What are the biggest questions remaining in the study of recent human evolution?

[Colibri]

@dtilque

BTW, when I asked about the Bluefish Caves site above, I meant specifically the 25,000 BP date. Is that date widely accepted by other archeologists? I found some pages online where scientists had doubts.

Since it’s relatively new data, I don’t know if you could determine whether it was “widely accepted” unless you polled professional archaeologists working in that field. There hasn’t been enough time to fully refute or confirm it. However, the date would tend to confirm the genetic evidence for human presence in Beringia.

[dtilque]

@Colibri

Since it’s relatively new data, I don’t know if you could determine whether it was “widely accepted” unless you polled professional archaeologists working in that field. There hasn’t been enough time to fully refute or confirm it. However, the date would tend to confirm the genetic evidence for human presence in Beringia.

It was first published in 1979. How long does it take before data is no longer “relatively new”?

[Colibri]

@dtilque

It was first published in 1979. How long does it take before data is no longer “relatively new”?

You cited the new information on dating from January 2017. That’s what I was referring to as new, rather obviously.

And in January, a Université de Montréal PhD candidate, Lauriane Bourgeon, and her colleagues published a new study on Bluefish Caves bones in the journal PLOS One, confirming that humans had butchered horses and other animals there 24,000 years ago. “It was a huge surprise,” says Bourgeon.

Bolding mine.

If you already know what the answer is, why are you asking me?

[JWilliams]

@Tim_T-Bonham.net

A lot of this may be a definition issue – what groups do biologists choose to identify & name as a separate species.

Clearly, Neanderthal, Denisovan, and modern Sapiens could all inter-breed. That would seem to indicate that they are all the same species – at least, that used to be one of the defining characteristics when I learned science as half century ago.

@Colibri

Many good species are interfertile and can even produce fertile hybrids. However, according to current interpretations of the Biological Species Concept, if hybridization is limited in time and space, then the two groups can be considered to be separate species.

A quote from Darwin highlighting the complexities involved in defining “species”. A concept with compounding complexities, even more so with modern scientific observations.

It is really laughable to see what different ideas are prominent in various naturalists’ minds, when they speak of “species”; in some, resemblance is everything and descent of little weight—in some, resemblance seems to go for nothing, and Creation the reigning idea—in some, descent is the key,—in some, sterility an unfailing test, with others it is not worth a farthing. It all comes, I believe, from trying to define the undefinable.
— Charles Darwin
Letter to J. D. Hooker (24 Dec 1856). In Francis Darwin, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1888), 446.

[dtilque]

@Colibri

If you already know what the answer is, why are you asking me?

I guess I was really trying to judge how thoroughly the Clovis First paradigm had been removed from the field. If others besides that researcher were also surprised by the confirmation of 30+ year old data, then the answer would be that they had a ways to go.