intelligence.

I believe one of the reasons we as an species have what could be considered advanced skills and high intelligence is that we are very diverse and try different strategies as different sub-populations. It's a long term evolutionary adaptation, and we can't afford to be homogeneous. That would slow down innovation to Komodo dragon levels. In practical terms it would basically destroy innovation. IMO.

the future has always been here and it's always been unevenly distributed.

A better expose on the subject from Jan 2019 here: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cave-that-housed-...

40 K years sounds like a long time, but there's a lot of evidence that human DNA has hardly changed at all in that time. I.e., for making fancy bracelets, our ancestors back then were just as bright, artistic, etc. as we are now so that given the materials, tools, and technology they had then they could do as well as we could and we couldn't do any better. I don't know about the "extinct human species", but there is there is a simple argument based on (i) mitochondrial DNA and (ii) a simple observation.

We take humans (a) in western Europe and (b) east Asia. For (i) we argue that from the rate of change in mitochondrial DNA the most recent common ancestor was about 40 K years ago. A guess is that that ancestor was in or near present India. So, some descendants walked NW to western Europe and others walked NW to east Asia.

Now for (ii), compare western Europeans and east Asians on essentially any attributes you want and observe that they are very close. Well, necessarily each is even closer to their most recent common ancestor: I.e., to get the DNA changes from western Europe to east Asia, have to have the changes going back in time to the most recent common ancestor and then more changes forward in time from that ancestor to east Asia; i.e., each of western Europe and east Asia is closer to the common ancestor than to each other and, since Europe and Asia are close now, they are even closer to their common ancestor.

So, conclusion: We are still really close to the most recent common ancestor.

Or, in simple terms, take the that ancestor, wash them up and give them some modern clothes, and they'd look just like us except with a different language. And they might be wearing a very nice bracelet.

I agree with you. For some reason, a significant proportion of people think that people in the past couldn't perceive the color blue and/or were hallucinating gods' voices in a schizophrenic kind of way (bicameral mind hypothesis).

40k years is between 1000 and 2000 generations. Why would it be unreasonable to think there could be significant genetic drift over that many iterations?

We have bred entirely new strains of dogs or other livestock that are almost unrecognizable from the starting population in a fraction of that time.

What we have done to plants through relatively unsophisticated selection pressure is even more illuminating.

Why humanity would be immune from similar processes, I cannot understand.

>We have bred entirely new strains of dogs or other livestock that are almost unrecognizable from the starting population in a fraction of that time.

But we specifically set out to do that. Random variance is going to mostly balance out unless it gives a competitive advantage.

> 40k years is between 1000 and 2000 generations. Why would it be unreasonable to think there could be significant genetic drift over that many iterations?

Sure, it looks like there "could be". So what is interesting is the evidence I presented that there hasn't been.

For why, maybe

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dsfyu404ed

explains. Or, with plants and domestic animals, we managed the evolution with directions in mind, but for humans Darwin had less intense objectives.

Human DNA has changed more in the last 50,000 years than in the 1 million before that. The pressures of large-scale organization, climate changes etc spurred continuous selection.

But, from what I presented, you are saying that the DNA changes of the last 50,000 years happened essentially the same and independently in (i) Europe and (ii) Asia.

Generally in evolution is it more likely that DNA twice the same is from a common ancestor instead of two independent, at least separate, cases of the changes.

For the influences of climate change, that seemed to vary: My guess is that Europe suffered and changed much more from the big ice sheets than Asia. So, it would be more likely that the DNA you say came from climate change came from common ancestors (from still earlier climate change, etc.) than from two independent responses to two (not very similar) climate changes.

Supposedly eyes with lenses and retinas evolved at least twice separately, but that took a very long time and is still considered amazing.

This may seem naive, but considering the different homo classifications, are all homo species today the same i.e. Homo Sapiens. I am not well versed in genetic classifications, but couldn't our ancestors and other homos breed? What is the distinction between this, just like how a chihuahua and a husky can technically produce offspring? Thanks for any clarification.

There are several examples of cross-species breeding resulting in viable offspring that can reproduce. You mentioned two breeds of domestic dog but domestic dogs can also breed with grey wolves. The domestic dog is considered a sub-species of the grey wolf. Coyotes can also breed with the grey wolf. Dingoes and jackals also fall in with domestics dogs, wolves, and coyotes. It isn't just canines either. The Savannah cat is a cross breed between African servals and domestic cats and that is not the only example for felines. Beefalo and Żubroń are examples of cattle/bison crossbreeding. Sumatran and Borenean orangutans are different species that are able to crossbreed.

Hmm very interesting, I was unaware of some of your example such as the Orangutan. Upon further research, at the Genus level "Two organisms from one genus might or might not produce an offspring with sexual fertility, but it is very certain that organisms from two different genera (plural of genus) can never produce a fertile offspring." While species has the same number of chromosomes and will produce fertile offspring. I guess my question, or perplexion, is why every verbally articulate human being on the earth now are solely the same species. Questions 1) Either by selection. 2) Even though genetic diversity. Maybe all our classifications are semantic, I'm still processing this. (Quote source: https://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-genus-a...)

I love the 'tag' alert options at the bottom of this site.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com