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by tomlock 2897 days ago
As I understand it there's a strong belief amongst Chinese nationalists that the Chinese diverged early from other humans. It makes me suspicious of this announcement, as it may be playing to those beliefs. However, I'm not sure it is untrue, doesn't bother me either way.
2 comments
garmaine 2897 days ago
Well, to that end the very first sentence of this article is wrong. These weren't carved by ancestors of anyone living today. This was homo erectus, a distant cousin.
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alecco 2896 days ago
Well, many Chinese scholars claim the Chinese are descendants from Homo Erectus.

It's even shown on a BBC documentary, they get disappointed when DNA analysis disproves their skull-shape "evidence".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredible_Human_Journey#2...

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garmaine 2896 days ago
The fact that I have healthy half-chinese kids puts the nail in the coffin of that idea... among many other things. It's about as serious an idea as a flat earth or "intelligent design".
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laretluval 2897 days ago
I don't think even the strongest Chinese nationalist would claim that the Chinese diverged from everyone else 2 million years ago!
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johnzim 2897 days ago
Actually there was a very significant amount of money ploughed into researching that exact topic in the PRC.

With significant and predictable sadness when the results didn't go their (the CCP and Chinese nationalists) way.

A google search gives a good paper on the topic:

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/28941533.pdf

TLDR: CCP, seeking to shore up ethno-nationalism (not an especially rare occurance in Chinese history) spent a LOT of time and research trying to prove that Han Chinese are in fact originally descended from Homo erectus Pekinensis rather than the African Homo Sapiens. (EDIT: Spelling)

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laretluval 2896 days ago
Homo erectus pekinensis isn't 2 million years old.

Go back 2.1 million years, like these stone tools, and it's not even clear that there is a genus Homo.

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powerapple 2896 days ago
what's wrong with trying to prove something? As long as it is research, I can see nothing wrong with it. Especially if they want to understand where they are from.
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