Free Republic

‘Hominids’ Were Gender Binary June 15, 2019 | David F. Coppedge Political activists will have more trouble arguing for gender fluidity, now that binary sex roles go way back. Nobody ever heard of gender fluidity before LGBT activists decided it was possible to divorce gender from biological sex. Now that scientists at the University of Seville have found evidence of “gender inequality” as far back as the Stone Age (Phys.org), will the activists find themselves fighting evolutionists in their claim that we humans should be different? If evolution made people look and act in two ways based on biological sex,...

"Darwinism came at the desired time; Darwin's theory that man is the descendant of a lower animal destroyed the entire foundation of Christian dogma." (Anton Pannekoek, "Marxism and Darwinism," translated by Nathan Weiser) As Pannekoek affirms, Darwin's mythological miracle-producing life and change-making evolutionary energy has destroyed the entire foundation of Christian theism. In supplanting Genesis 1-11, it has also destroyed biblical infallibility, transcendent moral law, sexual ethics, the gospel claims of Jesus Christ, and imago Dei, the source of man's personhood and innate dignity. In destroying the foundations of Christianity Darwinism has also destroyed the foundations of our Constitutional Republic,...

The lineage of humans and apes possibly split at a point several hundred thousand years earlier than currently assumed — and in the eastern Mediterranean rather than sub-Saharan Africa, a German research team claim. After studying the only two fossils found that belong to the hominid Graecopithecus freybergi, researchers at the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment (HEP) in Tübingen came to the remarkable conclusion announced on Monday, and set to be published in the PLOS One magazine. Hominids include humans and our ancestors, plus apes and their predecessors. Scientists have still to definitively prove when the lineage of...

Paleoanthropologists agree that modern humans evolved in Africa about 200,000 years ago, yet the fossil evidence for the earliest examples of Homo sapiens is scarce. One problem is the difficulty in recognizing true modern humans in the fossil record: At this time, many of the fossils thought to be early members of our species possess a mix of modern and primitive traits. For some paleoanthropologists, it means our species once had a greater range of physical variation than we do today. For others, it means more than one species of Homo may have lived in Africa at this time, sharing...

Two neuroscientists say that a now-extinct race of humans had big eyes, child-like faces, and an average intelligence of around 150, making them geniuses among Homo sapiens. The history of evolutionary studies has been dogged by the intuitively attractive, almost irresistible idea that the whole great process leads to greater complexity, to animals that are more advanced than their predecessors. The pre-Darwin theories of evolution were built around this idea; in fact, Darwin’s (and Wallace’s) great and radical contribution was to throw out the notion of “progress” and replace it with selection from among a set of random variations. But...

Progressive creationist anthropology: many reasons NOT to believe A review of Who was Adam? by Fazale Rana with Hugh Ross Although mostly written by Fazale Rana, the book is said to equally represent the work of Hugh Ross. Their salvos against biblical creationists are mostly confined to the earlier chapters of the book, with the first shot being to blame us for the biblical perspective on human origins not being ‘at the high table of scientific debate’ (p. 12). Here they characterize the approach taken by creationists as largely attacking human evolutionary models, but seldom offering ‘a viable theory of...

CHICAGO (AFP) - French fossil hunters have pinned down the age of Toumai, which they contend is the remains of the earliest human ever found, at between 6.8 and 7.2 million years old. The fossil was discovered in the Chadian desert in 2001 and an intense debate ensued over whether the nearly complete cranium, pieces of jawbone and teeth belonged to one of our earliest ancestors. Critics said that Toumai's cranium was too squashed to be that of a hominid -- it did not have the brain capacity that gives humans primacy -- and its small size indicated a creature...

Many people are convinced that human evolution is a fact. Often they will cite the existence of hominids in the fossil record as evidence for their conviction. These creatures presumably represent evolutionary intermediates between an ape-like creature and modern humans. The standard evolutionary model for human origins views Homo habilis as the first member of our genus (Homo). This hominid initially appears in the fossil record about 2.6 million years ago (mya) and seemingly gives rise directly to Homo erectus around 1.9 mya. The direct transformation of H. habilis into H. erectus appeared to gain support from the recovery of...

Hobbit hominids lived the island life Wed Apr 18, 6:43 AM ET PARIS (AFP) - A tantalising piece of evidence has been added to the puzzle over so-called "hobbit" hominids found in a cave in a remote Indonesian island, whose discovery has ignited one of the fiercest rows in anthropology. Explorers of the human odyssey have been squabbling bitterly since the fossilised skeletons of tiny hominids, dubbed after the diminutive hobbits in J.R.R. Tolkien's tale, were found on the island of Flores in 2003. Measuring just a metre (3.25 feet) tall and with a skull the size of a grapefruit,...

The skull of a bipedal hominid Paranthropus robustus is pictured in this undated photograph. The early human relative from 1.8 million years ago dined on the prehistoric equivalent of a smorgasbord -- fruit, nuts, roots, leaves and perhaps meat, according to a study that casts doubt on a key theory about its demise. (Journal Science/Handout/Reuters) An early human relative from 1.8 million years ago dined on the prehistoric equivalent of a smorgasbord -- fruit, nuts, roots, leaves and perhaps meat, according to a study that casts doubt on a key theory about its demise. The four-foot-tall, 100-pound (45-kg) bipedal...

Hominids' cave rave-ups may link music and speech Wed May 31, 2006 2:15 AM BST By Michael Roddy (Reuters) - It was a dark and stormy night, and in a cave in what is now southern France, Neanderthals were singing, dancing and tapping on stalagmites with their fingernails to pass the time. Did this Ice-Age rave-up happen, perhaps 50,000 to 100,000 years ago, on a cold night in the Pleistocene Epoch? Or is it purely a figment of the imagination of Steven Mithen, professor of early prehistory at the University of Reading in England? Impossible to know, Mithen, 45, readily...

More from that Ethiopian fossil find that sends hominid roots back more than 4 million years.

Birdbrain has long been a colloquial term of ridicule. The common notion is that birds' brains are simple, or so scientists thought and taught for many years. But that notion has increasingly been called into question as crows and parrots, among other birds, have shown what appears to be behavior as intelligent as that of chimpanzees. The clash of simple brain and complex behavior has led some neuroscientists to create a new map of the avian brain. Today, in the journal Nature Neuroscience Reviews, an international group of avian experts is issuing what amounts to a manifesto. Nearly everything written...

If you think your kids grow up fast, consider this: A new study suggests that Neanderthal children blazed through adolescence and on average reached adulthood at age 15. The finding bolsters the view that Neanderthals were a unique species separate from modern humans, since the time for humans to mature to adulthood grew longer over the course of their evolution, said paleontologist Fernando V. Ramirez Rozzi, who led the study. Rozzi, with the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, based his study on analysis of Neanderthal teeth. It will be published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. If...

<p>Get it through your once-thick skull. Scientists say the bulky craniums of the human ancestor, homo erectus, may have helped the species survive some aggressive mating rituals.</p> <p>After studying fossils in a region called Dragon Bone Hill in China, anthropologist Russell Ciochon of the University of Iowa concluded males of the species were clubbing one another over the head, probably to win females.</p>