What this suggests is horizontal evolution as well as vertical evolution.

Stanley Wilkin ,

This is a totally unknown topic to me but it calls to mind the work of one of the two Academica Press editors who published my essay on J.M. Barrie, Yeats, Eliot, in Origins of English Dramatic Modernism, 1870-1914 (2010), Gregory Tague.

These are some titles of books written by this English professor whose research is at the other spectrum from the Victorian novel he usually analyzes and closer to Charles Darwin. Gregory F. Tague has his most recent book titles listed on LinkedIn, as follows: "An Ape Ethic (2020); Art and Adaptability (2018); Evolution and Human Culture (2016); Making Mind (2014); &c."

• "Brooklyn, New York, United States
• 500+ connections
• Contact info
• 📷Biblioteko "
• He sent me pizzazzi email fliers, which look very impressive, and so I ordered his books for the university library.

Nancy Ann Watanabe,

I have long believed in horizontal evolution, that is mixing genes between other homo species existant at the time. There may have been at least a dozen at one point sharing Africa and the Old World, although evolution of our group seems limited to Africa.

But new work suggests other permutations. An early member of homo Erectus has an ape brain and the theory now is that the human brain developed fairly late and only within the last million years. The development of the human body preceded the development of the brain. We were therefore a specific member of the ape family (properly speaking simian homo) for most of our species' span. Homo Erectus may have included groups in Africa developing large brains and others in Asia limited to small ones until mixing occurred between the two groups.

Dear Stanley,

I have to confess I don't know Homo Namedi, but the coexistence between Neandertals and Modern humans certainly played and important role.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Xavier-Rouard

Homo Namedi was a primitive homo species recently found in South Africa, which was first thought to be very ancient but instead was found to have co-existed with early humans (us). There seems to have been many human species around at the same time, not just Neanderthal and Denisovan, which were like us, but many that were not. Homo Namedi had a brain like ours, which was the size of a chimpanzee brain.

If horizontal evolution is put into the picture, that is mixing of genes, it offers a genuine alternative to environmental forces behind evolution.

Although only 7 or 8 homo species have been found to co-exist there are probably many more yet to be found. South Africa at the present time appears to have provided the genesis of our species.

excellent youtube find, Stanley. thank you for that and the research idea/suggestion.

Not just there Rhonda, but in a number of journals too.

It's Naledi not Namedi !

Karl, you are right. I do not know how that happened. Thanks!

Jurand, my feelings exactly.

We are special. The survival of the animal and plant life of our world tends to be linked to a very limited ecological niche that offers opportunities and imposes constraints. As such, the survival of flora and fauna is sensitive to climate change. For example, an alligator in the Florida everglades is ill-equipped to survive on the frozen arctic icepack. Similarly, a polar bear from the Arctic Circle is ill-equipped to survive in the everglades. This discussion of the general trend in ecology leads to an interesting observation. Unlike most other animals, or even the archaic species of our genus, such as erectus or neanderthalensis, Homo sapiens can occupy a comparatively broad ecological niche.

Homo sapiens evolved in West Central Africa about 338 thousand years ago. The climate driven migration out of Africa, roughly 100 thousand years ago, pushed us into new biomes including include deserts, rainforests, high altitude, and the arctic tundra Our cognitive abilities forged cultural adaptations that exploited the new opportunities that they offered and overcame the limitations that they imposed. The ecological plasticity observed among modern humans was facilitated by highly advanced collaborative problem-solving skills. Roberts and Stewart (2018) suggest that when humans migrated out of Africa into new ecological environments, no single person could possess all of the requisite knowledge for adapting to climate change. However, the tribe could collectively develop an adaptive response and then transmit this knowledge to the next generation. Taking this a step further, language played a huge role in the evolutionary success of Homo sapiens.

Roberts, Patrick and Brian A. Stewart 2018. “Defining the ‘generalist specialist’ niche for Pleistocene Homo sapiens.” Nature Human Behaviour 2: 542-550.

Michael St. Clair,

Homo Erectus left Africa long before Homo Sapien and equally lived in a large number of environments. It survived as a species for over 1 million years. Also was our survival ability caused by our interbreeding with other human species? The Tibetans ability to survive in high altitudes was, it seems, down to their mixing with Denisovans.

There is another issue, rarely considered, and that is our survival amongst so many very large predators. Were we predated on? An interesting item came on the internet a week ago of ten Neanderthal remains found in a cave near Rome, which they believe were hunted down by hyenas, killed and eaten. If Neanderthal, close to us in abilities, were not top of the food chain how much did predation hone our survival skills? Were we really special after all?

There is a tendency to name all members of the genus Homo, except Sapiens, as archaic humans. The meaning is that only we, Homo Sapiens, are behaviorally modern humans.

We know that behaviorally modern Sapiens rules the world. The answer to why is in my book "Subsurface History of Humanity: Direction of History."

However ... It is possible that Denisovans (but not Neanderthals) were at least behaviorally as modern as Sapiens. The important fact is that the needle with an eye was found in the Denisova cave and was attributed to Denisovans, who lived around 50 thousand years ago.

We, Sapiens, may not be as special as we are accustomed to thinking we are.

Quite right, Victor. Since two more close relatives of ours have been discovered indicating that we once shared the planet with at least three or four other 'sapiens'. Appropriate word.

Homo sapiens invented the language. I found an interesting paper Article The 200,000-Year Evolution of Homo sapiens sapiens Language ...

Thanks Xavier. Very interesting, very interesting indeed.

Interesting question but it is away from my field