Re: Neanderthal Pappy used fire

Glenn R. Morton (grmorton@waymark.net)
Mon, 29 Jun 1998 21:20:11 -0500

At 05:46 AM 6/30/98 +0800, Stephen Jones wrote:
>Thanks for this. The first point is that this defeats your own view that
>Adam was an australopithecine or Homo habilis:
>
>"The only way to fit the scriptural account with the scientific observations
>is to have Adam and Eve be Homo habilis or Australopithecus." (Morton
>G.R., "A Theory for Creationists," 1996. http:
>//www.isource.net/~grmorton/synop.htm)
>
>who lived 5.5 million years ago:
>
>"I will make a suggestion that the place Genesis 2 is talking about is the
>Mediterranean basin when it was emptied 5.5 million years ago." (Morton
>G.R., "A Theory for Creationists,", 1996. http:
>//www.isource.net/~grmorton/synop.htm)
>
>If fire was only mastered "400,000 years" ago, then clearly this conflicts
>with the idea that australopithecine or Homo habilis/erectus had the
>technology to build a three-decker Ark 5 million years before:

Stephen, you are so silly on these things which is why I have almost ceased
reading anything your write. I didn't say that fire was only mastered 400
kyr ago. You are jumping to conclusions. What I said was that if
neanderthal's ancestors used fire it is difficult to exclude neanderthal
from the human race. The first evidence of controlled use of fire is from
1.6 myr ago at Swartkrans, SA. Amazingly the only bones found there are
Australopithecine. And I have mentioned this before and you keep forgetting.

"Interestingly, though, despite the fact that Member 3 has produced only
australopithecines, it is from here that traces of fire are known. These
occur in the form of burned stones and bones, heated to temperatures
typical of campfires. Member 3 times were the only point in the early
history of the cave at which hominid occupation of the cave entrance might
have been possible, and this might account for the fact that burned objects
occur only in that member; however, Brain prefers the idea that the
introduction of fire took place between Member 2 and Member 3 times. As to
the fire user (for Brain is as reluctant to conclude that a fire maker was
involved as he is to affirm that the fire was used in cooking), few doubt
that, despite the lack of fossils, it was the gracile hominid ascribed to
Homo-- but to what species of Homo?" ~ Ian Tattersall, The Fossil Trail
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 202-203

So maybe my theory isn't as crazy as you continually claim!

>The second point to make is that if Neandertal man is a totally different
>line from Homo sapiens, then he (Neandertal) cannot be human in any
>Biblical sense. The evidence is mounting that Neandertal and Homo
>sapiens, for all their similarities (which you emphasise), were also
>profoundly different (which you ignore). Here is the latest:

Ridiculous Stephen and I didn't read the rest of your post. There are lots
of native American tribes which were totally wiped out by plague and they
have left no descendants. There are the Greenland Vikings which also left
no descendants since everyone in Greenland in 1410 died out or their
descendants died out due to starvation. Thus the Greenlanders and the
Native americans were also a separate lineage from us and they left no
descendants. So I guess they weren't human in a biblical sense either.

glenn

Adam, Apes and Anthropology
Foundation, Fall and Flood
& lots of creation/evolution information
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm