Last week Swisher published his results and set the world of anthropology on its head. If he is right–and there are many who dispute his conclusions–then human evolution was a much less linear affair than previously suspected. Our species, Homo sapiens, is thought to have evolved about 200,000 years ago. It’s already known that it walked the Earth at the same time as its heavy-browed cousins, the Neanderthals, who became extinct about 30,000 years ago. Now Swisher’s find implies that all three hominid species were contemporaneous. Says Swisher: “It looks like today is unique in that there is only one single species of humans.”
Only a few decades ago it was commonly believed that humans evolved in a single clean line of descent, but then inconsistencies in the fossil records caused scientists to form two competing theories. The “multiregional” hypothesis holds that erectus went forth from Africa about a million years ago. Descendants then spread across the world and evolved into Homo sapiens at different times on different continents. The second theory, “Out of Africa,” argues that modern man evolved in one small area of Africa and then spread, possibly killing off erectus tribes along the way. Swisher contends that his findings bolster the Out of Africa thesis. It is “no longer chronologically plausible” to argue that Homo sapiens evolved from Homo erectus, he wrote. Dr. Philip Rightmire, a paleoanthropologist with the State University of New York at Binghamton, agrees: “The multiregionalists will have to do some fast talking to explain this.”
Actually, the mutliregionalists have already countered by suggesting that Swisher has the wrong bones, that perhaps he mistook early sapiens for erectus. For one thing, these Java skulls have a cranial capacity well above the average for erectus–though still far short of an average sapiens. Critics also question the accuracy of his dating technique. Swisher tested not the skulls themselves, which are delicate, but some water-buffalo teeth found in the same strata as the bones. The fossils in question were discovered by the Solo River, so some scientists have suggested that river currents and erosion mixed up the older skulls with teeth from a more recent period. But Anton, who has done a lot of comparative work on human species, insists these skulls are erectus. “Look,” she says, “this flies in the face of everything I was taught, too. This is a big deal.”
In her best-selling novel “The Clan of the Cave Bear,” Jean M. Auel vividly portrayed a prehistoric era when Homo sapiens and Neanderthals lived as hostile tribes, ambushing each other’s camps and raping each other’s women. In fact, no one knows how any of these species interrelated. Like the large-brained sapiens, erectus stood upright. He was likely taller and thicker, with a flat head and a projecting, simian face. Erectus carried only primitive tools, including a handheld, multipurpose stone ax used for everything from butchering meat to chopping wood. Sapiens, meanwhile, had invented boats and a sophisticated array of stone tools. One can only imagine erectus seeing a svelte group of sapiens gliding across the water toward him without getting wet. Did erectus ponder his mortality then? That’s one question the fossils may never answer.
In testing a layer of sediment where the Java fossils were found, scientists discovered that Homo erectus may have lived as recently as 27,000 years ago. It is possible that all three evolutionary groups were alive at the same time.
title: “Welcome To The Club” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-19” author: “Alice Metts”
MUSCATINE HAS BLED FOR EUROPE twice. Forty-eight young men didn’t return to the lush Mississippi River town from the first world war. World War II killed 64. Now, if NATO ever beckons, army Pfc. David Barclay knows that he could have to risk his own life. Like most other Americans, Barclay has heard little about three former East Bloc nations joining the alliance. But he does know something about the Russians. His unit, based in California, regularly engages in war games as the army of mythical Krasnovia. Barclay and his fellow ““Krasnovians’’ wear red stars and drive U.S. armor tricked up to look like Russian tanks. If asked to protect Poles from real Russians, Barclay says, he’ll fight to the death. But not, he admits, without first murmuring, ““Why do I want to defend them?''
That’s not some isolationist rant. Mus-catine (population: 24,000) sends office equipment and grain products worldwide. And with exports booming and commu-nism dead, talk of military threats sounds as antiquated as the mansions that line Muscatine’s bluffs. What was once reluctance to meddle overseas has become a starry-eyed conviction that war is a relic. If NATO expansion is a triumph of Bill Clinton’s foreign policy, someone had better tell Muscatine. Today few people realize that an attack on Lomza would demand the same retaliation as an attack on New York. And the Russians? They’re customers, reachable via e-mail.
The Iowans’ mind-set - part oblivion, part edgy denial -maddens exchange student Adam Jaworowski, 20, who can’t convince classmates in Muscatine that his native Lomza will always be vulnerable. ““They ask, “Why are you afraid?’ ’’ he says. But fear of Russia is a birthright in Lomza. Poland was gobbled up by its neighbors in the 19th century; Lomza became part of the Russian Empire. When war broke out between Poland and Russia’s Bolshevik regime in 1920, Lomza was a battlefield. After Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Stalin attacked from the east, occupied half the country and deported up to 1.5 million Poles. Communist regimes ran the country from the end of World War II to 1989. People in Lomza just don’t trust the ““new’’ Russia. ““The system changes, but the imperial instincts remain,’’ says Henryk Milewski, a survivor of the Siberian gulag.
Still, Russia today represents opportunity - in both Lomza and Muscatine. Iowans likethe Russians. The state’s per capita income spiked with each huge Soviet grain purchase in the 1970s. And Iowa’s sales of manufactured goods to Russia - electronics, machinery, high-tech instruments - have exploded 30-fold in the past decade. Bandag, an exporter of tire-retreading technology, boasts in its advertising of outfitting trucks ““from Muscatine to Moscow.’’ Lomza has a slightly different view. Its pragmatic new capitalists realize Russia can be a gold mine for them, too - as long as Poland can avoid being swallowed up again. NATO membership, they hope, will improve the access to Western goods and capital that has transformed Poland’s economy. Trade with Russia has cut Lomza’s unemployment rate from 29 to 11 percent. Businessman Stefan Sutyniec began importing U.S. chickens after meeting suppliers on a trip to Muscatine. Now he exports the birds to Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania. ““The East is a huge new market, and we have to help them just as we were helped,’’ he says.
Muscatine hopes that the gesture to expand NATO proves meaningless. Not that the topic comes up often. ““Over coffee we don’t talk much about foreign problems,’’ says Marion Nowysz, a native Pole who runs an export office in Muscatine. And Muscatine isn’t likely to pay more attention until someone gives it a reason. But if the alliance gives Lomza more access to the West, that will turn heads. ““There are risks to embracing the former East Bloc countries,’’ says Michael Gould of the Muscatine Chamber of Commerce. ““But these are potential markets.’’ That’s what readiness means today. As for actual warfare, Iowa will leave that to the army of Krasnovia.
