I do not think that the change is "doubtless" if Neanderthal had no tear
ducts. Tear ducts are not usually considered an important enough trait. (This
is getting quite redundant) Besides, Neanderthal made flutes--humans make
flutes. Neanderthals made jewelry--humans make jewelry. In fact, the
earliest upper paleolithic culture, the Aurignacian, is found in Neanderthal
areas not in areas inhabited by Homo sapien. Straus et al say
"The new dates for the appearance of the so called Aurignacian
technology in northern Spain are far older than any from the rest of Western
Europe including SW Germany. They are much older than any dates for the
Chatelperronian of France or for the Uluzzian (the Italian stratigraphic and
typological equivalent of the Chatelperronian). They are about the same as
the CvC14 dates for the Szeletian and Bohu-nician (Mousterian-Upper
Paleolithic 'hybrid' industries) of Hungary and Czechoslovakia. While the
northern Spanish Aurignacian dates are older than several early Aurignacian
CvC14 determinations from Eastern and Central Europe (e.g., Velika Pecina,
Pesko and Krems), they are about the same or perhaps somewhat younger than
other early Aurignacian dates from Samuilica (42.8+/-1.3 ka bp) and Bacho Kiro
in Bulgaria (a single infinite date of >43 ka bp), Istallosko level 9 in
Hungary (44.3+/-1.9 and 39.7+/-0.9 ka bp) and Willendorf level 2 in Lower
Austria (39.5 +1.55/-1.2 ka bp and 44.7+3.7/-2.5 ka bp). all these sites
should be redated with multiple determinations to obtain the best possible
estimates of age. Single dates published as 'finite', but that are older than
c.30ka bp, should probably be considered as minima. At most, there would seem
to be a difference of ca. 5 ka between the oldest Aurignacian dates in Central
and Eastern Europe (regions between which there is no clear temporal cline)
and those of northern Spain. Even this relatively short amount of time for
the supposed 'spread' of Aurignacian people or ideas across ca. 2300 km from
SE to SW Europe may prove illusory."(~Lawrence G. Straus James L. Bischoff and
Eudald Carbonell, "A Review of the Middle to Upper Paleolithic Transition in
Iberia", Prehistoire Europeenne, 3(January, 1993):11-27, p 14)
This means that it may have been Neanderthal who invented the Upper
paleolithic cultures of which you say is evidence of the human spirit!
Therefore I expect that you will now include Neanderthal as a member of
spiritual humanity.
>GM>The opinion of paleolithic art experts says that this is art and
>>is man-made. But the fact that these experts disagree with you and
>>Mr. Jones is quite silly of them.
>
>Au contraire! As I pointed out, even Marshack seems to have recently
>given up on the Golan Venus. Here is the whole brief article again:
>
>=======================================================
>Early Etchings
>
>The creation of the first artistic images is usually credited to early
>Europeans, who some 33,000 years ago began carving vulvas and
>animals on rock and ivory in France and Germany. The discovery
>of this 54,000-year old, three inch wide engraved flint may
>change that perception. The flint was excavated near the Syrian
>town of Quneitra; in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights by
>Naama Goren-Inbar of Jerusalem's Hebrew University. Both
>Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans lived in the region
>when this image of four nested arcs were engraved-with another
>piece of flint And both were tool users and hunter-gatherers. But
>archeologist Alexander Marshack of Harvard's Peabody Museum
>says it's most likely the artist was a more modern human since
>known Neanderthal artifacts to date, aside from tools, have been
>limited to things like beads and worked ivory. Marshack doesn't
>know what the image represents. "When I looked at it for the
>first time, it looked like a rainbow with rain, but that's not what
>I'm saying it is," he says. "If I am correct, and this is an early
>depiction, then you have evidence that art did not begin in
>Europe. And if it was there in the Middle East, it was probably
>also in Africa and Australia and in Asia. Europe was not the
>beginning of everything."
>
>("Early Etchings", Discover, Vol. 17, No. 7, July 1996, p26)
>=======================================================
>
>Fron Glenn there has been an "overwhelming silence" about this. He
>seems to be in denial mode. :-)
Steven, I have answered this till I am blue in the face. Do you not read my
responses? He does not deny the Golan Venus which was made by H. erectus or
Archaic Homo sapiens. The fact that Marshack does not mention every single
piece of art in the world is not evidence that he rejects them all. Your
logic is flawed. Besides art earlier than this is now known to occur at
Jinmium Australia dated from 75,000 years ago up to 176,000 years ago.(B.
Bower,"Human Origins Recede in Australia," Science News Sept 28, 1996, p. 196)
>
>GM>I have only seen one article critical of the object and lots
>>supporting it. Look below:
>>
>>Against:
>>
>>Andrew Pelcin, "A geological Explanation for the Berekhat Ram Figurine,"
>>Current Anthropology,Dec. 1994, 35:5, p. 674-675. He never actually
> examined
>>the object.
>
>Also add to "Against":
>
>"Early Etchings", Discover, Vol. 17, No. 7, July 1996, p26! :-)
>
Discover is NOT a peer reviewed scientific Journal. No scientists would go to
the mat over what they say.
>BTW how does Glenn know that "Pelcin...never actually examined the
>object"?
If Pelcin had examined the object he would not make a statement like:
"Microcsopic examination of the grooves, particularly those that delineate the
head and arms compared with grooves on unworked pieces of scoria excavated fro
the bed would demonstrate whether there had been hominid modification of the
scoria pebble in question. Until such a comparison is made, the symbolic
nature of the scoria pebble from berekhat Ram should not be cited as
indisuputable evidence either for or against the existence of symbolic art
prior to the Upper Paleolithic." Andrew Pelcin, "A geological Explanation for
the Berekhat Ram Figurine," Current Anthropology,Dec. 1994, 35:5, p. 675
{To Darrin Brooker: I just spent 10 minutes looking for the article to answer
this one point. Don't act as if answering Stephen is a simple thing to do!
When he is so discourteous as to dump 19 posts on us at once. Why do I do
this? I am honestly beginning to wonder. For all the effort I get to have Jim
and Stephen imply that I am dishonest, Woodmorappe implies the same. I am only
human and this does get to me occasionally. No one on the conservative side
seems to care very much about actual data and they search for one article
which can be forced to support their position}
>
>GM>In favor see:
>>
>>Alexander Marshack, "On the "Geological' Explanation of the Berekhat Ram
>>Figurine," Current Anthropology, 36:3, June, 1995, p. 495;
>
>Which article itself suggested that a "late Middle Paleolithic
>incised composition from the site of Quneitra, Israel" (the same
>one mentioned in the "Early Etchings" article above), be "addressed"
>instead in "the debate on possible pre-Upper Paleolithic symboling":
>
>"Until publication of these analyses, the debate on possible
>pre-Upper Paleolithic symboling may perhaps best be addressed not by
>suppositions at a distance but through the microscopic analysis of a
>late Middle Paleolithic incised composition from the site of
>Quneitra, Israel. I pointed to the Quneitra analysis in my recent
>criticism of the Eurocentric presumption that there was a punctuated,
>apparently genetic "species" shift in symboling capacity at the
>Middle/Upper Paleolithic transition" (Marshack 1994:386-87) (Marshack
>A., "On the `Geological' Explanation of the Berekhat Ram Figurine,"
>Current Anthropology, 36:3, June, 1995, p495)
>
Stephen, this frustrates me. Above you asked how I knew that Pelcin had not
examined the object. I spent 10 minutes looking for the article and you
already had your answer in the above citation where Marshack says that Pelcin
hadn't examined it. Why do you ask such questions when you can answer them
yourself?
As to Marshack believing that the 54000 year old Quenetra object is the oldes
art consider:
"Finally, Edwards accepts Marshack's contention that the fine engraved
lines on an ox rib from the Acheulian layer at the site of Pech d l'Aze in
France appear to be similar to the 'meander' symbol or iconographic unit of
notation that becomes an important element in the cave art of the Upper
Paleolithic period. If this engraving is a meander symbol, it suggests that
the complex cognitive development claimed for Homo sapiens sapiens near the
end of the Pleistocene epoch was presaged in the mental and cultural lives of
Homo erectus sometime before 300,000 B. P."~D. Bruce Dickson, The Dawn of
Belief, (Tuscon: The University of Arizona Press, 1990), p. 45-46
>GM>Desmond Morris, The Human Animal, (New York: Crown Publishing,
>>1994), p. 186-188;
>
>Morris only has a paragraph and a picture:
>
>"The newly found sculptural object the most ancient man-made
>image in the world - is a small stone figurine of a woman,
>unearthed at an archaeological site on the Golan Heights. It is
>extremely crude, but the head is clearly separated from the body
>by an incised neck, and the arms are indicated by two vertical
>grooves, apparently cut by a sharp flint tool. It is a find that
>establishes the even greater antiquity of the human fascination
>with symbolic images." (Morris D., "The Human Animal: A Personal View
>of the Human Species", ISIS: Oxford UK, 1994, p192)
>
>As he says, it is indeed "extremely crude".
>
>Renfrew, in a recent archaeology book I read at a newstand, says that
>only the neck is incised. The arms may not be. Therefore it may
>not be a figurine at all, jjust a bit of rock that someone made a
>couple of cuts at to see what it was like underneath, and then
>abandoned.
What book and I doubt that Renfrew drew the conclusion you are.
>
>GM>Jim, If you want to dismiss what my friend says go ahead and do
>>so. The first point with Hugh's "expert" was that the paper the
>>fellow wrote was given at a Christian conference, NOT a scientific
>>conference. If we cite this type of 'expert' then I know lots of
>>'expert' giving papers on the geocentricity of the earth. A person
>>needs to have done a certain level of study before he can become an
>>expert. This guy that Ross cites may have done it, but his name did
>>not ring a bell among the anthropologists or neural anatomists I
>>have been reading over the past couple of years.
>
>Well, if Hugh's "expert" is the guy who writes the anthropology
>pieces for Ross' Facts & Faith, he is right up with the latest
>anthropology.
>
>BTW I wonder how many of the "anthropologists or neural anatomists"
>Glenn has "been reading over the past couple of years" claim that
>Homo habilis/erectus lived 5.5 mya and had the technology to constuct
>a 3-decker Ark?
None.
> Come to think of it, what does Glenn's
>anthropologist "friend" think of Glenn's theory?
Why don't you ask him? He is a believer. I have posted my views on Talk
origins, have my web page advertised now in Talk Origins archive and they do
not criticize my views because they know I fit the data. They don't think I
am correct because they don't think the Bible has any touchstone with reality
but they generally respect what I say, unlike the Christians I too often run
into.
>
>GM>Christian apologists need to take a long hard look in the mirror.
>
>So do TE "Christian apologists", especially those who claim that
>"evolution is" *true "and that geology and anthropology supports
>*their* interpretation of the Bible"! :-)
>
Stephen,one fact can be historically documented. Until I started talking
about all the details of anthropology here, no you and Jim weren't even aware
of these details. Why is it that Christians don't talk about such things
unless they are forced to?
>I am not sure that the bow or guide part of a fire drill would
>necessarily have "scorch marks" on it. In any event, Ross does
>not say that it definitely *was* used in lighting fires, just that it
>was one alternatuve:
>
>"However, they seem to overlook some more obvious considerations.
>The bone was found near a hearth with charcoal and many burnt
>fragments of animal bones. One of the holes goes all the way through
>the bone and the other does not. These facts suggest at least some
>likelihood that the bone was an instrument for lighting fires (by
>twirling a twig in or through one of the holes with a bow). The
>holes may result from the bone's use as a hammer head or an axe head.
>Other possibilities abound. Most importantly, the researchers
>apparently did not construct a bear femur flute according to this
>bone's specifications to test whether or not it is capable of
>producing music." (Ross H, "The Meaning of Art and Music", Facts &
>Faith, Reasons To Believe: Pasadena CA, Vol. 10, No. 4, Fourth
>Quarter 1996, pp6,11)
>
But Hugh has no data to support his contention. It is not acceptable to make
hypotheses with no data to back them up. How about this as an alternative: it
was used as toilet paper for a guy with corrosive farts? This too is a
"possibility".
>GM>Why should this be the case? Shouldn't Christians strive to the
>>highest levels of excellence and get their facts straight?
>
>So says the man who claims that Noah was a Homo habilis (or is it
>erectus) and built a 3-decker Ark 5.5 mya, and then forgot everything
>until only about 30 kya, he regained the ability to make a bone
>whistle! :-)
>
Stephen, this is just ... never mind.
>
>[...]
>
>GM>Ross is silly to call a being that manufactures musical
>>instruments, manufactures jewelry, engages in underground mining and
>>built stone walls and paved areas, AND left evidence of the worship
>>of bears(like the Chippewa and Ainu of recent times), a
>>non-spiritual non-human. By this criteria, you aren't human either.
>>(You don't worsip bears do you?)
>
>Ross may be *wrong* on this,
He is!
glenn
Foundation,Fall and Flood
http://members.gnn.com/GRMorton/dmd.htm