“What are you doing with that white woman?” was the racist question hurled at Jeffrey Wellmaker, an African American man out walking in Phoenix, Arizona with his girlfriend, described only as a”39-year-old white female.” After two unidentified assailants asked this, they pursued Wellmaker and his girlfriend, then shot them both. Wellmaker survived the shooting. His girlfriend did not.
While this may sound like something out of the 19th century south, this is present day, in a large city, in the sunbelt of the southwestern U.S. As one researcher suggests: “ Although interracial (hetero)sexual relations are no longer illegal, and the number of visible, consensual interracial partnerships has increased, there still remains a discourse against these social arrangements circulating in the United States that continues to bear the traces of the history of antimiscegenation.”
“Antimiscegenation” is rooted in several equally incorrect beliefs: 1) that race is some inherent, biological quality; 2) that race, specifically the white race, can in some way be “pure,” and 3) that “mixing” races, that is by people of different racial or ethnic backgrounds having sexual contact will result in a diminishing of the “purity” and good qualities associated with whiteness.
This is complete balderdash not supported by any kind of research. In fact, if you’d like to read some good research on the origins and meanings of the development of antimiscegenation laws, I recommend Elise Virginia Lemire’s “Miscegenation” : making race in America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002) as a good starting point. As Lemire notes, discussion of “miscegenation” as a threat emerged in the years between the Revolution and the Civil War, as the question of black political rights was debated. As the debate over whether or not blacks were, in fact, human beings deserving of human rights grew more vociferous, descriptions and pictorial representations of whites coupling with blacks proliferated primarily in the North. Novelists, short-story writers, poets, journalists, and political cartoonists imagined that political equality would be followed by widespread interracial sex and marriage, and with it, the supposed decline of the white race.
Yet, some people (@CaptainChaos in the comments thread here) and the gunman in the assault in Arizona, continue to believe this sort of thing. And, unfortunately, a woman has lost her life because of it.
As someone who is in a interracial relationship, this REALLY chaps my hide.
Question? Was inter racial relationships illegal? .When did they or who decided when they were legal? Sorry but I’ve never heard of this.
Interracial relationships and interracial sex were illegal for most of U.S. history, including pre-Constitutionally (the irony, of course, being that many white slaveowners regularly raped and impregnated the black women they enslaved). Nonetheless, as Jessie points out in the post, the purpose of such laws was to ensure continued white dominance in new nation by protecting the alleged “purity” of the white race, and erecting firm social barriers between white people and enslaved blacks. Such laws persisted until the famous Supreme Court case of Loving v. state of Virginia in 1967, which ended all racialized marriage sanctions. Mildred Loving actually just past away recently (last year I think).
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Tellingly, although the Supreme Court decision rendered them moot, many southern states left their anti-miscegenation laws on the books until *very* recently – I think one was formally amended only in 2000 – Alabama maybe? Although these states could not enforce such laws, I think it symbolically meaningful that they foot-dragged so long to correct the “public record” so to speak.
Race mixing is a crime against nature and leads to the degeneration and eventual ruin of all culture and civilization. And especially Whites mixing with Blacks: talk about polluting the blood…why would the more evolved race who made it to the Moon, invented computers, and so on want to breed with the lowest one (which didn’t even invent the wheel) and bring the child’s IQ down, crime levels up, etc.?
I hope you are not insinuating I support violence, it is not so. As a matter of fact, I strongly suspect ethnocentrism, and its corollary endogamy, is genetically rooted and corresponds to a normal frequency distribution. So, those that engage in exogamy, with their offspring not being a part of the European descended gene pool per se, are leaving said gene pool with a greater mean ethnocentrism; they are aiding in breeding a more ethnocentric White race. Fine by me. Besides, the vast majority of White do not engage in miscegenation, census data indicates upwards of 90% remain endogamous.
As for race as “social construct”, well, feast your eyes on this genetic study’s abstract:
“We have analyzed genetic data for 326 microsatellite markers that were typed uniformly in a large multiethnic
population-based sample of individuals as part of a study of the genetics of hypertension (Family Blood Pressure
Program). Subjects identified themselves as belonging to one of four major racial/ethnic groups (white, African
American, East Asian, and Hispanic) and were recruited from 15 different geographic locales within the United States
and Taiwan. Genetic cluster analysis of the microsatellite markers produced four major clusters, which showed
near-perfect correspondence with the four self-reported race/ethnicity categories. Of 3,636 subjects of varying race/
ethnicity, only 5 (0.14%) showed genetic cluster membership different from their self-identified race/ethnicity. On
the other hand, we detected only modest genetic differentiation between different current geographic locales within
each race/ethnicity group. Thus, ancient geographic ancestry, which is highly correlated with self-identified race/
ethnicity—as opposed to current residence—is the major determinant of genetic structure in the U.S. population.
Implications of this genetic structure for case-control association studies are discussed.” – Tang H, Quertermous T, Rodriguez B, et al. Genetic structure, self-identified race/ethnicity, and confounding in case-control association studies. Am J Hum Genet. Feb 2005;76(2):268-275.
And that is ballgame. What’s that I hear? A crack in the cosmic egg?
I assume that my interlocutors are reasonable men and women of goodwill; that is they will be swayed by evidence and adopt a standard of morality by which the greatest good for all people can be affected; as I hope will be assumed of me, and the civilized advocates of our people.
I have told you what I am not for, i.e., wanton psychopathic violence. I will tell you now what I am for: The self-determination of all peoples should they choose it. Is that not what our countrymen bled and died for in World War One? It is indeed. Now we all know the ways in which the opportunities to affect that noble ideal have been squandered subsequently, and what a shame it has been, not the least of which is that what those honorable men gave their lives for has not come to pass. Fortunately, it need not be so forever, and we can redeem ourselves and honor their memory accordingly. Is it not a great tragedy, in fact a crime against humanity, that Tibetans are denied what is their human right? Of course it is, all decent men and women can agree to that. And should our own European derived peoples be denied what Tibetans ought have? Of course not, it would be an act of abject hypocrisy and moral failing.
““Antimiscegenation” is rooted in several equally incorrect beliefs: 1) that race is some inherent, biological quality”
Race is an inherent biological quality, it is a biological term to designate an inbreeding group. Taxonomically it is subordinate to species, also known as subspecies.
“; 2) that race, specifically the white race, can in some way be “pure,” and 3) that “mixing” races, that is by people of different racial or ethnic backgrounds having sexual contact will result in a diminishing of the “purity” and good qualities associated with whiteness.”
Races are pure in the sense that they have been isolated breeding populations that evolved for 10s of thousands of years on their own.
Races do exist, otherwise we couldn’t perceive it, physical anthropologists couldn’t categorize them and geneticists couldn’t analyze your DNA and tell you your ancestry.
A person’s race can be determined by a single strand of hair, often used by forensics. Pharmaceutical companies have developed drugs specific to certain races to help them better. Racially mixed people have more difficulty finding organ transplants that their bodies will accept.
It’s as plain as the nose on your face, but you refuse to believe it’s real because of your political agenda.
Neither you nor Lemire are an authority on genetics or physical anthropology. Educate yourself a little bit before spouting such nonsense.
Please take a serious look at this series: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3r2wYoHLRY.
FYI ~ I’ve deleted about half a dozen comments here that came through that amounted to death threats (against the man who was injured in this incident, against anyone in an interracial relationship). No need for everyone to read that crap, but I thought it was important to note.
While I don’t advocate violence against sexual deviants, such as those who engage in miscegenation, bestiality and pedophilia, I do understand the reaction of righteous indignation.
In the past all of those were categorized as unnatural acts and those who engaged in it were mentally ill.
Supposedly we are better off now with a “progressive” society where abhorrent behavior is allowed for the interests of rights and freedoms. Who is really using cloaking?
The world has been turned upside down, good is evil and evil is good. The Devil himself couldn’t do a better job.
@Captainchaos–
I don’t think citing one singular study (especially one that seems to conflate ancestry, race, and ethnicity and doesn’t address the problems with applying Wright’s fixation index on human populations) warrants the use of such snide, subjective language such as “that is ballgame” and “What’s that I hear? A crack in the cosmic egg”?
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I can think of three publications/studies off the top of my head which don’t support the data and conclusions you (or Mark) provided:
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(1) The Human Genome Project
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(2) ‘Human Genetic Diversity and the Nonexistence of Biological Races’ (2003) by Jeffrey Long and Rick Kittles
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(3) ‘The Race Myth’ by Joseph Graves.
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Also, here’s another, more interactive resource: http://www.pbs.org/race/000_General/000_00-Home.htm
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And just to fight fire with fire, that crack you hear is actually from the thin ice you are standing on.
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@Mark re: comment #12–
Real classy, brother. I guess you didn’t include incest in your list of sexual deviation because it hits too close to home, perhaps?
Our ancestors, particularly those of the Greatest Generation, many of whom now depart beyond the threshold of death, and are dearly mourned by us, were good men, and did all that was asked of them to build a better world. What a monstrous perversity and injustice of cosmic proportions that all that was good in them should then be dragged through the mud, and now it is their very being in the form of those which carry on in their stead that is threatened. Institute of Social Research > Frankfurt School > Critical Theory > Authoritarian Personality > Crypto-Fascist > Psychotic Butcher = the vileness of the diseased minds of those that wish to destroy all that makes life living in this world for our beloved people. It is genocidalist rubbish, down to the letter. It is one thing to ask of us to bear with patience for a day the plotters of our destruction, and the useful idiots whom imbibe it out of a need for moral superiority as against their own people, but to demand we endure it unto the grave is to ask to much.
Our people do exist, damn it. And something is lost if we cease to be ourselves. Our people are not merely so much trash to be used up and thrown away on some mythic hike to the Promised Land. Good men cannot ask that we aid in our own dispossession and destruction, and good men can no longer tolerate the debasement and looming eclipse of their beloveds.
distance88,
“A global genetic assay performed in the 1980s by Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi, and Alberto Piazza measured not kinship but variance or ‘genetic distance’, expressed as the coefficient Fst. Fortunately, Harpending shows that kinship can be expressed in terms of variance: fo = Fst + (1 – FST)[-1(2N – 1)] where fo is the local kinship coefficient, FST the variance of the metapopulation, and N the overall population. When N is large, as it usually is with modern ethnies, a good approximation for the above equation becomes, simply: fo = Fst.
This means that genetic distance , Fst, is both a measure of genetic variance between tow populations and a measure of kinship within each of them.” – Dr. Frank Salter, On Genetic Interests, pp: 45-46
You said: “I don’t think citing one singular study…”
The tendency is for genetic variation and similarity to be brought into greater relief the more people and gene loci tested, not less.
“especially one that seems to conflate ancestry, race, and ethnicity”
The clear import of the study I cited for our purposes here is that self-perceived (and by extension the right of a person to define themselves and so too a people – always assuming it is better for a person(s) to know the truth than believe a falsehood) peoplehood corresponds astoundingly closely with what empirical observation informs us is in fact.
On a deeply personal note, as a person involved in an interracial relationship and as a mother of multiracial children, this discussion flat-out scares me.
Somehow, most whites forget that historically white men started all the ‘racial mixing’ and ‘mixing’ into the white group with their hundreds of thousands of rapes of black women under slavery and Jim Crow segregation. Odd that they now insist on “racial purity” after doing all they could, far more than anyone else in North America to mix the ‘races’…
Captain Chaos Said:
‘ It is one thing to ask of us to bear with patience for a day the plotters of our destruction, and the useful idiots whom imbibe it out of a need for moral superiority as against their own people, but to demand we endure it unto the grave is to ask to much.’
Cap, I would like to cut through the flowery psuedo-theological language and ask a few simple questions. You sound like one of those Appalachian televangelists, ‘An I say unto you! We shall not bear the moral twerp-itude any longer! Amen. The devil has appeared and it is up to us to smite him..I say Smite him ya’ll..the time has come to honor our dearly departed {rest in peace} who lie amolderin’ in their graves {rest in peace} and who gave their lives {I say Lives!} for our sole purpose’
Are you awake, for starters? Or sleepwalking? I’d definitely check. First of all, let’s take a deep breath, come down out of the clouds and speak so a simple Cornell University graduate {that would be me} can understand what you’re paaa-reachin’ here.
1.Who specifically are the plotters of our destruction?
2. Who is the Greatest Generation {and don’t say Elvis.}
3. Who departed beyond the threshold of death? {that’s redundant by the way..if you’re departed..you’re pretty much dead. If you’re actually Beyond the Threshold of Death..where are you? Are we talking alternate universes? Cause my brother took courses in astrophysics. I could ask him.}
4. Please explain what it means to ‘cease to be ourselves’. I can’t imagine to cease to be myself. Can anybody cease to be who they {in fact} are?
5. Who specifically is hiking to the Promised Land?
I’d appreciate some real concrete easy to understand answers. And no cheats like quoting Darth Vadar.
distance88, maybe you should actually read some of the nonsense you cite and put forth an argument. Cutting and pasting titles of propaganda isn’t an argument, and using a television program as scientific proof is a joke.
Most of the fallacious arguments against race are ethically based, and others are about the boundary. Such nitpicking can go into whether species exist as well. Nearly 100% is politically motivated.
See Lewontin’s Fallacy for an example of PC anti-racist deception.
Captain Chaos Said: ‘Is it not a great tragedy, in fact a crime against humanity, that Tibetans are denied what is their human right? Of course it is, all decent men and women can agree to that. And should our own European derived peoples be denied what Tibetans ought have? Of course not, it would be an act of abject hypocrisy and moral failing.’
Please explain Exactly how European derived people are being denied their human right. You say alot of esoteric goobly doo, but you won’t come out and hit the nail on the head, so to speak. 1. How are our human rights being denied? Exactly what mechanics are in operation that is allowing this to happen? If you’ve got something to say: Say It.
Not sure why my other comments were deleted. They were civil. Nevertheless, here we go again:
Somehow, most whites forget that historically white men started all the ‘racial mixing’ and ‘mixing’ into the white group with their hundreds of thousands of rapes of black women under slavery and Jim Crow segregation. Odd that they now insist on “racial purity” after doing all they could, far more than anyone else in North America to mix the ‘races’…
Who forgot that? How could we ever forget that? We are reminded of it unremittingly and without irony!
Look up interracial rape statistics. The ‘we’ that you claim doesn’t exist have more than paid our debt with tens of thousands of white women being raped and/or sexually assaulted by black males every year and practically zero cases occuring in the reverse.
Also, I don’t understand how you can apply a concept of intergenerational and collective guilt to white folks and not expect us to do the same to black folks and others; namely, Jews.
Would you like to drudge up the crimes of the various races and see which race is most collective guilty of the most heinous list of atrocities?
@ Mark:
I went to your Occidental Dissent website where you live with your buddies like ‘Fred Scooby-Doo’. Found some way cool Nazi stuff there. Check this out everybody:
‘Sounds like there’s plenty of great material out there to start a new white country with, AFTER making sure to get it right this time — Jew-proof, “liberal”-proof, communist-proof, Vatican-proof, mainstream-Episcopalian-proof, clueless-women-voter-proof.’
on 07 Oct 2009 at 1:34 pm7Fred Scrooby
‘Those 44 million on the land mass of the present United States, kick all the others out — imagine how much land we’d all have!!!! When do we start?’
Look what we have here! If it isn’t old Uncle Himmler with his Final Solution. Tell me Mark, do you believe this? Do you think we should 1.Kick out all the Jews 2. Kick out all the Catholics 3. Kick out all the Women who have the audacity to vote {does this include your wife..ew-w-w. She might not like that.}
Should we all shave our heads, get tons of tattoos, learn the goose-step and Sing Along with Cap Chaos {could somebody please explain the words to me cause I can’t understand him when he pretends to be Moses.}
What about it Mark? Please explain Your Idea of the Perfect America. I’ll make it easy for you. I think the Perfect America should exclude———————–. Go ahead, be my guest.
PS. I’m Catholic and my grandparents came here from Italy. Does this mean I have to go back to Venice? And I can’t even speak Italian much less handle a gondola!
I can not believe that this is still going on in America. I mean I know that we are still a racist country, but the lengths to which we are racist keep becoming and more extreme. I thought that we would have been more accepting of interracial relationships when Loving v Virginia came was decided by the supreme court in 1972. It is so sad how after all of these years and all of the history we have, we still have not learned a damn thing about anything.
DanielJ said: ‘Also, I don’t understand how you can apply a concept of intergenerational and collective guilt to white folks and not expect us to do the same to black folks and others; namely, Jews.’
danielj on October 7th, 2009 wrote on the Occidental Dissent Blog the following:
‘Those 44 million on the land mass of the present United States, kick all the others out — imagine how much land we’d all have!!!! When do we start?
Forty acres and a mule for all of us…’
OK Daniel, Who exactly gets to stay and who gets to go? You tell me. And you still don’t understand Why Were My Comments Deleted? I was Civil! Visions of Auschwitz has a tendency to turn people off Daniel.
I guess suggesting ‘we’ {who are you referencing here? } could kick all the others out doesn’t sound slightly Superior Race Nazi Germany to you?
And Nazi Germany was Only responsible for the eventual deaths of 25 million civilians and military personnel by the time WWII ended. I mean..guess it coulda been more..why should I be Judgmental? Is it me, or is Hating People because of their Race a Big Bad Idea? Lemme think…nope..I think it’s a bad idea.
I wonder what Uncle Himmler tells you to do ‘in your dreams’ to all the rest of us 1.Catholics 2. Jews 3. Slavs 4. Asians 5. Eastern Indians 6. African-Americans 7. Episcopalians 8.Southern Europeans 9. Latinos 10. Native Americans…have I missed anyone?
Again, who Exactly gets to join the wagon trains to the Promised Land?
I see the liberals have found yet another cause which to gnash their teeth. Curiously they’re missing in action every time a black or other non-white ruthlessly murders (and sometimes tortures) a white victim. You see, whites are non-persons in the liberal weltanshauung and shouldn’t be accorded any rights.
Most liberals are every bit as bigoted and jaded as your average Southerner in pre-1965 America. Only they direct their bigotry towards the white race. A case in point was their staunch support for the blatant discrimination against the white firemen of New Haven, CT.
Maybe Jessie will post and discuss the Wichita Massacre.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wichita_Massacre
Then again whites were the victims and blacks were the perps, so that doesn’t fit the liberal script.
To Mark and Daniel J:
Vogue Magazine called and said: ‘Please tell Captain Chaos that the Pink Tights, Tinker Bell Slippers, and Baby Blue Cape look so 1950’s. Looks like he made an attempt to dress up for Halloween, but couldn’t decide if he wanted to be Super Ms. Cenegation or Cinderella. Will not make a good showing on the Red Carpet at the premier of his new movie Or on our Runways for Best Fall Looks For White Supremacists.’
Siskel and Ebert gave him 5 Thumbs Down!
Is there any comment I can leave that won’t get deleted? Is there a specific policy I have violated that is causing almost all my comments to disappear down the memory hole?
There was no profanity, no abuse, no incindiary language, no deroagtory or defamatory characterizing of groups of persons and no hostility, but rather, attempts to discuss the issues rationally.
Just ask me to stop posting if you would like me to stop posting.
I love when Nazis post on here and pretend they have scientific knowledge when they don’t…captainchaos, for instance makes a big deal of the microsatellite studies, which show that it’s possible to determine ancestral origin (which he conflates, improperly with the notion of race), and thus “race is real,” and racial differences, we are to presume, have a profound effect upon behavior, intelligence, etc. There is much one could say here, and Joe Graves, among others, would have a field day picking apart the pseudo scientific rubbish embedded in this claptrap, but the one thing I will note, just to clarify the microsat study is this: microsatellites are junk DnA, which means they do not code for anything: no behavior, no abilities, nothing. Any geneticist can tell you this. Even the people who did this study have said that, and they do not support the political agenda of the white nationalists who use it for their purposes. So, in other words, the parts of our DnA that differ, in any “racially clustered way” don’t matter much, and the parts of our DnA that really matter–and code for various abilities, etc–don’t differ much.
I for one think the posts of people who are white nats should be taken down at this forum. They can play at stormfront. I only think we should leave their posts up, or post them, if we decide to respond to a particular point they are making.
Free speech does not provide an obligation to allow space for everyone with an opinion on this board.
Personally I think the guys from Occidental Dissent are Hilarious! What Comic Relief! My feelings? Cappy Chaos should be on Saturday Night Live!
Yeah. Anti-miscegenation laws were as much about controlling white women as they were black people. Also, early on it was decided that the status of a child, whether s/he would be slave or free, would be based on the mother’s status, not the father’s.
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So, just to repeat, anti-miscegenation has nothing to do with protecting the purity of any “race,” much less white people. It was all about protecting white men’s sexual freedom and curtailing everyone else’s. European men did this any place they colonized: Africa, India, etc. My collorary thought is the striking fact that while nonwhites were usually always imagined as hypersexual, the laws, which were written by white men, always allowed white men to mate/rape whomever they chose.
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@ admin – I agree with Tim. I come here (when I come) to have stimulating conversation. To learn and have my mind and thinking expanded. While it can be amusing to read the dribble people convince themselves to believe; and informative to know what’s out there; it’s counterproductive if we can’t resist the temptation to respond.
Thank you for the answering to my question Jenni..I really don’t understand what all the fuss is about anyway because depending on what theory a person believes, which one theorizes, is that WE all originated out of Africa….Humm!!!
Thank you for the answering to my question Jenni..I really don’t understand what all the fuss is about anyway because depending on what theory a person believes, which one theorizes, is that WE all originated out of Africa….Humm!!!
Thanks for posting that old classic!
Does that then mean we are all the same as modern Africans? We dont look like them, how does that work then? Perhaps a scientist of Tim Wise’s stature can enlighten us.
Why is that in popular culture prehistoric/primitive people are ALWAYS depicted as white? Is that because white supremacists actually control the media?
POST#4–Jenni-I have not read most of the posts, but I just want to ask you another question. I don’t watch a lot of regular TV, but I do watch a lot of documentary’s Anyway, this documentary that I saw was all about the way that white slave owners used to have children with their slaves/women. However, in the documentary that I was watching, they also stated that when those children were born, those children were treated better because of the fact that they were considered to be half white..They also stated that many of the slave owners would send their children to school, provide better housing for their children, and give those children better opportunities then the other children that were born 100% “African”. Like I said, this is what this particular documentary was suggesting, or is this just another way to “sugar coat” the way some of the women were treated. I found this to be interesting, regarding, how those half white children were treated after they were born. So, I was just wondering has anyone done any research about how these half white children were treated after they were born?
@Mom – It’s true that some slaveowner/slavewoman children were treated well. Yes. Some weren’t. Some were sold away so they weren’t there to bother their father’s conscious.
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So yeah. There were those who received preferred treatment. But at the end of the day, they were still slaves. And to the rest of the world, unless they could pass, still black.
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Also, being that lighter skinned slaves worked in the house, closer to the master family; you have to wonder if the white women were really ignorant of what was going on or complicit. Some slaveowner’s wives would take out their angst on the female slaves working in the house. But the overwhelming majority appear to think they were wedded to the most faithful of men. Which is one reason we get stories like that of Thomas Jefferson’s where the black descendants all know what’s up, but the white descendants are clueless.
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But back to your point, no, the documentary wasn’t false. But if it made out like the majority of slaveowner/slavewoman children were treated that well, then yeah, there’s some suger coating going on. Frederick Douglass was the son of a slaveowner.
Thanks you for confirming. I don’t know what to believe when watching anything on TV. Sometimes I get upset about some of the documentary’s because it seems that “people” just want to explain everything away, so that there is no wonder, no imagination, and no hope left in the world.
Anyway, on a lighter note, I accidentally clicked on your name and came upon, I guess, to be your web page “Here I am, that girl No1KState”. LOL I liked your comments and your picture was very pretty. 🙂 :you go!
The Lurker Said: ‘Thanks for posting that old classic!
Does that then mean we are all the same as modern Africans? We dont look like them, how does that work then?’
Jeeez! They could use you at the Smithsonian Institute’s anthroplogy department. What an incisive mind! You figure these things out all by yourself or did ya have help at Occidental Dissent?
Let’s take it from the top shall we? Paleontologists have been studying fossils for decades trying to find more and more clues to our ancestors. Read all about it Mr. Lurker:
160,000-Year-old Fossilized Skulls Uncovered in Ethiopia are Oldest Anatomically Modern Humans {Ethiopia is Indeed IN AFRICA by the way.}
Robert Sanders | 11 June 2003
BERKELEY – The fossilized skulls of two adults and one child discovered in the Afar region of eastern Ethiopia have been dated at 160,000 years, making them the oldest known fossils of modern humans, or Homo sapiens.
Image © J. Matternes
Flash slideshow: The first Homo sapiens
The skulls, dug up near a village called Herto, fill a major gap in the human fossil record, an era at the dawn of modern humans when the facial features and brain cases we recognize today as human first appeared.
The fossils date precisely from the time when biologists using genes to chart human evolution predicted that a genetic “Eve” lived somewhere in Africa and gave rise to all modern humans.
“We’ve lacked intermediate fossils between pre-humans and modern humans, between 100,000 and 300,000 years ago, and that’s where the Herto fossils fit,” said paleoanthropologist Tim White, professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a co-leader of the team that excavated and analyzed the discovery site. “Now, the fossil record meshes with the molecular evidence.”
“With these new crania,” he added, “we can now see what our direct ancestors looked like.”
“This set of fossils is stupendous,” said team member F. Clark Howell, UC Berkeley professor emeritus of integrative biology and co-director with White of UC Berkeley’s Laboratory for Human Evolutionary Studies. “This is a truly revolutionary scientific discovery.”
Howell added that these anatomically modern humans pre-date most neanderthals, and therefore could not have descended from them, as some scientists have proposed.
The international team is led by White and his Ethiopian colleagues, Berhane Asfaw of the Rift Valley Research Service in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Giday WoldeGabriel of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The results of the find will be reported in two papers in the June 12 issue of the journal Nature.
The research team also unearthed skull pieces and teeth from seven other hominid individuals, hippopotamus bones bearing cut marks from stone tools, and more than 600 stone tools, including hand axes. All are from the same sediments and, thus, the same era.
“These were people using a sophisticated stone technology,” White said. “Using chipped hand axes and other stone tools, they were butchering carcasses of large mammals like hippos and buffalo and undoubtedly knew how to exploit plants.”
They lived long before most examples of another early hominid, the neanderthal, or Homo neanderthalensis, proving beyond a reasonable doubt, White said, that Homo sapiens did not descend from these short, stocky creatures. More like cousins, neanderthals split off from the human tree more than 300,000 years ago and died out about 30,000 years ago, perhaps driven to extinction by modern humans.
“These well-dated and anatomically diagnostic Herto fossils are unmistakably non-neanderthal,” said Howell, a co-author of the Homo erectus paper that details the hominids and an expert on early modern humans. “These fossils show that near-humans had evolved in Africa long before the European neanderthals disappeared. They thereby demonstrate conclusively that there was never a neanderthal stage in human evolution.”
Because the Herto fossils represent a transition between more primitive hominids from Africa and modern humans, they provide strong support for the hypothesis that modern humans evolved in Africa and subsequently spread into Eurasia. This hypothesis goes against the theory that modern humans arose in many areas of Europe, Asia and Africa from other hominids who had migrated out of Africa at a much earlier time.
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/06/11_idaltu.shtml
Put a fork in me! I’m through! I love white women! been married to one faithfully for years! Pretty Sad when an Organ called skin takes dominance over the undiscovered landscape called a brain. Unfortunate that man is still so small minded.