Re: Human Hobbit find

From: Tom McDonald (tmcdonald2672_at_nohormelcharter.net)
Date: 10/31/04 

Date: Sun, 31 Oct 2004 11:05:02 -0600

Ookie Wonderslug wrote:
> On Sun, 31 Oct 2004 05:05:51 GMT, Seppo Renfors <Renfors@not.com.au>
> wrote:
>
>
>>
>>Ookie Wonderslug wrote:
>>
>>[..]
>>
>>
>>>What yall reckon?
>>
>>That you are a racist low life!!!
>
>
> How does that follow? Is it impossible to notice a difference in
> physical characteristics anymore? Did you look at the pictures? How
> can it be racist to notice that a certain group has physical
> characteristics very similar to homo erectus? Are we supposed to
> ignore evidence that is right in front of our faces for the sake
> of......what, tolerance? Come on.

        The photos prove nothing.

        The physical characteristics you mention are only known from
skeletal remains. Reconstructions based on the physical remains
are by definition speculative as to skin color, hair color, type
and distribution, and other cosmetic issues. Try changing the
skin color to white, and take all the hair away from the head.

        The real differences are only clearly seen in the actual bones.
  Proper comparisons can only be made on a part-to-part basis,
and that is what was done to determine that Homo floresiensis
was not Homo sapiens.

        We in the West have a long and sad history of seeing dark skin
as somehow emblematic of privative humanity. Your choice of
photos for comparison purposes seems to be just more of the same
of that racist tradition. Did you even try to find photos of
_white_ people who might have come characteristics of the H.f.
specimens? If not, why not? If so, what did you find, and why
didn't you post them, too?

There is something uniquely
> different about Australian aborigines. They were isolated for
> thousands of years.

        Yes, and they have always been Homo sapiens.

It is proven from fossil finds that h erectus and
> h neanderthalis were in the area,

        Erectus in Australia? Or do you mean in Southeast Asia? If
the latter, so what? What does that have to do with the Homo
sapiens Australian Aboriginals?

        Neandertal? Please provide evidence. This would be pretty big
news, even if you only mean Southeast Asia.

Furthermore with this new hobbit
> find it proves that these people lived in the area (at least some of
> them) until very recently. It stands to reason that if any place is
> to hold modern remnants of former species it is the area near and
> around Australia.

        Why? What reason do you give for this speculation?

  What is so racist about thinking that these very
> different people are decendants of the last of the homo erectus?

        Why them, and not, for instance, Southeast Asians? Is it just
their external characteristics? They are, as you should know,
entirely Homo sapiens. Always have been.

How
> is the study of man going to benefit if we refuse to look at evidence
> on the basis of some perceived racial sensitivities? Until genetic
> comparison is made we will not know.

        Why should we look at evidence, as you want to do, based on
superficialities, when the actual investigators had the actual
skeletal material to work with?

        I don't know your experience, but I've actually worked with
human skeletal materials, from several human species. The
similarities and differences are almost always clear and
pronounced, and seasoned investigators don't often get the big
stuff wrong. DNA comparison has its own sets of problems, and
we really don't have to wait for it in order to make taxonomic
assignment of the H.f. remains.

>
> I personally think that what people call erectus, neanderthalis,
> sapien, and floresiensis are different breeds of the same species. IE
> us. That is, we are all the same, just look different. That is what I
> think genetic studies will show when/if they are ever done. How is
> that racist?

        It may not be racist, but it is not supported by the incredibly
huge amount of evidence available to us. However, your personal
view does suggest that you are swayed by things other than the
facts, and you may or may not have some racist views lurking in
the dark corners of your mind. You do have some fixed and
mistaken ideas, so to my mind the question of whether you may
use some assumptions that are racist is still open. You may
hold them innocently (that is, ignorantly) instead of culpably;
but you might want to examine them anyway. 

-- 
Tom McDonald
http://webpages.charter.net/tsmac/tmcdonald2672/

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