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.
thanks i've been working out
"experts" like the "global warming" experts right? I don't put much faith in them.
One more re-write on that last wise-crack would have been a good idea.
until the "scientists" invent a "way-back" machine they won't know for sure.
Ahh, you're part of the 'scientists don't know anything, so I'll just believe whatever I fancy' crowd. There's a lot of them nowadays, but since they don't teach science in schools anymore I'm not surprised.
Why would you expect them to -- scientists don't claim to know anything "for sure"? We're talking about what the evidence indicates.
from speculation.
Similar to the coherency value present in other fairy tales.
"experts" like the "global warming" experts right? I don't put much faith in them.
Bone experts can tell a lot about an individual from just the bones. You might not be able to do so, but we can.
But less entertaining.
You keep repeating that, but it's become blisteringly obvious you don't know what you're talking about.
on an extinct species that they know nothing about?
Maybe they have a better imagination than I do...
so these scientists have photographoc evidence of these "humans" and they have also interviewed them? go a link to the video, it sure would be interesting to watch.
on an extinct species that they know nothing about?
Maybe they have a better imagination than I do...
Better education.
Speaking of statements no less certain than Washington's crossing of the Delaware...
Where's the proof that the Biblical account of creation is more valid than the Hindu one? Or the Wiccan one?
LOL! Evidence that many other equally qualified scientists are unable to see either.
You, on the other hand, are more than qualified to have been an O.J. juror.
I'm out for now.
How much evidence is there that proves the Biblical version of creation is more valid than any other? Say, the Hindu one?
The most celebrated of these is the hymn that contains the earliest known reference to varna. Creation is the result of the sacrifice of Purusha (Man), the primeval being, who is all that exists, including “whatever has been and whatever is to be.” When Purusha, who had “a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, a thousand feet” was sacrificed, the clarified butter that resulted was made into the beasts which inhabit the earth. This same sacrifice produced the gods, Indra (the menacing king of gods), Agni (Fire), Vayu (Wind), as well as the Sun and the Moon. From Purusha’s navel the atmosphere was born; his head produced the heaven; his feet produced the earth; his ear the sky. The four varnas were born too: the mouth was the brahman (priest); the arms the kshatriya (warrior); the thigh the vaishya (general populace); the feet the shudra (servant).
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