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.
Hmmm, and you know all this from looking at some bones... I wonder what some "scientist" would have said about the "elephant mans" bones...
Sorry - "Check DU" .... what's that mean?????
As Leonard Cohen once said, "everybody knows!"
Yes, and I'm a Christian who swims in those waters.
I do not like to talk about it much, because I know many Christians have a very literal set of beliefs, and I don't care to either dislodge them of those beliefs, or convince them mine are rational.
Yes, just as I can distinguish the green from red by just looking at some colors.
I wonder what some "scientist" would have said about the "elephant mans" bones...
It would have probably been obvious it was a deformity. Plus that's only one skeleton. Homo Erectus is backed up by remains of hundreds of individuals.
The dust was created and man was "formed" from it.
I told my mom this and she said well there's either someone coming or going under your bed ....
Sorry, couldn't resist it .....
how you know, this isn't an extinct ape?
He probably would have said something like, "Why, this man has Proteus syndrome," if we're talking about a current scientist. Until 1996, he might have said, "Why this man has neurofibromatosis," but that turned out not to be the case. For many years, he probably would have said, "Why, this man has Elephant Man's Disease," but strange as it may seem, that turned out not to be the case either.
There's certainly no evidence for it... :^)
my point being, they have no idea anything about these creatures and everything they say is pure speculation from what they "think" they know. They have no idea for sure what it really is or how this creature acted etc.
Not married, I see.
And no evidence exists that we evolved from Apes either, at least the miracles of Jesus have been documented.
So you speculate that it MUST be a human? but you don't know for sure...
So you speculate that it MUST be a human? but you don't know for sure...
Quit blowing smoke. The experts who have looked at Kennewick Man know he was human. Are you just being a troll or what?
I do know for sure. It's definitely not an ape. If it had to be lumped into a group that we know of them it would be lumped with humans. But it is not a modern human.
your faith in man is strong my friend.
That statement is in accord with the position that NOTHING is more than 6000 years old.
You really think they have "no idea;" that everything published is "pure speculation"? I'm sure if it's that blatant, you'll have no problem demonstrating exactly what you mean ... concisely.
My point about the nature of the Elephant Man's disease was that any competent scientist observing the bones would realize at once that they were the product of disease and not evolution. It would also be perfectly obvious that the bones were those of someone who died so recently that his bones would show no evidence of fossilization -- they're still bones. (You do know the difference between a fossil and a bone).
Now, you may "have no idea ... about these creatures," and it may be that everything you "say is pure speculation," but that doesn't mean that no one else knows anything about them and is merely speculating.
As to how the creatures acted, my guess would be that it would have been distinctly pre-Stanislavsky, but more than that's about as far as I'd care to go.
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