Human Evolution and Racially Biased Scientists?

[houseofcantor]

What part of pulled that shit out of their ass are you failing to understand? Until they pull a freeze dried proto dude outta the ice, what is known about their appearance will remain at the intersection of jack and shit.

[ghostexorcist]

(27-12-2012 07:40 AM)houseofcantor Wrote:  What part of pulled that shit out of their ass are you failing to understand? Until they pull a freeze dried proto dude outta the ice, what is known about their appearance will remain at the intersection of jack and shit.

I think the facial reconstructions are based on current human skin and muscle depths. They may also mix ape and human measurements. This means the resulting face is not 100% accurate, but it still gives us an idea of what they might have looked like. Although, I will say that they are on pretty steady ground when it comes to early human skin color.

[namiloveyou]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUliLKSJ4bQ

According to the BBC, early modern humans looked exactly like contemporary Africans.

[houseofcantor]

Yeah, you guys are right. It's pulled that shit out of their asses.

[ScienceGeek2587]

The skin color issue is always fun in anthro. It is likely that the very earliest hominids still had thick hairy coats so the skin had much less sun exposure than ours does.

But apes have dark skin, some species do, some don't. When we run DNA profiles, the mechanisms we have for adjusting out skin to sun exposure developed after we lost the hair, of course, but before we were us.

The beautiful rich colors of modern humans' skin is a late adaptation to varying climates. When we look at the biochemisty involved, early humans should have had a smooth cafe au lait or even a bit darker, but not much, like people from India do. The gorgeous brown and blacks came a bit later, the fair even later than that and the speckled ginger much later.

Usually, makers of TV shows etc try for "nondescript" racial tone but humans have weird unconscious issues. We draw people like ourselves even when we don't mean to. Add to that, the hypersensitivity to mocking another race inadvertently by "implying that they are more ape-like" and we end up with Big, Blond, and Burly the cavemen.

It IS racist, but not malefically so.

Side note: I am personally horribly racist in one way and one way only. I wish folks of different races wouldn't marry as often because we risk losing our beautiful variety of colors and, as a ginger, y'all need to color our species because it's not like I can.

[ghostexorcist]

(27-12-2012 08:17 PM)houseofcantor Wrote:  Yeah, you guys are right. It's pulled that shit out of their asses.

Are you objecting to the facial reconstructions or the skin color stuff?

[Diablo]

The same reason aliens take on human form.

Does that make us speciest too?

[houseofcantor]

(27-12-2012 09:40 PM)ghostexorcist Wrote:  

(27-12-2012 08:17 PM)houseofcantor Wrote:  Yeah, you guys are right. It's pulled that shit out of their asses.

Are you objecting to the facial reconstructions or the skin color stuff?

Kinda answered yer own question...

(27-12-2012 08:03 PM)ghostexorcist Wrote:  I think the facial reconstructions are based on current human skin and muscle depths. They may also mix ape and human measurements.

I was watching some-fucking-thing... but I go on these science binges where I watch thirty documentaries...

[tiagorod84]

The famous 'human evolution' picture is merely illustrative. It does not have any sicentific accuracy.

The science community is obviously debating about how the early Homo sapiens looked like. The dark skin hypothesis seems to make more sense, due to the african latitude.