Critical Hominin Theory
December 26, 2023 7:54 AM Subscribe
"The units of paleontology, and of biology more generally, are different from the units of paleoanthropology, in that the latter are units in a story of our ancestors, and the ancestors are invariably sacred". A reconsideration of pre-human ancestors from biological anthropologist Jonathan Marks.
Marks blogs about anthropology's role (past and present) in racism, the construction of the human origin story, and the popular understanding of science.
Marks blogs about anthropology's role (past and present) in racism, the construction of the human origin story, and the popular understanding of science.
It seems to be acceptable to identify Neanderthal DNA in one's family tree. Also, European ancestors and pretty much any other population group can be identified through DNA analysis, and a proportion of DNA can be assigned to several populations in the same person. We don't speak of Chihuahuas and Great Danes as members of different species; we call them "breeds." The same differentiation applies to horses, cats, and other domesticated animals. But we recognize a sub-species of certain wild animals, such as leopards and wild (not feral) horses.
It would be outrageous to refer to different human types as "breeds." The sacred nature of the branch that studies our ancestors seems to be wading in increasingly muddier waters. Researchers from different fields can't even seem to agree on what to call one another.
A decade ago, I read about a group of hominids who lived in a large cave in France. They predated the earliest Neanderthal finds by a hundred thousand years. They built several shelters in that cave, all their doors opening away from the entrance to the cave. Each shelter had a wolf's skull over the doorway. As far as I know, these guys were never assigned to a branch on the Homo limb of the evolutionary tree.
I am told that I share 97% of my DNA with chimpanzees. That's only 5% more than I share with a goofball. I eagerly await further scientific confusion.
posted by mule98J at 11:22 AM on December 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
It would be outrageous to refer to different human types as "breeds." The sacred nature of the branch that studies our ancestors seems to be wading in increasingly muddier waters. Researchers from different fields can't even seem to agree on what to call one another.
A decade ago, I read about a group of hominids who lived in a large cave in France. They predated the earliest Neanderthal finds by a hundred thousand years. They built several shelters in that cave, all their doors opening away from the entrance to the cave. Each shelter had a wolf's skull over the doorway. As far as I know, these guys were never assigned to a branch on the Homo limb of the evolutionary tree.
I am told that I share 97% of my DNA with chimpanzees. That's only 5% more than I share with a goofball. I eagerly await further scientific confusion.
posted by mule98J at 11:22 AM on December 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
Well this is a bracing read on Jared Diamond AND evo-psych. I fucking love this guy.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 11:36 AM on December 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 11:36 AM on December 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
Instead of constructing narratives about our pre-historic past that have the veneer of science, it might be better to just educate people that we can't currently, and probably won't ever be able to, answer many interesting questions about how our Paleolithic ancestors changed biologically, cognitively, and culturally.
I appreciate that the proposal here highlights anthropological uncertainty by renaming anthropological units as "sacred". But that could invite confusion. Alternatively, we could focus on accurately labeling our need for elaborate narratives about our ancient past: an understandable but sometimes childish wish for answers even when none are possible.
posted by airing nerdy laundry at 11:52 AM on December 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
I appreciate that the proposal here highlights anthropological uncertainty by renaming anthropological units as "sacred". But that could invite confusion. Alternatively, we could focus on accurately labeling our need for elaborate narratives about our ancient past: an understandable but sometimes childish wish for answers even when none are possible.
posted by airing nerdy laundry at 11:52 AM on December 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
When I was teaching myself some biology, I ended up having similar (though not as informed or educated) thoughts as in this blog post.
What I concluded is that our brains think in categories, but: The world, especially the biological world, especially the sexually reproduced biological world, isn't created by category-forming mechanisms. The mundane fact of meiotic recombination means that my genome is made up of millions of snippets of DNA which each have their own history, their own family tree that branches into ever more tangled webs the further back you trace them.
That tangled-web process is not conducive to creating categories. Yes, some category-creating mechanisms do arise - geographic splits, mutation of genitalia, modified mating calls, that sort of thing - but they work slowly and unreliably to create clearly separate categories. Sex is working in every generation to tangle things together.
I can keep "five races of the world" in my head. I can't keep the millions of individual family trees of each snippet of my genome in my head. But the first one is a lie.
posted by clawsoon at 11:56 AM on December 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
What I concluded is that our brains think in categories, but: The world, especially the biological world, especially the sexually reproduced biological world, isn't created by category-forming mechanisms. The mundane fact of meiotic recombination means that my genome is made up of millions of snippets of DNA which each have their own history, their own family tree that branches into ever more tangled webs the further back you trace them.
That tangled-web process is not conducive to creating categories. Yes, some category-creating mechanisms do arise - geographic splits, mutation of genitalia, modified mating calls, that sort of thing - but they work slowly and unreliably to create clearly separate categories. Sex is working in every generation to tangle things together.
I can keep "five races of the world" in my head. I can't keep the millions of individual family trees of each snippet of my genome in my head. But the first one is a lie.
posted by clawsoon at 11:56 AM on December 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
Apropos "five races", this guy has something to say about that.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 12:06 PM on December 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 12:06 PM on December 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
Oomycetes always used to tell me that I had my great^n-grandparent's g-protein coupled receptors.
posted by Richard Saunders at 12:31 PM on December 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Richard Saunders at 12:31 PM on December 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
Always appreciate a Bruno Latour-tinged takedown of a line of thought.
posted by gusandrews at 8:41 PM on December 26, 2023
posted by gusandrews at 8:41 PM on December 26, 2023
A decade ago, I read about a group of hominids who lived in a large cave in France. They predated the earliest Neanderthal finds by a hundred thousand years. They built several shelters in that cave, all their doors opening away from the entrance to the cave. Each shelter had a wolf's skull over the doorway. As far as I know, these guys were never assigned to a branch on the Homo limb of the evolutionary tree.What is this referring to, please?
posted by Flunkie at 12:02 AM on December 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
What is this referring to, please?
Perhaps it's about Lazaret? From the Wikipedia article on paleolithic dogs, labeled 125,000 years before present at Grotte du Lazaret, near Nice, France:
posted by clawsoon at 1:16 PM on December 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Perhaps it's about Lazaret? From the Wikipedia article on paleolithic dogs, labeled 125,000 years before present at Grotte du Lazaret, near Nice, France:
Wolf skulls appear to have been set at the entrance of each dwelling in a complex of Paleolithic shelters. The excavators speculated that wolves were already incorporated into some aspect of human culture by this early time. A nearby wolf den intruded on the site. In 1997, a study of maternal mDNA indicated that the genetic divergence of dogs from wolves occurred 100,000–135,000 YBP. The Lazaret excavation lends credence to this mDNA study, in addition to indicating that a special relationship existed between wolves and genus Homo other than Homo sapiens, because this date is well before the arrival of Homo sapiens into Europe. In 2018, a study of paternal yDNA indicated that the dog and the modern grey wolf genetically diverged from a common ancestor between 68,000 and 151,000 YBP.125,000 years ago isn't before Neanderthals or Homo sapiens, but it is before the earliest known Homo sapiens in Europe. The linked article on Lazaret says:
Two hundred thousand year old cranial fragments of a nine year old juvenile found in the cave suggest the presence of either Homo heidelbergensis or a proto-Neanderthal human.The source for "wolf skulls appear to have been set at the entrance of each dwelling" is the 1996 book The Lost History of the Canine Race: Our 15,000-Year Love Affair With Dogs.
posted by clawsoon at 1:16 PM on December 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Part of Marks' argument is slightly odd; he seems to suggest that there's something particular to the study of humans that means we can't overcome our subjectivity:
We are humans studying human ancestors; the reflexivity is built into the system. In order to break out of the loop (Huxley 1863:69), we can pretend to be space aliens (“scientific Saturnians, if you will”), but that is hardly a scientific solution to any problem.
There are lots of scientific fields which are more or less successful at studying humanity (psychology, anatomy, medicine, etc) and they all have their difficulties, but they deal with them in the usual scientific ways: try to be objective, create formal processes to minimise systematic errors, acknowledge and guard against ideological interference, review the work collectively, etc. I don't see any reason, despite the problems Marks' describes, to believe that paleoanthropology can't find its own ways to make progress and discover truth.
posted by vincebowdren at 2:18 PM on December 27, 2023
We are humans studying human ancestors; the reflexivity is built into the system. In order to break out of the loop (Huxley 1863:69), we can pretend to be space aliens (“scientific Saturnians, if you will”), but that is hardly a scientific solution to any problem.
There are lots of scientific fields which are more or less successful at studying humanity (psychology, anatomy, medicine, etc) and they all have their difficulties, but they deal with them in the usual scientific ways: try to be objective, create formal processes to minimise systematic errors, acknowledge and guard against ideological interference, review the work collectively, etc. I don't see any reason, despite the problems Marks' describes, to believe that paleoanthropology can't find its own ways to make progress and discover truth.
posted by vincebowdren at 2:18 PM on December 27, 2023
Wolf skulls appear to have been set at the entrance of each dwelling
Thanks, Clawsoon. The lead sentence in the article I read began, _They lived in a cave in France..."
Thinking back, I believe I read that piece in the late 1990s. Hindsight is not always what it's cracked up to be. I seem to have conflated the dates with something I read about Neanderthals living in a cave shared by their ancestors. The ancestors date back 300K years.
posted by mule98J at 7:29 AM on December 28, 2023
Thanks, Clawsoon. The lead sentence in the article I read began, _They lived in a cave in France..."
Thinking back, I believe I read that piece in the late 1990s. Hindsight is not always what it's cracked up to be. I seem to have conflated the dates with something I read about Neanderthals living in a cave shared by their ancestors. The ancestors date back 300K years.
posted by mule98J at 7:29 AM on December 28, 2023
I wonder if the author of the article you read put together the dates of the possible Homo heidelbergensis finds in the cave with the dates of the wolf skulls. (Which ties nicely back to the OP, since the status of Homo heidelbergensis as a species has been much debated. Is it a species, a subspecies, a chronospecies? Or, as the OP puts it, "an attempt to apply scientific taxonomic rigor where it is inapplicable, by naming something and thus willing it into existence"?)
posted by clawsoon at 8:48 AM on December 28, 2023
posted by clawsoon at 8:48 AM on December 28, 2023
"an attempt to apply scientific taxonomic rigor where it is inapplicable, by naming something and thus willing it into existence"?)
It seems to have been established that several "hominin species" coexisted and, at least in the case of the Neanderthals and "sapiens," interbred ( Why not say intermarried?). We may have more to learn from prehistory than we want to know.
posted by mule98J at 4:40 PM on December 28, 2023
It seems to have been established that several "hominin species" coexisted and, at least in the case of the Neanderthals and "sapiens," interbred ( Why not say intermarried?). We may have more to learn from prehistory than we want to know.
posted by mule98J at 4:40 PM on December 28, 2023
It seems to have been established that several "hominin species" coexisted
Indeed. As I understood the author's point, the various species blend together with such fuzzy boundaries that it's hard to say which ones count as "actual species" and which ones are arbitrary categories that we've imposed on a series of fossils whose features blend into each other over time. Homo heidelbergensis sits right in the middle of that.
It's funny... at one time we had "missing link" problem, but now we have so many overlapping links that we don't know where one link ends and the next link begins.
posted by clawsoon at 5:26 PM on December 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
Indeed. As I understood the author's point, the various species blend together with such fuzzy boundaries that it's hard to say which ones count as "actual species" and which ones are arbitrary categories that we've imposed on a series of fossils whose features blend into each other over time. Homo heidelbergensis sits right in the middle of that.
It's funny... at one time we had "missing link" problem, but now we have so many overlapping links that we don't know where one link ends and the next link begins.
posted by clawsoon at 5:26 PM on December 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
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The overall take in this article, which I found to be very interesting, again points out the power of naming. If you name something, it is a way of reifying that thing, and then you just need to get people to use that name to solidify its ontological status. The so-called races are just such names. It’s a means of othering people with a label and then predicating differences on them to justify the othering.
Science can be just as human as politics…
posted by njohnson23 at 9:23 AM on December 26, 2023 [7 favorites]