Perspectives on the more distant human past

“A century ago, on July 26, 1916, a viral disease swept through New York. Within 24 hours, new cases of polio increased by more than 68%. The outbreak killed more than 2,000 people in New York City alone. Across the United States, polio took the lives of about 6,000 people in 1916, leaving thousands more paralyzed. Although scientists had already identified the polio virus, it took 50 more years to develop a vaccine. That vaccine eradicated polio in the U.S. in less than a decade. Vaccines are one of the most effective modern disease-fighting tools.

“As of this writing, the fast-spreading COVID-19 has already infected over a million worldwide, and has killed over 22,000 patients. There is an urgent need for a vaccine to prevent it from infecting and killing millions more. But traditional vaccine development takes, on average, 16 years. So how can scientists quickly develop a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2?” (From a primer on vaccines reprinted on Philstockworld. Dated last month.)

Let me add that in the 1950s the most popular living American… replacing the record holder Franklin Roosevelt, was Jonas Salk. The Greatest Generation adored him... a scientist who ‘saved childhood...” and science in general, and not a reality TV star.

Even if Covid-19 proves not to be a slippery devil, like HIV or a rapid-changeling like the flu, there are other reasons to go through the full scope of human pre-testing with a few tens of thousands, before rushing out a vaccine. Earlier I described Antibody-Enhancement by which some vaccines - like that for Dengue Fever - have proved devastatingly harmful, if not properly deployed.

== Speculations on human origins ==

Amazing. Apparently early modern human ancestors seem to have dispersed into the Levant and even Greece about 170,000 years ago… an early dispersal that “failed” as those early human populations then vanished, replaced by Neanderthals (who stretched from Europe to mid-Asia for 400,000 years.)  

That knocked humans back into only Africa…

...from which later versions of Homo sapiens burst forth about 70,000 years ago, spreading first due east and south into Australasia, where they were better adapted to the heat...

... then finally north into Europe for the famed late encounter with Neanderthals - about 45,000 years ago - when fortunes were decisively reversed. And roughly simultaneously with the end of Neanderthals (except some genes till in us) came humanity’s rendezvous with the first great Reprogramming Renaissance, as I describe in Existence.

It may be that humans were simply no match for the stronger Neanderthals, who kept us limited to the African homeland unti... perhaps a mutation enabled us to reprogram. At least that's the speculative theory that seems pretty obvious to me.

Something else amazing from the CARTA conference. While non-Africans tend to have from 2-3% Neanderthal DNA, each of us has a slightly different Neanderthal introgression. And in surveying a variety of these segments from many individuals, experts guesstimate that about 40% of a general Neanderthal genome is circulating in modern humans. Say what???? Given that much of the rest has been interpolated from fossil DNA, it seems we are getting ever closer to the sci fi (but inevitable) situation also depicted in Existence, where Neanderthals are resurrected and walk among us again.

The same can only be done at a 10% level for Denisovans, almost all of it coming from Melanesian populations.

And while we're talking possible brain mutations that led to us... Meanwhile, though few news articles refer to Uplift: “Scientists have grown larger monkey brains by giving marmoset fetuses a gene that's unique to humans.”

== Ha ha. We're all inter-breeders ==

As I've linked elsewhere, it now seems that Africans aren't purely human either. We see gene relics of a 'ghost population' of outsiders - a third kind - in many African populations.

Indeed. Around 700,000 years ago, multiple hominin species apparently shared the Old World: “It is now looking like Africa and Eurasia were inhabited by a whole range of hominin species just a few hundred thousand years ago. While H. naledi was living in South Africa, H. heidelbergensis was surviving in South-Central Africa, and H. sapiens was emerging in Morocco and Ethiopia. At the same time as all this, H. neanderthalensis was evolving in Europe, the Denisovans were developing in Asia, H. erectus may still have been clinging on in Indonesia, and two diminutive hominins, H. floresiensis and H. luzonensis, were living the island life in Southeast Asia.” And a bit earlier: “H. antecessor could be a kind of “basal” species to the “emerging humanity formed by Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern humans.”

== And more surprises ==

A scientist  found that Himba – a Nambian tribal group - have the highest recorded rate of what researchers call "extra-pair paternity." The term refers to an instance in which a child is born to a married couple, but the husband is not the biological father. The rate of extra-pair paternity found among Himba is 48%, far exceeding the 1% to 10% range previously thought to be typical for humans. Having children with non-marital partners was widespread among this group. A high percentage of couples (70%) had at least one child who was fathered by someone outside the marriage. Socially this did not seem to affect paternal care or Himba relaxed sexual attitudes.

Neuroscientists scanned the brains of lifelong bullies and found something grim: Bullies’ brains appear to be physically smaller than other brains. “Our findings support the idea that, for the small proportion of individuals with life-course-persistent antisocial behaviour, there may be differences in their brain structure that make it difficult for them to develop social skills that prevent them from engaging in antisocial behavior.”

== Fascinating… and Uplift-related ==

A non-scientifically rigorous experiment, but visually persuasive, shows a dog having learned to press twenty different buttons with a variety of meanings that do seem to situationally correlate. Our current pet is the smartest dog I ever had, making me wonder about those “neo-dogs” I wrote about, long ago.

And? A veterinary medicine commercial with an UPLIFT theme.

Interesting look into “dendrochronology” or the use of tree rings to establish a clear timetable of events across the last 6000 years. In this case possibly establishing the exact year of the Thera explosion (that pummeled the Minoan civilization and possibly led to the Bronze Age collapse) at 1560 BCE. 

== And some more science news of interest.... ==

NASA animation

Kinda kool video by NASA draining the oceans… showing the shallows and then middle depths and the great abyssals. Truly impressive things stand out. Like how shallow most of the Arctic is, and what sheer drops surround Africa on all sides and line the west side of the Americas. And how the deepest trenches go on and on, ever downward. (Abyssals of the kind I portray in INFINITY'S SHORE.)

The hydrogen production industry is growing at an accelerated rate. Just last year saw a 40 percent increase in shipments, raising total energy production to 1.1GW. Particularly given lithium-ion battery limitations, alternatives in the storage realm will grow increasingly vital for our renewable energy future.  Now comes “a method for synthesizing hydrogen from sunlight. The process uses a rhodium molecule as a catalyst to store electrons and create hydrogen.” This plus new cheap kinds of hydrogen fuel tanks starts to make a dream seem more likely.  (Via Abundance Insider)

== And finally... ==

One of the best (among many) of my recent podcasts: The Big "UNLOCK" What Next? examined 9 topics with 9 panels over 9 hours by 40+ futurists, thought leaders and industry experts to examine how best to reopen global economies and venture back into our communities purposefully and safely.