Talk:Homo heidelbergensis

message: "existing in Africa as a part of the operation of the Saharan pump, and not the European forms of Homo heidelbergensis, are thought to be direct ancestors of modern Homo sapiens" Can we get some citation on this? Everything I have read and heard about this says the opposite. I've flagged the section for citation and if it's not cited in a few day's I'll look into a rewrite.
Lunarctic 21:58, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, H. sapiens evolved in Africa, not from European H. heidelbergensis. (c.f. Out_of_Africa_theory) Kortoso (talk) 21:08, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: NOT an Ancestor

message: Also, from what I've been reading and hearing lately, the old "Relay" theory of human evolution has been replaced with the "Melee" theory, outdating a lot of this information, ie; from >1999 many new forms of hominid have been discovered, bringing certain information about our evolution into question. This needs to be considered. All of the referenced sources are from yonks ago, so I'm really uncertain that this article is up to date. As I said, if it's not fixed in a few days I'll talk about a rewrite and probably do it myself :P.
Lunarctic 22:27, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Outdated?

message: I have begun an attempt to make the pages on Homo ergaster, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo habilis, and Homo georgicus resemble each other in format and content more closely. I shall try to present each competing interpretation, but have often settled, half-way through the page, on presenting each species as legitimately distinct (while letting readers know, of course). My main concern is that these six pages present many prevalent and valid interpretations but no conformity of tone or content between pages (or sometimes even paragraphs). I shall also try to make conglomerate authorship less detectable between pages, personally editing large chunks using my own tone. I shall attempt, however, to let no personal interpretations of our ancestry interfere with the hypotheses presented. I will not eradicate any additions to these pages' content, obviously, but will attempt to make their voice and presentation uniform. Homo Ergaster (talk) 00:23, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds great, these articles are in drastic need of attention. FunkMonk (talk) 00:32, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Expansion and Inclusion 

message: Not an expert by any means, but how much sense does it make to say of the modern Maori, "...who also rarely threw objects, but used spears..." unless you are intending an unstated distinction between, say, "spears" that are used as stabbing weapons and "spears" that are thrown? Seems to me that if you want to make that distinction it should be made more explicit, particularly as this is cited as an exemplar. Maybe easier to choose a better example. 87.112.56.130 (talk) 08:03, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Poor Choice of Example 

message: What proof do we have that this picture really is representing Homo Heidelbergensis? Where was this picture taken? Also, commentaries at the source given states En realidad ese es un neandertal. which means this is in reality a neanderthal.--Narayan (talk) 19:31, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The author says that it was an exposition by the Atapuerca Foundation in Asturias. I suppose the Atapuerca Foundation might have put a diorama with all named human species (its Museum of Human Evolution at Burgos has a model of every one from Australopithecus afarensis down after all), but since this was an itinerant exposition it makes sense that it was more limited and only about the species represented in Atapuerca, H. antecessor and H. heidelbergensis. I don't remember which book was, La especie elegida or El collar del neanderthal, where Juan Luis Arsuaga said that they had found H. antecessor, H. heidelbergensis and H. sapiens (in the form of Neolithic burials and a couple of Medieval skeletons) at Atapuerca, and that they only needed to find H. neanderthalensis to have samples of all human species that had inhabited the area for the last one million years.--Menah the Great (talk) 14:57, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Picture at ''Morphology and interpretations'', really a Homo heidelbergensis? 

message: Why does the article still say 6 feet while the Smithsonian says 5 foot 9, as does this site ? Shouldn't we just say a range of heights have been suggested from 5'9" to over seven feet? Not surprisingly, it appears no one has done a literature review of published papers (which is where one needs to look for this). Dougweller (talk) 05:29, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Height redux 

message: I see little discussion on how H. heidelbergensis and crew got to Europe. Spain, France and England suggest a trans-Mediterranean route. What was the sea level like at that time (600,000-1.3 million years ago)? I thought I recall seeing a Wikipedia article on the topic. Merged and lost? Kortoso (talk) 21:14, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the Mediterranean coastline was not noticeably different at the time. The most accepted theory is local evolution from Eurasian populations of the Homo erectus complex, who would have in turn arrived from Africa via the Middle East. Fewer researchers support a direct migration over the Gibraltar straits (e.g. the partidaries of the Orce Man being real), and even fewer support a migration via Sicily and Italy (I personally know no one, and have seen it listed only as the less likely possibility).--Menah the Great (talk) 14:44, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

text: They probably made dugouts, rafts, or canoes. Or they were really good swimmers. Pick your choice. 137.118.104.149 (talk) 02:07, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Migration? 

message: The Schöningen section was originally copied and pasted; the links and cites were lost from the original. I restored this. Kortoso (talk) 16:32, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. I hate it was people do that, and it was also a copyright violation, our material is not public domain and we have to be able to identify the original authors - I've made a null edit and put a link to Schöningen Spears in the edit summary to do that. Dougweller (talk) 17:30, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Schöningen 

message: This species isn't mentioned in the Human Timeline at all, looks like someone just borrowed a timeline from another article.  If it was ancestor to Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern humans as the article states, then it should be on the time line. [posted by 164.51.92.46 at 10:37, 26 October 2016]
:FWIW - the species is well noted on relevant human timeline articles that have more details - for example, please see => "Human evolution" and "Timeline of human evolution" - hope this helps in some way - in any case - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 15:19, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: How come Neanderthal is listed under this type of human being? For the longest of time it was thought to be a  subspecies of H. sapien or it's own species of human/hominid.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.85.118.24 (talk) 19:00, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  IP Note 

message: Found source for some claims about language, for what it's worth.
: https://books.google.com/books?id=3Huo_r-w2WcC&dq=%22migratory+descendant%22&source=gbs_navlinks_s
There's also this, The Singing Neanderthals:
: http://eamusic.dartmouth.edu/~larry/music1052008/readings/Mithen_etal_response06.pdf
:Kortoso  (talk) 23:05, 15 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Language 

message: At the beginning of the section Divergent evolution, it says, The original Homo erectus who lived approximately 700,000 years ago...  Homo erectus came on the scene around 2 million years ago. I suspect this was meant to refer to the immediate H. erectus ancestor of H. heidelbergensis. I can't figure out how to reword it. Zyxwv99 (talk) 05:12, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: The source uses this wording, but it is clear in the context that this means the date when erectus evolved into heidelbergus. I have amended. Dudley Miles (talk) 07:20, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Homo erectus 

message: The diagram "Human Evolutionary Tree" under the "Evolution" section seems to disagree with the first sentence of the 3rd paragraph of the "Homo Heidelbergenis" section.  The sentence reads, "Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern humans are all considered to have descended from Homo heidelbergensis [7][8]", while the diagram indicates that modern humans are descended directly from Homo erectus.
Thus, not sure this diagram is worth keeping with the article, since it creates confusion and ambiguity - for me at least.
:I agree. The diagram is out of date - and the text is in German. I have deleted it. Dudley Miles (talk) 15:20, 4 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Discrepancy on Ancestry

message: It has become nigh impossible to discuss Middle Pleistocene humans in isolated pages on proposed species.
There should be pages on notable individual fossils (i.e. Kabwe skull and Ceprano calvaria), but Homo rhodesiensis  and  Homo cepranensis should be discussed in context under the header of H. heidelbergensis.
This can include the entire taxonomic debate on the derivation of Middle Pleistocene humans from H. erectus, and the
derivation of both Neanderthals and H. sapiens from Middle Pleistocene variants.
Based on the literature cited in the article, it seems to me that after a phase, in the 1990s to 2000s, of postulating new species or subspecies names every time a new fossil was discovered (H. cepranensis, H. georgicus, H. s. idaltu, H. gautengensis, H. tsaichangensis, ...), in the 2010s, the recognition dawned that the perceived distinctness of these "species" was merely due to the sparsity of fossil evidence, and most of these new proposals were recategorized as subtypes of either of
#Homo erectus (sensu lato, including ergaster), 
#Homo heidelbergensis (sensu lato, including rhodesiensis, and possibly also antecessor) or 
#Homo sapiens
Even H. habilis appears to be about to be reclassified as Australopithecus. The only recently proposed species that appears to remain valid is the very peculiar case H. floresiensis (possibly H. naledi?)
This has been going on since about 2010 or so, and obviously as an ongoing scholarly debate it was impossible to cover properly in an encyclopedic format, but the literature over the last five years or so does seem to present a picture that we may be able to work into a coherent summary.
--dab (𒁳) 09:53, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge suggestion

message: Hi I am student at the University of Oklahoma. I have been assigned this page to edit for my History of Science class. I was wondering if you had any suggestions as to what I should edit or add to the page. I am willing to do research for a new section to add to the page. I am new to wikipedia editing so please be patient with me. I apologize for my previous edit. I as I have stated, I am still trying to get a hang of things.
Thank you for your time.
AmareTamashī99 (talk) 19:50, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Work to Contribute

message: The information I added and changed on the page was made based off information collected from peer reviewed journals. I will looked into combining Homo rhodesiensis page and Homo Heidelberngensis. I will first analyze if there is enough evidence to prove that they are the same species. I will remind you this is for a school project. I would greatly appreciated it if you contacted me first if you plan to change anything. I will be happy to correct information that is wrong. Thank you for your time.
AmareTamashī99 (talk) 21:06, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thank you for your contributions; with that said, please review our [[WP:NOR|no original research policy, and also be aware that wikipedia is a global online encyclopedia whose articles are not anyone's school project that they have exclusive ownership of. Firejuggler86 (talk) 01:59, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: New Information Added

message: There is currently a map of Africa on this page, that claims it is there for reference. It is just a blank green map of Africa, not even Africa on Earth. Seriously, who could possibly read this page, and not know what Africa is‽ It should be removed.
174.3.228.242 (talk) 07:59, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree and have removed it. Dudley Miles (talk) 09:30, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Map of Africa? 

message: I see them called that in some works, mostly from the 1900s.
Seems these days they are another species of human. Then what about Neanderthal? Some classifications have Neanderthals as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis and not Homo heidelbergensis neanderthalensis though with all the new information these days I suppose that could be valid too.137.118.102.246 (talk) 01:05, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: A search of Google Scholar shows that it is used as a generic term, not specifically for heidelbergensis. Dudley Miles (talk) 09:49, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anyone still call them Archaic Homo sapiens? 

message: The following Wikimedia Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for speedy deletion:
* 
* Burgos - Museo de la Evolución Humana (MEH) - Homo Rhodesiensis.JPG
You can see the reasons for deletion at the file description pages linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 13:37, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for speedy deletion 

message: The following Wikimedia Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for deletion:
*  ()
* Burgos - Museo de la Evolución Humana (MEH) - Homo Rhodesiensis.JPG (discussion)
Participate in the deletion discussions at the nomination pages linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 22:38, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for deletion