och! here's your badge:
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.
Well, for example, there are perhaps a billion sperm cells for every one that conceives. About half are so defective that they can't even swim.
An estimated two of every three conceived embryos spontaneously abort. A lot of individuals born live never reproduce. What part of this do you not understand?
that'd leave a dent in any material less dense than neutronium.
We've had quite a long stretch of recorded history and as far as I can see we have not changed. We have not grown wings to fly or gill to swim the seas or even coats of fur to protect us from the harsh winters. Our feet are so tender we have to wear shoes if left to ourselves from birth we would die. So where is the proof that we are changing into some higher life form?
I do not consider a world wide fossil record, a geology denoting primarily aquaeous deposition, a planet three-forths covered by water, and a mantle saturated with water to be evidence against a global flood. I also do not consider uniformitarianism to be the last word in applying reason to the geologic record.
I do, however, consider St. Augustine to be on the mark in admonishing Christians to do their homework. The physical creation is a scientific creation, and the future resurrection of human flesh will be a scientific resurrection of the flesh, much as quantum physics is leading us to the understanding that time and space entail much more than human reason has yet to lay hold of.
The prophets and apostles St. Augustine holds in high esteem were ridiculed and put to death not for maintaining views that were contrary to the scientific status quo, but for maintaining that the Creator holds accountable those who do not take Him at His word. That includes matters pertaining to creation in general and the human condition in particular.
It strikes me as akin to the arguments against intelligent design when it is written: "If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead." Scoffing is to be expected, but it is not because there is no evidence of truth.
och! here's your badge:
so I have been reminded by two of the posters on this thread this evening, yes.
the placemarker-of-nothing is going to get a serious workout if this keeps up.
"We've had quite a long stretch of recorded history and as far as I can see we have not changed."
Sure we have.
"We have not grown wings to fly or gill to swim the seas or even coats of fur to protect us from the harsh winters."
Why would we?
". Our feet are so tender we have to wear shoes if left to ourselves from birth we would die."
All mammals would die if left to themselves after birth. Why should this have changed with us?
" So where is the proof that we are changing into some higher life form?"
Who said higher? Or lower? What does that even mean?
so sayeth the Grand Master?
then so say we all.
No, I do not think it is all a figment of the imagination. The arguments are cogent and reasonable. In fact, it fits together so nicely it is almost like a plan. To good to be true.
No. What we are dealing with is too sloppy to be conclusive. I guarantee if I ever took a course in osteometrics as it relates to evolution I would be asking so many questions the perfessor would be offended and take it personally because I did not swallow his interpretations whole cloth. He would call me stupid and flunk me because I questioned his assumption that this bone shape had to precede that bone shape in history, and that all these like-shaped bones must be due to ethnic contiguity.
Creationists just make stuff up. That's why they're called creationists!
We happen to have one historical test of this hypothesis of yours, and that one case at least suggests that it not only IS "difficult to make the evidence support the assumption," it's nearly impossible.
That test case is of course Eoanthropus dawsoni, or "Piltdown Man," a completely faked hominid (an engineered fraud combining fairly recent ape and human bones) that was nevertheless accepted as a genuine fossil creature for a number of decades.
If it really is "not difficult to make the evidence support the assumption" of evolution -- whether or not it genuinely does so -- then it should have been easy to work Piltdown into the scheme of human evolution along with actual fossils.
But it was not easy. Indeed no one succeeded in doing so. As real fossils accumulated from Africa and Asia clear patterns in human evolution became apparent. For instance teeth and jaws were reduced in size and became more human-like while the brain remained small and the skull remained apelike. Piltdown showed exactly the opposite pattern. (Unsurprisingly since it was an ape's jaw combined with human skull fragments.)
No one could ever "make" Piltdown fit. Textbooks and research papers began to ignore it or openly declare it an unsolved anomaly. If an attempt was made to include it in an evolutionary scheme it was inevitably shunted off onto a lonely side-branch.
I was speaking only for myself. This thing isn't worth following any more. Your debate adversaries aren't very interesting.
ah.
well, if the GM wakes up anytime soon, could you *please* remind him of BOD's budget request?
Horse to water and all that. I'm sure it would be a total waste of everyone's time and a big disruption, yes.
Would you not say that man is a higher life form than the ape that we came from? Where is the proof of our physical adaptation to our environment?
"Would you not say that man is a higher life form than the ape that we came from?"
No. The term has no meaning, evolutionarily speaking.
"Where is the proof of our physical adaptation to our environment?"
We are here, and doing quite well.
No. I don't get it. You're making a false assumption based on a fabricated scenario and jumping to an unscientific conclusion.
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