Posted on 06/01/2006 1:12:18 PM PDT by Sopater
"Australopithocines evolved into Homo erectus around 1.5 million years ago and Homo erectus, in turn, evolved into Homo sapiens around 400,000 years ago." This is presented to school children as no less certain than Washington's crossing of the Delaware. The statement makes dual claims: (1) there are fundamental anatomical differences between these three categories, and (2) each occurs in the right time frame. Let us examine these claims.
The anatomical differences between these three groups must be very substantial for the statement to have any meaning. Any anthropologist should be able to spot a Homo erectus on a crowded subway train, even clean-shaven and in a business suit, as different from modern humans. Not so. In fact, leading anthropologists Milford H. Wolpoff (University of Michigan), William S. Laughlin (U. of Connecticut), Gabriel Ward Lasker (Wayne State U.), Kenneth A. R. Kennedy (Cornell), Jerome Cybulski (National Museum of Man, Ottawa), and Donald Johanson (Institute of Human Origins) find the differences between these fossil categories to be so small that they have wondered in print if H. sapiens and H. erectus are one and the same. Fossils classified as H. erectus all share a set of "primitive" traits including a sloping forehead and large brow ridges, yet these all fall comfortably within the range of what are called normal humans today. For example, the very same traits are found in some modern people groups, including Eskimos! Eskimos might not like being referred to as "primitive" humans, yet evolutionists must do so if they are to be consistent. There are a lot of problems with the continued use of this taxon, yet it is essential to the evolution story.
The second truth claim embedded within the statement given to school kids has to do with these fossils occurring in the right time frame. For example, fossils with a H. erectus anatomy should be found exclusively in rocks that are older than those with its youthful descendents, "anatomically-modern" humans. This is decidedly not the case. Putting aside the validity of age-dates for a moment, the range for H. erectus is usually given at between about 1.5 million years and 400,000 years. Studiously avoided in most museum depictions is the fact that fossils with a H. erectus anatomy that are younger than 400,000 years number well over 100, including some as young as 6000 years. Even more amazing is this: fossil humans that are easily interpreted as "anatomically modern" (i.e., non-H. erectus) have been found in rocks that are much older than 1.5 million years. From a dozen different sites have come cranial fragments, including one good skull, teeth, several arm and leg bones, a fossil trackway, and stone structure that each screams out "modern human." The trackways at Laetoli, Tanzania, dated at 3.6 million years, and tibia (leg bone) and humerus (arm bone) from Kanapoi, Kenya, dated at 3.5 million, are especially significant for these pre-date even "Lucy," the celebrated upright-walking ape. These embarrassments have been revised, reinterpreted, and re-dated, but will not go away.
Keep these things in mind the next time you hear of a "missing link" being reported, for example, between H. erectus and modern man (as has been in the recent popular press). God made His creatures to reproduce "after their own kind," and it appears from the fossils that they have done just that.
* William A. Hoesch, M.S. geology, is an ICR Research Assistant in Geology.
God made His creatures to reproduce "after their own kind," and it appears from the fossils that they have done just that. ... This is presented to school children as no less certain than Washington's crossing of the Delaware.
There.
You mean that Darwin might have been wrong??
What a surprise!
"Haven't participated in a good heated argument lately... ;-)"
Yeah, these evolution threads. Genesis 1 is big-bang and evolution wrapped into one but since there are small inconsistencies with what we know today in the order of events the fanatics can't accept it - to do so would call into question every other detail of the bible as interpretable and "wrong" or misplaced.
If you want to know about evolution, why would you believe a word the Institute for Creation Research has to say?
With regard to evolution, is it not their goal to deny, obfuscate, and mislead?
The theory of evolution is entirely consistent with belief in a Creator.
I would no more pay attention to scientific advise from the Institute for Creation Research than I would pay attention to economics advise from the Socialist Workers' Party.
"With regard to evolution, is it not their goal to deny, obfuscate, and mislead?"
Make money too. Books, lecture fees. Enough buyers, pays the bills, maybe more.
Check DU.
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I have a point of view that isn't very popular with either creationists or evolutionists.
But the bottom line is this: I don't believe evolution explains US, modern humans, and our sudden emergence with so many attributes not seen before.
And, I believe in God.
Yup. The same people who state the Earth can't be more than a few thousand years old and think it should be taught in science classes.
That's an interesting reaction. Similar to the debate in the church years ago when it was still believed that the sun rotated around the earth. It had a lot to do with man's sense of self-importance. We WERE the center of the universe. It was quite a climb down to have to admit we were just a speck in a random position in the universe.
Dinosaurs = Jesus Horses.
I'm not quite sure of his first argument. He seems to be saying that species categorization by morphology is flawed because they only differ by shape.
That's like saying the rainbow is all the same color because it only varies by wavelength.
Of course color categorization is going to have arbitrary boundries -- wavelengths vary contiuously. But we know red is sufficiently different from blue to name them. Same ways with fossil bones.
His second argument that there are examples of 6000 year old H. erectus is a factual claim for which he provides no evidence.
hmmmm... I wonder how you interpret the Bible.
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