#Early hominid

[rustandsky]

First Funeral.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

I love places where I can walk around outdoors barefoot. makes me feel like a persistence predator

[canisalbus]

I'm curious to know what you meant by not having an internal monologue-- like, do you not address yourself sometimes, in your own head? For example-- "I probably shouldn't do that", or, "I guess I look okay today", or, "I wonder what they think of me?" ? (Some people address themselves in second person, ie. "oh you shouldn't have done that", or, "you're gonna be fine".)

Not really? My brain doesn't give me words, let alone sentences. It's mostly just images and concepts.

I can formulate speech in my mind if I put a significant amount of focus on that, it never happens passively. I have a lot of social anxiety (and I'm autistic, for what it's worth) so I often rehearse potential future conversations in my head, but it's a distinct activity that takes up a lot of mental space. I can be sort of slow at writing because it takes a moment for me to convert my thoughts into a verbal form, I keep pausing to try to find the most accurate and effective way to communicate what I'm trying to say.

[zinjanthropusboisei]

Ancestor (Paranthropus boisei) 

Paranthropus boisei was an early hominid species from 2.5–1.15 million years ago, living among the wetlands and lakes of the East African Rift System. The skull "Zinj" or "the Nutcracker Man" was discovered in 1959 in the now-arid Olduvai Gorge.

[hirotheinkling]

Here’s my illustration of a Neanderthal man carrying a deer that he just hunted in what is now France! Although the upper body of Neanderthals was very similar to that of modern humans, there are some subtle but distinctive differences between their skeletons. The collarbone of Neanderthals is very long, the chest is generally larger and deeper, and the rib cage is slightly flared at the base. The strong arms show marked muscle attachment sites, and the Neanderthal forearm is relatively short. The fingers are short, but the fingertips are broad. The scapula (shoulder blade) is wide from side to side, and Neanderthals most likely had a powerful upper arm swing.

[oh2e]

Maybe wandering around taking pictures in the early human exhibition in the Natural History Museum on the verge of tears with a Robin BBC Ghosts phone case sends the wrong message but I refuse to apologise because they were just like us! They loved and played and mourned and had kindness and had toothache and growing pains and painted and did their best and we remember them thousands, millions of years later.

[roach-works]

Hey, were you the one that said we might not have any Neanderthals around bc we had interbred w/ them? I just read this study https://phys.org/news/2023-05-nose-gene-inherited-neanderthals.amp

i have no idea if i am but i do just assume all early hominid species were interbreeding regularly, considering we have a documented record that at least one chimp had consensual sex with a baboon right in front of a researcher.

that link doesn't seem to be loading for me though.

[astronicht]

The funny thing about race car drivers and also astronauts (especially early astronauts) is that they have to fit into a machine where the engineers who built it are historically, constantly, mad that they have to leave room for a human being. So you get (in, say, the 1960s moonshot programs and Formula 1), a collection of really little athletes. Just some tiny guys.

[loki-zen]

but like fr we are not going to solve racism by reifying ‘White’ into a real, important category. all you’re doing there is solidifying the idea that what people look like is what counts, and obviously that is going to be an issue when you’re talking about displaced/colonised people, those with a history of mixing for other reasons, or about peoples within any given continent that doesn’t have basically the exact history that North America does.

[nomsfaultau]

[historyfiles]

Human Ancestors Bottleneck: a human genomics analysis has shown that the total population of direct-line human ancestors plummeted to about 1,280 breeding individuals for a span of about 117,000 years, bringing them close to extinction:

[bumblebeebats]

Sorry i can't come in today, i just bit the exact same spot on the inside of my cheek for the third time. Yeah that's right, the THIRD fucking time. Yeah i'll need about two weeks

[evilyurifan]

unknown: cave of bones documentary on netflix. profoundly moving

[beautifulcorpses]

Chapter ???

Before April 1st becomes April 2nd, and in the spirit of #BeautifulCorpses , I wanted to present to you a fine example of #NotFakeScience #AprilFools !

 Folks, meet what once was considered a very early member of the Homo genus: Homo diluvii testis !

Yeah, so... It’s known now to have been a giant Miocene salamander, dubbed Andrias scheuchzeri. An early representative of the species including the Chinese giant water salamander, amongst others.

 But when it was first uncovered in 1726, Swiss physician Johann Jakob Scheuchzer believed a man looked at him from the rock - its name literally translated to “Man, witness of the Deluge”.

Perhaps it could be compared to the Piltdown Man in England, in that it took a lot longer than what’d be normal for someone to call bullshit - 32 YEARS. That’s like an entire generation of people figuring that this was a person.

 From there, it flip-flopped from consideration as a catfish, a lizard, and finally a salamander - but never again a man. And thank God, honestly.

Some have claimed that, given the fragmentary appearance of the fossil, it could’ve been mistaken for a VERY destroyed human skeleton... though I wonder how much Mr. Scheuchzer might’ve been kidding, or at least not been serious... 

 I mean the guy was a DOCTOR

The lack of serious thought might’ve been endemic to the science at the time. For another example of this, we can point to the first dinosaur fossil ever discovered and described in Western science, Scrotum humanum.

(to whit: this was a piece of a leg bone of Megalosaurus, the first dinosaur described as such in the science. In a world where the first name managed to stay...)

I’ll close with this incredible interpretation by C. M. Koseman for “All Yesterdays”, of what a humanoid with A. scheuchzeri’s proportions would’ve *really* looked like...

 Happy #AprilFoolsDay everybody!!! Hope you enjoyed this brief #NotFakeScience adventure

[hirotheinkling]

Here’s my illustration of a Homo rhodesiensis male butchering a freshly hunted warthog in what is now Kabwe, Zambia! The type specimen of this species, the Kabwe 1 cranium, is one of the most robust hominin skulls from the Middle Pleistocene, with a massive brow ridge and thickened bone at the back to support the strong neck muscles. Results of radiometric dating place the age estimate of Kabwe 1 at 299,000 years old, virtually about the same age as the earliest Homo sapiens.