Astro Hacker News - Why it might be time to rethink the human family tree

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mmooss |next |previous [-]

Here's the paper:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13485234/

Towle I. Clades, Grades, and the Genus Problem: A Case for Revising Hominin Taxonomy. Am J Biol Anthropol. 2026 Aug;190(4):e70344. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.70344. PMID: 42612121; PMCID: PMC13485234.

contingencies |next |previous [-]

Clearly Homo idiotensis here is incapable of cultivating a factual ontology that would place it below the 'great apes' as the type species amongst amongst the 'asshole apes'.

mmooss |next |previous [-]

To me, the choices of names for clades seem like madness:

All apes (superfamily): Hominoidea; great apes (family): Hominidae; African great apes (subfamily): Homininae; Pan‐Homo clade (tribe): Hominini; human clade (subtribe): Hominina. [0]

The potential for error seems enormous, and also imagine speaking those words without creating confusion, or try forming singulars and possessives that, in text and speech, unambiguously identify the clade.

Can anyone on the inside shed insight on why they do this to themselves, and to everyone else who has even less understanding? Is it self-hate? Imagine a large codebase that named variables like that - there would be a lynching late one night when the bug was found to be confusion.

Despite my reaction, I guess there is some good reason that all these smart, experienced people make this choice.

[0] From the paper the OP describes: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13485234/

jltsiren |root |parent |next [-]

That's just the established naming convention. For brown bears, you have parvorder Ursida, superfamily Ursoidea, family Ursidae, subfamily Ursinae, tribe Ursini, genus Ursus, and finally species Ursus arctos. When there are millions of taxonomic names, you want to establish some kind of regular structure, because you are going to run out of useful distinctive names.

applicative |root |parent |next |previous [-]

I agree, but it is clear they got used to it. I suppose once you learn the endings, you can generate the higher genera from the name of a bottom level species familar to us like human-cat-dog / homo-felis-canis

Superfamily -oidea

  Hominoidea | Feloidea | Canoidea |

Family -idae

  Hominidae | Felidae | Canidae |

Subfamily -inae

  Homininae | Felinae (Small cats) | Caninae |

Tribe -ini

  Hominini | Felini | Canini |

Subtribe -ina

  Hominina | Felina | Canina |

foxglacier |root |parent |previous [-]

Homie, no idea.

[Sorry I never joke but surely the biologists were joking when they came up with that so it should be fair game]

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m3047 |next |previous [-]

Research is coming out specifically regarding the COVID genome which suggests missing sequence data was routinely filled in from baseline reference sequences. In turn, the reference sequences suggest during later analysis constant reversion back to the baseline. These gaps are the (dot) product of limitations of PCR * computer processing algorithms. No reason to believe the problem is limited to COVID.

BigTTYGothGF |root |parent |next [-]

I haven't heard anything about this, could you drop a couple references?

trollbridge |root |parent |previous [-]

Does this explain the conspiracy theories about “insertions”? When I looked into it, many other virus species had similar “insertions” - the problem seeming to be the sequencing itself not being accurate (as opposed to every viral disease being cooked up in a lab for the last 5,000 years)

bibimsz |next |previous [-]

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sokoloff |root |parent |next [-]

On a chart section spanning around 5 million years, are you asking about the millions of years where there was “all this diversity and branching” as contrasted with the last ten thousand years or so where there is less observed branching?

Around 15 branches in 5,000,000 years and 0 in the last 10,000 years seems more likely statistical than ideological to me.

jsbisviewtiful |root |parent [-]

Totally agree. Unfortunately we are living in an age of mass stupidity’s volume overtaking critical thought and analysis by those who are truly educated. The amount of moon landing conspiracy theories I see online is deeply disturbing - some even going as far as suggesting space doesn’t even exist. Truly disturbing times.

trollbridge |root |parent |next |previous [-]

If a group of humans gets isolated in an island, the moon, etc., experiences a population bottleneck and bigtime selection pressures, a new species might emerge after 500 generations (about 10,000 years).

ThrowawayTestr |root |parent |next |previous [-]

Are you not aware of the multiple genetic bottlenecks homo sapiens have gone through?

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guywithahat |root |parent |previous [-]

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ryoshoe |root |parent |next [-]

I feel like you're conflating race/ethnicity with species when the two are completely separate concepts. There's a great amount of diversity between dog breeds, including wolves, but little disagreement that they are the same species. Variation between members of a certain species is expected

binaryturtle |root |parent |next [-]

Isn't the general separation between species that they no longer can cleanly interbreed (generate fertile offsprings)? I'm no biology expert though, but I always thought this is how to separate things.

Humans of all kinds can breed and make new humans easily. Same for dogs... easily can breed with each other and increase diversity. So in both cases same species. But humans and chimpanzees? Probably not (albeit there are rumours? :) ), so different species.

guywithahat |root |parent [-]

Yes, but the difference also has to do with geography/preference. Brown and Polar bears can and do produce viable offspring, but because they're generally geographically separated we consider them separate species. Same for birds; many could mate but they choose not to (different mating calls, etc), and for that reason combined with different looks we classify them as separate species. Neanderthal, who are accepted as being a different species of human, interbred with humans before going extinct.

It's my opinion that if aliens visited earth 30k years ago and used our definition of the word, they would classify us as different species. To be clear I'm not advocating that we should refer to humans as different species, just that because we're capable of such advanced thought we should abide by different rules than we hold other animals to.

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sokoloff |root |parent |previous [-]

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tsimionescu |root |parent |next |previous [-]

A species is defined by one simple thing: if individuals can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. There are complications related to ring species and few others, but they're not applicable here.

All human beings from all over the world can interbreed and their children will be fertile themselves (with the same rate of accidental infertility they would find in their own populations). As such, it would be completely preposterous to claim that there is more than one species of human on the planet today.

mono442 |root |parent [-]

wolves are considered different species from dogs but they can produce offspring

guywithahat |root |parent [-]

The definitional limit on interbreeding includes geography and preference; black/brown/polar bears can and do interbreed in captivity but because they live in different locations and they look sufficiently different/have different diets we consider them different species.

If Aliens landed on our earth 20k years ago and used our definition of the word there's no doubt in my mind they'd consider us different species, we'd be like bears. As far as I can tell the only reason we don't classify people as different species is for the sake of society, as people would naturally then try to determine differences and rank them, which has an obviously bad long-term outcome.

OtomotO |root |parent |next |previous [-]

You don't seem to understand what species means and what race means, in biology

archonis |root |parent |previous [-]

Please educate yourself about basic biological taxonomy before you accidentally and publically position yourself as a practitioner and champion of flawed race science.

lolokbro |previous [-]

The races roughly correspond to long-term biomes along longitudinal regions, meaning there are multiple races of black, white, and brown respectively.

There are Slavic white, who are in the same vertical slice (roughly, around water) as Arab brown and Ethiopian black, genetically.

Then there are western African black along another band that are closer to Irish and Scottish than some other black people.

There are white, black, and brown East Asians - the whole spectrum from North Korea and Japan down to Malaysia, Vietnam, and Samoan.

It’s not as simple as black, white, brown - this spectrum emerged multiple times in our evolution mostly due to climate patterns and differences in coastal vs inland, and cave vs outdoor, living conditions that relate to the weather.

Any large vertical region we inhabited in ancient times, with dark cold places in the north and hot sunny places along the equator with coastal and inland options, a racial spectrum like that would emerge over time.

gradus_ad |root |parent |next [-]

So you're saying dark skinned people reside in the south and lighter skinned people predominate in the north?

lolokbro |root |parent [-]

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messe |root |parent |next |previous [-]

What does this have to do with the article?

lolokbro |root |parent [-]

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applicative |root |parent |previous [-]

As if to head them off, as if she could not bear the implications of their threat, Babette said pleasantly, “Why is it these UFOs are mostly seen upstate? The best sightings are upstate. People get abducted and taken aboard. Farmers see burn marks where saucers landed. A woman gives birth to a UFO baby, so she says. Always upstate.”

“That’s where the mountains are,” Denise said. “Spaceships can hide from radar or whatever.”

“Why are the mountains upstate?” Steffie said.

“Mountains are always upstate,” Denise told her. “This way the snow melts as planned in the spring and flows downhill to the reservoirs near the cities, which are kept in the lower end of the state for exactly this reason.”

I thought, momentarily, she might be right. It made a curious kind of sense. Or did it? Or was it totally crazy? There had to be large cities in the northern part of some states. Or were they just north of the border in the southern part of states just to the north? What she said could not be true and yet I had trouble, momentarily, disproving it. I could not name cities or mountains to disprove it. There had to be mountains in the southern part of some states. Or did they tend to be below the state line, in the northern part of states to the south? I tried to name state capitals, governors. How could there be a north below a south? Is this what I found confusing? Was this the crux of Denise’s error? Or was she somehow, eerily, right?

The radio said: “Excesses of salt, phosphorus, magnesium.”