>> I have no vested interest in this one way or another. My diagram
>> shows H. neanderthalis and H. sapiens interbreeding. But is there any
>> hard evidence they did?
Not really, although some anthropologists think they did (and that there
are transitional fossils between them).
>> For example, skeletons which show common
>> features (I understand the Neanderthals had a very robust frame), or
>> H. sapiens and H. neanderthalis skeletons in close proximity, etc?
There are areas of the Middle East where they overlapped for tens of
thousands of years. Most people take this as evidence that they didn't
interbreed (much). But we don't know if they lived cheek by jowl, or
were migrating in and out of the same places at different times.
>> I am not a creation-scientist. However, Lubenow, "Bones of
>> Contention", 1992, p121 mentions two 6,000 y.a. H. erectus fossils:
>> "Mosgiel crainium, Australia" and "Cossack skull, mandible, limb
>> fragments, Australia" and cites Michael Day, "Homo turmoil.", Nature
>> 348 (20/27 December 1990): 688.
I have the Day article at home, will have to reread it. But I will be
very, very surprised if he calls them H. erectus.
>> He also cites Australian fossils at Kow Swamp and Cohuna that "are
>> said in the literature (A.G. Thorne, "Mungo and Kow Swamp:
>> Morphological Variations in Pleistocene Australians," Mankind 8:2,
>> December 1971: 87, 316, 319) to have Homo erectus features" (p132).
Exactly; Lubenow seems to be the only person calling these skulls
H. erectus. He really gives no good reason for rejecting the mainstream
interpretation of "Homo sapiens with archaic features".
>> But could Lubenow be right for the wrong reason? Could it be that H.
>> erectus survived in isolated Australia into modern times, until being
>> bred out (or killed off) by H. sapiens aborigines?
Yes, this is not impossible, although it would be a big surprise to the
conventional wisdom. That's why Lubenow's efforts to argue that these
fossils are Homo erectus seem pointless. Even if he was right, ancestor
and descendant species living at the same time are not a problem for
evolution.
>> Is there any objective quantifiable evidence (eg. Zuckerman and
>> Oxnard's multi-variate analysis, etc), to decide one way or the other?
There are a couple of papers by P. Brown, in Archaeology in Oceania, in
1981 and 1987. Unfortunately, though these are in the local university
catalog, I can't find them in the shelves. Brown has claimed that the
Kow skulls are a result of cranial deformation, and these papers
probably explain his reasoning.
-- Jim Foley Symbios Logic, Fort CollinsJim.Foley@symbios.com (303) 223-5100 x9765* 1st 1.11 #4955 * "I am Homer of Borg! Prepare to be...OOooooo! Donuts!!!"