At every chronological estimation they should append 'at least as old as' while they present their results. You never know if something older comes up later.
If a thought like this has occurred to you, a dilettante, after reading a headline and/or cursorily glancing over the article, then you should assume that a study conducted by people with substantial academic training and deep expertise in the field have also had this thought and incorporated it into how they perform their analysis.
Drive-by anti-intellectualism like this is the death of interesting conversation, truly.
All of the great apes are incredibly intelligent in comparison to most other animals. The basic roots of our intelligence are probably a common feature to the whole family, but there's no consensus on why it's so advanced in humans. Any paleoanthropologist can rattle off about half a dozen possible explanations, but we honestly don't have enough evidence to really distinguish if, when, and how these were factors at different points in human evolution. Here's a quick attempt at some broad categories, which each have multiple hypotheses within them:
* Because intelligence had advantages for individual selection (e.g. mimetic recall hypothesis)
* Because intelligence had advantages for group selection
* Because intelligence had advantages for sexual selection (spandrel hypotheses often start here)
* Because adapting to rapidly varying ecological conditions required so many adaptations that we crossed some kind of barrier and "fell into" intelligence
* Because intelligence helped with foraging/hunting (exclusive of sociality)
chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans evolved intelligence too. They are smarter than most other critters in the jungle. Just all not as much as the lineage that leads to humans.
It's actually quite difficult to define human intelligence. Every time we think we find something unique by humans eventually some animal turns up that can do it too. It may be all just a question of degree and how it's used.
"Why humans evolved intelligence but orangutans did not".
There's a different way to think about this that is closer to how evolution actually works and will make the answer clear.
Our common ancestor (common to orangutans and humans) did evolve intelligence (concurrently with harnessing fire, clothing etc.). Not all of them, but some of them. And they broke off from the group. We now call them humans.
It's an interesting question, but maybe more complex than it appears. We cannot get rid of the cultural passing of information (non-genetic) in humans. If we do, we get feral children [1] (also known as Mowgli in popular culture). But I doubt anyone would seriously want to compare this "pure" intelligence with that of other primates. There is a possible agreement that socialization is not an option for humans but a requirement. Maybe if by some bad luck feral children were grouped together for some time, this might be an approximation, but I'm not sure. Overall, using computers as an analogy, it's like humans are only functional after the software installation following the first power-on, which is more or less required for normal activity.
I have no expertise in the field whatsoever but can't help but wonder if it is at all related to our consumption of cooked foods. At the very least it reduces the incidence of parasites but I am sure there are myriad benefits beyond treating foods for longevity through methods like smoking.
Humans are a protected species, carefully raised and nurtured by higher organisms that are hundred thousand times larger than us (in terms of space and time). The earth and solar system is just a vivarium of galactic scale. Several "glass wall" mechanisms were placed to ensure we are separated from the rest of the universe, like the oort cloud.
Somewhere out there in the universe are humans living freely outside the glass wall.
That question is analogous to asking why did some fish grow legs and become mammals.
The answer is mutations sometimes specific members of a group will gain a mutation that will overtime cause that group to split off away from the ancestor group. It’s all a matter of chance evolution doesn’t have a direction.
Is an individual human raised alone significantly smarter than a chimp?
How much of the intelligence gap is culture and communication that lets us educate ourselves and compound knowledge vs biology? Homo lived for thousands and thousands of years with the same level of development as other apes
A curious-er question to me would be how did cephalopods (octopuses, cuttlefish) develop sophisticated intelligence a few hundred million years before ‘we’ did separately from us?
And they still are alongside us right now. Which to me is fascinating.
The other apes are intelligent enough for their niche. At some point in humanity's past, the environment was harsh enough that the less intelligent ones died.
Because we are farther way on the evolutionary tree then is commonly thought, there is a tree of common ancestors going much further back (5 million or more years) that links humans with monkeys
I think this is actually an easy question to answer because you’ve accidentally preselected your demographics.
Imagine this: among primates, there is an even distribution of species of differing levels of intelligence. All the primates who became intelligent have similar evolution paths because intelligence defines their evolution path (opposable thumbs, large heads, standing upright, etc.) Then because they all have similar evolution paths we put all those into the genus “Homo.” Each of species of the genus Homo eventually either breeds with each other or genocides one another until there are only the Homo Sapiens left.
So with an even distribution of intelligence among all primates, it’s logical that, given enough time, all that is left are primates of sufficient intelligence enough to breed with each other or be genocided until there is only one species, or many species of primates who weren’t intelligent enough.
This is my guess (I’m not a biologist or ancient historian or anything)
All apes are intelligent. Studies have shown that their causal reasoning is almost on par with humans. What they seem to lack is language for communicating sophisticated concepts and persisting them across generations.
Out of africa is basically false, there were decently advanced walking hominids in asia a long time ago. Then they migrated west, africa was the origination, but that origination was not the ~50k years ago like was frequently claimed
All the evidence we have points to the vast, vast majority (>90%) of non-african human ancestry originating from hominin populations that were in Africa around 60-80k years ago, and were anatomically modern about 300k years ago. This article is about an ancestral clade of archaic hominins that contributed around 2% of modern non-african ancestry globally, that we've known about for years.
OOA (with minor admixture) is the consensus position for a lot of excellent reasons.
We know there were indigenous folks here in Australia ~50K years ago, and we know that we didn't evolve in Australia, so any origination must be further back than that.
You are completely wrong. Out of Africa is correct. Out of Asia is incorrect, and is outdated sino propaganda. Even the modern Chinese state admits that DNA evidence pretty conclusively points to out of Africa.
But the analytics were not made in China or by a Chinese researcher. So unless they tampered with the skull's age somehow, they would have little influence here.
Dismissing out of hand because it's from China is ridiculous but speaks to the jingoistic times we are living in, particularly when this is a Denisovan skull.
Legitimately saddens me to see such a low-info reply at the top. Highly recommend people read "who we are and how we got here" - it provides a lot of great context to discoveries like this.
I have to admit I thought it might be "like that" before I read the article. But I don't think Chris Stringer would be a co-author on the paper if there was an issue of bias.
While this work is impressive, it is just one skull and, as the article points out, seems statistically anomalous, and therefore interesting.
> I'm not convinced that this is any sort of neutral analysis
Did you actually read the article? Nowhere does it suggest that anyone is claiming that China is the origin of Homo Sapiens. This million old skull discovered in China is not Homo Sapien, but related to Denisoven. It’s scientifically interesting since it suggests two things
1. Homo sapiens have existed longer than we previously thought.
2. Homo Sapiens may have come out of Western Asia, not Africa. But China is not in West Asia…
Please find other articles to fit into your the-Chinese-are-supremacist narrative. This one is not relevant.
When the average life span was something like 30 years, why do all images look like they are 60+ years old? Is it a cognitive bias that we assume that people that are tens of thousands years old also look really old? :P
A lot of people here seem remiss to accept this but the claim was made, I think around 2018? And now the international community has gone and doubled checked - and it seems legitimate. 2025: the mainstream belief of descension changes.
What other base beliefs do you hold that will likely be false?
I can think of 5+. Our ancestors thought a lot of things for certain and died never knowing. Technological advancement is so fast nowadays, I hope we get to live through more.
tsoukase|4 months ago
KurSix|4 months ago
_petronius|4 months ago
Drive-by anti-intellectualism like this is the death of interesting conversation, truly.
moomoo11|4 months ago
mouse_8b|4 months ago
WalterBright|4 months ago
AlotOfReading|4 months ago
All of the great apes are incredibly intelligent in comparison to most other animals. The basic roots of our intelligence are probably a common feature to the whole family, but there's no consensus on why it's so advanced in humans. Any paleoanthropologist can rattle off about half a dozen possible explanations, but we honestly don't have enough evidence to really distinguish if, when, and how these were factors at different points in human evolution. Here's a quick attempt at some broad categories, which each have multiple hypotheses within them:
* Because intelligence had advantages for individual selection (e.g. mimetic recall hypothesis)
* Because intelligence had advantages for group selection
* Because intelligence had advantages for sexual selection (spandrel hypotheses often start here)
* Because adapting to rapidly varying ecological conditions required so many adaptations that we crossed some kind of barrier and "fell into" intelligence
* Because intelligence helped with foraging/hunting (exclusive of sociality)
nn3|4 months ago
It's actually quite difficult to define human intelligence. Every time we think we find something unique by humans eventually some animal turns up that can do it too. It may be all just a question of degree and how it's used.
acchow|4 months ago
There's a different way to think about this that is closer to how evolution actually works and will make the answer clear.
Our common ancestor (common to orangutans and humans) did evolve intelligence (concurrently with harnessing fire, clothing etc.). Not all of them, but some of them. And they broke off from the group. We now call them humans.
Agraillo|4 months ago
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child
hiatus|4 months ago
nvlled|4 months ago
Humans are a protected species, carefully raised and nurtured by higher organisms that are hundred thousand times larger than us (in terms of space and time). The earth and solar system is just a vivarium of galactic scale. Several "glass wall" mechanisms were placed to ensure we are separated from the rest of the universe, like the oort cloud.
Somewhere out there in the universe are humans living freely outside the glass wall.
w10-1|4 months ago
We destroyed the many other humanoid/intelligent species, who did compete with us.
flohofwoe|4 months ago
dyauspitr|4 months ago
The answer is mutations sometimes specific members of a group will gain a mutation that will overtime cause that group to split off away from the ancestor group. It’s all a matter of chance evolution doesn’t have a direction.
tjs8rj|4 months ago
How much of the intelligence gap is culture and communication that lets us educate ourselves and compound knowledge vs biology? Homo lived for thousands and thousands of years with the same level of development as other apes
textlapse|4 months ago
And they still are alongside us right now. Which to me is fascinating.
mouse_8b|4 months ago
The other apes are intelligent enough for their niche. At some point in humanity's past, the environment was harsh enough that the less intelligent ones died.
mikert89|4 months ago
atbvu|4 months ago
dboreham|4 months ago
goodmunky|4 months ago
azakai|4 months ago
kouru225|4 months ago
Imagine this: among primates, there is an even distribution of species of differing levels of intelligence. All the primates who became intelligent have similar evolution paths because intelligence defines their evolution path (opposable thumbs, large heads, standing upright, etc.) Then because they all have similar evolution paths we put all those into the genus “Homo.” Each of species of the genus Homo eventually either breeds with each other or genocides one another until there are only the Homo Sapiens left.
So with an even distribution of intelligence among all primates, it’s logical that, given enough time, all that is left are primates of sufficient intelligence enough to breed with each other or be genocided until there is only one species, or many species of primates who weren’t intelligent enough.
This is my guess (I’m not a biologist or ancient historian or anything)
Razengan|4 months ago
What would "intelligence" look like WHILE it was evolving?
A slightly more unsettling thought: How would newly-emerging intelligence FEEL like, internally?
Also, how would humans fare if born and raised in the wild, without any language or tools taught to them?
naasking|4 months ago
unknown|4 months ago
[deleted]
unknown|4 months ago
[deleted]
bigbrained124|4 months ago
Survival of the fittest never includes the gene impacts plants and fungi can force onto creatures.
Also cyclical 12kyr catastrophic events leading to small condensation of species under stress.
Exklusivmarode|4 months ago
[deleted]
mikert89|4 months ago
AlotOfReading|4 months ago
OOA (with minor admixture) is the consensus position for a lot of excellent reasons.
marcus_holmes|4 months ago
octaane|4 months ago
unknown|4 months ago
[deleted]
bradley13|4 months ago
dang|4 months ago
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
slightwinder|4 months ago
whimsicalism|4 months ago
Legitimately saddens me to see such a low-info reply at the top. Highly recommend people read "who we are and how we got here" - it provides a lot of great context to discoveries like this.
martinclayton|4 months ago
While this work is impressive, it is just one skull and, as the article points out, seems statistically anomalous, and therefore interesting.
curseofcasandra|4 months ago
Did you actually read the article? Nowhere does it suggest that anyone is claiming that China is the origin of Homo Sapiens. This million old skull discovered in China is not Homo Sapien, but related to Denisoven. It’s scientifically interesting since it suggests two things
1. Homo sapiens have existed longer than we previously thought.
2. Homo Sapiens may have come out of Western Asia, not Africa. But China is not in West Asia…
Please find other articles to fit into your the-Chinese-are-supremacist narrative. This one is not relevant.
kakacik|4 months ago
hopelite|4 months ago
ebg1223|4 months ago
z3t4|4 months ago
jdthedisciple|4 months ago
avg of 30 usually just means higher child death rates
once adult you would likely still get to 50+ on avg
ineedaj0b|4 months ago
A lot of people here seem remiss to accept this but the claim was made, I think around 2018? And now the international community has gone and doubled checked - and it seems legitimate. 2025: the mainstream belief of descension changes.
What other base beliefs do you hold that will likely be false?
I can think of 5+. Our ancestors thought a lot of things for certain and died never knowing. Technological advancement is so fast nowadays, I hope we get to live through more.