Secondly, if we are to go strictly by the appearance of objects in the record
with no ability to reasonably infer existence at other times then the
historical record becomes rather strange. The first Maya farming was found at
a site dated 4500 years ago. The second example of Maya farming was found
3000 years ago. To assume that we can go absolutely no further than the
examples we have in hand would lead us to conclude that there was NO farming
between 4499 and 3001 years ago in Maya regions. This of course is rather
strange. We would also have to assume that since the ancient Egyptians didn't
have the bellows, they had to have a lot of guys blow on the fire to make it
hot enough to smelt iron.
In the case of the tarsiers, we would have to assume that the oldest
Tarsier in the fossil record had nothing to do with the second oldest since
they didn't exist in the interim.
Obviously we can not treat the fossil record in that fashion. Reasonable
extrapolations from the data we have are fine if they don't go too far. It is
quite unlikely that we have found the bones of the first H.erectus on earth so
it is quite likely that there are older erectus's to be found.
glenn