"The oldest evidence for Broca's area to date is from KNM-ER 1470, a H.
habilis specimen from Kenya, dated at approximately two million years ago.
autocatalytically so that it nearly doubled in the genus Homo, reaching its
maximum in Neanderthals. If hominids weren't using and refining language I
would like to know what they were doing with their autocatalytically
increasing brains (getting ready to draw pictures somehow doesn't seem like
enough)." ~ Dean Falk, Comments, Current Anthropology, 30:2, April, 1989,
p. 141-142.
"Studies of such casts have suggested that new morphological features
(which Australopithecus did not have) appear in the brains of Early Homo
and Homo erectus: these include larger frontal and parietal lobes and
prominently enlarged Broca's and Wernicke's areas, associated with speech."
~ Kathy D. Schick and Nicholas Toth, Making Silent Stones Speak, (New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), p. 219
I could go on and on but see the following references:
James R. Shreeve, The Neandertal Enigma, (New York: William Morrow and Co.,
1995), p. 274-275
Clive Gamble, Timewalkers, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), p. 172
Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct, (New York: Harper/Perennial, 1994),
p. 352-353
Even the severest critic, Phillip Lieberman, does believe that Neanderthal
could speak!
He says:
"Our cousins the Neanderthals surely possessed speech, though more
susceptible to misinterpretation because of its acoustic properties, and
language." Philip Lieberman, Eve Spoke, (New York: W.W. Norton, 1998), p. 13
Another critic speaks of heidelbergensis (an even more ancient species of
human),
"Indeed, as we've seen, the inferred form of the vocal tract in Homo
heidelbergensis is more or less modern, in which case acquisition of the
vocal apparatus permitting speech preceded the arrival of Homo sapiens by
several hundred thousand years." Ian Tattersall, Becoming Human, (New York:
Harcourt Brace & Company, 1998), p. 171
And of a time 780,000 years ago, Bednarik writes of H. erectus:
"The seafaring capability of this hominid,
first proposed in this journal, effectively refutes the
widely accepted hypothesis of a very recent origin of
language and 'modern human behavior'." Robert G. Bednarik,
"Maritime Navigation in the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic,"
C.R. Academie des sciences, Paris, 328(1999):559-563, p. 559
Yes, men have been talking much longer than you want to believe. The
question is will you believe the evidence?
>Next, Glenn rides this horse for a while, claiming that I doubt the
'humanity'
>of H. erectus.
And I will ride this horse until Christian apologists decide to pay
attention to observational data rather than ignoring that which doesn't fit
their preconceptions. Both YECs and OECs are quite willing to ignore lots
of data in order to save their theology. As some people on this list can
well attest (from events last December-January), if I ever believe that the
Bible is falsified, then I will leave Christianity. And the fact that
Christian apologists like to ignore lots of data makes me very suspicious
of what
they say.
>>You don't think that H. erectus can be human. Then explain this!
>
>>Homo erectus built a village and altar that was found at Bilzingsleben and
>dates to between 350-424,000 years ago.
>
>>To ignore anthropological data like this is to bury our heads in the sand.
>We need to incorporate it into our theological theories or explain it away.
> If this is really an altar, then my view is correct and spiritual mankind
>is much older than christians want to accept.
>
>>But I would contend that your view pays no attention whatsoever to the
>massive amount of data that is out there telling you that christian
>apologetics must adjust. What is being taught (a young Adam) is wrong. Your
>really need to study what is out there.
>
>Comment:
>
>I agree with Glenn that H. erectus - while not H. sapiens - certainly was
>'on the way'. This is at the heart of my article in PSCF on the 'evolution
>of human awareness of something beyond nature'. Our relgious sense is
>ancient and may well be part of our human nature.
I don't believe H. erectus 'was on the way'. That is your view. Like being
partially pregnant, it is impossible to be partially religious. You either
have religion or you don't. If H. erectus built an altar--which it appears
that he had--then he wasn't 'on the way' he was already there!!! By my
reading of the Bible, Adam was the first religious person, indeed the first
human--the only one. If H. erectus was religious, then Adam was prior to
that time.
>
>However, I locate the 'match', between these observations and the Genesis
>text, not with the stories of Adam and Eve, but with the declaration
>in 1:26 (or so) "Let us make man .... ". H. erectus corresponds to a
>declaration of intention. H. erectus can be aesthetically regarded as
>God's intention to create man.
>
>Which gets back to the concept of a 'two teired' resemblance between
>Genesis 1 and the evolutionary record. I don't get around the stumbling
>blocks of a direct comparison, I use them. The stumbling blocks are
>those phrases that are either naming or 'don't fit' the corresponding
>epoch. I see those stumbling blocks as resembling the corresponding
>epoch on a different level, as meaning, not as visualization.
>
>Thus Glenn makes an inappropriate comparison when he states:
>
>>... the whole concept that the earth was cloudy for 4
>billion years simply won't work. Hugh Ross makes the same claim. But the
>earth's atmosphere can not hold clouds of water all over the earth. First
>there is too little water in the atmosphere and secondly, since the
>droplets in the cloud want to fall, only the friction with an updraft of
>air counteracts the gravitational pull and maintains the cloud in the sky.
>
>Instead, he could look at the whole body of literature on the importance
>of the greenhouse effect during the Archean and the Proterozoic. James
>Kasting's Scientific American article depicted the Proterozoic earth as
>an orange ball. The atmosphere of the early Earth was 20 times more
>dense than today. It was 95% carbon dioxide. Talk about a greenhouse
>situation. A strong greenhouse effect, on Earth, means higher atmospheric
>temperatures and more clouds, amotng other effects.
Ray, the issue was clouds not CO2 and not the existence of a greenhouse
effect. Show me why you think the early earth was cloudy! CO2 is not what
makes the clouds on venus, it is sulfuric acid.
cloud cycle on Venus -> SO2+0 goes to SO3; SO3+H2O goes to H2SO4;
The H2SO4 droplets grow and fall, as they fall the SO2 evaporates and is
returned up to the upper atmosphere. Notice that CO2 has nothing to do with
this cycle! See
~ R. Knollenberg and D. M. Hunten, "Microphysics of the Clouds of
Venus", Journal of Geophysical Research, 85:A13, December 30,
1980, p. 8055.
I got into the physics of Venus' clouds in preparation for my very first
article Can the Canopy Hold Water? CRSQ Dec 1979.
So, the CO2 greenhouse issue you raise above is irrelevant to a cloud
cover. So, I repeat again, it is impossible for the earth to have been
cloud covered for the first 4 billion years of its existence and you
haven't presented any evidence to the contrary. And a quick re-reading of
Kaster's article failed to find any mention of clouds in the archaean.
Please point this out if it is there.
>
>My comparison can be found in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies
>1993. To me, the comparison draws one - in the same way that Glenn's
>does - to examine the evolutionary record more carefully and to really
>appreciate the research.
>
>But unlike Glenn's approach, I am not striving for propositional certainty.
Why not? Don't you care if your propositions are true? Or do false
propositions work as well as true ones? (see below).
>I am striving for 'a sense of recognition'. That sense is sort of like a
>switch, either you see it or you don't. But once you see a two-tiered
>resemblance, a lot of interesting possibilities emerge, including the
>concept of Genesis 1 as vision.
But doesn't it matter whether or not the view you advocate is true? Or is
truth a useless appendage in these post-modern times?
>Also unlike Glenn's approach, I think that Mesopotamian prehistory is
>crucial to an new appreciation of the early stories of Genesis. Even
>though the concept of looking at Genesis 1 as if it had been a vision
>is speculative, it is speculative with a wonderful engagement. It
>engages with many of those issues of word meaning, of ancient world
>views, of attitudes on nature and divinity, of diachronic development,
>of syncretism and ritual stability, that Biblical scholars as well
>as archaeologists currently wrestle with. It is a great learning
>tool.
>So Glenn wants to pound the table, to control, not to play:
>
I pound the table not to control. It is to try to get people to pay
attention to the data that they ignore. YECs ignore data, RTB ignores data,
the ID movement ignores data. YEt they claim to be telling us the truth! It
is this ignoring of data that makes Christian intelligentsia the laughing
stock of the modern world. Our inability to face reality is what causes us
to have so little influence in the modern universities. We are not seen as
offering anything real. We only offer the entertainment of self-delusion
with our apologetics. Is christianity about ignoring data and retreating
into a 'game' in order to avoid having to deal with the contradictory data?
Data is what determines what happened, not subjective games. Why play a
subjective game? Subjectivity never gives one truth, it just makes the
person feel like he has found the truth.
>I think that I'm just a kid at heart.
There does comes a time when one must face reality.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution