May 25, 2025 07:51 PM
https://aeon.co/essays/why-one-branch-on...the-others
EXCERPTS: On the western slope of Mount Carmel, in Israel, lies the cave of Es-Skhul. About 140,000 years ago, during the Ice Age, nomadic hunter-gatherers made camp here. [...] The skeletons found here represent some of the earliest known members of our species, Homo sapiens. But these Homo sapiens were very different from us.
Their skulls retained anatomical features seen in primitive humans like Neanderthals – huge brow ridges, massive jaws, thick skulls. But, despite their primitive appearance, they weren’t our ancestors; they appear too late in time. They’re a side branch of our evolutionary tree, one that went extinct, leaving no descendants. Why did we survive, while they didn’t?
The answer may lie in their skulls. They lacked the peculiar anatomical traits that modern humans share – small brow ridges, bubble-shaped skulls, reduced jaws, thin cranial bones – which are typical of juveniles of other hominins and apes. Compared with other hominins, we’re literally baby-faced. Selection for juvenile traits – low aggression, openness to novelty and new people – likely made us more social, and produced our immature-looking skulls as a side-effect. Ironically, it may have been this sociability and low aggression that made modern humans so incredibly dangerous to these primitive Homo sapiens.
[...] In a lot of ways, these people resemble us. They had high foreheads and domed heads, more like us than like Neanderthals, who had sloped foreheads and long braincases. Their brains were similar in size to ours. Their jawbones had strong chins; Neanderthals and other species had weak chins. But in other ways, the Skhul and Qafzeh fossils are strikingly primitive.
[...] Artefacts found with the Skhul and Qafzeh fossils also reflect this mix of sophisticated and primitive...
[...] For a century, archaeologists have tried to make sense of the Skhul and Qafzeh bones, but we’re far from a consensus. Even assigning the skeletons to a species has been contentious. For a time, the skeletons were given their own species; later, they were interpreted as transitional between Neanderthals and modern humans, or even as Neanderthal-human hybrids. The current thought is that they are part of Homo sapiens, more closely related to us than to Neanderthals. But if so, how do they relate to us?
[...] The striking pattern we see in the archaeological record is that modern Homo sapiens always took ground against other hominins, and we never gave it up. Everywhere modern humans went, we displaced archaic sapiens, never the reverse – as with Neanderthals and Denisovans ... We won consistently, more often than we lost. Our success wasn’t a fluke; we weren’t just lucky, we were better than the other humans. Modern humans had an edge – so what was it?
One possibility is that we were better with tools and technology. [...] Another possibility is that we were better with language. [...] We might also have had other more subtle advantages...
[...] So it’s possible that a sort of process of domestication gave modern Homo sapiens our weird, immature skulls, including big, domed heads, loss of brow ridges, small jaws, and thin skull bones. If the bones look immature, maybe the brain inside was too. Perhaps youthful creativity, imagination, faculty for languages, playfulness, why’s-the-sky-blue curiosity, willingness to make new friends were all retained late in life in us, compared with other humans – with selection for child-like behaviours creating our child-like faces... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: On the western slope of Mount Carmel, in Israel, lies the cave of Es-Skhul. About 140,000 years ago, during the Ice Age, nomadic hunter-gatherers made camp here. [...] The skeletons found here represent some of the earliest known members of our species, Homo sapiens. But these Homo sapiens were very different from us.
Their skulls retained anatomical features seen in primitive humans like Neanderthals – huge brow ridges, massive jaws, thick skulls. But, despite their primitive appearance, they weren’t our ancestors; they appear too late in time. They’re a side branch of our evolutionary tree, one that went extinct, leaving no descendants. Why did we survive, while they didn’t?
The answer may lie in their skulls. They lacked the peculiar anatomical traits that modern humans share – small brow ridges, bubble-shaped skulls, reduced jaws, thin cranial bones – which are typical of juveniles of other hominins and apes. Compared with other hominins, we’re literally baby-faced. Selection for juvenile traits – low aggression, openness to novelty and new people – likely made us more social, and produced our immature-looking skulls as a side-effect. Ironically, it may have been this sociability and low aggression that made modern humans so incredibly dangerous to these primitive Homo sapiens.
[...] In a lot of ways, these people resemble us. They had high foreheads and domed heads, more like us than like Neanderthals, who had sloped foreheads and long braincases. Their brains were similar in size to ours. Their jawbones had strong chins; Neanderthals and other species had weak chins. But in other ways, the Skhul and Qafzeh fossils are strikingly primitive.
[...] Artefacts found with the Skhul and Qafzeh fossils also reflect this mix of sophisticated and primitive...
[...] For a century, archaeologists have tried to make sense of the Skhul and Qafzeh bones, but we’re far from a consensus. Even assigning the skeletons to a species has been contentious. For a time, the skeletons were given their own species; later, they were interpreted as transitional between Neanderthals and modern humans, or even as Neanderthal-human hybrids. The current thought is that they are part of Homo sapiens, more closely related to us than to Neanderthals. But if so, how do they relate to us?
[...] The striking pattern we see in the archaeological record is that modern Homo sapiens always took ground against other hominins, and we never gave it up. Everywhere modern humans went, we displaced archaic sapiens, never the reverse – as with Neanderthals and Denisovans ... We won consistently, more often than we lost. Our success wasn’t a fluke; we weren’t just lucky, we were better than the other humans. Modern humans had an edge – so what was it?
One possibility is that we were better with tools and technology. [...] Another possibility is that we were better with language. [...] We might also have had other more subtle advantages...
[...] So it’s possible that a sort of process of domestication gave modern Homo sapiens our weird, immature skulls, including big, domed heads, loss of brow ridges, small jaws, and thin skull bones. If the bones look immature, maybe the brain inside was too. Perhaps youthful creativity, imagination, faculty for languages, playfulness, why’s-the-sky-blue curiosity, willingness to make new friends were all retained late in life in us, compared with other humans – with selection for child-like behaviours creating our child-like faces... (MORE - missing details)