At the same time that the missing link was found, this appeared from a friend in my e-mail. We all seem to be trying to find our original identities. (smile)
REH Dr. Juan Martinez Cruzado, a geneticist from the University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez designed an island-wide DNA survey, The study funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, shows that 61 percent of all Puerto Ricans have Amerindian mitochondrial DNA, 27 percent have African and 12 percent Caucasian. (Nuclear DNA, or the genetic material present in a gene's nucleus, is inherited in equal parts from one's father and mother. Mitochondrial DNA is inherited only from one's mother and does not change or blend with other materials over time.) In other words a majority of Puerto Ricans have Taino blood. "Our study showed there was assimilation," Martinez Cruzado explained, "but the people were not extinguished. "The people were assimilated into a new colonial order and became mixed. That's what Puerto Ricans are: Indians mixed with Africans and Spaniards," he asserted. "It is clear that the influence of Taino culture was very strong up to about 200 years ago. If we could conduct this same study on the Puerto Ricans from those times, the figure would show that 80 percent of the people had Indian heritage." Another historical moment that should receive more attention involves the story of a group of Tainos who, after 200 years of absence from official head-counts, appeared in a military census from the 1790s. In this episode, a colonial military census noted that all of a sudden there were 2,000 Indians living in a northwestern mountain region. "These were Indians who the Spanish had placed on the tiny island of Mona (just off the western coast of Puerto Rico) who survived in isolation and then were brought over," Martinez Cruzado said. Martinez Cruzado noted how many customs and history were handed down through oral tradition. To this day on the island, there are many people who use medicinal plants and farming methods that come directly from the Tainos. This is especially true of the areas once known as Indieras, or Indian Zones. <http://www.indiancountry.com/> EXCERPTS FROM THIS WEBSITE: http://www.indiancountry.com/ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of D and N Sent: Friday, September 09, 2011 11:17 PM To: Ed Weick; RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] missing link? skeletons, 2 mil. years old Yes, the frailty of life comes to mind, too. As well as the numerous questions round these lives; how they lived, what their thoughts might have been, and what choices they had to make that they ended up disappearing. And why the scientists are being quiet about the other two skeletal remains. Natalia On 9/9/2011 12:37 PM, Ed Weick wrote: What I always find amazing with stuff like this is that I'm here and alive. Our now human ancestry goes back a few billion years through a variety of mutations. But in the case of we who are alive today, aren't we lucky that none of our ancestors died before they procreated. That is how come we are here. Ed _____ From: D and N <mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]> To: "RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION" <mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, September 8, 2011 7:18:26 PM Subject: [Futurework] missing link? skeletons, 2 mil. years old Just heard about this on CBC radio: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/04/08/tech/main6374925.shtml Natalia 2 Million-Year-Old Skeletons Reveal Man-Ape Link By CBSNews AP) Two skeletons nearly 2 million years old and unearthed in South Africa are part of a previously unknown species that scientists say fits the transition from ancient apes to modern humans. The fossils bear traits from both lineages, and researchers have named them Australopithecus sediba, meaning "southern ape, wellspring," to indicate their relation to earlier apelike forms and to features later found in more modern people. "These fossils give us an extraordinarily detailed look into a new chapter of human evolution and provide a window into a critical period when hominids made the committed change from dependency on life in the trees to life on the ground," said Lee R. Berger of South Africa's University of Witwatersrand. "Australopithecus sediba appears to present a mosaic of features demonstrating an animal comfortable in both worlds." On Sunday's "60 Minutes," correspondent Bob Simon will report on the discovery, including an interview with Berger. Berger and colleagues describe the find in Friday's issue of the journal Science. Modern humans, known as Homo sapiens, descended over millions of years from earlier groups, such as Australopithecus, the best-known example of which may be the fossil Lucy, who lived about a million years before the newly discovered A. sediba. Berger said the newly described fossils date between 1.95 million and 1.78 million years ago. Some have characterized the find as a "missing link," but that is a concept no longer accepted by science. "The 'missing link' made sense when we could take the earliest fossils and the latest ones and line them up in a row. It was easy back then," explained Smithsonian Institution paleontologist Richard Potts. But now researchers know there was great diversity of branches in the human family tree rather than a single smooth line. Recent stories on evolutionary finds: DNA May Point to New Human Ancestor <http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/24/tech/main6329488.shtml> Smithsonian Opens Human Evolution Hall <http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/17/tech/main6308467.shtml> <http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/06/tech/main6273478.shtml> "Hobbit" Skeleton Challenges Evolution The two new fossils were found in a pit in what was once a cave, their bones preserved by hardened sediment that buried them in a flood shortly after they died, the researchers said. One was a female estimated to have been in her late 20s or early 30s and the other was a male age 8 or 9, according to the report. Two more have been found since this discovery, but Berger declined to detail them. Berger said their features suggest that the transition from earlier groups to the Homo genus occurred in very slow stages. "We can conclude that this new species shares more derived features with early Homo than any other known australopith species, and thus represents a candidate ancestor for the genus, or a sister group to a close ancestor that persisted for some time after the first appearance of Homo," he said. But, Berger said, it isn't yet Homo because it "doesn't have the whole package." A. sediba could turn out to be a sort of Rosetta stone that helps unlock the secrets of the development of the genus Homo, Berger said, even if it turns out to be a side branch. According to the researchers, A. sediba had an advanced hip bone and long legs, allowing it to stride like humans, but also had long arms and powerful hands like an ape. Both the female and the juvenile were about 4 feet 2 inches. The female would have weighed about 73 pounds and the child about 60 pounds. "The brain size of the juvenile was between about 26.5 to 27.5 cubic inches, which is small, but the shape of the brain seems to be more advanced than that of Australopithecines," the researchers reported. Our human brains are about 73 to 98 cubic inches. While the skeletons had traits of both genuses, the researchers said they chose to classify them conservatively as Australopithecus, rather than Homo, because of their upper body design and brain size. Potts, director of the Human Origins Project at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, noted that other examples with some Australopithecine and some Homo traits existed as much as a half-million years before A. sediba. This particular combination has not been seen before, he said. "It's part of the experimentation of evolution," said Potts, who was not part of Berger's research team. Also, he cautioned, because there are only two examples there is no way to know if the gene pool died out or was passed along to others. Funding for the research was provided by the South African Department of Science and Technology, the South African National Research Foundation, the Institute for Human Evolution, the Palaeontological Scientific Trust, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the AfricaArray Program, the U.S. Diplomatic Mission to South Africa and Sir Richard Branson, the billionaire founder of Virgin Group Ltd. _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
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