This research is hardly a waste of money. It’s intriguing to see where we come from and on how long a timeline. Plus the more we learn about evolution the less of a case there will be for teaching the mock science of intelligent design in our schools.

RE: #93395 by archeon of thrace on 8/09 at 6:24 am
(416 comments total)

“DennisD you are an idiot.

Research is good.  It is good we taxpayers fund it, at least this kind.  It is better than missle defense, and illegal foreign wars.”

Got that right, archeon, if we aren’t working toward adding every piece of information to our understanding of the human condition (past & present) we are regressing. Like the song says, “Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative”.

RE: #93286 by DennisD on 8/08 at 8:48 pm
(Unregistered commenter)

“I’m anxiously waiting for the scientific conclusion as to which species could piss away the most taxpayer funded “research” dollars down a bottomless well, first. I’ll bet on the homo sapien every time.”

The answer is too easy, Dennis, Neanderthals. Contrary to popular belief they never went extinct. They just all moved to DC. Don’t you think it’s time we cleared ALL of them out with their old-fashion thinking?

RE: #93372 by cyrena on 8/09 at 4:52 am
(719 comments total)

#93349 by Douglas Chalmers on 8/09 at 3:23 am

“Seems like I remember coming across them in my childhood, though it was long enough ago that I could have them mixed up with something else.”

Hi cyrena, always a pleasure to see you posting.

No, you didn’t mix them up. At that age we all saw them. They were called...classmates. LOL

DennisD you are an idiot.
Why are you here wasting your time then? get out there and deal with your so called “real time” problems.

Research is good.  It is good we taxpayers fund it, at least this kind.  It is better than missle defense, and illegal foreign wars.

#93372 by cyrena on 8/09 at 4:52 am: “...Thanks for this very interesting information. I never even knew of these people, though it’s odd that there has been a series of characters in childrens books, as well as small sculpture pieces that have been designated as “Hobbits”. And, it brings “little people” to mind....”

“Hobbit” was originally from “The Lord of the Rings” but there is no clear origin even from the author. It is possible that it was a creation from the word “hogget” which is a young sheep about one year old and too old to still be called a lamb. It could also be a human familiarisation of the sound of a frog???

Quote: “...’On a blank leaf I scrawled: ‘In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.’ I did not and do not know why.’ .....The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, No 163, to W.H. Auden, dated 1955.......  This is Tolkien’s own account of his invention of the word ‘hobbit’, while marking School Certificate papers: he gives no date, but from the clues he gives, this most likely happened one summer in the late 1920’s. This, then, is one of the most significant doodles in the history of literature: without it, there would have been no Hobbit, and without The Hobbit no Lord of the Rings, and without The Lord of the Rings, surely no Silmarillion. If not for those ten scrawled words, the world might never have heard of J.R.R. Tolkien....” http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/h/hobbits.html

#93349 by Douglas Chalmers on 8/09 at 3:23 am
Doug,
Thanks for this very interesting information. I never even knew of these people, though it’s odd that there has been a series of characters in childrens books, as well as small sculpture pieces that have been designated as “Hobbits”. And, it brings “little people” to mind.

Seems like I remember coming across them in my childhood, though it was long enough ago that I could have them mixed up with something else.

Anyway, thanks.

And yes, we humans do seem to have a way of seriously jacking things up for other living things, as well as each other.

#93344 by cyrena on 8/09 at 2:39 am: “...Does that mean that the greed of the few will eventually wipe out the many...?”

They/we already did, apparently, cyrena. Search “homo floresiensis” also known as the Hobbits from Flores in the Indonesian archipelago near Timor discovered only a few years ago.

They existed as an alternative to homo sapiens (that’s us) until quite recently and were believed to have become extinct from the pressures of living with f#ckin’ stupid modern humans! What’s new, eh?

Quote: “...FLORES MAN - It sounds too incredible to be true, but this is not a hoax. A species of tiny human has been discovered, which lived on the remote Indonesian island of Flores just 18,000 years ago. Researchers have unearthed remains from individuals who were just one metre tall, with grapefruit-sized skulls...... These astonishing little people, nicknamed ‘hobbits’, made tools, hunted tiny elephants and lived at the same time as modern humans who were colonizing the area...... the story of a find that changes the world of palaeoanthropology, and challenges our perception of what it means to be human. http://www.nature.com/news/specials/flores/index.html

I’m hearing a little frustration here. Like folks aren’t too interested in all of this, at this point in history.

Can’t say I blame ya.

One thing interesting though, is the point about competing for resources, which is how one species eventually wiped out the other.

Does anybody get the similarity there? We’re in it folks. Competing for basic survival resources like food and water and in the case of the US, ENERGY.

Does that mean that the greed of the few will eventually wipe out the many?

It’s looking that way to me. Has been for a while now.

Cro-Magnon man, Homo erectus, Homo habilis, duh.  What about Washington man......???

It’s always good to know where you’re coming from.