Fossil finds in China are challenging ideas about the evolution of modern humans and our closest relatives.
.. “But it’s increasingly clear that many Asian materials cannot fit into the traditional narrative of human evolution.”
.. Stringer even suggests that H. heidelbergensis might have originated in Asia and then spread to other continents.
But many researchers, including most Chinese palaeontologists, contend that the materials from China are different from European and African H. heidelbergensis fossils, despite some apparent similarities. One nearly complete skull unearthed at Dali in Shaanxi province and dated to 250,000 years ago, has a bigger braincase, a shorter face and a lower cheekbone than most H. heidelbergensis specimens3, suggesting that the species was more advanced.
.. Politics at play?
Some Western researchers suggest that there is a hint of nationalism in Chinese palaeontologists’ support for continuity. “The Chinese — they do not accept the idea that H. sapiens evolved in Africa,” says one researcher. “They want everything to come from China.”
.. But the continuity-with-hybridization model is countered by overwhelming genetic data that point to Africa as the wellspring of modern humans. Studies of Chinese populations show that 97.4% of their genetic make-up is from ancestral modern humans from Africa, with the rest coming from extinct forms such as Neanderthals and Denisovans5. “If there had been significant contributions from Chinese H. erectus, they would show up in the genetic data,” says Li Hui, a population geneticist at Fudan University in Shanghai. Wu counters that the genetic contribution from archaic hominins in China could have been missed because no DNA has yet been recovered from them.
.. Despite the different interpretations of the Chinese fossil record, everybody agrees that the evolutionary tale in Asia is much more interesting than people appreciated before. But the details remain fuzzy, because so few researchers have excavated in Asia.
61 Glimpses of the Future
- If you want to understand how our planet will turn out this century, spend time in China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria and Brazil.
- If you’re wondering how long the Chinese economic miracle will last, the answer will probably be found in the bets made on commercial and residential developments in Chinese 3rd to 6th tier cities in Xinjiang, Gansu, Qinghai and Tibet.
- .. Touch ID doesn’t work at high altitude, finger prints are too dry.
- .. A white male travelling alone in interesting places, will always need to disprove they are a spy. Thanks Hollywood.
- .. Pretentious people are inherently less curious.
- Everything is fine, until that exact moment when it’s obviously not. It is easy to massively over/under estimate risk based on current contextual conditions. Historical data provides some perspective, but it usually comes down to your ability to read undercurrents, which in turn comes down to having built a sufficiently trusted relationship with people within those currents.
- .. Every time you describe someone in your own country as a terrorist, a freedom is taken away from a person in another country. Every country has its own notion of “terrorism”, and the overuse, and reaction to the term in your country helps legitimise the crack-down of restive populations in other countries.
- .. China is still arguably the lowest-trust consumer society in the world. If a product can be faked it will be. Out of necessity, they also have the most savvy consumers in the world.
- .. The most interesting places have map coordinates, but no names.
- .. It is a matter of national pride for a Kyrgyz border guard to solicit bribes from your local travel companions out of sight of the foreigner.
- .. In order to size up the tribe/sub-tribe you’re part of, any group of young males will first look at the shoes on your feet.
- .. After the Urumqi riots in 2009 the Chinese government cut of internet connectivity to Xinjiang province for a full year. Today connectivity is so prevalent and integrated into every aspect of Xinjiang society, that cutting it off it would hurt the state’s ability to control the population more than hinder their opposition.
- .. TV used to be the primary way for the edge-of-grid have-nots to discover what they want to have. Today it is seeing geotagged images from nearby places, sometimes hundreds of kilometres away.
- .. If you want to understand where a country is heading pick a 2nd or 3rd tier city and revisit it over many years.
- .. Japan remains the lead use case for a depopulating society, with 40 million less people in the next 50 years. It has the opportunity to be a world leader in figuring out how to make depopulation work at a societal level. China will lose an estimated 400 million people by 2100, from its peak of 1.4 billion in 2020.
Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware (Part 1) | Future Cities | WIRED
Life in the People’s Republic of WeChat
More than 760 million people use it regularly worldwide; it’s basically how people in China communicate now. It’s actually a lot of trouble not to use WeChat when you’re there, and socially weird, like refusing to wear shoes.
.. It’s fundamentally a messaging app, but it also serves many of the functions of PayPal, Yelp, Facebook, Uber, Amazon, Expedia, Slack, Spotify, Tinder, and more. People use WeChat to pay rent, locate parking, invest, make a doctor’s appointment, find a one-night stand, donate to charity. The police in Shenzhen pay rewards through WeChat to people who rat out traffic violators—through WeChat.
.. The Chinese term for this ritual, sao yi sao, quickly becomes familiar. Everyone and almost everything on WeChat has a QR code, and sao yi sao-ing with your phone is both constant and strangely satisfying.
.. He scans my code, which gives him my WeChat profile and also generates the equivalent of a friend request; I accept, and we agree to meet during the week, skipping right over the old-fashioned niceties of last names and business cards.
.. After a couple of months, her WeChat fans began urging her to sell beauty products. Setting up a shop on WeChat’s platform took her a couple of days.
.. WeChat has made Beijing a very different place from the city I lived in from 2006 to 2009. There’s so much less standing in line and waiting, particularly at the bank. Cash used to be king. I paid my rent in cash, my bills, every restaurant and shop. Now people shoot money around on their phones
.. Taking a taxi in China used to require getting the driver to call your destination to verify exactly where you were going. On this trip, everyone I visit drops a map into a message, with the location pinned, and I show that to the driver.