I don't know why apologetical ministries only tell their readers half the
story or only tell their readers that which supports their view. But
another case of this has come to my attention in the 4th quarter
Connections put out by REasons to Believe. The article in question is Fuz
Rana, "Up (and Away) From the Apes," Connections, Fall, 1999, pp 3-4. THe
article is discussing the place of Homo antecessor in human evolution. A
spanish team found the fossil at the Gran Dolina site several years ago
(1994). The fossil is dated to 800,000 years ago based upon the fact that
the rocks it is found in are reversely magnetized. The last reversal of the
earth's magnetic field was at that time. The authors believe that Homo
antecessor gave rise to Homo sapiens, and Homo heidelbergensis who, in
turn, gave rise to the Neanderthals. Thus Homo antecessor is said to be the
last common ancestor between Neanderthals and modern humans. The article
says:
"The possibility still remain, that this sample is actually a Homo erectus
specimen. If it is not, J. M. Bermudez de CAstro and others suggest, this
finding adds additional support to the idea that Homo erecus does not
belong as part of an evolutionary pathway leading to modern man and
Neandertals, but rather should be viewed as a side lineage without
descendents.
"Evidence is insufficient as yet to declare the divorce between modern
humans and Homo erectus final. Even so, the significance of this
possibility cannot be overstated. Neandertals and Homo erectus are the two
hominid species that have the most fossil evidence associated with them.
Morphological and DNA evidence have clearly severed the evolutionary tie
between Neandertals and modern humans. Now the possibility that the same
outcome awaits Homo erectus is very real. If Homo erectus is not part of
the 'evolutionary path' to modern humans, then nothing more than a few
skull and jaw fragments connected modern humans with the
australopithecines. This disintegration of proposed links hardly allows for
the declaration that human evolution is fact. On the contrary, the theory
explaining how it happened seems to be unraveling." P. 4
There are so many things wrong with this that one hardly knows where to
begin. First, Rana does not understand the evolutionary model that de
Castro is advocating as Rana is thinking of Homo erectus as defined several
years ago. A few years ago, Homo erectus, which at that time encompassed
both the Indonesian, Chinese and African erectus', was split into two
taxons. The Asian erectus retained the name Homo erectus. The African Homo
erectus was renamed Homo ergaster. de Castro is arguing that the African
erectus (now known as ergaster) gave rise to antecessor who gave rise to
modern men and neanderthals. So, when de Castro says that Homo erectus was
a side branch, he is only speaking of the Asian branch. The african branch
of the erecti (now renamed ergaster) is still considered by de CAstro to be
in the lineage of modern man. Rana, by his rather silly claim, merely
shows that he has not done the requisite research.
Secondly, in saying that anthropologists have shown that we are not related
to Neanderthal distorts what the actual data says. It is true that Krings
in 1996 showed that a particular neanderthal's mother did not transmit her
mtDNA to modern populations, that conclusion can not be generalized to
include all Neanderthal mtDNA, since all Neanderthal mtDNA has not been
tested. In fact Krings' work is the only test to date. On a more positive
note in favor of Neanderthal ancestry for modern men, the recent discovery
of a Neanderthal/human hybrid at Lagar Velho Portugal (which interestingly
is not mentioned at all by Rana probably because it doesn't support his
thesis see Cidália Duarte et al, "The early Upper Paleolithic human
skeleton from the Abrigo do Lagar Velho (Portugal) and modern human
emergence in Iberia "
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci, USA, 96(1999):13:7604-7609.) shows that the two
peoples were capable of interbreeding. Since then, there have been other
cases of likely Neanderthal/homo sapiens interbreeding.(Kate Wong, "Cave
Inn," Scientific American, Dec. 1999, p. 34)
Why don't these cases make news in Hugh Ross's organization? Or do they
only report what agrees with their side?
THirdly, de Castro's article does not represent any disintegration of the
evolutionary links. All it represents is a change of which fossils were
ancestral to us. For Christian organizations to manufacture an imaginary
'disintegration' of evolutionary ancestors, can only lead to giving their
readers a false hope which will cause a big loss of credibility when the
distortion is discovered.
I would call on Ross' organization to do a better job of balanced treatment
of anthropological news. Clearly the people they have writing in that area
have not done sufficient research to be anything more than propagandists
for their cause.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution
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