Stephen, is it absolutely impossible for you to admit that you were wrong
about who is first associated fire?
>This doesn't support Glenn's claim that "The first evidence of
>controlled use of fire is from 1.6 myr ago at Swartkrans, SA.":
>
>Firstly, "Member 3" is the *latest* of the strata, dating from "1.5 to
>1.0 myr old":
>
>"Such faunal comparisons suggest that Swartkrans Members 1 and 2
>fall into the time range of about 1.9 to 1.6 myr ago, with Member 3
>somewhat younger, around 1.5 to 1.0 myr old." (Tattersall I., "The
>Fossil Trail," 1995, p201).
First, there are anthropologists who claime the 1.6 myr age
http://www.unc.edu/courses/anth100/acheulia.htm
Secondly, Stephen, let me grant your request. Let's say it is 1.5 million
years old. SO WHAT? It still is the earliest fire and it still is
associated with Australopithecus bones, not Homo. How exactly does reducing
this to 1.5 myr help your case?
>
>Secondly, as Glenn's own quote says, the "As to the fire
>user...Brain..." (ie. "C. K. Brain of the Transvaal Museum", who
>Tattersall describes as a "leader in" the "renaissance of
>australopithecine studies in South Africa), "...is as reluctant to
>conclude that a fire maker was involved as he is to affirm that the fire
>was used in cooking..." (Tattersall I., "The Fossil Trail,", 1995,
>pp199,202)
But the fact is, that the earliest fire is associated with those you say
couldn't possibly have done it. By the way, the australopithecines that
are associated with fire also had hands that were quite capable of making
stone tools also!
"The hand bones found at the cave site of Swartkrans are also strikingly
similar to a modern human hand and unlike that of a chimpanzee or even the
earlier Australopithecus afarensis. Distinctive features are a flattened
bone at the end of the fingers and a robust thumb bone with markings for a
strong flexor pollicis longus muscle, a feature of the powerful mobile
thumb in the modern human hand. Since most of the skull and tooth fossils
from this cave represent Australopithecus robustus, Susman argued that most
of the hand bones do as well." ~ Kathy D. Schick and Nicholas Toth, Making
Silent Stones Speak, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), p.102
"A new analysis of the Swartkrans bones indicates that members of this
'deadend' line of hominids possessed hands with a precision grasp and were,
therefore, as capable of making and using tools as the earliest true human
species H. habilis, which has long been considered the first stone-tool
maker. Furthermore the South African remains suggest the robusts were
nearly as proficient at two-legged walking as are modern humans and spent
much of their time on the ground." ~ Bruce Bower, "Retooled Ancestors,"
Science News 133, May 28, 1988,p. 344
"But they certainly had the hands for tool-making. At Swartkrans, Susman
found that the species P. robustus possessed straight fingers and a broad
thumb designed to supprt a large muscle found in the thumbs of modern
humans, but not in the corresponding digits of apes or monkeys. The
mobility and shape of the ancient hominid's wrist bones are also human-like."
~ Bruce Bower, "Retooled Ancestors," Science News 133, May 28, 1988,p. 345
>>SJ>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:
>
>GM>Ridiculous Stephen and I didn't read the rest of your post.
>
>How does Glenn know that what I said was "Ridiculous" if he "didn't
>read the rest of" my "post"?
>
>What Glenn found "ridiculous" was an extract from a recent article
>from NATURE, the world's premier scientific journal,
No, Stephen, what I find ridiculous is your past use of this 'different
lineage' to assert that Neanderthals are not human. As I have pointed out
many times, there are many groups of humans who were different lineages yet
they are still human. The Keppel Islanders have been isolated from other
humans for 5000 years, until last century. They also have physical
differences. The implications of your views are that we shouldn't send
them missionaries because they are a different lineage.
"The Keppel Islands now lie 13 kilometres fromt the mainland, but the
journey to the island could be made in two legs: 4.5 kilometres to Pelican
Island and then 8.5 kilometres to South Keppel.The islanders were rather
isolated because of this distance from the mainland, and the effects of
isolation can be seen in their language, physical appearance and material
culture. Their language was unintelligible to the mainlanders, and they
spoke so quickly that mainland Aborigines said they 'yabbered like crows'.
Physically, the Keppel islanders were also distinctive. The skulls studied
show a high percentage of 'auditory exostoses', that is, bony, protruding
growths in the region of the ear, which may be the result of inbreeding
through isolation.
"Keppel Islander's material culture was also different from that of the
mainland. They had no boomerangs, shields or ground-edge axes, and only
one type of club, but they possessed other items apparently absent from the
adjacent coast such as necklaces made of shell and of 'bits of red
toadstool', fish-hooks (made of coconut or turtle shell) and stone drills
for manufacturing the hooks." ~ Josephine Flood, "The Archeology of the
Dreamtime, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 190-191
**
"It seems that the Keppel islanders were more or less isolated for some
5000 years. A small population of about eighty-five people exploited their
limited territory of 20 square kilometres, including about 38 kilometres of
coastline: there would have been about two people to each kilometre of
coast, a similar population density to that found among other coastal
groups, such as the Bentinck islanders or the Anbara of Arnhem Land. Over
the centuries the language and physical characteristics of the Keppel
Island people changed as a result of evolution in a small, isolated
community, and their material culture became almost as simple and limited
in range as that of the Tasmanian Aborigines" ~ Josephine Flood, "The
Archeology of the Dreamtime, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 191
which claimed
>that because "Humans" (i.e. Homo sapiens) "are...unique among
>mammals in lacking facial projection...whereas the face in all other
>adult mammals, including Neanderthals, projects to some extent in
>front of the braincase" and this is caused uniquely by an "early
>reduction in the length of the sphenoid, the central bone of the cranial
>base from which the face grows forward", therefore "Neanderthals
>and other archaic Homo should be excluded from H. sapiens."
>(Lieberman D.E., "Sphenoid shortening and the evolution of modern
>human cranial shape," Nature, Vol 393, 14 May 1998, pp158-159)
So would you not share the gospel with a person who had a craniofacial
deformity? Does the length of one bone, this bone, indicate humanity?
Does this mean that the image of God resides in the Sphenoid bone? The
implications of your position is silly.
>
>GM>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.
>
>I don't know what Glenn's argument is here. My post didn't even have
>the word "descendant" (or it's cognates) in it! But to answer Glenn's
>point, "the Greenland Vikings" and "Native americans" *were* Homo
>sapiens. Neandertals were *not*:
I hope you are sitting down Stephen, but the official name for Neanderthal
since the 1950s Cold Spring Harbor Symposium is HOMO SAPIENS
neanderthalensis. We are HOMO SAPIENS sapiens. We are racial varieties of
each other. See The Neandertals by Trinkaus and Shipman, p. 268-269
While there are some individual anthropologists who want to go back to
William King's 1864 Homo neanderthalensis, they do not have consensus and
they do not have official sanction.
glenn
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
Foundation, Fall and Flood
& lots of creation/evolution information
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm