Five years ago, Gregory Chaitin, a co-founder of the fascinating and mind-bending field of algorithmic information theory, offered a challenge:1

The honor of mathematics requires us to come up with a mathematical theory of evolution and either prove that Darwin was wrong or right!

In Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics2, co-authored by William A. Dembski, Winston Ewert, and myself, we answer Chaitins challenge in the negative: There exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution. Period. By model, we mean definitive simulations or foundational mathematics required of a hard science.

We show that no meaningful information can arise from an evolutionary process unless that process is guided. Even when guided, the degree of evolutions accomplishment is limited by the expertise of the guiding information source a limit we call Baseners ceiling. An evolutionary program whose goal is to master chess will never evolve further and offer investment advice.

Here I answer ten frequently posed questions about and objections to Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics.

1. Why yet another book dissing Darwinian evolution?

Solomon was right. Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.3 There are gobs of books written about evolution, pro and con. Many are excellent. So whats so important about Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics? On the topic of evolution, the conclusion is in: There exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution. Hard sciences are built on foundations of mathematics or definitive simulations. Examples include electromagnetics, Newtonian mechanics, geophysics, relativity, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, optics, and many areas in biology. Those hoping to establish Darwinian evolution as a hard science with a model have either failed or inadvertently cheated. These models contain guidance mechanisms to land the airplane squarely on the target runway despite stochastic wind gusts. Not only can the guiding assistance be specifically identified in each proposed evolution model, its contribution to the success can be measured, in bits, as active information.

And, as covered in Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics, we suspect no model will ever exist to substantiate the claims of undirected Darwinian evolution.

2. But Darwinian evolution is so complicated, it cant be modeled!

If this objection is true, we have reached the same conclusion by different paths: There exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution.

3. You model evolution as a search. Evolution isnt a search.

We echo Billy Joel: We didnt start the fire! Models of Darwinian evolution, Avida and EV included, are searches with a fixed goal. For EV, the goal is finding specified nucleotide binding sites. Avidas goal is to generate an EQU logic function. Other evolution models that we examine in Introduction to Evolutionary Informaticslikewise seek a prespecified goal.

The evolution software Avida is of particular importance because Robert Pennock, one of the co-authors of the first paper describing Avida,4 gave testimony at the Darwin-affirming Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District bench trial. Pennocks testimony contributed to Judge Joness ruling that teaching about intelligent design violates the establishment clause of the United States Constitution. Pennock testified, In the [Avida computer program] system, were not simulating evolution. Evolution is actually happening. If true, Avida and thus evolution are a guided search with a specified target bubbling over with active information supplied by the programmers.

The most celebrated attempt of an evolution model without a goal of which were aware is TIERRA. In an attempt to recreate something like the Cambrian explosion on a computer, the programmer created what was thought to be an information-rich environment where digital organisms would flourish and evolve. According to TIERRAs ingenious creator, Thomas Ray, the project failed and was abandoned. There has to date been no success in open-ended evolution in the field of artificial life.5

Therefore, there exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution.

4. You are not biologists. Why should anyone listen to you about evolution?

Leave aside that this question reeks of the genetic fallacy used in debate to steer conversation away from the topic at hand and down a rabbit trail of credential defense. The question is sincere, though, and deserves an answer. Besides, it lets me talk about myself.

The truth is that computer scientists and engineers know a lot about evolution and evolution models.

As we outline in Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics, proponents of Darwinian evolution became giddy about computers in the 1960s and 70s. Evolution was too slow to demonstrate in a wet lab, but thousands and more generations of evolution can be put in the bank when Darwinian evolution is simulated on a computer. Computer scientists and engineers soon realized that evolutionary search might assist in making computer-aided designs. In Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics, we describe how NASA engineers used guided evolutionary programs to design antennas resembling bent paper clips that today are floating and functioning in outer space.

Heres my personal background. I first became interested in evolutionary computation late last century when I served as editor-in-chief of the IEEE6 Transactions on Neural Networks.7 I invited top researchers in the field, David Fogel and his father Larry Fogel, to be the guest editors of a special issue of my journal dedicated to evolutionary computing.8 The issue was published in January 1994 and led to David founding the IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computing9 which today is the top engineering/computer science journal dedicated to the topic.

My first conference paper using evolutionary computing was published a year later10 and my first journal publication on evolutionary computation was in 1999.11 That was then. More recently my work, funded by the Office of Naval Research, involves simulated evolution of swarm dynamics motivated by the remarkable self-organizing behavior of social insects. Some of the results were excitingly unexpected12 including individual member suicidal sacrifice to extend the overall lifetime of the swarm.13 Evolving digital swarms is intriguing and we have a whole web site devoted to the topic.14

So I have been playing in the evolutionary sandbox for a long time and have dirt under my fingernails to prove it.

But is it biology? In reviewing our book for the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA), my friend Randy Isaac, former executive director of the ASA, said of our book, Those seeking insight into biological or chemical evolution are advised to look elsewhere.15 We agree! But if you are looking for insights into the models and mathematics thus far proposed by supporters of Darwinian evolution that purport to describe the theory, Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics is spot on. And we show there exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution.

5. You use probability inappropriately. Probability theory cannot be applied to events that have already happened.

In the movie Dumb and Dumber, Jim Careys character, Lloyd Christmas, is brushed off by beautiful Mary Samsonite Swanson when told his chances with her areone in a million. After a pause for introspective reflection, Lloyds emergent toothy grin shows off his happy chipped tooth. He enthusiastically blurts out, So youre telling me theres a chance! Similar exclamationsare heard from Darwinian evolutionist advocates. Darwinian evolution. So youre telling me theres a chance! So again, we didnt start the probability fire. Evolutionary models thrive on randomness described by probabilities.

The probability-of-the -gaps championed by supporters of Darwinian evolution is addressed in detail in Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics. We show that the probability resources of the universe and even string theorys hypothetical multiverse are insufficient to explain the specified complexity surrounding us.

Besides, a posteriori probability is used all the time. The size of your last tweet can be measured in bits. Claude Shannon, who coined the term bits in his classic 1948 paper,16 based the definition of the bit on probability. Yet there sits your transmitted tweet with all of its a posteriori bits fully exposed. Another example is a posteriori Bayesian probability commonly used, for example, in email spam filters. What is the probability that your latest email from a Nigerian prince, already received and written on your server, is spam? Bayesian probabilities are also a posteriori probabilities.

So a hand-waving dismissal of a posteriori probabilities is ill-tutored. The application of probability in Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics is righteous and the analysis leads to the conclusion that there exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution.

6. What about a biological anthropic principle? Were here, so evolution must work.

Stephen Hawking has a simple explanation of the anthropic principle: If the conditions in the universe were not suitable for life, we would not be asking why they are as they are. Gabor Csanyi, who quotes from Hawkings talk, says, Hawking claims, the dimensionality of space and amount of matter in the universe is [a fortuitous] accident, which needs no further explanation.17

So youre telling me theres a chance!

The question ignored by anthropic principle enthusiasts is whether or not an environment for even guided evolution could occur by chance. If a successful search requires equaling or exceeding some degree of active information, what is the chance of finding any search with as good or better performance? We call this a search-for-the-search. In Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics, we show that the search-for-the-search is exponentially more difficult that the search itself! So if you kick the can down the road, the can gets bigger.

Professor Sydney R. Coleman said after the Hawkings MIT talk, Anything else is better [than the Anthropic Principle to explain something].18 We agree. For example, check out our search-for-the-search analysis in Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics.

7. What about the claim that All information is physical?

This is a question we have heard from physicists.

In physics, Landauers principle pertains to the lower theoretical limit of energy consumption of computation and leads to his statement all information is physical.

Saying All computers are mass and energy offers a similar nearly useless description of computers. Like Landauers principle, it suffers from the same overgeneralized vagueness and is at best incomplete.

Claude Shannon counters Landauers claim:

It seems to me that we all define information as we choose; and, depending upon what field we are working in, we will choose different definitions. My own model of information theorywas framed precisely to work with the problem of communication.19

Landauer is probably correct within the narrow confines of his physics foxhole. Outside the foxhole is Shannon information which is built on unknown a priori probability of events which have not yet happened and are therefore not yet physical.

We spend an entire chapter in Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics defining information so there is no confusion when the concept is applied. And we conclude there exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution.

8. Information theory cannot measure meaning.

Poppycock.

A hammer, like information theory, is a tool. A hammer can be used to do more than pound nails. And information theory can do more than assign a generic bit count to an object.

The most visible information theory models are Shannon information theory and KCS information.20 The consequence of Shannons theory on communication theory is resident in your cell phone where codes predicted by Shannon today allow maximally efficient use of available bandwidth. KCS stands for Kolmogorov-Chaitin-Solomonoff information theory named after the three men who independently founded the field. KCS information theory deals with the information content of structures. (Gregory Chaitin, by the way, gives a nice nod-of-the-head to Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics.21)

The manner in which information theory can be used to measure meaning is addressed in Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics. We explain, for example, why a picture of Mount Rushmore containing imagesof fourUnited States presidents has more meaning to you than a picture of Mount Fuji even though both pictures might require the same number of bits when stored on your hard drive. The degree of meaning can be measured using a metric called algorithmic specified complexity.

Rather than summarize algorithmic specified complexity derived and applied in Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics, we refer instead to a quote from a paper from one of the worlds leading experts in algorithmic information theory, Paul Vitnyi. The quote is from a paper he wrote over 15 years ago, titled Meaningful Information.22

One can divide[KCS] information into two parts: the information accounting for the useful regularity [meaningful information] present in the object and the information accounting for the remaining accidental [meaningless] information.23

In Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics, we use information theoryto measure meaningful information and show there exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution.

9. To achieve specified complexity in nature, the fitness landscape in evolution keeps changing. So, contrary to your claim, Baseners ceiling doesnt apply in Darwinian evolution.

In search, complexity cant be achieved beyond the expertise of the guiding oracle. As noted, we refer to this limit as Baseners ceiling.24However, if the fitness continues to change, it is argued, the evolved entity can achieve greater and greater specified complexity and ultimately perform arbitrarily great acts like writing insightful scholarly books disproving Darwinian evolution.

We analyze exactly this case in Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics and dub the overall search structure stair step active information. Not only is guidance required on each stair, but the next step must be carefully chosen to guide the process to the higher fitness landscape and therefore ever increasing complexity. Most of the next possible choices are deleterious and lead to search deterioration and even extinction. This also applies in the limit when the stairs become teeny and the stair case is better described as a ramp. As Aristotle said, It is possible to fail in many wayswhile to succeed is possible only in one way.

Heres an anecdotal illustration of the careful design needed in the stair step model. If a meteor hits the Yucatan Peninsula and wipes out all the dinosaurs and allows mammals to start domination of the earth, then the meteors explosion must be a Goldilocks event. If too strong all life on earth would be zapped. If too weak, velociraptors would still be munching on stegosaurus eggs.

Such fine tuning is the case of any fortuitous shift in fitness landscapes and increases, not decreases, the difficulty of evolution of ever-increasing specified complexity. It supports the case there exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution.

10. Your research is guided by your ideology and cant be trusted.

Theres that old derailing genetic fallacy again.

But yes! Of course, our research is impacted by our ideology! We are proud to be counted among Christians such asthe Reverend Thomas Bayes, Isaac Newton, George Washington Carver, Michael Faraday, and the greatest of all mathematicians, Leonard Euler.25 The truth of their contributions stand apart from their ideology. But so does the work of atheist Pierre-Simon Laplace. Truth trumps ideology. And allowing the possibility of intelligent design, embraced by enlightened theists and agnostics alike, broadens ones investigative horizons.

Alan Turing, the brilliant father of computer science and breaker of the Nazis enigma code, offers a great example of the ultimate failure of ideology trumping truth. Asa young man, Turing lost a close friend to bovine tuberculosis. Devastated by the death, Turing turned from God and became an atheist. He was partially motivated in his development of computer science to prove man was a machine and consequently that there was no need for a god. But Turings landmark work has allowed researchers, most notably Roger Penrose,26 to make the case that certain of mans attributes including creativity and understanding are beyond the capability of the computer. Turings ideological motivation was thus ultimately trashed by truth.

The relationship between human and computer capabilities is discussed in more depth in Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics.

Take Aways

In Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics, Chaitins challenge has been met in the negative and there exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution. According to our current understanding, there never will be. But science should never say never. As Stephen Hawking notes, nothing in science is ever actually proved. We simply accumulate evidence.27

So if anyone generates a model demonstrating Darwinian evolution without guidance that ends in an object with significant specified complexity, let us know. No guiding, hand waving, extrapolation of adaptations, appealing to speculative physics, or anecdotal proofs allowed.

Until then, I guess you can call us free-thinking skeptics.

Thanks for listening.

Robert J. Marks II PhD is Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor University.

Notes:

(1) Chaitin, Gregory. Proving Darwin: Making Biology Mathematical. Vintage, 2012.

(2) Marks II, Robert J., William A. Dembski, and Winston Ewert. Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics. World Scientific, 2017.

(3) Ecclesiastes 12:12b.

(4) Lenski, R.E., Ofria, C., Pennock, R.T. and Adami, C., 2003. The evolutionary origin of complex features. Nature, 423(6936), pp. 139-144.

(5) ID the Future podcast with Winston Ewert. Why Digital Cambrian Explosions FizzleOr Fake It, June 7, 2017.

(6) IEEE, the Institute of Electrical and Electrical Engineers, is the largest professional society in the world, with over 400,000 members.

(7) R.J. Marks II, The Joumal Citation Report: Testifying for Neural Networks, IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, vol. 7, no. 4, July 1996, p. 801.

(8) Fogel, David B., and Lawrence J. Fogel. Guest editorial on evolutionary computation, IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks 5, no. 1 (1994): 1-14.

(9) R.J. Marks II, Old Neural Network Editors Dont Die, They Just Prune Their Hidden Nodes, IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, vol. 8, no. 6 (November, 1997), p. 1221.

(10) Russell D. Reed and Robert J. Marks II, An Evolutionary Algorithm for Function Inversion and Boundary Marking, Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Evolutionary Computation, pp. 794-797, November 26-30, 1995.

(11) C.A. Jensen, M.A. El-Sharkawi and R.J. Marks II, Power Security Boundary Enhancement Using Evolutionary-Based Query Learning, Engineering Intelligent Systems, vol. 7, no. 9, pp. 215-218 (December 1999).

(12) Jon Roach, Winston Ewert, Robert J. Marks II and Benjamin B. Thompson, Unexpected Emergent Behaviors from Elementary Swarms,Proceedings of the 2013 IEEE 45th Southeastern Symposium on Systems Theory (SSST), Baylor University, March 11, 2013, pp. 41-50.

(13) Winston Ewert, Robert J. Marks II, Benjamin B. Thompson, Albert Yu, Evolutionary Inversion of Swarm Emergence Using Disjunctive Combs Control, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics: Systems, v. 43, #5, September 2013, pp. 1063-1076.

Albert R. Yu, Benjamin B. Thompson, and Robert J. Marks II, Swarm Behavioral Inversion for Undirected Underwater Search, International Journal of Swarm Intelligence and Evolutionary Computation, vol. 2 (2013). Albert R. Yu, Benjamin B. Thompson, and Robert J. Marks II, Competitive Evolution of Tactical Multiswarm Dynamics, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics: Systems, vol. 43, no. 3, pp. 563- 569 (May 2013).

Winston Ewert, Robert J. Marks II, Benjamin B. Thompson, Albert Yu, Evolutionary Inversion of Swarm Emergence Using Disjunctive Combs Control, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics: Systems, vol. 43, no. 5, September 2013, pp. 1063-1076.

(14) NeoSwarm.com.

(15) Review of Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics, Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, vol. 69 no. 2, June 2017, pp. 104-108.

(16) Claude E. Shannon, A mathematical theory of communication, Bell System Technical Journal 27: 379-423 and 623656.

(17) Gabor Csanyi Stephen Hawking Lectures on Controversial Theory, The Tech, vol. 119, issue 48, Friday, October 8, 1999.

(18) The bracketed insertion in the quote is Csanyis, not ours.

(19) Quoted in P. Mirowski, Machine Dreams: Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 170.

(20) Cover, Thomas M., and Joy A. Thomas. Elements of Information Theory. John Wiley & Sons, 2012.

(21) Review for Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics.

(22) Paul Vitnyi, Meaningful Information, in International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation: 13th International Symposium, ISAAC 2002, Vancouver, BC, Canada, November 21-23, 2002.

(23) Unlike our approach, Vitnyis use of the so-called Kolmogorov sufficient statistic here does not take context into account.

(24) Basener, W.F., 2013. Limits of Chaos and Progress in Evolutionary Dynamics. Biological Information New Perspectives. World Scientific, Singapore, pp. 87-104.

(25) Christian Calculus.

(26) See, e.g., Penrose, Roger. Shadows of the Mind. Oxford University Press, 1994.

(27) Hawking, Stephen. A Brief History of Time (1988). AppLife, 2014.

Photo credit: Postman85, via Pixabay.

Original post:

Top Ten Questions and Objections to Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics - Discovery Institute

Typecasting happens behind the camera as often as it does in front of it. Shawn Levy, whose brand as a Hollywood director was typified by family blockbusters likeCheaper by the Dozen and Night at the Museum, wanted the production company those hits yielded, 21 Laps, to be much more than a vehicle for him to crank out more of the same.

I know what it feels like to be perceived as limited in what you do, Levy told moderator Pete Hammond of Deadline on Sunday during a panel at the Produced By conference.

When Twentieth Century Fox came to Levy after the smash success ofNight At The Museuma decade ago and offered him a first look deal, the Canadian native and Yale graduate saw an opportunity to build a company that would support filmmaker voices.

I wanted it to be a production company, said Levy, not just a vanity deal for me to direct.

About seven years ago, Levy was joined by Dan Levine and Dan Cohen, who helped him line up projects across the gamut of budget, genre and platform. The chemistry has taken time to develop, but in recent years 21 Laps has produced some of the biggest hits on both big and small screens in recent years, including ParamountsArrival and NetflixsStranger Things. During the session, the three principals at 21 Laps detailed how all the pieces have gradually fallen into place.

We have our various tastes, added Levy. We have our opinionsBut at the end of the day were there to help shepherd and protect the directors vision and voice. Thats what I always want when I direct.

The breakthrough came in 2013 when a low-budget romantic comedy, The Spectacular Now, became a hit at Sundance. A movie about teen-age life saddled with an R rating, it charmed most critics but grossed only $6 million. No matter for Levy, it was the companys turning point.

Before we did Spectacular Now, 21 Laps was just about comedy and family films, he said. From the minute it came out, it was a turning point. No longer were we just saying we could do different things. We were doing it.

No film better illustrates the evolution of that vision than Arrival, the science fiction movie that starred Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner. After acquiring book rights, they went to Fox to pitch it under their agreement.

They didnt think it was for them at the time, said Levine. Like with many projects, if they dont feel and dont want it, theyve never handcuffed us from making it elsewhere.

Arrival landed at Paramount Pictures, where the alien contact movie directed by Denis Villeneuve (Sicario) became a critical and commercial success, earning eight Oscar nominations and winning one (for sound editing). Made for a shade under $50 million, it surpassed $100 million at the U.S. box office and $200 million worldwide.

Along with Arrival, 2016 brought Stranger Things, a fantasy horror-drama with Spielberg-ian flourishes that sold to Netflix after it was turned down by numerous studios. You really have to believe in the project and director and writers and just keep fighting, said Levine. A bunch of people may say you cant make that but were passionate.

He added, I call it sticking your face in the fan. You just keep going. If you dont give up, thats when you get it done.

Levy recalled a friend who was ready to give up because he said movies he spent years working on didnt love him back.

If you really love them and stick your face in the blade every once in a while, said Levy, they will love you back.

Read more:

Sean Levy, 21 Laps Partners On Shingle's Dramatic Evolution ... - Deadline

KDRV

Drift Evolution Showcases Emotional Appeal of Drift Racing KDRV MEDFORD, Ore.--The hundreds of drivers in the valley's two-day Drift Evolution Event show the momentum the sport has gained. Like an emphatic bat flip in baseball or an impassioned touchdown dance in football, those in the drifting community view their ...

Read the original:

Drift Evolution Showcases Emotional Appeal of Drift Racing - KDRV

NHM London

Fossils of early members of Homo sapiens found in Morocco (left) display a more elongated skull shape than do modern humans (right).

Researchers say that they have found the oldest Homo sapiens remains on record in an improbable place: Morocco.

At an archaeological site near the Atlantic coast, finds of skull, face and jaw bones identified as being from early members of our species have been dated to about 315,000 years ago. That indicates H. sapiens appeared more than 100,000 years earlier than thought: most researchers have placed the origins of our species in East Africa about 200,000 years ago.

The finds, which are published on 7 June in Nature1, 2, do not mean that H. sapiens originated in North Africa. Instead, they suggest that the species' earliest members evolved all across the continent, scientists say.

Until now, the common wisdom was that our species emerged probably rather quickly somewhere in a Garden of Eden that was located most likely in sub-Saharan Africa, says Jean-Jacques Hublin, an author of the study and a director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Now, I would say the Garden of Eden in Africa is probably Africa and its a big, big garden. Hublin was one of the leaders of the decade-long excavation at the Moroccan site, called Jebel Irhoud.

Hublin first became familiar with Jebel Irhoud in the early 1980s, when he was shown a puzzling specimen of a lower jawbone of a child from the site. Miners had discovered a nearly complete human skull there in 1961; later excavations had also found a braincase, as well as sophisticated stone tools and other signs of human presence.

The bones looked far too primitive to be anything understandable, so people came up with some weird ideas, Hublin says. Researchers guessed they were 40,000 years old and proposed that Neanderthals had lived in North Africa.

More recently, researchers have suggested that the Jebel Irhoud humans were an archaic species that survived in North Africa until H. sapiens from south of the Sahara replaced them. East Africa is where most scientists place our species origins: two of the oldest known H. sapiens fossils 196,000 and 160,000-year-old skulls3, 4 come from Ethiopia, and DNA studies of present-day populations around the globe point to an African origin some 200,000 years ago5.

Hublin first visited Jebel Irhoud in the 1990s, only to find the site buried. He didnt have the time or money to excavate it until 2004, after he had joined the Max Planck Society. His team rented a tractor and bulldozer to remove some 200 cubic metres of rock that blocked access.

Their initial goal was to re-date the site using newer methods, but in the late 2000s, the team uncovered more than 20 new human bones relating to at least five individuals, including a remarkably complete jaw, skull fragments and stone tools. A team led by archaeological scientist Daniel Richter and archaeologist Shannon McPherron, also at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, dated the site and all the human remains found there to between 280,000 and 350,000 years old using two different methods.

The re-dating and the tranche of new human bones convince Hublin that early H. sapiens once lived at Jebel Irhoud. Its a face you could cross in the street today, he says. The teeth although big compared with those of today's humans are a better match to H. sapiens than they are to Neanderthals or other archaic humans. And the Jebel Irhoud skulls, elongated compared with those of later H. sapiens, suggest that these individuals' brains were organized differently.

Hublin/Ben-Ncer/Bailey/et al./Nature

A facial reconstruction of fragments of an early Homo sapiens skull found at Jebel Irhoud, Morocco.

This offers clues about the evolution of the H. sapiens lineage into todays anatomically modern humans. Hublin suggests that anatomically modern humans may have acquired their characteristic faces before changes to the shape of their brains occurred. Moreover, the mix of features seen in the Jebel Irhoud remains and other H. sapiens-like fossils from elsewhere in Africa point to a diverse genesis for our species, and raises doubt about an exclusively East African origin.

What we think is before 300,000 years ago, there was a dispersal of our species or at least the most primitive version of our species throughout Africa, Hublin says. Around this time, the Sahara was green and filled with lakes and rivers. Animals that roamed the East African savanna, including gazelles, wildebeest and lions, also lived near Jebel Irhoud, suggesting that these environments were once linked.

An earlier origin for H. sapiens is further supported by an ancient-DNA study posted to the bioRxiv preprint server on 5 June6. Researchers led by Mattias Jakobsson at Uppsala University in Sweden sequenced the genome of a boy who lived in South Africa around 2,000 years ago only the second ancient genome from sub-Saharan Africa to be sequenced. They determined that his ancestors on the H. sapiens lineage split from those of some other present-day African populations more than 260,000 years ago.

Hublin says his team tried and failed to obtain DNA from the Jebel Irhoud bones. A genomic analysis could have clearly established whether the remains lie on the lineage that leads to modern humans.

Palaeontologist Jeffrey Schwartz, at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, says the new finds are important but he is not convinced that they should be considered H. sapiens. Too many different-looking fossils have been lumped together under the species, he thinks, complicating efforts to interpret new fossils and to come up with scenarios on how, when and where our species emerged.

Homo sapiens, despite being so well known, was a species without a past until now, says Mara Martnon-Torres, a palaeoanthropologist at University College London, noting the scarcity of fossils linked to human origins in Africa. But the lack of features that, she says, define our species such as a prominent chin and forehead convince her that the Jebel Irhoud remains should not be considered H. sapiens.

Shannon McPherron, MPI EVA Leipzig/CC-BY-SA 2.0

The site in Jebel Irhoud, Morocco. When the site was occupied by early humans, it would have been a cave; the covering rock and much sediment was removed by work in the 1960s.

Chris Stringer, a palaeoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London, who co-authored a News & Views article accompanying the studies, says he was baffled by the Jebel Irhoud remains when he first saw them in the early 1970s. He knew that they werent Neanderthals, but they seemed too young and primitive-looking to be H. sapiens. But with the older dates and the new bones, Stringer agrees that the Jebel Irhoud bones stand firmly on the H. sapiens lineage. They shift Morocco from a supposed backwater in the evolution of our species to a prominent position, he adds.

For Hublin, who was born in nearby Algeria and fled at the age of eight when its war of independence began, returning to North Africa to a site that has captivated him for decades was an emotional experience. I feel like I have a personal relationship with this site, he says. I cannot say we closed a chapter, but we came to such an amazing conclusion after this very long journey. It blows my mind.

Read more from the original source:

Oldest Homo sapiens fossil claim rewrites our species' history - Nature.com