aaus-list @ ukrainianstudies.org -- [aaus-list] Hoax alert: SCIENTISTS GOOF UP ORIGINS??


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For those of you who may have encountered the story about the supposed
discovery that shows that humans originated in Ukraine, and not in Africa,
see below for a clarification of the problems with this hoax (written by Ben
Fitzhugh, an archaeologist).  It would be interesting to know who came up
with this and decided to circulate it!  If you have not seen this yet, the
original article is appended below.

Cheers,
Laada Bilaniuk

-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Fitzhugh [mailto:fitzhugh@u.washington.edu] 
Sent: Thursday, October 06, 2005 11:15 AM
To: Laada Bilaniuk
Cc: obilani1@swarthmore.edu; lesure@ucla.edu
Subject: Re: FW: SCIENTISTS GOOF UP ORIGINS??

Laada and Oleksa (and Richard),

This is the first I have heard this story.  It is clearly a spoof, though 
Richard can tell us if this is a twisted version of a true UCLA discovery. 
(Richard, has this story circulated at UCLA?)
[Richard Lesure, Assoc. Prof. of Anthropology (also an archaeologist)
responded that he had never heard of this story or of Anid Harjak.]

For one thing there is no Dr. Anid Harjak at UCLA (current chair of the 
department is Dr. Douglas Hollan, according to the web site).  Also, the 
claim of a "human tribe" that is "1000 years" older than what is known 
from Africa is amusing, since the earlies hominid anscestors in africa are 
over 3 million years old and 1000 years is statistically 
indistinguishable.  The link to National Geographic's not yet released 
issue, suggests an attempt to make the fraud seem credible.

To my knowledge, Ukraine has not contributed much in the way of early 
hominid fossils, though there are important late Middle Paleolithic sites 
in Crimea (ca 40,000 years ago and younger).  Georgia made news a few 
years ago for the discovery of a much earlier hominid fossil site, though 
certainly still of a lineage coming out of Africa. (in fact the sensation 
of this discovery was that the small sizes of these skeletons and their 
small brains revised conclusions about when hominid ancestors might have 
first left Africa, pushing it back at least to 2 million years ago... but 
in fact, the Caucasus arent that far from NE Africa!).

Of course, it is likely that Ukraine was among the territories over 
which many early hominids and later more modern humans expanded (most 
anthropologists now see evidence for two waves of migration out of Africa 
2-1 mya and 100kya, perhaps with the second wave mixing with the extant 
population - that's a huge debate).  Given that, it is not unreasonable 
that many of the people in the world might have some (very distant) 
ancestry that lived on or crossed Ukrainian territory, but not that humans 
evolved there and not in Africa.

cheers

Ben

Ben Fitzhugh
Associate Professor		     Office (206) 543-9604
University of Washington	     FAX (206) 543-3285
Department of Anthropology	     Email: fitzhugh@u.washington.edu
Box 353100
Seattle, WA  98195-3100


> -----Original Message-----
> From: by way of Oleksa Bilaniuk [mailto:assyahu@webtv.net]
> Sent: Friday, October 14, 2005 6:55 PM
> To: Bilaniuk@u.washington.edu
> Subject: Fwd: SCIENTISTS GOOF UP ORIGINS??
>
> Ben:
>    Is there anything to this story?
> 					Oleksa.
>>
>> Washington Tribunal Evening Edition Tuesday, September 27, 2005
>>
>> SCIENTISTS GOOF UP ORIGINS??
>> By Mark Elbard, Sr. Reporter
>>
>> Los Angeles - Researchers in the anthropological department at UCLA
>> uncovered, what has to be, one of the greatest goofs of modern
>> anthropological studies today. Dr. Anid Harjak, head of the Anthropology
>> and Archeological departments at UCLA said, "I can't believe we could
have
>> missed something like this, but what we have now discovered is more
>> exciting that anything we've ever encountered."
>>
>> Man did not originate from Africa?
>>
>> May 2005 - Dr. Anid and his team have made a new discovery. A set of
bones
>> of an early human-like tribe predating those found in Africa by 1000
years.
>> Where was this discovery made? In a large country right in the middle of
>> Europe and Asia. A country that most Americans haven't even heard of
until
>> the recent Elections that took place there, the Ukraine.
>>
>> The bones, at first, looked too evolved to be considered as bones from
such
>> an early period. "But after a cross reference with the bones found in
>> Africa, we found that the bones we thought to be of early human origins,
in
>> Africa, were in fact bones of a species very close to ours, but not
quite"
>> said Dr. Rosalina Evandelez, one of the participants of the geological
digs
>> and leading expert of Early Human Evolutional Development.
>>
>> As it turns out, the bones found in Kravina, Ukraine, were early human
>> bones. "The oldest ever found. It seems that this country that most of us
>> have hardly even heard of is where life originated. And after we ran
>> several statistical diagnostics through our computer, we have discovered
>> that 87.9% of humans living on this planet today have some traces
Ukrainian
>> blood in them, believe it or not. 10% has been worn away through strict
>> in-race breeding and inbreeding through families, such as the cultures of
>> the middle east and the royal families throughout the world" Dr. Anid
>> stated enthusiastically.
>>
>> More information on this subject can be found in next month's National
>> Geographic Magazine. Visit http://www.nationalgeographic.com for more
>> details.
>>
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