In general Christian apologists, like Hugh Ross, don't want to ascribe
humanity to Homo erectus. Because they were morphologically different from
us, to allow them into the human family requires the acceptance of a
certain level of evolution. It also requires that we grant to them the
respect due for their accomplishments. However, in all their activities,
Homo erectus displayed an amazing ability to plan for the future in
activities such as hand axe manufacture, hunting, village building,
possible religious activities etc. We will examine the planning required in
these areas with the view in mind that a being who can plan, has the
ability to understand moral accountability. What kind of planning were men
500,000 years ago capable of? We shall see.
Many Christian apologists take a cavalier attitude towards the manufacture
of primitive stone tools. They think that the manufacture of primitive
stone tools is the result of little more than banging the rocks together.
Ross actually says that if birds had the requisite intelligence they too
could make stone tools. He says(1995, p. 2):
"Therefore, tool design and use is something all the birds and mammals
could exhibit, given adequate intelligence. Some of the most intelligent of
bird and mammal species use tools."
Nothing could be further from the truth. No other mammal or bird
manufactures stone tools. This view probably comes to Christianity from
past apologists. Tattersall and Schwartz (2000, p. 26) write:
"Another English natural historian, John Woodward, had emphatically stated
in 1728 that if you made stone tools, you were not only technologically
unsophisticated, you were nothing more than a barbarian and savage. Stone
tools that were dug up in the fields had to have been made by earlier
humans, who, of course, had been barbaric and savage compared with
eighteenth-century Englishmen. But the course of human history had been
away from the barbaric to the civilized, away from stone tools to the
advanced technology of metallurgy. Truly civilized humans of the eighteenth
century had followed this path of progress. The consequence of adhering to
this simple-minded chain of thought, however, was that if you were to find
any living humans who still made stone tools, they had to be savages. And,
unfortunately, western European explorers had discovered many groups of
people who still used stone and other non-metal tools. If you belonged to a
western society, this simple dichotomy -- metal-tool use equals civilized,
non-metal tool use equals savage--gave justification to conquest and
subjugation."
The manufacture of say an Acheulean handaxe requires exquisite planning. It
was something accomplished by Homo erectus from 1.5 million years ago on.
We will get our data from Boxgrove, England, an archaeological site which
dates to 500,000 years ago. Hundreds of handaxes were found at Boxgrove as
well as two sites where the hominids sat around dead carcasses, a Rhino and
a horse, manufacturing the handaxes which were then used to butcher the
animals. The interesting thing about the horse site was the fact that the
hominids surrounded the carcase, left flakes that can be re-fit back
together to form a solid nodule with an approximate handaxe-sized hole in
the refitted nodule. Also very interesting is a wound in the scapula of the
horse that is interpreted as a spear wound. Pitts and Roberts (1997, p.
259-260) write:
"Bernard Knight drew the outline of a scapula with his thick black pen.
The bone was incomplete, but in the middle of the broken edge there was an
almost perfectly circular depression about four centimetres across, like a
bit out of the side. He had been sceptical when he heard about it in
Cardiff, but then he had gone London to see the actual specimen. It was
half a million years old and one of many bone fragments, Mark had told him,
from a large butchered horse.
"'The first thing was that the edge of the defect, though it was only a
third of a circle, was pretty absolutely circular. Then it had this typical
terracing, which means that something had been driven through it.'
"He drew a cross section through the bone to illustrate how on the
underside the fracture splayed out.
"'The break was so clean, which usually means high velocity-it wasn't made
by something just pushing against the bone. And the other odd thing was
that the edge of it had a couple of paralleled diagonal marks, as if there
was a rotation in it which you see in the rifling of a missile. It may be
pure chance, of course, but it is a bit odd.'" Michael Pitts and Mark
Roberts, Fairweather Eden, (New York: Fromm International, 1997), p. 259-260
Of this wound, Roberts states (Gore, 1997, p. 109):
"British excavations at Boxgrove indicate that the man whose tibia turned
up there may have been a hunter too. 'We have a piece of horse scapula
with a wound probably made by a wooden spear,' says Boxgrove's site
director Mark Roberts,..." ~ Rick Gore, "The First Europeans," National
Geographic, July, 1997, p. 109
and (Gore, 1997, p. 109):
"'Horses may have moved up and down the coast in herds,' says Roberts.
'Almost certainly humans would have been hunting them cooperatively, rather
than scavenging them. We believe that because we never find butchery marks
on top of the tooth marks of scavenging animals. It's always the other way
around.' roberts thinks that the scavengers would arrive after the humans
had already left with the best cuts from their kills.
"'Before, we doubted that humans had speech this early,' says Roberts.
'But for this kind of group hunting, which would require strategies such as
ambush, speech would have been critical."
Wooden spears from just after the Boxgrove time, which is 500,000 years
ago, were found at Schoningen which dates to 400,000 years ago. The
Schoningen spears are balanced exactly as modern javelins are and thus they
are good for throwing at game from a distance (Dennell, 1997, p. 767-768).
Pitts and Roberts write(1997, p.262):
"Whatever the wood from which the presumed Boxgrove spear was carved, it
could not have been an easy thing to make. Like the antler hammers for
working flint found at the dig (a second one was to be found in August
1996), a spear could hardly be the product of a creature with no ability to
plan for the future."
After they had speared the horse, the Boxgrove hominids sat around their
prize, manufactured handaxes and then butchered the horse. We know this
because there are stone tool cutmarks on the horse bones and microscopic
marks on the stone tools which are made only by cutting meat (Pitts and
Roberts, 1997, p. 241). Another amazing thing seen at the Boxgrove site is
that the other carnivores and scavengers (whose bones are found in strata
of this age) apparently left the Boxgrove hominids alone after their kill.
In other words they apparently treated the Boxgrove hominids as modern
lions treat modern man! Pitts and Roberts write (1997, p. 267):
"'There's no evidence of fire at the butchery sites. I'd guess ten or 12
individuals, maybe less: how do they secure this kill? There are lions and
wolves out there. How do they keep it? They sit down. Even the best
butchers in the world are going to take two or three hours to complete this
operation. At the Rhino Butchery Site, they bring in the tools. But at the
Horse Butchery Site, they've got time to bring raw material in and knap it
up on the spot. And then, not just that, then they smash the bones open and
they eat the marrow. Finally they take away the major muscle blocks: each
man could pack out in excess of 50 kilos of meat. They're obviously
organized and relaxed in what they're doing. If you think of modern lion
kills, they're always being harassed by hyenas. There comes a stage when
there are enough hyenas, then the lion will give up - but we don't see this.
"'The view I've started to develop is that it's about recognition of
species by other species in the landscape. In Africa today, in areas where
there are Maasai, the lions don't bother them, they don't attack their
cattle. They know that's not the thing to do. Maybe our hyenas knew not to
meddle with hominids. But there's nothing wrong with saying we don't know.
At the moment we don't understand how they kept things like hyenas away
from these kills.'"
And once the kill was finished, they had to make handaxes, which require
lots of foresight. Here is a description of making a handaxe given by a
modern 21st century human, Phil Harding (Pitts and Roberts, 1997, p. 297-298):
"'How long to make one handaxe?' asked John Wymer,"
"'It took me a fair old while - mainly because I had to think about it.
You 'ave to pick the right nodule. Every one's different. Right from the
start, you 'ave to see the finished axe, and think about getting acute
angles for future blows. You 'ave to take decisions that are unique to each
nodule, just to make the same handaxes. Unless you've got the most
elementary piece of raw material, you've got to think about it'.
"No, even the best flint, you've got to think.'
"Francis Wenban-Smith had been listening.
"'The ability to make a handaxe says everything you deed to know about
Homo heidelbergensis. People say it's just banging rocks together. But ask
anyone who has to make a handaxe and you'll get a different story. It's all
planning: from the moment you pick up a nodule, you have to have an idea of
where the handaxe is. If you follow the path of least resistance, you will
removed parts of your axe. The tranchet tip requires immense foresight -
the edge must be left unworked till the end, to leave a platform for
removal of the flake. And all the time you're weighing benefits in one area
against advantages in another - thinness, straightness of edge, symmetry'.
"'It's like chess', he said. 'Sometimes you have to think five or six
moves ahead. And you don't think about shaping first, then thinning and
then sharpening: your head is full of such abstract concepts every time you
remove a flake. It's like playing chess'.
"Well, two of the country's best flint knappers were agreed on one thing:
making a flint handaxe is not easy, and it's certainly not - as so many
academics claim -just a matter of practised repetitive movements. It's an
intellectual exercise, where problems are being solved in the mind at every
turn. 'Only a cabinet-maker', Jacques Pelegrin, an experienced French
knapper, has written, 'can understand what another cabinet-maker is doing'
"Indeed, independently of the conversation in the old cow parlour at
Boxgrove, Jacques told National Geographic for a 1996 article on
neanderthals that you need brains to knap flint."
"'It takes months, if not years, to learn to do it well', he said."
"'It would be like playing chess for us."
Now that we have the activities seen at Boxgrove out on the table, let us
look at the planning depth required to accomplish these tasks. I will list
some of them (many steps left out)
1. find suitable sapling
2. carve sapling into spear (done in the days before the hunt)
3. check its balance for thowing
4. fire harden the tip of the spear (normally done and observed in ancient
spears)
5. know from past observation where the horses will be.
6. stalk the horses. (requires much knowledge and prediction of the future
actions of prey)
7. throw spear.
8. find flint nodule suitable for making a hand axe (requires foresight and
knowledge of where the flint is and what a good nodule is)
9. manufacture the hand-axe. Campbell and Loy (1996, p. 432) observe that
two different manufacturing stages are required to make a late Homo erectus
hand axe each stage with 20-45 different flake removals)
10. butcher horse (many steps involved here)
11. remove meaty parts to safer place to eat the meat.
These are not the actions of mindless bipedal animals.
Another case of foresight and planning is seen at the way the Bilzingsleben
village was planned for various uses. This is a Homo erectus site and dates
to 400,000 years ago. Mania and Mania (1994, p. 124) write:
"Five to 8 m from the dwelling structures, an artificially paved area with
a diameter of 9 m was found. According to the archaeological evidence,
special cultural activities may have been carried out there."
That 9-m wide area is the probable altar mentioned by Gore (1997, p. 110)
"But Mania's most intriguing find lies under a protective shed. As he
opens the door sunlight illuminates a cluster of smooth stones and pieces
of bone that he believes were arranged by humans to pave a 27-foot-wide
circle.
"'They intentionally paved this area for cultural activities,' says Mania.
'We found here a large anvil of quartzite set between the horns of a huge
bison, near it were fractured human skulls.'"
Such activities must be planned and were planned for by the very fact that
this 'cultural' area was built! Other areas at this amazing site were used
for the manufacture of wood. Woodshavings were found beneath travertine
which preserved it. They arranged their habitation space according to the
purpose for which the space was used. This is a very human thing to do. We
arrange our kitchens, where we cook in a different part of our huts from
where we sleep, bath or have our home office. These people were not merely
bipedal primates with nothing between their ears.
But they could also plan month's in advance. At Bilzingsleben each hut
opened to the south had a hearth in front of the door. (See Figure 5, Mania
and Mania, 1994, p. 127). Clearly they were planning for the future when
cold wind would come from the north. Having the doors face south prevented
cold winds from entering the huts. The hearth at the door provided both
warmth as well as protection from wild animals at night. These individuals
could plan, and plan well. They knew the consequences of actions taken and
actions not taken. They would thus, have been able to understand the moral
commandment, "Thou shalt not eat of the fruit of this tree". Surely people
with these abilities are human and our apologetics should reflect that
assessment.
References
Bernard G. Campbell and James D. Loy, Humankind Emerging, (New York:
HarperCollins, 1996)
Robin Dennell, "The World's Oldest Spears," Nature 385(Feb. 27, 1997), p.
767-768
Rick Gore, "The First Europeans," National Geographic, July, 1997
D. Mania and U. Mania, "Latest Finds of Skull Remains of Homo erectus from
Bilzingsleben (Thuringia)" Naturwissenschaften, 81(1994):123-127.
Michael Pitts and Mark Roberts, Fairweather Eden, (New York: Fromm
International, 1997)
Hugh Ross, "Art and Fabric Shed New Light on Human History," _Facts &
Faith_ 9(1995):3:1-2
Ian Tattersall and Jeffrey Schwartz, _Extinct Humans_, (New York: Westview
Press, 2000), p. 26
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Jun 18 2000 - 19:45:23 EDT