Posted on 06/11/2003 3:31:46 PM PDT by aculeus
In a discovery that several colleagues describe as "spectacular" and "extraordinary," an international team of researchers has uncovered fossils in Ethiopia that fill a crucial gap in the record of human evolution.
Judged by their physical characteristics, the 160,000-year-old-fossils - nearly complete skulls of two adults and a child found near the village of Herto - teeter on the razor-thin edge of change between anatomically early and modern humans. The team also found skull pieces and teeth from seven other individuals.
The discoveries dovetail with an expanding body of genetic evidence indicating that modern humans first evolved in Africa about 150,000 years ago.
Over the years, paleoanthropologists have gathered fossils that open windows on key periods in the history of human evolution in Africa dating back millions of years, notes Tim White, co-leader of the team that made the discovery. But "the record has been mute" on what was happening 150,000 years ago, he says.
"We're opening the first window on the continent in this time period," he adds. And the view from the window is "very consistent with the predictions made by genetic evidence" that modern humans originated in Africa.
Combined with existing fossil and genetic evidence, researchers say, the new find seriously undermines hypotheses that modern humans evolved roughly simultaneously in different regions of the world and that in Europe, Neanderthals gave rise to anatomically modern Europeans.
In one sense, the finds at Herto come as little surprise to some paleoanthropologists who work in Africa.
Given the pattern of development in fossils that date to either side of the Herto group, these are the kind of hominids one could expect from that time and that region of Africa, according to Curtis Marean, professor of anthropology at Arizona State University's Institute for Human Origins.
What makes them special, he says, is their "outstanding state of preservation" and their tightly defined dates. The technique that Dr. White's team used allowed it to date the fossils between 160,000 and 154,000 years ago. The age of other potential near-modern human fossils, such as those found at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, is more uncertain.
The White team, which details its results in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, first came across the site where the fossils were found on Nov. 16, 1997. It's a landscape that today looks as much like a Martian plain as anything on Earth.
Pebble-strewn, virtually treeless, scorchingly hot, the terrain along the rift valley containing the site stretches in subtle undulations toward distant mountains. But 160,000 years ago, when much of the Northern Hemisphere sagged under a sheath of ice two miles thick, this patch of Africa was the site of a shallow freshwater lake teeming with catfish, crocs, and hippos, researchers say.
According to White, he noticed a butchered hippo skull and related artifacts in an eroding slope near Herto. Eleven days later, he and colleagues returned to survey the site.
As White worked on a shaded enclosure for a lunch break, he says, "I sent two people off to begin the survey near where we had found the hippo." When they came back about a half hour later, both had found hominids, he says.
And the painstakingly slow process of collection and excavation began.
Of the specimens included in Thursday's report, the child's cranium presented perhaps the biggest reconstruction challenge. More than 200 pieces were scattered over some 4,300 square feet of the valley floor, presenting Ethiopian scientist and team member Berhane Asfaw with a 3-D jigsaw puzzle to assemble.
In addition to the hominids, stone tools also emerged from the team's excavations that signal a shift in toolmaking technology to the flake-based features of the Middle Stone Age. Moreover, one of the adult skull fragments shows evidence of parallel surface cuts that could indicate some form of primitive burial rites, the team reports.
160,000 years could have had something to do with it too!!
The real question concerning these deaths is, "What did Bush know and when did he know it".
;<)
Your priest's comment reminds of a comment I heard once about liberals: "Their minds are so open, their brains fall out." The idea that we must be open to believing ideas that contradict the word of G-d is blasphemy.
Y-shua's claims were/are claims of exclusivity. He said that He was the "way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except by me." Pretty exclusive.
from Answers in Genesis:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/1273.asp
Some questions for theistic evolutionists (and 'progressive creationists')
by Don Batten
The following questions may help those who adhere to some form of theistic evolution (God used evolution to create everything) or progressive creation (God intervened at various points in the process of evolution) to realize that their position violates clear concepts revealed in the Bible-- indeed much that is foundational to the very Gospel itself.
Concept violated: the goodness of God
The Bible says 'God is good' and in Genesis 1:31 God described his just finished creation as 'very good'. How do you understand the goodness of God if He used evolution, 'nature red in tooth and claw', to 'create' everything?
Concept violated: Adam's sin brought death and decay, the basis of the Gospel
According to the evolutionist's (and progressive creationist's) understanding, fossils (which show death, disease and bloodshed) were formed before people appeared on earth. Doesn't that mean that you can't believe the Bible when it says that everything is in 'bondage to decay' because of Adam's sin (Romans 8)? In the evolutionary view, hasn't the 'bondage to decay' always been there? And if death and suffering did not arise with Adam's sin and the resulting curse, how can Jesus' suffering and physical death pay the penalty for sin and give us eternal life, as the Bible clearly says (e.g. 1 Corinthians 15:22 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all shall be made alive?
Concept violated: the divine inspiration of the whole Bible
If the Genesis accounts of Creation, the Fall, the origin of nations, the Flood and the Tower of Babel — the first 11 chapters — are not historical, although they are written as historical narrative and understood by Jesus to be so, what other unfashionable parts of the Bible do you discard? The biblical account of creation in Genesis seems very specific with six days of creative activity, each having an evening and a morning. According to the evolutionary sequence, the biblical order of creation is all wrong. Do you think God should have inspired an account more in keeping with the evolutionary order, the truth as you see it, if indeed He did use evolution or followed the evolutionary pattern in creating everything?
Concept violated: the straightforward understanding of the Word of God
If the Genesis account does not mean what it plainly says, but must be 'interpreted' to fit an evolutionary world, how are we to understand the rest of the Bible? How are we to know that the historical accounts of Jesus' life, death and resurrection should not also be 'reinterpreted'? Indeed, can we know anything for sure if the Bible can be so flexible? Concept violated: the creation is supposed to show the hand of God clearly
Dr Niles Eldredge, well-known evolutionist, said:
'Darwin . . . taught us that we can understand life's history in purely naturalistic terms, without recourse to the supernatural or divine.'1
Is it not philosophically inconsistent to marry God (theism) with evolution (naturalism)? If God 'created' using evolution which makes Him unnecessary, how can God's 'eternal power and divine nature' be 'clearly seen' in creation, as Romans 1:20 says? Evolution has no purpose, no direction, no goal. The God of the Bible is all about purpose. How do you reconcile the purposelessness of evolution with the purposes of God? What does God have to do in an evolutionary world? Is not God an 'unnecessary hypothesis'?
Concept violated: the need of restoration for the creation
If God created over millions of years involving death, the existing earth is not ruined by sin, but is as it always has been — as God supposedly intended it to be. So why then should He want to destroy it and create a new heavens and earth (2 Peter 3 and other places)?
Niles Eldredge, Time Frames — the Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibrium, 1986, Heinemann, London, p. 13.
I love this "Even Darwin" stuff. Darwin is just a guy, what matters is what happens in the real world.
if no evidence was found to support the theory within 100 years that it should be discarded.
The evidence is quite abundant and accepted by virtually every single scientist alive today.
What???
Genesis isn't at all very specific.
In evolution we expect less complex life forms to evolve into more complex ones and thats what we find.
While Genesis can't even get it's story straight. Genesis One and Two directly condradict each other in the order of creation
Genesis 1
Plants-->Animals-->Man & Woman (At the Same time)
Genesis 2
Man -->Plants--> Animals-->Woman
Other flops in Genesis include
Days and evenings were created before the Sun and Moon
The moon gives off it's own light instead of it being reflected sun light
Quote Gen 1.26 "And God said, Let us make man in our image" and Gen 3.22 "Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil". Well who exactly is "US". It seems Genesis saying there is more than one God. Same in the tower of babel story
What variation? Either God created the Earth exactly as described in Genesis or he didn't. I mean heck, homosexual marriage is a variation on the theme of marriage as established by God, am I supposed to accept that as well and good or call it an abomination in the eyes of God? The Bible says it's wrong, but God didn't actually mean all homosexuality is wrong, is that it?
You could use that argument for anything that you didn't agree with in the Bible!! Well, God didn't really mean it that way. It could mean this, or it could mean that. I don't mean to offend any religion but it's getting high time Christians of all faiths start accepting the Bible word for word, and not play it off as stories or allegories for daily life. God made the world, man sinned, Christ came to earth, suffered and died, rose again from the dead, and will come again. Then the world as we know it will end. Period
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