On Fri, 13 Dec 1996 21:54:56, Glenn Morton wrote:
GM>An article was published today in Science, C. C. Swisher III, W.
>J. Rink, S. C.Ant in, H. P. Schwarcz, G. H. Curtis, A. Suprijo,
>Widiasmoro, "Latest Homo erectus of Java: Potential Contemporaneity
>with Homo sapiens in Southeast Asia" Science Volume 274, Number 5294,
>Issue of 13 December 1996, pp. 1870-1874.
Once again, thanks to Glenn for keeping us all up to date! :-)
GM>This article presents evidence that Homo erectus lived as late as
>27,000 years ago in Java. This presents an interesting situation
>relevant to my claim that homo erectus engaged in human behavior and
>was indeed as human as you or I.
Here Glenn continues to play on the word "human". Of course Homo
erectus was "human" in one sense, eg. being a member of the genus
Homo. The real question for Christians is not whether erectus was
"human" but whether he was *fully* "human", ie. in a Biblical,
spiritual sense - whether he could have a personal relationship with
God. This is the way Ross defines the word "human":
"In the Genesis Creation account, soulish creatures (birds and
mammals endowed by God with mind, will, and emotions so that they can
form relationships with human beings), and spirit creatures (human
beings who in addition to the soulish features of birds and mammals
are also endowed by God with spirit that they can form a relationship
with God Himself) are distinguished from other animals (invertebrates
and lower vertebrates)...Of all life on the earth, only humans have
earned the title `sinner.' Only humans can experience `death through
sin'...My point is that only human beings, spiritual beings, are
`made alive in Christ.' First Corinthians 15 refers only to those
creatures who experience sin and desire to be delivered from sin.
This excludes all species of life on the earth except humans.
Therefore, just as in Romans 5, no reason is found to deny physical
death for nonhuman life previous to Adam's sin." (Ross H., "Creation
and Time", 1994, pp61-62)
"In Genesis 1, God speaks of adham (male and female), and only adham,
as being made in His image...As humanity's story unfolds through
subsequent chapters, we discover that what makes humans different is
a quality called "spirit." None of the rest of Earth's creatures
possesses it. By "spirit" the Bible means awareness of God and
capacity to form a relationship with Him. Worship is the key
evidence of the spiritual quality of the human race, and the
universality of worship is evidenced in altars, temples, and
religious relics of all kinds. Burial of dead, use of tools, or even
painting do not qualify as evidence of the spirit, for non-spirit
beings such as bower birds, elephants, and chimpanzees engage in such
activities to a limited extent." (Ross, 1994, p141)
Presumably Glenn's strategy to have his 5.5 mya homo habilis/erectus
Adam theory accepted is to maximise the similarities and minimise the
differences between the earliest and latest members of the genus Homo
respectively? Yet consider that in 2 million years (5.5 million
years according to Glenn), the best that H. erectus got to was some
crude tools, rafts and rock art. Yet in 100,000 years H. sapiens
has built computers, spaceships and has "sailed" to the moon!
GM>Here is the present situation with regard to who inhabited
Australia:
>
>" In Africa and the Near East, H. sapiens first appear in the
>fossil record around 100 ka (52), and in mainland Asia perhaps by 67
>ka(45). On Java, the oldest known H. sapiens date to less than 10 ka
>(53); however, evidence elsewhere in Southeast Asia indicates that H.
>sapiens arrived much earlier. Early H. sapiens date to about 30 ka
>in Australia (54) and possibly to 40 ka in Malaysia (55), whereas
>archaeological remains attributed to H. sapiens occur as early as 40
>ka in New Guinea (56) and 50 ka (or greater) in Australia (17,
>57).The temporal and spatial overlap between H. erectus and H.
>sapiens in Southeast Asia, as implied by our study, is reminiscent of
>the overlap of Neandertals (H. neanderthalensis) (58) and
>anatomically modern humans (H. sapiens) in Europe (59).~C. C.
>Swisher III, W. J. Rink, S. C. Antn, H. P. Schwarcz, G. H. Curtis,
>A. Suprijo, Widiasmoro, "Latest Homo erectus of Java: Potential
>Contemporaneity with Homo sapiens in Southeast Asia" Science Volume
>274, Number 5294, Issue of 13 December 1996, pp. 1870-1874
The dates for H. sapiens 67-10 kya, are consistent with the
"Out-of-Africa/Middle East" replacement hypothesis. The oldest dates
may be a type of "anatomical modern humans", rather than fully modern
humans. Only the latter would be the descendants of Adam, according
to the Pre-Adamite model.
The "temporal and spatial overlap between H. erectus and H. sapiens
in Southeast Asia" is, like "the overlap of Neandertals (H.
neanderthalensis)" is actually evidence that H. erectus is not
ancestral to H. sapiens:
"Paleontologists mapping the expansion of the species subscribe to
one of two theories. The first, known as "out of Africa," postulates
that human migration began about 1.8 million years ago, when Homo
erectus left the African continent and colonized Europe, the Middle
East and Asia. Roughly 1.6 million years later, anatomically modern
Homo sapiens appeared in Africa, and eventually migrated out too,
displacing the prehumans who preceded them. The second theory, known
as multiregionalism, has no quarrel with the first wave of Homo
erectus expansion, but argues that the subsequent Homo sapiens
emigration never took place. Rather, it holds that Homo sapiens
sprang up- in many spots throughout the Old World, evolving from Homo
erectus colonies already in place. The new findings provide a boost
to the out-of-Africa camp. If Homo erectus really became Homo
sapiens in several places at once, they argue, why would such an
evolutionary wave have simply skipped Java? What's more,
multiregionalists have long contended that Javan Homo erectus gave
rise to modern Australians, but if the older and newer species in
fact overlapped, this becomes unlikely. "The multiregionalists will
have to do some fast talking," says Homo erectus expert Philip
Rightmire of the State University of New York at Binghamton. "The
evidence they looked to in the Far East is falling away." Not so,
respond multiregionalists, who note that cranial capacities of Asian
Homo erectus fossils sometimes vary by as much as a third. This,
they say, is proof that the more primitive species was not simply
supplanted by an advanced one but evolved slowly into one. Out-of-
Africa proponents pass these differences off as little more than
normal variations in skull size between one individual and another.
The out-of-Africa scenario was the more popular theory even before
Swisher's team published its findings, and now it is only likely to
find more adherents. Nonetheless, multiregionalists show no signs of
folding their tents-and if anything, may have grown even more
convinced of their position. "Homo erectus and Homo sapiens could
never have lived together," De Vos maintains. Maybe not, counters
Swisher, but for now the fossils say they did." (Kluger J., "Not So
Extinct After All", Time, December 23, 1996, pp64- 65)
>GM>There is the recent discovery of the 75,000+ year age of the art
>work at Jinmium. Bahn reports, Jinmium Australia "Lower layers of
>sediment nearby, containing ochre and stone artefacts, have likewise
>been dated to 116,000+/- 12,000 years ago, and even 176,000+/-16,000
>years for a layer just below one object."~Paul G. Bahn, "Further Back
>Down Under," Nature, Oct 17, 1996, p. 577 Putting these two thing
>together leads to the conclusion that, based upon present evidence,
>the settlement of Australia was not accomplished by H. sapiens, but
>by H. erectus, since the earliest Asian sapiens is dated at 67,000
>years ago. And should the earlest date of 176,000 years hold up, it
>would mean that Australia was occupied prior to the appearance of H.
>sapiens.
I for one, have no problem with this, and think it probable.
>GM>This early date is supported by oceanic pollen record. Bahn
>reports, "As for the colonization of Australia, it was only in the
>1960s that firm evidence was found for human occupation during the
>Pleistocene, before about 10,000 years ago; since then, the date has
>been steadily pushed back, always in the face of enormous sceptisim.
>The currently accepted arrival date is up to 60,000 years ago, yet
>over the past decade there have been strong claims from pollen
>studies for a far earlier date. Sediment cores from Lake George, New
>South Wales, revealed a period around 130,000 years ago when there
>was a sudden increase in destructive brush fires, reflected in
>greatly increased quantities of charcoal, and coinciding with a
>sudden and dramatic change in vegetation --the first for 750,000
>years--when fire-sensitive forests began to be replaced by
>fire-tolerant eucalyptus and by grasses. "That was challenged by
>archaeologists, who assigned this vegetation change to only
>60,000-54,000 years ago, using a simple correlation of age with
>depth in the lake cores. But support for the early dates has come
>from similar pollen and charcoal evidence, dated to about 140,000
>years ago, in a 400-metre marine core on the continental shelf off
>the Queensland coast; the core spans 1.5 million years, and, unlike
>Lake George, its upper part is well dated. The decline of forest and
>rise of charcoal particles form the most dramatic change in the whle
>core, and have been tentatively attributed to human
>colonization."~Paul G. Bahn, "Further Back Down Under," Nature, Oct
>17, 1996, p. 577-578, p. 578
Without human artifacts, this is not conclusive. Australia even
today has a lot of naturally occurring (ie. lightning) bushfires
that burn unchecked in its far north for weeks and even months. It
should be remembered that Australia is the driest and flattest
continent on Earth.
>GM>This further means as Bahn notes, "One of the stumbling blocks to
>accepting an early colonization has always been that, because
>Australia was never attached to Asia, even at the lowest sea levels
>of the Ice Age a journey there required an ocean voyage of at least
>70 km. But now the discovery of a stone-tool industry on the
>Indonesian island of Flores, in a layer dated by palaeomagnetism to
>about 700,000 years ago, has provided good evidence for open-sea
>voyages by H. erectus, so there can be no question that whoever
>colonized Australia was capable of such a journey, even 176,000 years
>ago."~Paul G. Bahn, "Further Back Down Under," Nature, Oct 17, 1996,
>p. 577-578, p. 578
Agreed. Wills suggests bamboo rafts as a likely vehicle:
>"The Australians are not seafaring peoples. Before the arrival of
>Europeans, the peoples of the northern Australian coast did make
>rafts of mangrove or driftwood, but these could not float for more
>than a few hours before becoming waterlogged These peoples lost, or
>never acquired, the technology needed to hollow out tree trunks to
>make canoes. So how did they get to Australia in the first place?
>Perhaps on bamboo rafts, which are as easy to make as bark boats but
>float for a good deal longer. There is plentiful bamboo on the
>tropical island of Timor, just to the northeast of the Australian
>mainland. And, sixty thousand years ago, soon after the start of the
>last major Ice Age, the sea level was at least 200 meters lower than
>it is now. Today, Timor is separated from Australia by 600
>kilometers of open ocean. During the Ice Age maximum, a huge
>Australian coastal plain extended almost all the way to the island.
>Migrants from Timor would have been checked only by a narrow stretch
>of water some 70-90 kilometers wide. This strait could easily have
>been crossed, by accident or design, by peoples on bamboo rafts.
>But, if there were few or no bamboos in the area when they arrived,
>it would have been a one-way voyage. After their rafts had cracked
>and split in the sun on the hot Australian shore, there was no way
>back." (Wills C., "The Runaway Brain", 1994, p144-145)
>
>GM>We also know that H. erectus engaged in wood work from
>microanalysis of the wear on the tools AND the discovery of a
>polished wooden plank from that time period.(S. Belitszky et al, "A
>Middle Pleistocene Wooden Plank with man-made Polish," Journal of
>Human Evolution, 1991, 20:349-353.)
I don't know why Glenn keeps posting this type of evidenece because
it actually counts against his 5.5 mya Homo habilis/erectus Adam
theory. The "Middle Pleistocene" was between 500-100 kya, yet
Acccording to Glenn, a H. habilis/erectus Noah built a 3-decker Ark
in the Middle *Pliocene* (ie. 5500 kya). These findings are
consistent with a Old Earth/Young Adam pre-Adamite model, but not
with the Old Earth/Old Adam view that Glenn espouses.
GM>Now, if H. erectus and H. sapiens lived togather for 10-30,000
>years, there would be opportunity for interbreeding. The interesting
>thing is that Australian aborigines show several skeletal traits
>which resemble the Java form of Homo erectus.
[...]
>Though some 700,000 years old, the face eerily resembled those
>of far younger, modern human fossils from Australia. The 'robust'
>Australian sapiens were as modern in brain size as any in the world,
>but they showed the same facial projection--big browridges, thick
>bones, sloping foreheads, and heavy molars--that Wolpoff saw in
>Sangiran 17. Many living Australian aborigines carry the same traits
>today."
Shades of T.H. Huxley, who wrote about the negro:
"No rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average
negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the white man. And
if this be true, it is simply incredible that, when all his
disabilities are removed, and our prognathous relative has a fair
field and no favour, as well as no oppressor, he will be able to
compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival,
in a contest which is to be carried out by thoughts and not by
bites." (Huxley T.H., "Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews",Appleton:
New York, 1871, p20)
I supose one sees what one wants to see. Nelson and Jurmain
describe Wolpoff as "The most ardent advocate of this model", ie.
"the Multiregional Evolution Model (local continuity]" model" (Nelson
H. & Jurmain R., "Introduction To Physical Anthropology", 1991, p534)
This alleged similarity in only *some* (not all) Australian
aborigines, could be due to convergence, following a similar way of
life in a similar part of the world.
>GM> "Decades before, Weidenreich had suggested a connection between
>the erectus fossils of Java and modern Australian aborigines. But
>Weidenreich had only skullcaps to work from, like those of Solo Man
>from Ngandong. In the face of Sangiran, Wolpoff saw the missing
>anchor to Weidenreich's Australian lineaage. Another researcher had
>suggested that the anatomy of Australian aborigines bore 'the mark of
>ancient Java.' For Wolpoff, Sangiran was stunning proof. In their
>arguments, Alan Thorne had been trying to convince Wolpoff that
>regional features would appear first at the remote edges of the
>hominid range, farthest away from the African birthplace of the
>earlist hominids. And here sat Sangiran 17, three quarters of a
>million years old and about as far from the African 'center' as one
>could get--but already full-fledged native Australasian."~James R.
>Shreeve, The Neandertal Enigma, (New York: William Morrow and Co.,
>1995), p. 102-103
Yes, "*For Wolpoff*, Sangiran was stunning proof"! :-) But not for
others:
"Even if possible cranial deformations are discounted, they provide
strong evidence for an extreme and long-preserved heterogeneity of
physical types among the tribes of Australia during that period
before the arrival of Europeans that the aborigines knew as the
dreamtime. How much of this heterogeneity persists today is an open
question. The anthropologist Alan Thorne has compared the robust Kow
Swamp and gracile Willandra Lakes skulls to skulls of present-day
aborigines. He finds the recent skulls to lie somewhere in between
those extremes. Unfortunately, all the recent skulls used in his
study came from one small part of Australia, so they are probably not
representative of present-day variation...Argument continues about
whether the variety of physical types among the migrants to Australia
were the result of two or more migrations or whether the first
arrivals were themselves phenotypically heterogeneous- that is,
whether they had markedly different appearances. Alternatively, the
phenotypic variation seen among present-day aboriginals might have
been generated by selection and tribal fragmentation after people
arrived in Australia. It seems possible that some combination of all
three might be true." (Wills, 1994, p149)
It seems to me that regional continuity models are unfalsifiable
because they have to include large chunks of gene-flow to account
for the fact that these regional populations still stayed one
species:
"Milford Wolpoff and Alan Thorne have used the Homo erectus-like
characteristics of some of the Australian fossils to argue for a
continuity of local evolution in the area. They visualize the
Australians as being descended from ancestors like the people of
Ngandong in Java, who were certainly Homo erectus. The aborigines
would then have made the transition to Homo sapiens, either before or
after their arrival on the Australian mainland. Wolpoff and Thorne
also postulate that a role in this transition was played by gene
exchange with other, more advanced groups. You will remember that
this idea of extensive gene exchange solves the problem of how
similar evolutionary events could have happened in different places.
Of course, it does not explain how genes that conferred a more Homo
sapiens-like character could have migrated into the aboriginal
population without at the same time bringing in other genes that
would have diluted their distinctive racial characteristics- unless
the aboriginals were at the same time being strongly selected for the
various characteristics that mark them off from other racial groups."
(Wills, 1994, p149)
But this latter strong selection makes the regional continuity
superfluous, since it could of itself explain the unique features of
Australian aborigines.
>GM>While this study does destroy one particular view of the regional
>continuity theory in which two fossils were viewed as intermediate
>and now can not be so viewed, the late date of H. erectus on Java
>gives an excellent reson for the cranial similarities between Asian
>erectus and modern man.
>
>Like similar evidence for interbreeding between Neanderthal and
>modern man in Europe, this new work explains a lot.
It is interesting that Glenn quotes Shreeve who believes just the
opposite about Neandertal man, as can be seen from this extract from
his book, "The Neanderthal Enigma":
"By 1987, the French archaeologist using the [thermoluminescence]
technique, Helene Valladas, had squeezed an age of 60,000 years out
of the burnt tools found beside Moshe at Kebara. The shocker came
the following year, when she and her colleagues announced the
results of their work at Qafzeh: the "modern" skeletons were about
92,000 years old. By comparison, Neanderthal remains in Spain had
been dated at 30,000- 40,000 years. Clearly, if modern humans were
inhabiting the Levant tens of thousands of years before the
Neanderthals, they could hardly have evolved from them. If the dates
are correct, it is hard to see what else one can do with the venerated
belief in our Neanderthal ancestry but chuck it. The two physical
types do not follow one from the other, nor do they meet in a fleeting
moment before one triumphs and the other fades. They just keep on
going, side by side but never mingling. It seems certain that they
never interbred. This is yet another puzzling component in the
Levantine riddle. Humans love to mate. The barriers between races
and cultures, so cruelly evident in other respects, melt away when sex
is at stake. When Neanderthals and modern humans came into
contact in the Levant, they would have interbred, no matter how
strange they might initially have seemed to each other. But the
evidence just isn't there. It is possible that new fossils will be found
that demonstrate the emergence of a "Neandermod" lineage. But
from the evidence now in hand, the most likely conclusion is that
Neanderthals and modern humans were not interbreeding in the
Levant. If these humans were contemporaneous, how on earth did
they fail to do so? Only one solution to the mystery is left.
Neanderthals and moderns did not interbreed in the Levant because
they could not. They were reproductively incompatible, separate
species, biologically distinct." (Shreeve J., "Neanderthal Neighbours",
The Bulletin, Vol. 116, No. 6053, December 31, 1996/January 7
1997, p54)
>GM>Swisher et al conclude,
>
>GM>"Rather,our ages for Ngandong and Sambungmacan indicate that H.
>erectus persisted in Southeast Asia into the latest Pleistocene
>overlapping in time with H. sapiens and raise the possibility that
>features shared by the two species are either homoplastic or the
>result of gene flow(51)."C. C. Swisher III, W. J. Rink, S. C. Antn,
>H. P. Schwarcz, G. H. Curtis, A. Suprijo, Widiasmoro, "Latest Homo
>erectus of Java: Potential Contemporaneity with Homo sapiens in
>Southeast Asia" Science Volume 274, Number 5294, Issue of 13 December
>1996, pp. 1870-1874.
See above. Such overlap is a problem to the multi-regional model
which presumably Glenn is arguing for:
"Swisher and his colleagues used dating techniques known as electron
spin resonance and uranium series dating, which are used for
materials too old for radiocarbon dating. But the new date comes as a
shock to anthropologists. "It's hard to accept," says Clark Howell, a
leading anthropologist at the University of California, Berkeley. But if
the revised date is right, he says, it will upset the multiregional theory
of human origins. This theory holds that modern humans evolved
more or less simultaneously in Africa, Asia and Europe from
populations of H. erectus, beginning as far back as 2 million years
ago in Southeast Asia. The Ngandong fossils were considered to be
one of the best examples of the transition. With an assumed age of
200 000 to 300 000 years, the fossils seemed to fall between older
specimens from the Sangiran site in Java, which may be 1 million
years old, and the earliest known modern humans in Australia, dated
at about 30 000 years. The new date suggests this cannot be the case.
If the Ngandong fossils are very young, they cannot be an
intermediate step between the older H. erectus and early H. sapiens in
Australasia, says Swisher." (Lewin R., "Ancient humans found refuge
in Java", New Scientist, Vol. 152, No. 2061/2, 21/28 December
1996, p16)
Even before this new evidence, the mult-regional hypothesis was in
trouble:
"If early Homo was able to leave Africa before 2.0 mya (and later),
did these intercontinental quests contribute to the prehistoric
distributions of Homo sapiens, our own species? The new evidence
must be framed in terms of the ongoing debate over "multiregional" or
"out-of Africa" origins for Homo sapiens. The multiregional argument
would use the new evidence to suggest that the early dispersals of
early Homo set a complex stage for Homo sapiens to emerge at
connected points across much of the Old World. For us, however, the
new evidence suggests that both the early and later species of Homo
had the ability to disperse across the continents. Given that Homo
sapiens fossils appear to be much older in Africa than on any other
continent, the answer seems obvious. Having emerged in Africa, Homo
sapiens dispersed to Eurasia, replacing older populations of Homo."
(Larick R. & Ciochon R.L., "The African Emergence and Early Asian
Dispersals of the Genus Homo", American Scientist, Vol. 84, No. 6,
November-December 1996, p550)
God bless.
Steve
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