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Why it might be time to rethink the human family tree

https://nautil.us/why-it-might-be-time-to-rethink-the-human-family-tree-1283985
18•Anon84•2d ago

Comments

bibimsz•2d ago
isn't it kind of suspect that there was all this diversity and branching conveniently right up to today and then it stopped. seems ideological.
sokoloff•1d ago
On a chart section spanning around 5 million years, are you asking about the millions of years where there was “all this diversity and branching” as contrasted with the last ten thousand years or so where there is less observed branching?

Around 15 branches in 5,000,000 years and 0 in the last 10,000 years seems more likely statistical than ideological to me.

jsbisviewtiful•15m ago
Totally agree. Unfortunately we are living in an age of mass stupidity’s volume overtaking critical thought and analysis by those who are truly educated. The amount of moon landing conspiracy theories I see online is deeply disturbing - some even going as far as suggesting space doesn’t even exist. Truly disturbing times.
ThrowawayTestr•1d ago
Are you not aware of the multiple genetic bottlenecks homo sapiens have gone through?
guywithahat•1d ago
I don't think anyone can look at the incredible diversity of humans we have now and say they're all the same species, while looking at birds or other animals and say they deserve to all be different species. One of those trains of thought are wrong, and humans seem to be the outlier.

That said, I don't want to be the one to have to tell people they're another race. I think calling all humans the same race simplifies a lot of life, and there's no reason we can't treat ourselves differently.

ryoshoe•1d ago
I feel like you're conflating race/ethnicity with species when the two are completely separate concepts. There's a great amount of diversity between dog breeds, including wolves, but little disagreement that they are the same species. Variation between members of a certain species is expected
binaryturtle•4m ago
Isn't the general separation between species that they no longer can cleanly interbreed (generate fertile offsprings)? I'm no biology expert though, but I always thought this is how to separate things.

Humans of all kinds can breed and make new humans easily. Same for dogs... easily can breed with each other and increase diversity. So in both cases same species. But humans and chimpanzees? Probably not (albeit there are rumours? :) ), so different species.

OtomotO•36m ago
You don't seem to understand what species means and what race means, in biology
tsimionescu•10m ago
A species is defined by one simple thing: if individuals can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. There are complications related to ring species and few others, but they're not applicable here.

All human beings from all over the world can interbreed and their children will be fertile themselves (with the same rate of accidental infertility they would find in their own populations). As such, it would be completely preposterous to claim that there is more than one species of human on the planet today.

trollbridge•44m ago
If a group of humans gets isolated in an island, the moon, etc., experiences a population bottleneck and bigtime selection pressures, a new species might emerge after 500 generations (about 10,000 years).
m3047•1d ago
Research is coming out specifically regarding the COVID genome which suggests missing sequence data was routinely filled in from baseline reference sequences. In turn, the reference sequences suggest during later analysis constant reversion back to the baseline. These gaps are the (dot) product of limitations of PCR * computer processing algorithms. No reason to believe the problem is limited to COVID.
trollbridge•45m ago
Does this explain the conspiracy theories about “insertions”? When I looked into it, many other virus species had similar “insertions” - the problem seeming to be the sequencing itself not being accurate (as opposed to every viral disease being cooked up in a lab for the last 5,000 years)
BigTTYGothGF•22m ago
I haven't heard anything about this, could you drop a couple references?
archonis•8m ago
Please educate yourself about basic biological taxonomy before you accidentally and publically position yourself as a practitioner and champion of flawed race science.

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Why it might be time to rethink the human family tree

https://nautil.us/why-it-might-be-time-to-rethink-the-human-family-tree-1283985
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