<<While erectus is not apelike, if you now want to talk about the piths,
then
that is another matter. They walked just like you an I, fully bipedal.
Their foot prints found at Laetoli are exactly like the footprints you or I
would leave IF we had never worn shoes. >>
What sort of shaman art did they produce? In fact, what sort of SHOES?
Sorry, technologica dark age. A million years and they couldn't figure out
shoes.Must have been REALLY dark.
<<Now, this would certainly imply that someone with very modern foot
morphology was walking around 3.7 million years ago at Laetoli. The
assumption is that it was Australipithecus but it might have been someone
else. Back to 3 million years ago, the foot morphology is identical to ours
and shows NO transitional features.>>
Well, then they were certainly just like us. What art, similar to what a
man produces, did they leave behind to demonstrate this?
<<You are equivocating on the word Leakey. There is Richard Leakey whom
you
quote and Mary Leakey whom I quote. I happen to agree with Mary Leakey who
says the phonolite pebble was an intentionally produced work depicting the
hominid face.>>
Since I had just given you the citation to Origin of Humankind, I assumed
you knew who I was referring to. Big assumption, I guess. Here it is again:
<<Here is how Leakey describes some of your Noahic descendents:
"Other fossils of individuals from the area indicated that not only were
many of them bigger than Lucy, standing more than 5 feet tall, but also
that they were more apelike in certain respects--the size and shape of the
teeth, the protrusion of the jaw--than the hominids that lived in South and
East Africa a million years or so later. This is just what we would expect
to find as we moved closer and closer to the time of human origin." [Origin
of Humankind, p. 30]
Now, since you like to use the Leakeys as the standard, I'll ask you the
same question you asked me: You know more about this than Leakey? You are
prepared to go sit with him and tell him these were NOT ape-like creatures
at all, but fully functional modern humans, with the capacity to worship
God and create shaman art and talk among themselves?>>
Richard Leakey wrote the book Origin of Humankind. Are we clear now? OK,
respond to the quote.
<<You listed a set of criteria you wanted before you would believe in the
humanity of archaic man. I supplied every one of them yet now you say it
is
not enough.>>
You've supplied nothing of the kind. Please listen again: What I'm telling
you (and what every other expert in the world would tell you if you didn't
insist on being the cheese) is that the art of modern man, in both scope
and breadty, is NOTHING LIKE anything produced before.
You're like some archaeologist, twenty centuries from now, with all the
evidence that humans set tables with fine china and silverware and plates
and bowls, claiming that he has now found evidence that dogs are part of
the human family. Why? Because, by golly, we found a drinking bowl in an
old structure marked "Fido." Dogs drank from bowls! Just like humans!
Hmmm, maybe Noah was a golden retriever...
Jim