archeology - world's oldest rock art might be in Australia

Sorry mate - did not see this post - must have posted it between me opening the thread and starting a reply and me actually finishing said reply (i sometimes take a while when I am researching answers)

But I am sticking to my guns about hominid migration here - and I formed this opinion in a little tiny country museum in Warwick when I first saw the replica of the "Talgai skull" Now I have enough anatomy to know what is human norm and THAT skull, deformed by post mortem pressure or not it is NOT homo sapiens! I can post pictures but they do not do the original 3D image justice

We know from DNA evidence that Australian aborigines that were part of a very early dispersal and colonisation but that evidence is only one lock of hair from a Western Australian individual

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/4776/aboriginal-genome-rewrites-human-dispersal-story

There were at least three groups of Aboriginals with the "original" group the Tasmanian Aborigine - of whom none survive unfortunately and very very sadly

 

From what i see in the photos Talgai skull is definitely human just not Homo Sapient , just look the eye sockets and the protruding bow above them (sorry i don't know the English term) , with my tiny experience i think this is an Erectus .

 

Darn I meant to post homo sap not just human - yes, the more you look the more it seems hominid. Homo erectus was around a long time and given the survival stories following the Boxing Day Tsunami there is no real reason why a small group would not have made it to Australia following just such a natural disaster

 

Sorry to correct your terminology but i think hominid is everything primate like that walks in two legs .
It took our species few thousand years to get from Yemen to Australia , i don't see why other species can not have done the same .

 

it's definitely h. sapien. brow ridges are still present in today's modern populations...

 

I wouldn't say it's impossible but highly unlikely...successful migration requires a planned unified effort, hunter gather societies require a group of 20-30 for a functional sustainable community, a combination of technology, experience, strength, maturity, youth, the odds of that happening by accident across open seas, very, very, very slim...

 

Melanesian's DNA group of which the Aborigines belong have a DNA contribution from a newly found hominid Denisovans, a sister group to neanderthals, whereas Europeans have a DNA contribution from the Neanderthals...my point being that you cannot identify purely on superficial appearance of what you think a modern sapiens looks like, forget what you've been taught by ill-informed high school teachers it's much more complex than a layman's understanding of archeological...sub-Saharan Africans have not been found not to have neanderthal or Denisovans DNA...

 

According to Wikopedia (not the best source) Melanesians are the only Black race that blond hair is common.

That is why I was curious...most black folks here have natural dark hair.

The genetics of hair color are not well understood and only 2% of the earth people have blond hair into middle age. Those being the northern and eastern Europeans.

It seems that a genetist would at least investigate a link.

It would beg the Question...Why only Melanesians??? And where did the blond hair come from.

 

Wild assumptions. As with most continents, several human migrations passed through Australia. I took notes on this once, and from what I have, the earliest human presence in Australia dates back to roughly 50,000-55,000 years ago (Keilor and Willandra Lakes sites were dated at 35,000-45,000 ya). These however were robust types displaying affinities with Middle Pleistocene (500,000 y old) hominids. The current grassile Aboriginees appear for the first time on record in Australia about 30,000 ya (Lake Mundo skeletons). For few tens of thousands of years the robust and grassile aboriginees cohabited side by side with rubust skeletons appearing in fossil record as recently as 9,000 - 15,000 ya (Kow Swamp in N. Victoria).

 

define common...there are sub Saharan Africans with blonde hair and even blue eyes, the later was a surprise to me...red hair is even more wide spread throughout the world and again not unique to Europeans...


http://globalfusionproductions.com/fbl/nigerian-parents-give-birth-to-a-blonde-hair-blue-eyed-baby-girl-in-london/

my African friends wife has red hair and blue eyes, unusual but it happens...mutations always happen sometimes they become more dominant and stay with the population other times they get reabsorbed back into the mix...

and I was one of those northern europeans with platinum coloured hair as a child, blonde as teenager/young adult, brown in my later years...my fathers hair was black as any found in Africa but grey/blue eyes...

 

That big ridges ? i don't think so also

http://www.archaeologybulletin.org/article/viewFile/12/21/68[

(photo don't wanna show up ) This is an image of Talgai skull from the back side



Homo Sapient has one distinct characteristic , our skulls are round specially on their back , this fellow had an elongated one



It is clearly an Erectus specimen

 

Regarding Lake Mungo skeletons, it seems the date estimates have been recently revised upwards to 40,000 years old. Still, the analogy to Neanderthals and moderns in Europe holds similar, with gracile and robust aboriginee skeletal and tool remains collected from across various sites in Australia. The robust types most likely arrived earlier from Java since they are similar to Middle Pleistocene hominids from that island.

The first estimate of LM3's age was made in 1976, when the team of paleoanthropologists from the Australian National University (ANU) who excavated LM3 published their findings. They estimated that LM3 was between 28,000 and 32,000 years old.[5] They did not test LM3's remains directly, but rather established an estimate by stratigraphic comparison with LM1, an earlier set of partially cremated remains also found at Lake Mungo.

In 1987, an electron spin resonance test was conducted on bone fragments from LM3's skeleton, which established an estimate of his age at 31,000 years, plus or minus 7,000 years. In 1999 Thermoluminescence dating work was carried out on quartz from unburnt sediment associated with the LM3 burial site with the selective bleach results indicating a burial older than 24,600 ± 2,400 and younger than 43,300 ± 3,800 ka.[10] Later Thorne et al. (1999), arrived at a new estimate of 62,000 ± 6,000 years. This estimate was determined by combining data from uranium-thorium dating, electron spin resonance dating and optically stimulated luminescence dating of the remains and the immediately surrounding soil.[11] However, this estimate was very controversial.[12][13][14] The lowest level of the LM3 which are as old as 43,000 years demonstrated that LM3 should not be older than the lowest layer. However, the ANU team had dated the stratum itself to be between 59,000 and 63,000 years old. The problems with using uranium-thorium dating on tooth enamel was criticized.

In 2003, collaboration of several Australian groups reached a consensus that LM3 is about 40,000 years old.[15] This age largely corresponds with stratigraphic evidence using 4 different dating methods. The age of 40,000 years is currently the most widely accepted age for the LM3, making LM3 the second oldest modern human fossil east of India. The study also found that LM1 was a similar age to LM3, and not 30,000 years old, as previously thought.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Mungo_remains

 

Yes I know and we do not know what the Denisovans looked like because we only have a finger bone

And we have yet to we have yet to work out the exact relationship Homo Florensis has to all of this and how THEY got where they were found

Given that palaeontology on this continent relies on a handful of specimens - most of which are problematic when it comes to being examined - and what we have found is........anomalous........I am sticking by my guns and averring that there are and will be "surprises" to be found here.

 

The bone in question was probably from the middle finger.

 

Homo Floresiensis bones are closer to an Australopithecian rather than anyone else .
Islands provide the isolation required for a species to outlive it's "expiration" date , megalenia in Australia and the giant eagle in new Zealand are good examples .

 

Raised high and with fervour LOL!!

 

And yet how did THEY get there? There is no evidence of an Australopithecian migration and many sites suggest Homo Florensis was a variant of Homo Erectus.

It seems our mate Homo Erectus was more advanced than many have given him credit for

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/662794.stm

 

You have to inherit genes for blue eyes from both parents.

If you have one blue gene and one brown gene the child will have brown eyes.

As far as skin color goes ...if a blond haired blue eyed thorobred Northern European marries a thorobred African the skin color can be from "whitest white" to "blackest black"
I also had "dirty blond" hair until I reached about 30 then it turned brown.
My whole family had blue eyes...parents, grandparents on both sides, aunts, uncles, cousins.

My dad had black hair...and my mothers red.

Sub Saharan Africa is likely to be intermixed with white people. That is why I was so curious about the Melanasians.

I saw River Monsters on T.V. the other day and Jeremy Wade was in the Solomon Islands. He said the natives originated in Asia.

 

Talgai skull characteristics falls within the physical range of modern aborigines brow ridges and all...and it is very different from your other pictures...you have fallen in the ethnocentric fallacy that all sapiens have high foreheads and domed skulls....

here's a example of modern aborigine skull

 

that's a good guide but if it 100% true there would be no blue eyed people at all....blue eyes is a mutation, the first person to have them would've had two parents with brown eyes, mutations can and do repeat...

 

you're jumping to early conclusions, Flo could a modern sapien that has adapted with insular dwarfism...

 

I would imagine very much like Neanderthals...

maybe none, they may be relatives of today's modern Melanesians, or a remnant of homo erectus...how they got there, they came by water craft...being east of the wallace line walking was impossible and as homo erectus as far as I'm aware never shown any technology advanced enough for them to be capable of transporting an entire H&G society across open water...which is why I suspect they're not homo erectus but h. sapien...a viable DNA sample from Flo would confirm it either way...

sure which is why archeologists are always looking further back...but sometimes nothing is found because there is nothing to find, finding nothing is in itself is important as well...

 

If you want to go that far.... the fact that any animal has eyes at all it would be because of mutation.

The gene for brown eyes is dominant.

 

I would tend to think that Melanasians came to Oz and the surrounding area by boat from Africa.

The only difference would be the geographic isolation that all peoples have had at some time in their history.

But I have no proof...just opinion.

 

ya I'm aware of that but it needs to start somewhere then fix it's self in the population...