Posted on 06/11/2003 8:03:26 AM PDT by blam
Oldest human skulls found
By Jonathan Amos
BBC News Online science staff
Three fossilised skulls unearthed in Ethiopia are said by scientists to be among the most important discoveries ever made in the search for the origin of humans.
Herto skull: Dated at between 160,000 and 154,000 years old (Image copyright: David L. Brill)
The crania of two adults and a child, all dated to be around 160,000 years old, were pulled out of sediments near a village called Herto in the Afar region in the east of the country.
They are described as the oldest known fossils of modern humans, or Homo sapiens.
What excites scientists so much is that the specimens fit neatly with the genetic studies that have suggested this time and part of Africa for the emergence of mankind.
"All the genetics have pointed to a geologically recent origin for humans in Africa - and now we have the fossils," said Professor Tim White, one of the co-leaders on the research team that found the skulls.
"These specimens are critical because they bridge the gap between the earlier more archaic forms in Africa and the fully modern humans that we see 100,000 years ago," the University of California at Berkeley, US, paleoanthropologist told BBC News Online.
Out of Africa
The skulls are not an exact match to those of people living today; they are slightly larger, longer and have more pronounced brow ridges.
These minor but important differences have prompted the US/Ethiopian research team to assign the skulls to a new subspecies of humans called Homo sapiens idaltu (idaltu means "elder" in the local Afar language).
Herto reconstruction: What the ancient people might have looked like (Image copyright: J. Matternes)
The Herto discoveries were hailed on Wednesday by those researchers who have championed the idea that all humans living today come from a population that emerged from Africa within the last 200,000 years.
The proponents of the so-called Out of Africa hypothesis think this late migration of humans supplanted all other human-like species alive around the world at the time - such as the Neanderthals in Europe.
If modern features already existed in Africa 160,000 years ago, they argued, we could not have descended from species like Neanderthals.
"These skulls are fantastic evidence in support of the Out of Africa idea," Professor Chris Stringer, from London's Natural History Museum, told BBC News Online.
"These people were living in the right place and at the right time to be possibly the ancestors of all of us."
Sophisticated behaviour
The skulls were found in fragments, at a fossil-rich site first identified in 1997, in a dry and dusty valley.
Stone tools and the fossil skull of a butchered hippo were the first artefacts to be picked up. Buffalo fossils were later recovered indicating the ancient humans had a meat-rich diet.
The most complete of the adult skulls was seen protruding from the ancient sediment; it had been exposed by heavy rains and partially trampled by herds of cows.
SEARCH FOR HUMAN ORIGINS
The Herto skulls represent a confirmation of the genetic studies
The skull of the child - probably aged six or seven - had been shattered into more than 200 pieces and had to be painstakingly reconstructed.
All the skulls had cut marks indicating they had been de-fleshed in some kind of mortuary practice. The polishing on the skulls, however, suggests this was not simple cannibalism but more probably some kind of ritualistic behaviour.
This type of practice has been recorded in more modern societies, including some in New Guinea, in which the skulls of ancestors are preserved and worshipped.
The Herto skulls may therefore mark the earliest known example of conceptual thinking - the sophisticated behaviour that stands us apart from all other animals.
"This is very possibly the case," Professor White said.
The Ethiopian discoveries are reported in the journal Nature.
The remarkable thing to me about the neanderthal skeleton is that it would have had very little ability to bend sideways, with that bell-shaped rib cage hovering so low over those wide hip bones. It might be true that a neanderthal in a business suit wouldn't stand out too much, but the x-ray would sort of jump out at you.
Remarkably well.
Can you get DNA from a fossilized bone?
Yes, up to about 60,000 years old. From teeth, a little beyond that.
What ever happened to the tried and true scientific method of observation and repeatability. One can only make guesses from an old bone. How many bones have been re-interpreted or interpreted differently by different evolutionists?
(Morgan Freeman on the right....)
Nothing. It is observed in action every time a paleontologist opens up a new dig, and finds nothing that contradicts the current main story significantly. Just as the Hartzsprung-Russell diagram is re-confirmed every time an astronomer catalogs a new star.
One can only make guesses from an old bone.
One can only make guesses from old stars. Is astronomy therefore a suspect science? How many phase-transitions have actually been observed--yet there they all are one the diagram. Pretty sneaky, those darn astronomers.
How many bones have been re-interpreted or interpreted differently by different evolutionists?
Gee, you mean sciences refine their stories when new data comes in? Astonishing.
So no ballet??
An excuse? An excuse for not having data one currently doesn't have? When are you going to be calling those pesky astronomers to task for all the stars they haven't cataloged? You never know--enough of that cleverly avoided data might reveal the hartzsprung-russell diagram for the godless communist/humanist plot we all know it really is.
The proof they need from the fossil record is always in those pesky 'gaps'.
It is not. It is in the morphological continuity of the fossil record as matched up against the geological record. Just as the law of gravity is confirmed by the behavior of distant bodies, not by a continuous stream of observations running from earth to the distant stars.
And with the DNA, how does that correlate with the fossil record? But how can it work backwards into the past and match up with what the fossils suggest?
By comparison of the number of mutational events in a given chromosome that is shared between living beings. It is sort of an analogy to navigating to a distant point by taking 3 bearings, and finding where they cross.
Long enough to produce changes in bone dimensions. And long enough to be used to metrify DNA methods against other current dating technologies, such as amino acid racimation.
I see, so looking at some bone fragments is sufficient to satisfy the scientific method? Nope. The conclusions they make are not supported by the visual evidence. You compare apples and oranges and draw false conclusions. Astronomy and astrophysics also run on many theories, some much stronger than others, some testable, some not. There are physical laws that govern the cosmos that can be tested and confirmed and used to make some other strong conclusions. Not so with a bunch of bone fragments in this article. The conclusions reached in this article are nothing more than assumptions based on presuppositions - no doubt about it. Would you like to call their conclusions a FACT? If you do, you are doing so on faith, not on the evidence - no escaping that.
My skull is a different shape than your skull [bigger with larger brain ;)]. So what? What does that prove? Nothing. There are slight genetic variances in any species.
No contra-body rotation. If they waltzed, they'd be those blockades on the floor by dancers that only know the box step.
If I couldn't do the turning waltz, I'd go extinct myself.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.