[Taxacom] What is Homo sapiens

Wed May 30 13:21:33 CDT 2018

I visited the village of Neander. The museum there puts Neanderthals as a subspecies of Homo sapiens, despite popular media placing them differently. I'd not be surprised if they are reclassified as a race someday.I agree with you Ken and others. M

Sent from my Samsung device

-------- Original message --------
From: John Grehan <calabar.john at gmail.com> 
Date: 30/05/2018  19:21  (GMT+01:00) 
To: Kenneth Kinman <kinman at hotmail.com> 
Cc: taxacom <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> 
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] What is Homo sapiens 

Ken, that's a 'reasonable' argument, although still an argument. Perhaps
one day (if I get bored with ghost moths) I will see if I can understand
the nature of the molecular evidence better to make an assessment of those
thousands of scattered pieces (and whether they exist in nature or created
by alignment).

Getting back to the generic allocation, for now I have no firm opinion
either way for neanderthals being included within Homo or not. The
phylogenetic affinities of floresiensis fossil on the other hand remains
more problematic - in my opinion (as I did not think that the available
character states have been adequately analyzed).

John Grehan

On Wed, May 30, 2018 at 1:01 PM, Kenneth Kinman <kinman at hotmail.com> wrote:

>       Neanderthal DNA is scattered in thousands of pieces throughout our
> genome.  It would be virtually impossible for a population to selectively
> lose all of them.
>
>                ---------------Ken
>
> P.S.  I cannot believe that I spelled neanderthalensis twice in one
> posting.  A double "senior" moment for my aging brain.
>
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* John Grehan <calabar.john at gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, May 30, 2018 11:53 AM
> *To:* Kenneth Kinman
> *Cc:* Socorro Gonzalez; taxacom
>
> *Subject:* Re: [Taxacom] What is Homo sapiens
>
> Why should ancestral retention have to be in all individuals of a species?
>
> John Grehan
>
> On Wed, May 30, 2018 at 12:49 PM, Kenneth Kinman <kinman at hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> John,
>
>      In the case of Homo sapiens neandthalensis, it cannot be ancestral
> retention.  Because if it was ancestral retention, you would not see the
> virtual absence of such genes in African populations.
>
>      One can argue whether neandthalensis should be a subspecies of
> sapiens, or a distinct species, but placing it in a separate genus would be
> compltely unacceptable to most mammalogists.  Even many anthropologists
> would not accept such oversplitting.  That would be so far away from Mayr's
> recommended criterion that it would destabilize hominid classifications
> even more than they already are.
>
>                       -------------Ken
>
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* John Grehan <calabar.john at gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, May 30, 2018 9:40 AM
> *To:* Socorro Gonzalez
> *Cc:* Kenneth Kinman; taxacom
> *Subject:* Re: [Taxacom] What is Homo sapiens
>
> This relates to a broader question that I presume someone on this list can
> answer as a molecular geneticist - when 'genes' are shared between species,
> how does one know whether they are ancestral retention vs later
> 'hybridization'?
>
> On the interbreeding criterion some would posit neanderthals as H. sapiens.
>
> John Grehan
>
> On Wed, May 30, 2018 at 10:28 AM, Socorro Gonzalez <
> herbario_ciidir at yahoo.com.mx> wrote:
>
> I agree Kenneth.
>
> Considering that several of us have neanderthal genes (I, as many other
> people, have more than 3%). So, I wouldn't be happy that part of my
> ancestry is in another genus :)
>
> Socorro
> _________________________________
>
> M. Socorro Gonzalez Elizondo
> Herbario CIIDIR
> Instituto Politecnico Nacional
> Sigma 119 Fracc. 20 de Noviembre II
> Durango, Dgo., 34220 MEXICO
> Tels. (618) 814 4540, (618) 814 6802; (55) 5 729 6000 ext. 82609
>
>
> ------------------------------
> *De:* Kenneth Kinman <kinman at hotmail.com>
> *Para:* John Grehan <calabar.john at gmail.com>; taxacom <
> taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
> *Enviado:* Miércoles, 30 de mayo, 2018 8:40:02
> *Asunto:* Re: [Taxacom] What is Homo sapiens
>
> Dear All,
>
>       In the conclusions, he says: "By logical extension, hypothetical
> neanderthalensis and heidelbergensis clades, regardless of their
> relationship to a sapiens clade, should be regarded as separate genera."
>
>       I do not agree with that at all.  This is another example of the
> oversplitting that many anthropologists have long practiced, and it should
> be discouraged, not encouraged.
>
>                 --------------Ken
>
> ________________________________
> From: Taxacom <taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> on behalf of John
> Grehan <calabar.john at gmail.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2018 7:59 AM
> To: taxacom
> Subject: [Taxacom] What is Homo sapiens
>
> For anyone interested in such questions, see article at
>
> http://www.isita-org.com/jass/Contents/2016vol94/Schwartz/26963221.pdf
>
>
> Abstract below
>
> What constitutes Homo sapiens? Morphology versus received wisdom
>
> Although Linnaeus coined Homo sapiens in 1735, it was Blumenbach forty
> years later who provided the first morphological definition of the species.
> Since humans were not then allowed to be ante-Diluvian, his effort applied
> to the genus, as well. After the Feldhofer Grotto Neanderthal disproved
> this creationist notion, and human–fossil hunting became legitimate, new
> specimens were allocated either to sapiens or new species within Homo, or
> even to new species within new genera. Yet as these taxonomic acts
> reflected the morphological differences between specimens, they failed to
> address the question: What constitutes H. sapiens? When in 1950 Mayr
> collapsed all human fossils into Homo, he not only denied humans a diverse
> evolutionary past, he also shifted the key to identifying its species from
> morphology to geological age – a practice most paleoanthropologists still
> follow. Thus, for example, H. erectus is the species that preceded H.
> sapiens, and H. sapiens is the species into which H. erectus morphed. In
> order to deal with a growing morass of morphologically dissimilar
> specimens, the non-taxonomic terms “archaic” (AS) and “anatomically modern”
> (AMS) were introduced to distinguish between the earlier and later versions
> of H. sapiens, thereby making the species impossible to define. In
> attempting to disentangle fact from scenario, I begin from the beginning,
> trying to delineate features that may be distinctive of extant humans (ES),
> and then turning to the fossils that have been included in the species.
> With the exception of Upper Paleolithic humans – e.g. from Cro-Magnon,
> Dolni Vestonice, Mladeč – I argue that many specimens regarded as AMS, and
> all those deemed AS, are not H. sapiens. The features these AMS do share
> with ES suggest the existence of a sapiens clade. Further, restudy of
> near-recent fossils, especially from southwestern China (~11-14.5 ka),
> reinforces what discoveries such as H. floresiensis indicate: “If it’s
> recent, it’s not necessarily H. sapiens”.
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