Talk:Boskop Man

What species are Boskop finds now?
We need to know how the Boskop finds have been reclassified. Someone on a chat forum says that Eiseley totally exaggerated the whole thing, which is probably why this page was created. Smilo Don 16:32, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

From some reddit comments (at http://reddit.com/info/6dds8/comments/), "In the 1950s it was shown that the Boskop skulls were barely different from those of modern peoples such as the San and Hottentot. What's more, the Boskop brain was actually smaller than the high end of modern humans, which is about 2000 cc." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.163.150.8 (talk • contribs) 14:42, 28 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Here's a recent article from discover magazine. Based upon the source I think it should be reconsidered. here's a link


 * ''"Sometimes I think my head is so big because it is so full of dreams,” says John Merrick in the play The Elephant Man. He might have been speaking for the Boskops, an almost forgotten group of early humans who lived in southern Africa between 30,000 and 10,000 years ago. Judging from fossil remains, scientists say the Boskops were similar to modern humans but had small, childlike faces and huge melon heads that held brains about 30 percent larger than our own.


 * That’s what fascinates psychiatrist Gary Lynch and cognitive scientist Richard Granger. “Just as we’re smarter than apes, they were probably smarter than us,” they speculate. More insightful and self-reflective than modern humans, with fantastic memories and a penchant for dreaming, the Boskops may have had “an internal mental life literally beyond anything we can imagine.” Lynch and Granger base their characterization on our current understanding of how the human brain works, describing in detail its physiology and structure and comparing it with the brains of other primates. They also explore what the Boskops’ big brains tell us about evolution (why didn’t they survive?) and about the future of human intelligence (can we engineer bigger brains?). These are questions, one suspects, that even the smallest-brained Boskop would have approved of. "'' --Loganis (talk) 20:30, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Nominated to be checked for its neutrality
I nominated this article to be checked, Statments like this seem to me not be neutral, "In other words, there is indeed no Boskop "Man", but there are indeed Boskop skulls (and Fish Hoek, and Skhul, and Tuinplaas, and Qafzeh, etc.), all indicating that brain sizes have on average been shrinking over the past few tens of thousands of years. This simple but surprising fact is almost universally agreed on by anthropologists."

I don't know enough about the subject to fix it myself.

The article could use a general rewrite as it is rather confusing as is —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.131.74.118 (talk) 06:58, 17 December 2009 (UTC)


 * '"There is indeed no Boskop "Man"' is not POV and is completely neutral, unless you think declarative sentences are inherently "not neutral" (in which case, every article on wikipedia would immediately become not neutral). The implied context of the sentence is that 'Boskop Man' is some kind of common term (perhaps the one that led you to this article).  The further elaboration that there is no such "Man" (ie species) makes perfect sense in that context.  The sentence on its own is perfectly fine.


 * However, I don't know if the article is neutral, b/c I don't have the background or interest to investigate whether or not there is a general consensus about Boskop skulls. If there is, whatever it is, it would be the appropriate thing to put in this article.  That's what people should be looking for re: neutrality; the way the article is written is fine.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.91.101.240 (talk) 10:27, 30 December 2009 (UTC)


 * The article, as it now stands, reads like it was written by a debunker. Moreover, most of the declarative sentences are unsourced, making them suspect. &mdash;QuicksilverT @ 08:23, 5 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Since the idea of a "Boskop man" has been pretty thoroughly debunked for a while now, I think the "debunker point of view" is the neutral point of view in this case. Also, most of the declarative sentences come straight from the sources already listed and properly footnoted. I don't see the need for requesting separate footnotes for every declarative statement contained in those sentences. --94.189.233.233 (talk) 14:44, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

The wording "in other words"
The use of the wording "in other words" is incorrect. In other words implies that the statements are logically equivalent in some way. In this article, the statement that there is confusing and the statement that there is no Boskop Man are not equivalent, or at least not demonstrated to be. --166.70.99.89 (talk) 15:59, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Stub
This article appears to be a stub&mdash;it leaves many questions unanswered and covers only a tiny fraction of the end result of these discoveries. I feel it should be marked as such. --166.70.99.89 (talk) 16:01, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Rewrite of the article.
I've seen WP:BOLD abused far more often than I've seen it used correctly; but I wanted everyone to know that I've revised the article, adding links to other subjects, integrating the formerly redundant second and third paragraphs, and improving the reference to The Human Fossil Record. If any of this is incorrect, please make whatever changes are necessary. ExOttoyuhr (talk) 16:31, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

"Criticism"
It seems odd to me that criticism is represented as being cordoned off in its own little pen when the majority of the article IS criticism. It reminds me of one of Baudrillard's examples of hyperreality. It is subtly dishonest to represent this information in this way. Is the criticism in the rest of the article more objective or more truthful than that under the "criticism" headline? Then why doesn't it belong there? If the position Wikipedia editors want to represent is that the Boskop skulls do not represent a different hominid then one can say so in the article; There is no criticism section on the page for the Fiji mermaid, nor is one needed. However, the inclusion of both a "criticism" section and criticism in the supposedly non-critical portions of the article is a subtle form of misdirection. There is no advancement of the concept in this article without a qualifier, "purported", "claimed", etc. to BE criticized.

I did not edit the article other than by moving the bulk of the criticism to the "criticism" section, so that my intentions would be clear. The article now looks rather ungainly, but hopefully someone with the political capital necessary to be able to make edits to articles and have good faith assumed of them will fix it up.

98.154.22.134 (talk) 13:27, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

"Criticism"
It seems odd to me that criticism is represented as being cordoned off in its own little pen when the majority of the article IS criticism. It reminds me of one of Baudrillard's examples of hyperreality. It is subtly dishonest to represent this information in this way. Is the criticism in the rest of the article more objective or more truthful than that under the "criticism" headline? Then why doesn't it belong there? If the position Wikipedia editors want to represent is that the Boskop skulls do not represent a different hominid then one can say so in the article; There is no criticism section on the page for the Fiji mermaid, nor is one needed. However, the inclusion of both a "criticism" section and criticism in the supposedly non-critical portions of the article is a subtle form of misdirection. There is no advancement of the concept in this article without a qualifier, "purported", "claimed", etc. to BE criticized.

I did not edit the article other than by moving the bulk of the criticism to the "criticism" section, so that my intentions would be clear. The article now looks rather ungainly, but hopefully someone with the political capital necessary to be able to make edits to articles and have good faith assumed of them will fix it up.

98.154.22.134 (talk) 13:27, 18 April 2013 (UTC)


 * For fairness and to avoid the appearance of irrational bias imposed by subjective opinion in some kind of guerilla sceptics vendetta, there should be a Response to Criticism section on all of these controversial articles. Let the readers decide for themselves instead of this impression of a campaign of bias, as is the current state on Wikipedia. It's a situation which deserves to be fought against, because right now, wikipedia has minimal - or near zero - credibility.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.69.206.1 (talk) 21:56, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

First person
Maybe I'm wrong, but the use of the first person in the final paragraph seems out of place.76.9.167.121 (talk) 03:55, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

I suggest adding when the year they died. (you don't need to if the information hasn't been found.)
Thanks 2603:8001:5201:B43E:65AD:B604:FB47:6EDB (talk) 18:00, 25 January 2023 (UTC)