<<There are neither large gaps nor sudden leaps in the
transition from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens.>>
This is not a statement a careful paleoanthropologist would make. Not Niles
Eldredge. Not Ian Tattersall. In fact, see Tattersall's recent book, "The
Fossil Trail" (Oxford, 1995) for the latest assessments. I highly recommend it
to you. His qualifications are, of course, impeccable, and his writing style
superb.
Not only does Tattersall see gaps, he sees, as I've pointed out, an explosive
arrival of modern man. Note carefully the wording:
"Given the general pattern of changelessness that characterizes the bulk of
the Paleolithic archaeological record, it is hard not to conclude that there
was but one *truly great leap* in human evolution....Homo sapiens is
*emphatically not* an organism that does what its predecessors did, only a
little better; it's something very different. *Something extraordinary, if
totally fortuitous, happened with our species.* [Id. at 246, emphasis added]
That "something" is not part of the record, nor even explicable, given current
naturalistic understanding. Tattersall is wonderfully frank about the
evidence. He does not mark that "something extraordinary" as divine
intervention (a la Goodman), but that door is open. And the suddenness is
clear.
<<You claim that the origin of human language is explosive, but most of
the opinions you cite here do not support that view, in fact it is not
clear that any scientists actually support it.>>
Tattersall again: "When you put the skull bone evidence together with what the
archaeological record suggests about the capacities of the Neanderthals and
their precursors, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that articulate langauge
is the sole province of fully modern humans" [Id. at 212]
<<There is a known intermediate. It is the group of fossils known as
archaic Homo sapiens, or sometimes Homo heidelbergensis.>>
This is not a "known" intermediate. There ARE NO "known" intermediates. There
are theories and interpretations, and a variety of them. None of this is
settled. That statement cannot be made. Tattersall: "However many species of
extinct hominids you accept, the relationships among them are, and will
continue to be, the subject of vigorous debate." [Id. at 231]
In the case of Homo heidelbergensis, Tattersall wrote a 1986 paper on the
subject, and reiterates that H.h. can be assigned to a distinct group, which
indludes the Arago, Petralona, Bodo and Kabew fossils. He concludes that
section with: "Homo sapiens, as distinctive an entity as exists on the face of
the Earth, should be dignified as such instead of being adulterated with every
reasonably large-brained hominid fossil that happens to come along." [Id. at
219]
Thus, from the perspective of modern paleontology, modern man "exploded" onto
the scene. Paleoanthropologists like Eldredge and Tattersall agree. WHY it
happened thus they are not yet able to explain, and don't attempt to. And, to
their credit, they don't assume intermediates or gradual development. They are
acting exactly like scientists should.
But that man is a sudden arrival is obvious.
Jim