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.
Indeed. It is not science. Modern science eschews the claim to have rounded up all the possible causes of a thing, and has been doing so, just about since Francis Bacon. Apparently, you do actually intend to hold your breath until you turn blue to establish your absurd claim. The very day God is caught on video tape producing new species using entirely different bases to code for proteins, science will turn over a new leaf, and heed creationist cautions. Until then, evolutionary theory remains a best guess (and nothing more than a best guess--according to most any scientist you ask) as to the origins of species.
Before you can reason, you must have a premise
Before you can prove things formally using deductive logic you need a premise. Several, in fact. For ordinary vanilla reasoning, assumptions are fine. And most people can produce reasonable brands of reasoning with being able to put their fingers on what their assumptions are.
I'll give you an example--when my mother shouts down the stairs, "Good grief, that's just like your father". It is analogy that is being offered to me, not deductive or inductive proof. Yet, it is a potententially useful bit of reasoning that's being offered to me, which, if I heed, it, might help me keep my girlfriend.
You already admitted that there is no objectivity in science
If you are going to speak for me, a little more thought should be employed in doing so. I said no such thing--I acknowledged that scientists recognize the existence of their own subjective biases, and try to counteract then through critically conducted peer review, as is particularly noteworthy in the present behavior of scientific technical journals. Obviously, increased objectivity is the goal of all this laudable journistic flagellation.
There's an elephant in the middle of the living room that you are ignorning, and its name is "presupposition." The problem is that most neodarwinists, like you, either ignore or deny the fact that they have philosophical a priori presuppositions. But denying it does no good - they are there.
For all this huffing and puffing about "presuppositions", you have not, in any manner, demonstrated that a "presupposition" is anything more than a working hypothesis--than which a science cannot get along without. Do physicists and astronomers rush to scrap their major current working theories, rather than try to patch them, or reject apparently anomolous data pending further confirmation? Of course they do--and rightly so. You are, as usual, thrashing evolutionary theory for doing what other natural sciences do.
As much as you try to compartmentalize darwinism, you can't do it because there are underlying a priori (before experience) presuppositions in it about the nature of reality that go far beyond simple mutation+natural selection.
Like what?
Again, there is no such thing as an objective scientist - what do you think that means?
The better question is, why do I care? Virtually all scientists subscribe to the thesis that they are, by nature, subjective, and that their subject matter has objective existence they can only approximate through their subjective filters. So what? What thesis of yours does this advance?
Neodarwinism is grounded in materialism and does not acknowledge that anything outside of material causes exists.
It is painfully obvious that this is not correct, and repeating it over and over doesn't make it any the less strange. It is not the stance of modern science, or even of a tiny fraction of modern scientists. It is just a chant you've learned and can't let go of. Ask a scientist or two, for goodness sakes.
Materialism is a joke in philosophical circles - it's one of the most self-refuting philosphies known to man.
Really? Can you provide me with a disproof of Thale's thesis? Anaxamanders? Anaxamenes? What is your proof that "all is NOT change?" No common materialist thesis is any more "disprovable" than the thesis that God created the heavens and the earth is disprovable.
I didn't lose you. Neodarwinists theorize that there is no non-material mind or self - we are our brains. Are you actually going to try to deny that? Do you see the metaphysics in such theories - there is no scientific basis to say that we are our brains - it's a faith statement.
You did indeed lose me, as I have no interest in chasing down every special notion about philosophy that's rattling around in your brain with such apparent urgency. Why do I care about the mind-brain argument in the context of this thread? What is the scientific basis to say that we AREN'T our brains?
That it is a total paste up job is clearly evident from the picture. Only the lower jaw seems to be whole. The rest seems to have been assembled with glue and many of the pieces (vide the large triangle in the middle of the top of the skull) do not seem to fit very well.
It is also very humorous how paleontologists can claim to know from a partial skull not only that it was able to stand up on two feet but also make tools and I am sure that if you pushed them enough what his last meal was.
Yes science does work. The problem with your argument is that paleontology is not science and it certainly cannot prove descent.
If you were to let a hundred paleontologists loose in a cemetery, take away the gravestones and ask them to show from the cadavers who descended from who, they would be totally unable to do it even though the specimens they would have at hand are almost perfect and much much better than what they base their extravagant claims of descent on.
Nope. Only since Darwin has science rejected divine intervention. Also naturalism is really a meaningless term invented by materialists because the term had been rendered ridiculous. There is essentially no difference between naturalism and materialism. They both deny God and divine intervention.
Playing semantic games. Evolution says much more than 'common descent'. It is totally materialistic and completely rules out divine intervention in the creation of species. For example it completely contradicts the Bible in saying that man is descended from apes by materialistic means. Because evolution totally rules out any kind of process which is not random and materialistic it is totally unChristian (in fact I would call it anti-Christian). The only way that evolution of species could be deemed to be Christian is if it was postulated that new species came about as a result of a divine design from the beginning of life. Evolution clearly opposes any such explanation and is therefore materialistic and unChristian. If some wish to delude themselves that they can reconcile the two, they are only fooling themselves, but they are not disproving the enmity to Christianity inherent in Darwinian evolution.
As usual you insult but do not let the reader see what you call 'a stupid example' because it is not. Here it is so all will know what is being discussed:
If you were to let a hundred paleontologists loose in a cemetery, take away the gravestones and ask them to show from the cadavers who descended from who, they would be totally unable to do it even though the specimens they would have at hand are almost perfect and much much better than what they base their extravagant claims of descent on.
Species do not descend from one million year individual to another a million years later. They descend from generation to generation. There cannot be any such leaps in descent and your denying my example and calling it ridiculous shows the desperation of your position. If paleontology cannot even prove the descent of a son from a father where the cadavers are in excellent condition, it certainly cannot prove the descent of anything accross millions of years with fossils which in almost all cases are only partial and in poor condition.
No DNA test is possible from mere bones and almost all fossils are just that or even less - some are just impressions on rocks.
Paleontologists have been able to make their connections via the bones, fossils etc, piecing them together using modern skeletons as a baseline
That is what they claim. I am saying that it is a false claim. If they cannot correctly tell the descent of a son from a father when good cadavers are available, they clearly cannot show descent from millions of years ago when the bones are in very poor condition.
I know of one that drives around Florida in a red pickup...
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.