Posted on 03/24/2006 11:47:46 AM PST by The_Victor
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - A hominid skull discovered in Ethiopia could fill the gap in the search for the origins of the human race, a scientist said on Friday.
The cranium, found near the city of Gawis, 500 km (300 miles) southeast of the capital Addis Ababa, is estimated to be 200,000 to 500,000 years old.
The skull appeared "to be intermediate between the earlier Homo erectus and the later Homo sapiens," Sileshi Semaw, an Ethiopian research scientist at the Stone Age Institute at Indiana University, told a news conference in Addis Ababa.
It was discovered two months ago in a small gully at the Gawis river drainage basin in Ethiopia's Afar region, southeast of the capital.
Sileshi said significant archaeological collections of stone tools and numerous fossil animals were also found at Gawis.
"(It) opens a window into an intriguing and important period in the development of modern humans," Sileshi said.
Over the last 50 years, Ethiopia has been a hot bed for archaeological discoveries.
Hadar, located near Gawis, is where in 1974 U.S. scientist Donald Johnson found the 3.2 million year old remains of "Lucy," described by scientists as one of the greatest archaeological discoveries in the world.
Lucy is Ethiopia's world-acclaimed archaeological find. The discovery of the almost complete hominid skeleton was a landmark in the search for the origins of humanity.
On the shores of what was formerly a lake in 1967, two Homo sapien skulls dating back 195,000 years were unearthed. The discovery pushed back the known date of mankind, suggesting that modern man and his older precursor existed side by side.
Sileshi said while different from a modern human, the braincase, upper face and jaw of the cranium have unmistakeable anatomical evidence that belong to human ancestry.
"The Gawis cranium provides us with the opportunity to look at the face of one of our ancestors," he added.
Fester, you are asking some good questions.
The first goal of a morphological study in osteology, and probably other fields as well, is to establish the regularities of your group--figure out the traits which characterize one group while at the same time excluding other groups. There are several good statistics to help with this; the one I am most familiar with is multiple discriminant function analysis. Its goals are to group things, and to figure out if any (or which) traits help to do this. It is used in evolution and population studies quite a bit. The Bantu expansion in Africa was tracked using this kind of osteometric data and analysis.
Shape generally takes precedence over size! There are even ways to find shape similarities between male and female (ignoring size and gender differences) while excluding males and females from other groups (relying again on shape differences).
Once the regularities of a group are established, with the characteristics that define that group understood, it is easier to work with the outliers. Often size and gender differences are not very critical, when compared to shape differences.
This type of study is generally grouped under osteometrics--measurements of bones. There is another whole field which tracks genetic markers in bones. As you might expect, it has its own multivariate statistics to help out. I have not actually done any of this (I prefer measurements).
A lot of this is becoming obsolete with the genetic studies.
To summarize, a lot of what osteologists do is computerized, which takes a lot of the subjectiveness out of the process. Regularities are more important at first than outliers, but after the base population is understood outliers are much more fun. These things are serious studies, with thousands of scientists and aspiring-scientists working their tails off to figure it all out. Don't try this at home!
Hope this helps.
As opposed to which classical definition...? LOL
Yes, but I would still like to know what are the empirically tested rules for the interpretation of bones. Another familiar scenario reads like this: "You're too stupid, so trust us."
" Man is not an animal, no matter how much the evolutionists want to make him one."
It wasn't evolutionists who categorized Man as an animal.
The progression we see in the fossil record can't be explained that way. We see apelike things outside the range of human variation becoming more humanlike until they fall within the range of human variation AS YOU COME FORWARD IN TIME. We see what you would see if we evolved from apes.
Darwin didn't have this evidence in 1859. Nevertheless, his theory meant such forms must have existed. Now we have found many. That's a good prediction for which creationists studiously avoid giving him credit, nor do they attempt to address how he did it if he's supposed to be such a charlatan.
Google "paleontology" and then maybe "cladistics."
Another familiar scenario reads like this: "You're too stupid, so trust us."
The most familiar scenario on the crevo threads is creationists saying, "What I don't know, nobody knows and you can't make me understand."
Are apes evolving into humans
you said people too how are we evolving into some other animal?
You evolutionists are going to have a time of it explaining to God why you rejected His truth!
Were we given brains to not use?
The evidence against a global flood is overwhelming. Do we just ignore that evidence and say, "Can't see it, didn't happen" or some such?
Take a look at this and let me know what you think.
Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the heavens, and the other elements of the world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and the moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to be certain from reason and experience. Now it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and they hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make confident assertions [quoting 1Ti. 1:7].- St. Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, 1:42-43.
There are also still monkeys, primitive primates, primitive insectivores, monotremes, reptiles, fish, amphibians, simple chordates, primitive multicellulars, unicellulars, etc. Doesn't mean our line didn't progress through stages similar to those in reverse.
BWAHAHAHA! "Modern" in this context covers the 300+ years! Excepting defining animals in terms of blastulation. That "only" goes back a couple hundred.
Give it up. Yeah you found an old dictionary that includes colloquial, and nonstandard, definitions of "fish" and such. But everyone, including you, knows that's not what you meant to invoke in the message I responded to.
If you're able to simply admit that you made an (read: several elementary) error(s) and move on you'll instantly raise yourself head and shoulders above the average antievolutionist here.
"you said people too how are we evolving into some other animal?"
That was never the criteria. You asked for an example of organisms that aren't degenerating. That being said, we are still evolving.
How far away are the skulls that allegedly 'bracket' this skull?
Coyoteman..bravo for reminding us of the words of St. Augustine...they apply so well, to the current thread...
FDT...everyone is going to have to explain themselves to God, when the time comes, you included...the way in which you read and interpret the Bible, is your own way, with your own particular bias, experience, and understanding...it may be a 'truth' for you, but you have no authority to declare it as the 'truth' for anyone but yourself...its only your own personal interpretation...other folks, can read the Bible, and same as you do, and come to an entirely different interpretation...and that will be the 'truth' for them...
You certainly do not have the authority to declare just what is Gods truth...all you can declare, is that you believe a certain interpretation, which works for you...and millions of others have different interpretations which work for them...and neither interpretation will ever be agreed on, by all those calling themselves Christian...
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