Maba Man

And you know, that reminds me of one more very interesting insight from Chris.

In the 1950s, there was a fossil found in Guangdong, Southeastern China, called Maba And the Maba fossil, um, if it was found in Europe or in the Levant, it would be called a Neanderthal.

And so when they found the fossil, they said, "Oh, we, we found Neanderthals in, in southeastern China," in the 1950s.

So nobody was ready to accept Neanderthals in China at that, at that time, so it was rejected.

So everybody just started calling the Maba fossil archaic Homo sapiens, right? Um, but it's interesting, if we actually go back and, and restudy that fossil now, now that we're s- the field seems to be much more open to the idea that Neanderthals are actually much more widespread than previously assumed, right? So it hasn't been recla- it hasn't been reclassified yet, so if you go to the, the, you know, where w- you know, the papers that we've been publishing in recent years, we keep it as an outlier, separate, um, Homo longi and separate from Homo juluensis.

The Maba fossil and then, uh, Hathnora in India, um, there's a lot of similarities there, and so people suggest that these two fossils may, may be very, very similar, right? And they, they could be assigned to the same.

But it was never clear whether we should call these guys, uh, Neanderthals or not, and, and the, the field's very conservative, right? And so the, you know, a lot of people were not willing to say that Neanderthals were in China at, at that time.

But I, I think we need to be much more open-minded now with all of the changes that we're seeing, uh, in the field.

Until next week, cheers!

In the 1950s, there was a fossil found in Guangdong, southeastern China, called Maba.

And the Maba fossil, if it was found in Europe or in the Levant, it would be called a Niantal.

And so when they found the fossil, they said, oh, we found Niantals in Southeastern China in the 1950s.

So nobody was ready to accept Niantals in China at that time, so it was rejected.

So everybody just started calling the Maba fossil Archaic Homo sapiens.

But it's interesting if we actually go back and restudy that fossil now, now that the field seems to be much more open to the idea that Neanderthals are actually much more widespread than previously assumed, right? So it hasn't been reclassified yet.

So if you go to the, you know, where, you know, the papers that we've been publishing in recent years, we keep it as an outlier, separate from Homo longi and separate from Homo juliensis.