Lost lineage

 

This dude definitely suffers from ADHD, ha ha, but he does say some interesting things in these clips. Very interesting, in fact. I´m old enough to remember when saying stuff like this would get you attacked by Skeptics (TM) on the web as a dangerous pseudo-scientist...

First, we have the idea that humans aren´t descended from Australopithecus, since these creatures were adapted to a more arboreal lifestyle. Instead, Australopithecus is a side branch on the hominin family tree. Humans would then be "directly" descended from Sahelanthropus and Orrorin, who lived prior to the australopithecines and were bipedal. Note also the implication that the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees would be - relatively speaking - more human-like than ape-like. 

Second, there is the famous Cerutti mastodon kill site in California, which has been dated to 130,000 years BP. The mastodon may have been killed by humans, which according to standard accounts didn´t live in the Americas at that time. Indeed, Homo sapiens had hardly left Africa! So either Homo sapiens sneaked into the New World much earlier, searching for tender proboscid flesh, or some other Homo did it. 

Of course, ideas like the above have been entertained for a long time by Theosophists, Anthroposophists, creationists and my man prabhu Michael Cremo.

Which doesn´t mean their world-views or methods are right. Mere guess work based on religous scriptures doesn´t count in science. Purely by chance, some religious group somewhere will turn out to be right about something. Still, it is kind of funny that people whose religious convictions made them predisposed to doubt Australopithecus as a human ancestor or Clovis First, may have been on the right track all along. And, of course, there have always been minority reports in science they could "quote-mine"...

But the nerds on the web, who seem to live in an eternal now, will never admit any of this. If somebody finds Atlantis, they will probably act as if Graham Hancock never existed, either.