Posted on 01/02/2005 9:41:39 PM PST by bondserv
Anthropologist Claims Humans, Neanderthals, Australopithecines All Variations on One Species 01/01/2005
According to a news story in the UK News Telegraph, all fossil hominims, including modern humans, Australopithecines, Neandertals and the recent Indonesian “hobbit man,” belong to the same species: Homo sapiens. Reporter Robert Matthews wrote about Maciej Henneberg (U of Adelaide) and his argument, based on skull sizes and body weights for 200 fossil specimens, that all known hominim bones fit within the range of variation expected for a single species. Henneberg made the startling claim in the Journal of Comparative Human Biology, where he said, “All hominims appear to be a single gradually evolving lineage containing only one species at each point in time.”
Henneberg still believes humans were evolving, but his analysis points out several important shortcomings in the “science” of paleoanthropology that should make the thoughtful reader wary of its practitioners. (1) There is a huge range of variation possible within a single species. (2) It is difficult to assign any human bone to one or another species. Notice what this led Henneberg to state: “There is no precise way in which we can test whether Julius Caesar and Princess Diana were members of the same species of Homo sapiens” (emphasis added in all quotes). Consider what that means when judging bones of alleged human ancestors. You could tell any story you want. (We like the one that Caesar and Diana were different species.) (3) The article reminds everyone that paleoanthropologists often bicker about the meaning of their discoveries (see 12/21/2004 headline). Geoffrey Harrison (Prof. emeritus, Oxford) said it best: “Clearly there is a need to be more aware of the possibility of variation – but that is not the inclination today. It has been a problem because the discoverers have usually put so much effort into finding the evidence, so they want it to be important.” (4) There are too few bones to make any conclusions. Henneberg said there are fewer than 30 Neandertal specimens available for study. (5) Neandertals could be considered fully human. The article refers to Henneberg stating, in effect, that “What evidence there is, however, is consistent with Neanderthals being from the same species as modern humans.” Christopher Stringer (Natural History Museum, London) adds that Neandertals were not signficantly different from us in skull or body size. “The argument they are a different species is, of course, only a hypothesis...” (italics added).
Best quote from the story is the last paragraph:He [Henneberg] added that the never-ending announcements of new species said more about those making the claims than about human evolution. “The problem is there are far more palaeontologists than fossil specimens”.Corollary: it also says more about the editors of National Geographic than about human evolution, too – both when they make never-ending announcements, and when they become strangely quiet about stories like this one.
Be careful not to get your definitions wound up in the "tow line" of Evolutionary theory. A common failing.
I am fairly certain the three professors are familiar with your objection and have chosen a more conservative approach than you two have. I tend to align with more conservative thought, where caution and disclaimers are the method of preference. Just-So stories are on the chopping block in our brave new scientific world as scientists who get untangled become emboldened.
"There is no foundation for life evolving from Africa. There is every reason to believe life evolved on Antarica and Antarica is the source of dispersal."
Every reason...can you give us just one?
And how about a few arguments against 'out of Africa'?
Thanks for the ping!
So Lucy could have been Eve? You posted the picture. The upper left is a modern chimpanzee. The next thing over is A. afarensis. Why do the Australopithecine skulls look so much like chimpanzee skulls? Henneberg isn't making that go away, he's just somehow failing to mention it. "Normal human variation" apparently includes being crudely the size of a chimp and having a head more chimp than human. He does a poor job of explaining how that can be so.
The way I read things, your big newsworthy finding isn't a big newsworthy finding if you flat-out *don't deal* with straightforward, obvious objections. (And, just in general, the way you and the guy at Creation-Safaris read things has a one-way ratchet and pawl in it somewhere.)
Pre-1800.
So what's up with that?
Are you trying to say you have a life away from FR?
Pre-1800.
...You guys talk about our issues with context. :-)
Once again you miss the point. We are talking speciation vs. variation. What does the data say, not what do we want the data to say.
Speciation has not been demonstrated to be a truth. Simple, really. In fact, we see attempts to pawn variation off as speciation. Typical of the Liberal scientist with an agenda.
Haven't figured it out yet?
I'm sure next time some creat sez A and B are part of the same species because they can interbreed, you'll post them a warning to be "careful not to get your definitions wound up in the "tow line" of Evolutionary theory" as you have so often in the past. Not.
I am fairly certain the three professors are familiar with your objection
I wouldn't be at all surprised if they weren't even aware of that evidence.
Just-So stories ...
Sure - mtDNA analysis is a just-so story. Next time I'm on a jury when DNA evidence is presented, I'll point out to the other jurors that it's only a just-so story.
Oh, boy! Here we go again.
Strong words for "My recollection...". Remind me to avoid your kind of jurors.
Nah. Natural processes have been releasing these things into the enviroment slowly over the eons...we are already acclimated to them.
BTTT
The New Year would be incomplete without the commencement of a fresh battle.
P.S. I realize you were referring to the ignorance of your inept adversary. :-)
Still haven't figured it out, have you?
The lack of an acient African civilization has always bothered me. If modern man developed in African then why were there no great civilizations in Africa? I suppose one could claim Egypt but I concider Egypt a middle east civilization. Now people will claim climate, etc, but remember the climate was much diferent 20,000 years ago.
That should not bother you at all.
First, humans migrated out of Africa tens of thousands of years before there were any "great civilizations" anywhere. Once they did so, the Africans retained no special prerogative that would lead us to expect that they would develop civilizations first.
Second, Africans contemporaneously exhibited civilization not that far behind the rest of the world. They lagged by perhaps two millennia at most which is not that dramatic when considering the fraction of human history this represents.
Third, there is almost no connection between antiquity of settlement and complexity of civilization. That much is demonstrably clear via innumerable examples. The impact of climate, resources, topography, and even serendipity seems rather undeniable.
It's an interesting question why Africans did not develop advanced civilization more swiftly, but it has no bearing on the Out Of Africa theory. Moreover, one should not confuse the separate questions of hominid evolution generally and Homo sapiens evolution in particular.
Sometimes I still try to remember what it was like.
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