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.
Speciation in evolution doesn't go "Poof!" Things change little by little.
Speciation has not been demonstrated to be a truth.
Do you have a source for this? Duane Gish waving his arms? Your own amnesia?
Yes I have. I don't want God to call me "willingly ignorant" of His creation, and His flood.
2Pe 3:5
5 For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:
6 Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:(emphasis added)
2Pe 3:9
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. (emphasis added)
Jhn 3:14
14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:
Num 21:8-9
8 And the LORD said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.
9 And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.(emphasis added)
Those who chose not to look, or believe they will survive without looking -- die.
The Gospel is simple, repent (recognize you are fatally bitten by sin and in need of savior) and receive the all complete free gift of salvation provided by Jesus Christ (looking to the cross as the only remedy).
You too can shake off the handle of being "willingly ignorant".
What an insightful rebuttal.
If there is a God, he has obviously decreed that he will not be 'found' in the things of this world, and so looking for material evidence of his existence is futile. In fact, Christianity deems that endeavor heretical (it is Gnosticism).
Neanderthals Not Our Cousins, Expert Claims 03/16/2004
The news media are reporting claims that Neanderthals and modern humans never interbred, based on work from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Both EurekAlert and Nature Science Update repeat the claim that the institute’s study of DNA and bones from four Neanderthals and five modern humans from scattered locations rules out any interbreeding.
That’s until you read the fine print. Can such things be known? Listen to the disclaimers in the NSU article:Although the two groups seem to have been genetically separate, the fossil record is too patchy, and dating methods too unreliable, to say whether this was because they never met, or because they simply didn’t consider each other an enticing proposition.If these were potentially interbreeding humans, then forget the racism going on in all this Neanderthal/modern dichotomizing. All scientists can observe is that there were a few distinct physical characteristics among the Neanderthals, such as prominent brows and thicker bones. What can we know but that early wrestlers and bikers just got together and formed their own societies?
Given the small number of fossils studied, it’s also possible that interbreeding did occur, he [David Serre] adds, but that we have not found the evidence yet.
Such a match-up would have been genetically feasible, says Stringer. The two groups were closer in genetic terms than other primates that happily breed today, he says.
(Emphasis added.)
There are groups of modern humans even today who prefer to associate with others like themselves. They can and do form distinctive populations, like pygmies or Watusi. The Bible speaks of the sons of Anak and the Nephelim who were giants in their time. Did the Israelites interbreed with them? Probably not. Was either group non-human? Of course not.
Dead men tell no tales. Living ones, however, often tell whoppers, especially those in the Darwin population.
Next headline on: Early Man.
Early Humans Refused to Be Classified 05/24/2004
We humans like to classify things, and when we classify ourselves, we sometimes get into trouble. We create groups of “us” and “them” that breed conflicts. A fight of sorts is going on between paleoanthropologists, reports Science News1 May 22, over what to make of some skulls found in a cave in Romania. The skulls are blurring the neat categories most anthropologists had made to distinguish primitive and early modern humans.
The discovery last June, an Indiana Jones-like adventure involving cave diving into a tomb-like chamber and finding bones of cave bears and human skulls, has the makings of a good movie. But now that the skulls are in the lab, scientists are scratching their own skulls figuring out where to fit them in the human lineage. The problem is that they display both “primitive” and “modern” traits: modern cheek bones and no brow ridges, but heavy-set jaws and massive teeth. Named Oase (wah-see) after the cave in which they were found, the skulls also contain multi-ridged third molars larger than those of Neanderthals. These bones and another found in Portugal that displays “a potpourri of traits from both species” are causing some anthropologists to suggest that all these varieties of early humans interbred. That threatens to overturn favorite theories about human evolution:
The Oase skull’s strange combination of modern and archaic characteristics underscores scientific confusion about how to define anatomically modern humans, [Erik] Trinkaus [Washington U at St. Louis] adds.In more serious jeopardy is the practice of classification itself. “One way to make sense of fossils such as the Portuguese child and the Oase skull is to stop assuming that each ancient Homo species existed on a separate branch of an evolutionary tree, says Trenton W. Holliday of Tulane University in New Orleans.”
“Paleontologists have created an artificial [anatomical] Rubicon that the Oase fossils violate,” he says. “The blend of traits on these specimens contradicts the existence of a straightforward evolutionary process [during the Stone Age] in which modern humans came out of Africa and replaced everyone else.” (Emphasis added in all quotes.)
Is it possible to be racist with long-dead humans? There is a great deal of variation among people groups living today (Watusi and pygmy, etc.), yet they are all 100% human and it is very unPC to discriminate between them. Variation within a species can be quite pronounced. Anthropologists seem to be too quick to sort bones into evolutionary lineages without considering the environmental influences on anatomy, such as diet: chewing tough meat might accentuate brow ridges and teeth, for instance.
This long-fumbling practice of classifying human bones into separate species so as to weave a tale of evolution should be scorned for its phony discrimination. It’s not science; it is dogma looking for support. Primitive, my tooth. These deceased brethren could probably outrun and outsmart any modern paleoanthropologist on the trail of a cave bear. That takes brains, physical fitness, and complex DNA that is anything but primitive. Maybe the new paradigm is that humans have been devolving from highly intelligent, skilled, artistic hunters into lazy, obese, foolish storytellers.
Neanderthals Matured Faster 04/29/2004
The news media are all echoing a story out of Nature April 291 that Neanderthals matured by age 15, as indicated by their teeth. A News and Views article in the same issue by Jay Kelley2 begins, It is nearly 150 years since the existence of Neanderthals was first recognized, but debate about their relationship to modern humans remains as contentious as ever.” The find is not necessarily indicative of a major difference between Neanderthals and modern humans, but “ should prove to be a fruitful line of research.” Sample news media interpretations can be found at BBC News and paleoanthropology’s bulldog, National Geographic.
You can’t infer the social evolution of humans from teeth. Modern humans reach puberty before 15, so why shouldn’t there be variation in tooth maturation rates between varieties of humans? This study is way too much interpretation on way too little data. A “fruitful line of research” is code for “a new storytelling plot.”
Evolutionists grasp at any hint that Neanderthals were a different species than us. It’s a kind of historical racism. Harrub and Thompson point out in a thick new book, The Truth About Human Origins (Apologetics Press 2004), p. 133, that at four fossil sites, Neanderthals and modern humans are found buried together. The only way to build a Darwinian story out of that is to claim that modern humans buried their pet missing links with them.
ping for later
Bump for later read. This should be good.
If these were potentially interbreeding humans, then forget the racism going on in all this Neanderthal/modern dichotomizing.
LOL! The "modern dichotomizing" is your value-judgment about "racism" .. which would've been more or less a given throughout most of pre-modern history.
The problem [sic] is that they display both “primitive” and “modern” traits: modern cheek bones and no brow ridges, but heavy-set jaws and massive teeth.
Oooh, neat. Sounds like a transitional form. ;)
You can’t infer the social evolution of humans from teeth. Modern humans reach puberty before 15, so why shouldn’t there be variation in tooth maturation rates between varieties of humans?
Oh, wow. What an astonishingly ignorant remark (OK, it's not really astonishing in light of the source). The phrase "Neanderthals matured by age 15" refers to physical maturation, not psychological maturation. LOL
Ok........
Pardon, a little slip-O-the-tounge.
Expert-review does sound funny.
ok...
Are you confirming my statement, or attempting to disagree? If the latter, exactly where do you think those verses permit the 'error' of Gnosticism?
Well sure, but unlike you, I will wait until some evidence shows up - if it does I will modify my opinion. Until then, the best evidence is that Neanderthal and modern humans overlapped in time and space but there was no gene flow. Given what I know of human sexual behaviors, I consider that lack of interbreeding powerful evidence against their being of the same species in the "biological species" sense.
So this is an argument that evolution is wrong? How many ways are you trying to have this?
If there are gaps, you guys win. No transitionals. Blah! Blah! Had to invent punk-eek! Blah! Blah! Can't find that missing link! Blah! Blah!
We have a hominid series that intergrades like crazy, a nightmare for lumpers and heaven for splitters. Australopithecines and early hablines are hard to split apart, they're so similar. Late habilines and early ergaster/erectus are hard to split apart because they're so similar. Ergaster, in fact, was suggested as a separate species because, with those specimens included, erectus changes too much over time to be all one species, say the proponents. Heidelbergensis was split out from H. sapiens (archaic) because otherwise H. sapiens changes too much over time to be all one species, etc.
To recap, you win if things fall easily into bins. That, at least, I can understand logically, although Occam's Razor would still say that we just don't have a good enough fossil record. But you also win if things don't fall easily into bins.
And that doesn't make any sense at all. There, before your eyes, is evidence for gradual transition. You pretend it's evidence for the lack of same. That's just shameless.
Does the complete skull of an Australopithecus exist?
The ancient Nubians had a fascinating culture. At one point they conquered Egypt and Nubians were pharoahs for about 60 years (yeah, I know that's a blink of an eye by Egyptian standards ) and the Ethiopians also had a complex culture. The rest of Africa was pretty grim.
There were a scattering of kingdoms that arose along the westen coasts and forests between Senegal and Cameroon; there were the Swahili towns along the eastern coast, and there were the trade networks within the Zambezi region. In the degree of advancement I would say that in 1400 AD they were roughly around 600 BC Europe.
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