Dogen

Comment Threads

• Jean-Léon Moore commented on We get mail (contd.)
  Multi-aspect joke: 1 Direct: Martin's links were to the US Army Quarter Master Association (although he used an oddly old version - he might not like the new one, but there's another one that keeps all the pictures). The REMOUNT operation (to replace via breeding (with 75% US Gov. buying uptake), rejuvenate and prevent future short-falls (as seen in WW1)) was originally run by the US Department of Agriculture, then taken over by the Department of War (1920's onward, ran until WWII basically). The joke is that, as linked, in 1927 (at the very same time of those trucks shipping...
• Bill Arnold commented on We get mail (contd.)
  If you are interested, there's recent work on the topic of just how much genetic diversity has been lost over the last 60-150k years (I am, quite intentionally, including Neanderthals, Denisovan and the other three). Of course interested, though with full plate already, mainly looked at techniques, and at the differences between African and non-African samples and explanations for them (e.g. bottlenecks/founder effects). "the other three"? If I'm counting right, in the spirit of the implied (sci-fi?) scenario, can we have a transliteration or translation? (Haven't looked in the archives.) This is now on my list to watch: Active Interpretation...
• Elderly Cynic commented on We get mail (contd.)
  Almost certainly still wrong. Even accepting that those were Homo sapiens, which is debatable, they weren't Homo sapiens ssp. sapiens by definition, and they were almost certainly much less genetically diverse than sub-Saharan Africa was or is (probably even combined). You have to go back further for your claim to be plausible....
• Elderly Cynic commented on We get mail (contd.)
  There is patchy evidence for several other hominids, which may or may not have been distinct from the known species/subspecies - e.g. the "hobbit". None are known to have been 'good' subspecies, as distinct from pathologically inbred populations (like the Hapsburgs)....
• Jean-Léon Moore commented on We get mail (contd.)
  Yes, you'd have to add an extra zero (0) again. (nose wiggle). Anyhow, here's a long-form article that's quite interesting, and relates to the 2016 Chinese discoveries. Let's just say that the old view is being challenged, for various reasons: A third idea is even more radical. It emerged when Martinón-Torres and her colleagues compared more than 5,000 fossil teeth from around the world: the team found that Eurasian specimens are more similar to each other than to African ones8. That work and more recent interpretations of fossil skulls suggest that Eurasian hominins evolved separately from African ones for a...