Other descendants

Summary:

What about the descendants of the people who didn't leave Africa?

Other descendants

Guarina Molina 23 Aug 2009 01:37

The other day in class, we discussed about 3,000 people [2,000 females; 1,000 men] that left Africa in order to explore the other parts of the world, and how that is how people started expanding to other continents, such as Europe and Asia. I decided to include that in my section 1 essay, but then I started thinking about the rest of the people.

They say that we are all descendants of those 3,000 people who left Africa, but what happened to the rest of the people? There must have been some people left in Africa, because I think that those who left could not the only people living on Earth at the time.

So, I was wondering if any archeologists ever found out anything about the people who didn't leave Africa. Because that would not make us all related to the 3,000 people, but to some more.

Re: Other descendants

olandolfi 23 Aug 2009 15:05

Remember that the Human history is one that goes back as far as 4 millon years ago. Genetically all of human beings descend from just a small group of hominids. The, on the course of millions of years, that group developed, evolved, adapted, multiply, and in some cases got extinted. in this link Human Origin you can see a brief but complete description of the Human Journey.

When we talk about humans we need to make the diference between Hominids and Homo, because there is an imporatnt distinction. The reason why there is not much information about our ancestors is that for the las 60 thousand years we have very much being by ourselves in the world, our time of shared planet is from the 60 thounsand b.c. going as far as 4 million years back, is a long period of time and bones and structures get pulverized.

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“As human beings, we are endowed with freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is our responsibility.” Arnold J. Toynbee

Re: Other descendants

Guarina Molina 23 Aug 2009 18:33

Right now I am watching the documentary, and it is so great. It caught my attention how different the australopithecus were from the homo erecutus in terms of looks. They said that when they discovered Lucy, she appeared to be less than 4 feet tall. But with the discovery of the homo erectus boy, they said that he was about nine years old, but already 5 feet 4 inches tall, which is extremely tall for any nine year old, even today. Why was that? Because the homo erectus were more carnivorous than any other species?

I also decided to google the Hominids and Homo difference [because I thought they were the same thing], but now I am confused. It said that Homo was a genus that included modern humans and all of their ancestors [which includes homo sapiens, homo erectus, homo habilis, etc.], and that Hominids are the Apes family.

Then it said that we [humans] are hominids but then, that means that Homo are also part of the hominids?

And I also wanted to know if we could do a 'wiki article' about that? :)

Re: Other descendants

olandolfi 24 Aug 2009 01:05

To answer your last question, on the Wiki part The Peopling of the World that is exactly what you are going to do. As soon as I divide the groups you can start working on that. Now, the hominids are like the big family to whom be belong. What plants is to flower, Hominids is to human. Now all plant are flowers, and not all of the flowers look alike. The term Homo is what make us distinctly apart from the other hominids, because we were able to walk straight up in two legs.

Language can be a little confusing due to the fact that the word homo was assigned to the specie before we new we were connected to the rest of the hominids, hence the confusion with the term ape.

Hope to have clear your doubts.

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“As human beings, we are endowed with freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is our responsibility.” Arnold J. Toynbee