Oldest Remains of Modern Humans Are Identified by Scientists

NEW YORK (AP) -- A new analysis of bones unearthed nearly 40 years ago in Ethiopia has pushed the fossil record of modern humans back to nearly 200,000 years ago -- perhaps close to the dawn of the species.

Researchers determined that the specimens are around 195,000 years old. Previously, the oldest known fossils of Homo sapiens were Ethiopian skulls dated to about 160,000 years ago.

Genetic studies estimate that Homo sapiens arose about 200,000 years ago, so the new research brings the fossil record more in line with that, said John Fleagle of Stony Brook University in New York, an author of the study.

The fossils were found in 1967 near the Omo River in southwestern Ethiopia. One location yielded Omo I, which includes part of a skull plus skeletal bones. Another site produced Omo II, which has more of a skull but no skeletal bones. Neither specimen has a complete face.

Although Omo II shows more primitive characteristics than Omo I, scientists called both specimens Homo sapiens and assigned a tentative age of 130,000 years.

Now, after visiting the discovery sites, analyzing their geology and testing rock samples with more modern dating techniques, Fleagle and colleagues report in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature that both specimens are 195,000 years old, give or take 5,000 years.

Fleagle said the more primitive traits of Omo II may mean the two specimens came from different but overlapping Homo sapiens populations, or that they just represent natural variation within a single population.

To find the age of the skulls, the researchers determined that volcanic rock lying just below the sediment that contained the fossils was about 196,000 years old. They then found evidence that the fossil-bearing sediment was deposited soon after that time.

Paul Renne, director of the Berkeley Geochronology Center, which specializes in dating rocks, said the researchers made "a reasonably good argument" to support their dating of the fossils.

"It's more likely than not," he said, calling the work "very exciting and important."

Rick Potts, director of the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, said he considered the case for the new fossil ages "very strong." The work suggests that "we're right on the cusp of where the genetic evidence says the origin of modern humans ... should be," he said.

G. Philip Rightmire, a paleoanthropologist at Binghamton University in New York, said he believes the Omo fossils show Homo sapiens plus a more primitive ancestor. The find appears to represent the aftermath of the birth of Homo sapiens, when it was still living alongside its ancestral species, he said.

Has anybody thought about what CDK does to observed geometric distances like SN1987A?

SN1987A was distanced at c187kly by knowing that the light from it illuminated a ring of gas surrounding it about 1 year later. It seems to me that the exponential CDK model would move SN1987A MUCH further away, off the top of my head hundreds or even thousands of times further away. This is because given that SN1987A is a lot more than 6000ly away light must have been moving much faster then, so the triangle baseline gets a LOT bigger....

Now that makes me ponder two problems.

1. If SN1987A is hundreds of times further away than mainstream theory places it then why is it (and the Mag Clouds in general) the correct brightness for its mainstream distance? (does the additional photon output that VR and MJN are discussing cancel this?)

2. Just how big does the universe seem to be in the Settlefield model? If a comparatively close object like SN1987A is hundreds or thousands of times further away than believed by mainstream physics then what about stuff like the quasars that mainstream physics already places billions of lightyears away? Is there really time for the Settlefield universe to grow that big in 6000 years, even with the high initial c value? At a guess, off the top of my head these distant objects to remain in proportion would have to move thousands of trillions of lightyears away at least.

Apologies if these points are nonsense or are addressed by Settlefield. I am not a real physicist.

But isn't evolution being taught in schools prescribed by a judge or a group of judges who are not scientists?

Religious content is sometimes removed from schools based upon the First Amendment non-establishment clause. The US Supreme Court did this and lower judges from time to time reinterpret the ruling to cover increasingly cagey attempts to circumvent it. That's not because the courts really determine what's true in science but because the courts are the arm of the government that settles disputes over what goes on in government schools.

All creationist arguments are so shell-game twist-and-shout nothing-up-my-sleeves slithering slimey bogus.

One thing that my friend espouses too is - the "fact" not a theory of devolution . That all living things will all die. Care to comment on this one?

... Because a human woman listened to a talking snake 6000 years ago, before which nothing ever died. Now even amoebas have to die eventually, if only when the Sun goes red giant.

I don't think much of the idea. Useless and a curious illustration of what God is supposed to consider as justice. He'd be pretty crappy to behave that way if that story were true, but I don't think it's true.

As for what your friend should do, he should just get on the web with everyone else and make his case. His bogus prize is the same fairy money as Kent Hovind's. (Although some people have tried to accept Hovind's offer and haven't had much luck.)

Anyway, I'm not a Ph.D type, either, so I'm not eligible. That said, your kinesiologist buddy is out of his league with anyone who actually knows some molecular bio and/or paleontology. Tell him to log onto FR and let fly and we'll see how he stacks up.

That brings up another question, though. Would your friend take on a molecular biologist and a paleontologist at once in the same "trial?" That's another thing that happens in these discussions on the web. Every mistatement he makes has a chance of being caught by somebody or other, although not perhaps by just one guy head-to-head. For a creationist, that tends to be a lot of corrections. Even so an ICR-type article is so incredibly full of BS that it's a "Where to begin?" experience. Even with all the corrections, a lot of BS sneaks by.

Side issue: I do not understand what you are saying you confused. What is the present value of an old photon? We agreed I think that a photon is a photon and its energy will be proportional to its wavelength, other differences cancelling. As you pointed out, the photon energy is constant except for quantum leaps which decrease it, so a 6000-year-old photon now has much less energy than at emission. Originally it was emitted with almost the same energy as today. The old photon was redshifted slightly because decreased h in the past quantumly affected atomic structure, which sent out a shorter wavelength than photons sent today. Therefore we agree the old photon had "almost the same energy as now". I had that wrong at first.

Other side issues: In 447 I should add I may still not be correctly understanding Setterfield's statement at the beginning of Implications, because my simplification of it does not seem now to be precisely stated. For example, I was about to misstep and say theoretically h should not invert c, but once again I was struck that by observation h does invert c. Can hardly argue with that. As my understanding improves, so will my lucidity .... Thank you and Thatcherite for admitting working out the issue (464 and 466) about cancelling faster reaction rates with longer time taken to observe them .... Also, please reread Montgomery-Dolphin 1993 linked in 455 and let me know if you still have objections to the refined data-point statistics and conclusions. I'm sure there is more work since.

Main issue for now: I think you're trying to say there were more photons then, but redder. That's what Setterfield said in at least one paper. (Yes.) The problem is that energy is not conserved if the redshifts are small. Vastly too many photons, only a tiny redshift. We need a factor of 11 million (only you can't do that and not go blind). We have less than two. You are right, the energy of the sum of photons is greatly increased (but I was right, individual photon energy is conserved).

I agree "it's far from clear why" there is low redshift. It appears to me, as one who does not understand much quantum theory, that as the granularity h increases with time, the atomic structure undergoes quantum resettlings, which I regard as compactings. The quantum leaps are suggested by the observed quantized redshifts. When Setterfield analyzes the nature of atomic resettling, he specifies that the redshift times the lightspeed quantum (delta-c) where leaps occur, times the Rydberg quantum number, gives the lightspeed for that redshift. The lightspeed quantum is 63.74c (current value), and I would visualize that the number of quanta contained in any given c corresponds to something like a number of placement positions for the atomic particles (similar to electron orbital shells). The Rydberg quantum number is 72*16*pi^4, which I visualize as corresponding to a number of potential configurations for quantum particle release directions. If all that is correctly stated (unlikely), the narrative explanation for why wavelength redshift only registers about 1.5, when c and frequency and photon count go up 10^7 times, is this: the increased granularity of the universe (its high resolution) permits much more quantum positional ability for both the internal particles of the atom and the wavelengths they emit, so that the wavelengths don't get shorter proportionally. They don't need to get shorter because of increased speed, which is all directed to increased frequency; but they get a bit shorter because the atom that can put out such increased frequency has resettled only slightly more compactly or efficiently. (If all this works out someday we will be ironically calling the quantum of 63.74c-now = 1.91x10^10m/s the "Setterfield constant"!)

Where is the cancellation? The opacity computation doesn't do it for me. I still think "the decrease in density lowers the luminous energy by two factors, which are cancelled by the increase in lightspeed and the increase in total photon output." Applying your stellar structure source to the changes in stars, it stated that decreasing opacity resolves to decreasing radius and volume, but also that increasing density resolves to increasing volume, so the volume and radius changes cancel and are not a factor. I don't think that the photons are carrying "less light" so that many of them constitute one "optical photon" (neat concept, though). I read that electron scattering is dissipating (all or part of) the photon increase and that may contribute if I knew more about it.

Let me ask it this way. I see that we are both approaching this like a programmer who keeps getting a compiler error on a horrendous function involving tons of parentheses and we both keep trying to add, remove, and rearrange the parentheses trying to find out if any are missing or extra. If your mental compiler should suddenly spit out the result that the syntax was valid (all the parentheses are rightly joined and cancelled), what would be the result? Would the program run, or would some other unforeseen error manifest? I know you're not running Setterfield's work through the gauntlet just to refresh me in physics. Personally, would you prefer the theory to be right or wrong, and what would you do and believe (particularly about the earth's age) if the evidence were conclusive in either case? Have we established sufficient benefit of doubt to establish that there might be another reason for high radiometric dates? Thank you!

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