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Comment by nomdep | Hacker News Reader

    "And if you do happen find a jawbone in your bathroom, my suggestion is first to contact the local authorities. Sure, a fossil in travertine likely comes from hundreds of thousands of years ago. It isn't a crime scene. But depending on your state or nation of residence, laws governing discovery of human remains on your property may be complicated and having the paperwork in order with the police, sheriff, or coroner is the first step for most investigations."

No thanks. I'm not going to complicate my life with paperwork and police investigators because of a small piece of a might-be-a-fossil from Turkey.

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Well, I'm not telling you how to live your life, but someone who used to work in a related field, please at least consider it if you ever are in that situation. It's always useful to have more data, and some data will always come from random findings like this.

Maybe AI image recognition is good enough by then to actually determine if it is from a human or some other animal, so that you know beforehand that your paperwork will not be in vain at least. I don't expect that there will be much of a police investigation, the age should be rather obvious in most cases. On the other hand I've heard that there are states where the police get less than half a year of training, so maybe there will be one. But still, think of the potential scientific value :)

If the recommended course of action to contribute here is to involve the police and inform them there might be human remains on your property, then I strongly doubt you're gonna get many people willing at all. If this is a genuine and serious potential source of fact finding/analysis that is of value to the field, then the field needs to find a less... lets call it polarizing, option.

I think the other comment is more accurate: this isn’t about polarization, it’s a potential threat to your safety.

Involving the police for something like that is not a threat to your safety in a civilised country. It is, indeed, the best course of action in any country with a functioning police force.

Well, a functioning police force wouldn't mind if you reach to online communities and paleontologists to verify that those remains are human before reaching to police to file a report, I'd assume.

And so, if the law force action could have serious consequences, then the tiles would be better left untouched, no paperwork needed. And if it couldn't, then it's okay not to file paperwork first.

Yeah, like if they said "call the archeology department of your local university to see if they want to document it", I'd totally do that. But I'm not going to call the police, explain to them what I'm calling about and potentially open a crime scene investigation in my own home.

Though realistically, I don't expect that the police would even come out or do anything at all, they don't bother to come out for car breakins, so I don't see them coming out for "I saw something in my new countertop that looks sort of like it could be a 500,000 year old human fossil"

Putting the lives of your family and yourself at risk by involving police would be incredibly irresponsible.

This is an unreasonable comment even for an American. But in other countries it's especially not a concern. You might have to report it to a different government agency (like an archaeologist or animal control) but you are supposed to report it to someone.

The other reddit category of things you should report to the police (or someone else) is of course people who find old grenades in their house.

https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/comments/4x9u4p/unc...

Sure, it's different in other countries. But as a dark skinned person in America, this is not unreasonable, but pragmatic. Reporting to an archaeology organization is not at all the same thing as reporting to police.

Correct me if I am wrong, but this was in a cut limestone plate. So if it was a crime, I am sure the murderer is long deceased and probably not even a homo sapiens.

I think the theory is that if you don't tell the cops before anyone else, then when they find out they might try to bust you for failing to report human remains. Even the dimmest sheriff wouldn't try to persuade a prosecutor that a fossil was the victim of a living murderer.

>So if it was a crime, I am sure the murderer is long deceased and probably not even a homo sapiens.

If it was a "murder", it had to be a homo sapiens. Killings by wild animals aren't called "murders".

However, if this was a Neanderthal person, it's quite possible the murder was by a fellow Neanderthal, aka homo sapiens neanderthalensis.

(Apparently it's still debated whether the Neanderthals are a distinct species or a subspecies of homo sapiens.)

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

You argue with someone and police makes a visit. Searches your criminal history and sees one line "investigated for murder". Guess what might happen. Nothing right? Because we live in a perfect world.

> "investigated for murder"

Seriously overestimating the willingness of police to give a shit about what are clearly _really old_ remains.

The CYA part about talking to authorities (whoever applicable in your jurisdiction, not necessarily police) still applies. There are often laws about human remains. THOSE would show on your record if this is mishandled.

> Searches your criminal history and sees one line "investigated for murder".

That's not even remotely close to how police records work in the US. It fits the narrative, but is completely ignorant of reality.

Not everyone lives in USA.

Still human remains.

[citation needed]

it's humanoid remains, but not modern human

Right back at you with the citation needed. Humanoid is not a taxonomic term anymore. All Homo are humans. Never said modern, which it obviously isn't.

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

> Although some scientists equate the term "humans" with all members of the genus Homo, in common usage it generally refers to Homo sapiens, the only extant member.

There's no citation for that claim and it would be unlikely for there to be one.

It's just some dude's personal impression about a subjective matter (a word in transition), and carries no more weight than any other comment being made here.

A more meaningful source would be a usage guide like Garner's Modern English.

Actually, it is cited. The fragment you quoted is from the lede, which is supposed to summarize the rest of the material. So if you read on to the section "Etymology and definition", you find that the same claim is cited to Merriam Webster.

As it happens, this citation is useless, because it doesn't support the claim. Basically, I think it's fraudulent to cite that claim to that MW article.

Okay, link to your source

I don't wanna classify you like an animal in the zoo, but it seems good to me to know that you're Homosapien too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HwmO_GZfzI

I feel like this is peak HN pedantry, but it seems like there's some controversy amongst anthropologists these days as how to sort of colloquially define human; I've heard some say that any species in the genus homo should qualify.

And how to legally define human is extremely controversial and always has been.

Is this because there are people walking around today with a substantial amount of Neanderthal DNA and were being cautious not to denigrate them?

I thought the term "humanoid" referred to bipedal aliens with bilateral symmetry. Or to human-like robots.

"Humanoid" refers to anything with a human body morphology (i.e., bipedal, two legs, two arms, head). That can be actual humans, human-looking robots, bipedal aliens with bilateral symmetry, or even Barbie dolls I suppose.

It’s something that looks like human remains, and that needs to be imaged properly to have a definitive answer.

That will be a great comfort to know, after the trigger happy local yokel cops shoot you in the head while executing their no-knock warrant because they think that you are reaching for a hidden weapon.

I'm also pretty sure there are more human skeletal remains than any other species on the planet, whether comparing by count or mass.

Whether or not that's already making it into materials used in fancy house decorating materials is a more complicated question I guess.

Seriously. People have ended up dead from calling the police about things far less likely to cause concern/confusion than "I have dead human parts in my bathroom"

Maybe "I have dead human parts in my bathroom" is not the best way to explain the situation and one would be served better if they concentrated on how to make the communication convey the intended message the best, instead of being satisfied with "technically correct is the best kind of correct".

You need to read the old internet 1.0 lore "In The Beginning there was Plan" and then consider how communication happens in any bureaucratic organization. (Poorly, intermittently, and with multiple transmission errors)

You tell the dispatcher that you found a fossilized jawbone in your tile, by the time the report makes it's way to the responding officer the story is you found a severed head in your sink.

Like opening with "I'm pretty sure this is a non-issue, but there's a fossilized jawbone fragment in some travertines I just had installed. Do you need to investigate that or are we good?"

Yeah, most people's lives are complicated enough as is. This "suggestion" is asking you to go well out of your way to get buried in some tedious paperwork and investigations. Only those who are into fossils might give a care.

Also notice how smoothly they equate a potential fossil with "human remains". Yeah, technically right.

And misunderstandings about "human remains" somewhere in some complicated cross jurisdictional chain of command could end up with you in handcuffs, or shot.

Or the media could run some poorly researched human interest story about you that makes you sound like Jeffrey Dahmer.

Or something that's never happened can continue never happening. People have found hominid fossils out in public before and it's been obvious they were fossils. The worst that's happened is they're returned to native tribes who then keep them.

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