We are all African apes. Nationalism is nonsense.
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“Blood group?”
“Anglo-Saxon with a dash of Viking.”
“Blood is blood, Mr. Hancock, all over the world.”
“I DIDN’T COME HERE FOR A LECTURE ON COMMUNISM, YOUNG LADY!”For a different thread
The scientist that gave the lecture on the Argentinean congress for the legalization of abortion, said that the concept of a human being is arbitrary and religious, the real concept in biology is life, and in molecular and cellular biology the concept is life too, the scientist Hackel considers that in the womb of our mother we repeat more than 50,000 years of natural history, we came from inferior animals
To get the timing right. An earlier species of homo left Africa for Asia and eventually evolved into Neanderthals; Homo sapiens evolved out of species of homo left in Africa and then spread to Asia too where they interbred with Neanderthals?
Incidentally, are all apes African (an artificial concept and division anyway, however useful for some purposes).
Q: “Aren’t all apes African (an artificial concept, however useful for some purposes)?”
A: “Africa” and “Eurasia” are nothing more than regions on either side of an isolation barrier to interbreeding.
The textbook example is the evolution of Darwin’s finches (and tortoises) on the distinct islands of the Galápagos archipelago.
Q: “Why are we not the sub-species to Neanderthals?”
A: This boils down to:
- Q: How did later (70,000 years ago) African Homo sapiens out-compete earlier Eurasians?
- A: This is active research.
- Q: What is the evolutionary impact of 65,000 years of isolation on Australian Homo sapiens?
- A: None. Australians had cohabited with Neanderthals and Denisovans in Eurasia. They are [just another] Eurasian variant.
- Cultural evolution is more significant than biological evolution for Homo sapiens from the Upper Palaeolithic onwards.
Modern Homo sapiens comprises one gloriously mongrel species.
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https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2002/04/orig-a20.html
Research suggests a more complex evolution and spread of modern humans
Walter Gilberti
20 April 2002
New research into the genetic pedigree of modern humans may lead to a modification of the widely accepted “out of Africa” theory that explains the origin and worldwide expansion of people, who looked and behaved much like ourselves.A study by Dr. Alan Templeton, a population biologist at Washington University in St. Louis, casts doubt on the notion that modern homo sapiens completely replaced other human populations as they “migrated” out of Africa some 100,000 years ago. “It’s mostly out of Africa but not exclusively,” Templeton said in a recent interview. “Humans expanded again and again out of Africa, but these expansions resulted in interbreeding, not replacement, and thereby strengthened the genetic ties between human populations throughout the world.”
It is generally accepted that modern humans first appeared in the African continent from about 70,000 to 130,000 years ago, as indicated by fossil evidence from Border Cave and Klasies River in southern Africa. Tantalizing remains of “archaic” homo sapiens, a human that exhibited a combination of primitive and modern characteristics, have been dated as ancient as 300,000 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interbreeding_between_archaic_and_modern_humans
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/08/22/homo-a22.html
Scientists identify new hominid species Homo longi, or “Dragon man”
Frank Gaglioti
22 August 2021
The announcement of a new hominid species Homo longi, possibly a parallel and contemporaneous species of Homo sapiens, has made the story of human evolution even more complex.The lead scientists were from the Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences Professor Xijun Ni, Hebei GEO University in Shijiazhuang Professor Qiang Ji in China, along with an international team of scientists in the United Kingdom and Australia.
They published their findings on June 25 in the open access journal The Innovation , under the headline “Massive cranium from Harbin in northeastern China establishes a new Middle Pleistocene human lineage,” along with two other articles, “Late Middle Pleistocene Harbin cranium represents a new Homo species” and “Geochemical provenancing and direct dating of the Harbin archaic human cranium.”
The designation of a new species was made from a rare near-complete hominid skull in China with a remarkable history of discovery. The skull was originally found on a riverbank approximately 90 years ago by a Chinese man building a bridge across the Songhua River in Harbin near the North Korean border, when the area was under Japanese occupation. The Chinese man, an indentured labourer, hid the skull in a well and only revealed its location on his deathbed to his grandchildren. Unfortunately, he did not disclose the exact location of his find. This meant that the scientists were not able to find supplementary evidence from the skull’s geological surrounds. It is remarkable that the skull was rediscovered at all so a scientific analysis could take place.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2009/05/hobb-m13.html
Walking, running, and human evolution
New insights derived from the hobbits of Flores
William Moore
13 May 2009
Homo floresiensis skull
Homo floresiensis Credit: Ryan Somma
A recent conference at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and several new publications contribute to the developing understanding of the proposed new hominin species Homo floresiensis, also known as the Flores hobbits (an allusion, due to their small size, to the child-sized characters from The Lord of the Rings). The results tend to support both the evolutionary distinctiveness of the so-called hobbits, and to provide new insights into human evolution in general.The existence of this previously unknown human species was first announced in 2004 based on the recovery of skeletal remains on the Indonesian island of Flores (See “‘Hobbits’ of Flores: Implications for the pattern of human evolution” ).
We are modern apes walking in two legs instead of four legs. All modern primates must have solidarity with others primates. Nationalism is nonsense. Continents and Islands were produced by tectonic plate move and they cracked in different pieces, there was one continent only. We are still ignorants about our own history and the history of the earth, probably, the Indians knew more than us about the earth
https://www.yahoo.com/news/neanderthal-denisovan-dna-discovered-ancient-000000914.html
Neanderthal and denisovan in South America
AJJ, the problem I have with your views on nationalism is your insistent belief that the only “true”
identity of workers in any nation state with a capitalist economy is that of a wage slave – one who owns nothing but labour power and is therefore exploited (according to Marx’s LTV). As you say: “Wage slaves we remain despite the colour of our passports”. On this view, identities based on gender, ethnicity, religious and political beliefs, occupation, community association, have no significance, except to confuse workers as to their “true” identity (as defined by the SPGB).The same point can be made in regard to your post (#235534) which reproduces a piece published by the SPGB in 1929 about Arabs and Jews in Palestine (at the time of the British Mandate) where it makes the extraordinary assertion that the suffering of Arabs and Jews has nothing to do with race, religion, national independence and patriotism, but only with their shared identity as workers “(who are) therefore exploited.” And this at the time when the foundations of the Zionist state were being laid down at the expense of the Arab Palestinians! As you say AJJ, the SPGB can’t be accused of inconsistency. No, but you can be consistently wrong.
Otherwise, I agree with many of your general statements about nationalism which reflect the seminal ideas of Benedict Anderson (and, I might add, the Marxist historian E J Hobsbawm). All here would agree I am sure that modern nationalism is a nineteenth century invention with many key assumptions based on myth. But the assumption that national or communal identities are irrelevant to the working class is also a myth. You seem to agree, since you recognize that “belonging and patriotism” can be genuinely felt, “exactly the same as religion, which is an opium to deaden the pain of daily drudgery”. But do you really believe that a worker’s identification with family, ethnic group, community association etc. is also the same as a religion – a mere opiate that deadens? I can’t see that at all. And it’s an important thing to ask, because these collective identities are independent of a national identity which is the object of your strong and persistent opposition. Do you not accept that a worker can have strong sense of collective identity (including “class consciousness”) while at the same time sharing a sense of belonging to the place where he lives, in the country where he has a common life in what is called a nation state?
pgb – ‘sharing a sense of belonging to the place where he lives,’
Of course we feel that sense but not to arbitrary tribal areas but to the planet as a whole! Ever since we saw our tiny blue jewel of a planet hanging in the immensity of black nothingness from the perspective of the moon many realized that tribalism and the ruling class’s manipulation and perversion of communal feelings was destroying it. Socialists have always known this but those images from space are a startling reminder of how tiny, delicate and alone humanity is.
https://www.fau.edu/newsdesk/articles/ancient-dna-south-america
ANCIENT DNA ANALYSIS UNRAVELS THE EARLY PEOPLING OF SOUTH AMERICA
I often ask myself how many wars were waged, how much blood was shed to create those entities we call nations. They didn’t evolve organically but were imposed by coercion and force.
The process continues to this very day as this thread demonstrates but it is even highlighted more by the civil wars going on in Africa when borders and countries were arbitrarily decided.
You ask if a worker can have strong sense of collective identity (including “class consciousness”) while at the same time sharing a sense of belonging to the place where he lives, in the country where he has a common life in what is called a nation state?
Yes for the first part, the place he lives, but I question the latter statement that the nation-state represents his common life.
Regional, neighbourhood, and communal affections and attachments are often stronger than national. The street gang rivalry for the right to call a few streets and a housing estate one’s own territory. In a previous post I gave an example of football tribalism.
How these arise is a valid question. There are a variety of apparent causes, ethnicity, religion and so on. There is also the baggage of history that linger and pass down generations.
Search for the origins and I think it is simple economic competition for a secure livelihood that brings them about. So for me, the answer to the divisions that exist, is not all those nationalisms but satisfying people’s material needs.
I’m an ex-pat, (the polite term for an economic migrant seeking a cheaper way of life). Do I miss certain things about the land of my birth? Yes. The long summer days. Are there things I don’t miss? Yes, the early darkness of winter. Oh after a few pints of Guinness, my favourite tipple but developed in another country, I could go on and list many many more things to both lists.
But have I discovered that there is something very special in being born and raised in a particular place that is unique, something not shared with others from elsewhere, not really. Yes, there are some differences, all can be put down to culture and traditions. Even your example of family upbringing is not uniform or universal. Religious beliefs also may appear different but delve deeper, they are all pretty much the same. Am I emotionally connected to the land of my birth? No. But I do still have family, friends and Party comrades there, relationships that remain a bond, regardless of geographic distance.
I speak from my own identity – a citizen of the world. Once I chose to live in another part of the world, the reality of documentation, passports, and visas became a burden.
The problems of all those who seek to live in another country either by choice or necessity resonates strongly with me. For several months I possessed no passport,(the renewal of the old one caught up in the government backlog). Because of the legalistic determination of nationality, I existed in limbo.
Having said the above, I do not see my situation as very much different from someone who may happen to move home from Wick to Walsall. The world is our home, not a country or a city.
Being what we describe as a world socialist has always, for me at least, distinguished the SPGB and the WSM. In our internal debates I have frequently placed that criteria above the continued existence of a political body called the Socialist Party *of Great Britain*
But this is off topic and apologies for moderating my own posts more impartially.
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