13 thoughts on “A New Homo Sapiens?”

  1. Whoa…

    Formatting error on the link in this post completely hosed the entire main page. Doesn’t pull up on IE 8 OR Firefox… 🙁

  2. Wingo,
    The obesity is merely a preexisting genetic predisposition to store up fat at the onset of winter or a new ice age. We spend our time on our butts in front of the PC like living in the cave during winter back in the ice age past, so its only natural that our bodies gear themselves to minimizing energy burning to last through the winter.

  3. Since all of the evidence to date points to the origin of humanity in Africa, isn’t it true that every single American citizen (no matter how he or she got that way) an African-American?

  4. The origin of humanity is a continuum, not a singluar event, so why stop at Africa when tracing back current Americans’ origin? If life originated in deep sea hydrothermal vents, perhaps we are all Oceanic-Americans. Or if we want to consider our original lands, perhaps we are all Pangaean-Americans. If you want to stay focused on Africa, how about Pannotian-Americans, or even just plain old Gondwanan-Americans?

  5. Of course, there is a limit to how far this series can be pushed back. And that leads to an insight: I now realize that when the President”s critics dismissively refer to him by his high school nickname, they are merely highlighting the fact that President Obama is not the first president who is a Barryonic-American.

  6. Of course, there is a limit to how far this series can be pushed back.

    Hold up — we do have a frequent drive-by sneerer on this very forum who is merely a product of the quantum vacuum.

  7. Sort of. I’m not as young and hip as you are Titus, so when you said “QFT” on the Nina Tottenberg Christmas thread above, I thought “Quantum Field Theory”? A QFT party might be a lot more fun than a Christmas party!

    Anyway, I think we shouldn’t limit these back to our roots “we are all African-Americans” sorts of comments to geography. Why not religion too? So, for example, when a Christian American meets a Muslim American, he can reassure him by saying “We are all Jewish Americans!”

  8. That doesn’t work Bob. The reason is that Christians were originally a subset of Jews before Peter was enlightened. Muslims were never a subset of Jews or Christians. Mohammad, like Charlie Manson, thought he could use this religion thing to create followers. It worked.

    Getting back to the more interesting question. Are there more hominids we don’t know about yet? There’s some interesting stuff buried in what we do know.

    …and doesn’t it seem quite the conceit that we are sapien sapiens?

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