Different Puddles of Muck

[Being]

I guess the original thread was in CC because I don't find it here. But the crux of it was that the stardust didn't just fall into a single puddle of muck on the face of the Earth. Species were springing up everywhere. It's certainly been proven that the viral strain from Africa spread further than any other. But plumes of similar enough species where also spreading, all over the Earth. When the plume from Africa met with a compatible enough plume close by they mingled. The resultant species is not the same as the species out of Africa. And it is this new species that mingled with its other neighboring plumes. Geography is not what changed the "people" out of africa; mingling with the other species did.


http://www.pbs.org/first-peoples/home/


I don't remember many of you agreeing with me back in the original thread.

[agamemnus]

It's an interesting concept.

[Being]

Concept?

[agamemnus]

Interspecies breeding.

[Being]

Elaborate, please, because I have no clue what your inference is.

[agamemnus]

The website and basis of your text ... interspecies breeding. Right?

[Aimless]

I gotta admit I had high expectations and was disappointed by that series. But the wife and I have become very fond of saying "interbreeding" in a dramatic and pervy voice

[wiggin]

I guess the original thread was in CC because I don't find it here. But the crux of it was that the stardust didn't just fall into a single puddle of muck on the face of the Earth. Species were springing up everywhere. It's certainly been proven that the viral strain from Africa spread further than any other. But plumes of similar enough species where also spreading, all over the Earth. When the plume from Africa met with a compatible enough plume close by they mingled. The resultant species is not the same as the species out of Africa. And it is this new species that mingled with its other neighboring plumes. Geography is not what changed the "people" out of africa; mingling with the other species did.


http://www.pbs.org/first-peoples/home/


I don't remember many of you agreeing with me back in the original thread.

Your metaphors need some work, but there are elements of truth in this basic idea. Yes, there is growing evidence from genetic analysis and other methods that early homo sapiens did indeed exchange some genetic material with other human species, and that this was partially determined by geography. Of course to some extent the idea of 'interspecies mating' is an oxymoron - successful matings that produce fertile offspring would by definition not be interspecies (with the usual caveats about fuzziness in the species definition). No one today would think that modern Africans and Europeans were different species, even though matings between them were relatively rare until recently.

However, there's two points to note: first, these are hardly aliens - the different human species came from a common, relatively recent, ancestor, and shared the vast majority of their genetic material. It's not like human-like species were springing up out of nowhere. Furthermore, the extent of mixing appears to have been quite limited, at least based on our data so far. I suspect that selection pressures in the environment are likely more important in accounting for regional variations, though we'd have to do a detailed analysis to actually separate these effects.

[Being]

Not seeing where my metaphors are bad.

[agamemnus]

wiggin, some good points.

First, I'd like to point out that we as a species have a very long evolutionary history, and I seem to remember reading somewhere -- or maybe I am making this up -- (didn't read/watch/hear this documentary) that even if there was interspecies breeding, regional variations developed only after all the other sub-species died off and we re-spread through the planet. as a homogenized species.

Separately, if there were any distinct species that developed alongside our ancestors, and if our ancestors only very occasionally mated with them (i.e.: that sub-species existed at all), does this mean that we are innately racist, like chimps? Or, were we simply so few in number that such encounters between tribes of different sub-species were almost 0? (I don't believe this one is a mathematical possibility, though... surely even a small % of chance encounters would have quickly homogenized sub-species)