That's interesting you brought up that picture, Reason. I've been pondering why it is that often people mention how "negligible" human existence is. Usually, it comes from the mouths of leftists. This, of course, isn't really surprising considering their nihilistic will to lower humanity, to make all into a insignificant paste as it were. Why don't people ever consider existence from a different angle? I.e., from the perspective of atoms. To atoms, we are gargantuan cosmic entities, Gods! I like to view myself according to the latter as it is more empowering. The former perspective tends to make individuals fall into a pit of nihilistic despair.
Cold Weasel
Gender : Posts : 275 Join date : 2012-05-25 Age : 39 Location : East via West
That's interesting you brought up that picture, Reason. I've been pondering why it is that often people mention how "negligible" human existence is. Usually, it comes from the mouths of leftists. This, of course, isn't really surprising considering their nihilistic will to lower humanity, to make all into a insignificant paste as it were. Why don't people ever consider existence from a different angle? I.e., from the perspective of atoms. To atoms, we are gargantuan cosmic entities, Gods! I like to view myself according to the latter as it is more empowering. The former perspective tends to make individuals fall into a pit of nihilistic despair.
Yes. I remember hearing that, materially speaking, on the scale of the smallest to largest particles and lengths in the universe, humans are actually on the larger side.
Man, these people where ahead of their time, if only the weaklings would of listened! 300 years ago they would of been burned at the stake, secularism opens the door for Pagan influence, humanists are apart of the solution. Really fun interview. Also Zeena very much is easy on the eyes.
21 October 2013 No known hominin is ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans, study says The search for a common ancestor linking modern humans with the Neanderthals who lived in Europe thousands of years ago has been a compelling subject for research. But a new study suggests the quest isn't nearly complete.
No known hominin is ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans, study says This image shows diversity in premolar and molar morphology in Neanderthals, modern humans and potential ancestral species [Credit: Aida Gómez-Robles, PNAS] The researchers, using quantitative methods focused on the shape of dental fossils, find that none of the usual suspects fits the expected profile of an ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans. They also present evidence that the lines that led to Neanderthals and modern humans diverged nearly 1 million years ago, much earlier than studies based on molecular evidence have suggested.
The study, which will be published online this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was carried out by an international team of scholars from The George Washington University, Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research in Austria, Indiana University and Atapuerca Research Team in Spain.
"Our results call attention to the strong discrepancies between molecular and paleontological estimates of the divergence time between Neanderthals and modern humans," said Aida Gómez-Robles, lead author of the paper and a postdoctoral scientist at the Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology of The George Washington University. "These discrepancies cannot be simply ignored, but they have to be somehow reconciled."
P. David Polly, professor in the Department of Geological Sciences in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences, is a co-author of the study. Other co-authors are Spanish researchers José María Bermúdez de Castro, Juan-Luis Arsuaga and Eudald Carbonell, co-directors of the excavations at Atapuerca sites. The study resulted from a collaboration that developed when Gómez-Robles spent a semester at IU studying with Polly while she was a graduate student at the National Research Centre for Human Evolution and at the University of Granada, both in Spain. It also makes use of statistical methods developed by IU Bloomington biologist Emilia Martins.
The article, "No known hominin species matches the expected dental morphology of the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans," relies on fossils of approximately 1,200 molars and premolars from 13 species or types of hominins -- humans and human relatives and ancestors. Fossils from the well-known Atapuerca sites have a crucial role in this research, accounting for more than 15 percent of the complete studied fossil collection.
The researchers use techniques of morphometric analysis and phylogenetic statistics to reconstruct the dental morphology of the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans. They conclude with high statistical confidence that none of the hominins usually proposed as a common ancestor, such as Homo heidelbergensis, H. erectus and H. antecessor, is a satisfactory match.
"None of the species that have been previously suggested as the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans has a dental morphology that is fully compatible with the expected morphology of this ancestor," Gómez-Robles said.
The study also finds that the potential human ancestors discovered in Europe are morphologically closer to Neanderthals than to modern humans. This suggests the line leading to Neanderthals arose around 1 million years ago and the divergence of humans took place much earlier than previously thought. Other studies have placed the divergence around 350,000 years ago.
The researchers argue that quantitative and statistical methods provide a better way to settle debates about human origins than the descriptive analyses that have been used in the past. "Our primary aim," they write, "is to put questions about human evolution into a testable, quantitative framework and to offer an objective means to sort out apparently unsolvable debates about hominin phylogeny." They also suggest applying their methodology to study other body parts represented in the hominin fossil record.
What comes next? Answers to the ancestry question could come from studying hominin fossils from Africa, the researchers say. But the African fossil record from the era of interest is sparse.
"The study tells us that there are still new hominin finds waiting to be made," Polly said. "Fossil finds from about 1 million years ago in Africa deserve close scrutiny as the possible ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans."
Anfang
Gender : Posts : 3989 Join date : 2013-01-23 Age : 40 Location : Castra Alpine Grug
The thing is that they make the assumption of a common modern human, across all the races. While that other research team concluded that different human races have different amounts of neanderthal DNA inside them, africans having zero.
If I make the assumption of a commonality of all humans and I look at the DNA or fossils for that matter then I can only look at the common markers across the board. And those modern human markers have nothing in common with neanderthals because they were excluded by the first assumption of a commonality among all modern humans.
A phenological example to illustrate it - White skin? Nope, we have black guys among humans too, so we can't use that as a common feature in our search for ancestors.
So of course they found no common ancestor because they excluded all markers on the modern human side which would have had commonalities with neanderthals. They couldn't include them because not all modern humans share them, namely the africans.
Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
Starting to learn more about ancient Roman culture. I was drawn to the gladiators for obvious reasons. I thought this was an interesting movie-documentary on them.
The guy that makes these videos deserves more views, in my opinion, for the time and effort he puts into his videos. He has many good videos on Nietzsche, Redbeard, and others. Here is a link to his Youtube channel:
Probably the greatest moment of my life, one of the hardest encounters of all gaming history, took 200+ hours of practice for 25 people to achieve absolute synchronized perfection. At the age of 14 I was one of the best players out of a total of 11 million people. Good fucking times... The game was too good; where in it had inbound reward mechanisms of insane proportions, the amount of ecstasy involved within achieving such impossible feats is unparalleled in comparison to any drug.
Carmina Burana, composed by Carl Orff: Poetry written by German monks and Paters from Beuern in the 11th, 12th, 13th and 14th century; critical on society, (Church) government and celebrating Nature and life from season to season, reflecting it on human life.
_________________ 1. "Youth, oh, youth! | of whom then, youth, art thou born? Say whose son thou art, Who in Fafnir's blood | thy bright blade reddened, And struck thy sword to my heart."
2. "The Noble Hart | my name, and I go A motherless man abroad; Father I had not, | as others have, And lonely ever I live."
Cold Weasel
Gender : Posts : 275 Join date : 2012-05-25 Age : 39 Location : East via West
"We'll discuss the marketing of corrosive counter-culture modern art and the attack on beauty. Gavan discusses the cult of personality around empty artists that have put focus on rot and death. Art is degenerating into nothing but sensationalism. The success of modern art is judged by how much attention it can get and consequently the more subversive, disgusting and pornographic it is, the more the attention it gets by the "critics" and media pundits. Shock factor is mistaken for greatness. Gavan asks what happened to art that conveys beauty, holds veneration for life and is inspirational. Kearney says that the Frankfurt School has been instrumental in turning art into crude smut and emptiness."
OhFortunae
Gender : Posts : 2311 Join date : 2013-10-26 Age : 30 Location : Land of Dance and Song
