Apparently, Denisovans and Neanderthals shared the Altai Cave in southern Siberia, or at least, if not shared, then occupied it off and on over tens to more than one hundred millennia. * The changing character of a neighborhood isn’t new.
And that’s a point made by David M. Raup in Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad Luck? ** The neighborhood continues with different occupants. I can think of my own childhood neighborhood; all the original occupants are now gone, moved or passed away, replaced by different occupants. You can say that mammals generally took over the neighborhood from the dinosaurs in the same manner and that our species has moved into the Neanderthals’ neighborhoods.
Species occupying the same neighborhood at different times—and maybe, because the Denisovans seemed to have intermixed with the Neanderthals at the same time—makes me think of how different ideas seem to occupy the same brain. The cave of the skull isn’t a home for a single idea-species. And there’s a reason: No one has yet discovered a philosophy that answers all our questions with finality. In addition, most of our ideas are tinged with emotion and assumption. Go ahead: Convince me that you hold the same ideas in the same way you held them in your younger days.
Ideas keep moving into and out of our brains as we find their weaknesses in contradictions and incompleteness, discover other ideas, or merely abandon on a whim what we once held to be true. The occupants of the brain’s neighborhood change. The houses—or the caves or rock shelters—appear to be the same, but inside the occupants differ from those who first built and occupied them.
Do some archaeological digging in that Cave of the Skull you carry around, that portable neighborhood. Do you see evidence for multiple occupations and for cross-breeding among idea-species?
* SCINEWS, Denisovans and Neanderthals Lived in Denisova Cave for Thousands of Years. 31 Jan 2019. Online at http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/denisovans-neanderthals-denisova-cave-06864.html
See also: Zenobia Jacobs et al. 2019. Timing of archaic hominin occupation of Denisova Cave in southern Siberia. Nature 565: 594-599; doi: 10.1038/s41586-018-0843-2
Katerina Douka et al. 2019. Age estimates for hominin fossils and the onset of the Upper Palaeolithic at Denisova Cave. Nature 565: 640-644; doi: 10.1038/s41586-018-0870-z
**W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1991.
And that’s a point made by David M. Raup in Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad Luck? ** The neighborhood continues with different occupants. I can think of my own childhood neighborhood; all the original occupants are now gone, moved or passed away, replaced by different occupants. You can say that mammals generally took over the neighborhood from the dinosaurs in the same manner and that our species has moved into the Neanderthals’ neighborhoods.
Species occupying the same neighborhood at different times—and maybe, because the Denisovans seemed to have intermixed with the Neanderthals at the same time—makes me think of how different ideas seem to occupy the same brain. The cave of the skull isn’t a home for a single idea-species. And there’s a reason: No one has yet discovered a philosophy that answers all our questions with finality. In addition, most of our ideas are tinged with emotion and assumption. Go ahead: Convince me that you hold the same ideas in the same way you held them in your younger days.
Ideas keep moving into and out of our brains as we find their weaknesses in contradictions and incompleteness, discover other ideas, or merely abandon on a whim what we once held to be true. The occupants of the brain’s neighborhood change. The houses—or the caves or rock shelters—appear to be the same, but inside the occupants differ from those who first built and occupied them.
Do some archaeological digging in that Cave of the Skull you carry around, that portable neighborhood. Do you see evidence for multiple occupations and for cross-breeding among idea-species?
* SCINEWS, Denisovans and Neanderthals Lived in Denisova Cave for Thousands of Years. 31 Jan 2019. Online at http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/denisovans-neanderthals-denisova-cave-06864.html
See also: Zenobia Jacobs et al. 2019. Timing of archaic hominin occupation of Denisova Cave in southern Siberia. Nature 565: 594-599; doi: 10.1038/s41586-018-0843-2
Katerina Douka et al. 2019. Age estimates for hominin fossils and the onset of the Upper Palaeolithic at Denisova Cave. Nature 565: 640-644; doi: 10.1038/s41586-018-0870-z
**W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1991.
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