Group
On Tue, 11 Aug 1998 21:28:37 -0500, Glenn R. Morton wrote:
GM>Only humans bury their dead and engage in mortuary practices. The
>following is the oldest proven case of human burial and it is very old. Two
>citations for this activity.
There is no evidence in my anthropology books or presented by Glenn that
indicates that Bodo Man was buried, and it may not be as old as Glenn
claims (see below).
Also, Glenn as usual plays on the word "human" to make his case that
Adam was a "Homo habilis or Australopithecine":
"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)
But Donald Johanson whom Glenn quotes below to support his case,
admits that anthropologists have no clear set of physical criteria as to what
is "human":
"In fact, how did one even define a human? It may seem ridiculous for
science to have been talking about humans and prehumans and
protohumans for more than a century without ever nailing down what a
human was. Ridiculous or not that was the situation. We do not have, even
today, an agreed-on definition of humankind, a clear set of specifications
that will enable any anthropologist in the world to say quickly and with
confidence, `This one is a human; that one isn't.'" (Johanson D.C. & Edey
M.A., "Lucy The Beginnings of Humankind," 1982, pp103-104)
and indeed on evolutionary physical criteria alone Johanson admits it
cannot be decided where humanness begins:
"There is never a clean break in a line of evolutionary descent. An
australopithecine mother never gives birth to a human son. There will be a
period during which both mother and son will have such a blurry mixture of
traits that assigning them to either species will be almost impossible. If one
could assemble a complete series of mother-son-mother-son skeletons
covering a couple of million years of time and in the process going from
something that unmistakably was not human to something that
unmistakably was, one would be hard pressed to place a finger on the
approximate spot - let alone the exact spot - where the crossover to
humanness took place." (Johanson D.C. & Edey M.A.," 1982, p107)
Alan Walker, the discoverer of the Homo erectus skeleton called
"Nariokotome boy", believes that being fully linguate is the determining
criteria for fully humanity and that this was "a very recent acquisition":
"In my mind, these varied lines of evidence - anatomy, archaeology and
genetics - all point to a single conclusion. True language seems to me to
have been a very recent acquisition, one that just precedes and enables the
evolution of anatomically modern humans and fully modern behaviors....
(Walker A., & Shipman P., "The Wisdom of Bones: In Search of Human
Origins," 1996, p234)
Because Homo erectus was speechless,Walker had had to change his mind
and admit that Homo erectus was not fully human:
"Homo erectus was speechless, illinguate. Not only does this conclusion
contradict the accepted wisdom that language acquisition demarcates the
origin of the genus Homo, it leaves me with a haunting and novel image of
the Nariokotome boy. Here was a young man, tall, black, lean, and
muscled, thoroughly adapted to his environment. He made tools that,
although crude, represented a substantial advance over those of his
predecessors and he made these tools according to a distinct and repetitive
plan, using deliberate techniques. He lived in a group with strong social
ties, one that nurtured helpless infants and nourished their mothers. He and
his kind were very successful in obtaining high-quality foods, almost
certainly by hunting, so successful that the evolution of big brains and large
bodies could occur. The boy's species, Homo erectus, was perhaps the
cleverest that had yet walked the face of the earth. Long-legged and
immensely strong, this species strode out of Africa. They were such
effective predators that they could invade and colonize most of the Old
World at a rate that appears virtually instantaneous to our modern dating
techniques: less than a hundred thousand years to get from Africa to Java,
not by deliberate migration but by simple population expansion, year after
year. All of this looks and sounds so human, and yet...and yet the boy
could not talk and he could not think as we do. "(Walker A., & Shipman
P., 1996, p234. My emphasis)
Indeed, Walker says that Homo erectus was just a non-human animal:
"For all of his human physique and physiology, THE BOY WAS STILL
AN ANIMAL - A CLEVER ONE, A LARGE ONE, A SUCCESSFUL
ONE - BUT AN ANIMAL NONETHELESS. This final discovery of the
boy's speechlessness had an enormous emotional impact on me. Over the
years that had passed since Richard, Kamoya, and I had first excavated his
bones, I had thought I was growing to know the boy, to understand him, to
speak his language, metaphorically. I grew fond of his form; his face took
on the familiarity of a member of the family or an old friend. I could almost
see him moving around the harshly beautiful Turkana landscape, at a
distance looking enough like the Turkana people to be mistaken for human.
He did this, I would think, he knelt there to scoop up water or crouched
behind a bush like this one to stalk an antelope. But then, as I approached
him closely, preparing mentally to hail him and at last make his
acquaintance in person, it was as if he turned and looked at me. In his eyes
was not the expectant reserve of a stranger but that deadly unknowing I
have seen in a lion's blank yellow eyes. He may have been our ancestor,
BUT THERE WAS NO HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS WITHIN THAT
HUMAN BODY. HE WAS NOT ONE OF US." (Walker A., & Shipman
P., 1996, pp234-235. Emphasis mine)
In another place Walker clarifies his thinking that "being fully human is
predicated upon being linguate":
"But for me the most telling discovery revolved around language. I had
never anticipated that Homo erectus would prove illinguate. Not until Ann
MacLarnon's analysis of the vertebral column and the stunning new
evidence of brain function derived from PET scans undermined the
credibility of language in early Homo did I see how intimately language is a
part of being human. At some deep level, BEING FULLY HUMAN IS
PREDICATED UPON BEING LINGUATE." (Walker A., & Shipman P.,
1996, p238. My emphasis)
Therefore Walker concludes that Homo erectus was "was profoundly in-
human":
"This meant that the boy my colleagues and I spent so many years
discovering and analyzing WAS PROFOUNDLY IN-HUMAN. He was
large, he was strong, he was a toolmaker, a hunter, and an intensely social
animal adapted to a rigorous, active life in the tropics. BUT HE WAS NOT
HUMAN, DID NOT THINK LIKE A HUMAN, AND COULD NOT
SPEAK. Had I met him in the flesh, we would be unable to communicate,
not because we had no language in common - the problem I experienced in
meeting the Turkana woman described in the prologue - but because we
had no perception in common. The truth is that language is as much a
perceptual mechanism, a means of ordering and Understanding the world,
as it is a communicative device. To me the boy is a creature of human size
and appearance with superhuman strength and a peculiar combination of
tender sensibilities and a practiced, predatory cunning, an almost human
whose perception of the world is utterly alien and incomprehensible. This
image fills my mind with questions I cannot yet answer. He was an
extraordinary combination of the familiar and the strange, an animal that
looked and walked and sweated and cared as we do, yet one who could not
talk and whose ability to make mental maps of his world was extremely
limited." (Walker A., & Shipman P., 1996, p238. Emphasis mine.)
This fits with contemporary evangelical Christian theology's identification
of humanness with being able to have a personal relationship with God:
"What is man? Yes, that is a most important question. And it is a question
to which the biblical revelation gives the best of answers. Let it be said for
the moment, however, that whatever it is that sets man apart from the rest
of the creation, he alone is capable of having a conscious personal
relationship with the Creator and of responding to him. Man can know God
and understand what the Creator desires of him. Man can love, worship,
and obey his Maker. In these responses man is most completely fulfilling
his Maker's intention for him, and thus being most fully human, since
humanity is defined in terms of the image of God." (Erickson M.J.,
"Christian Theology," 1985, p472)
which itself depends on the possession of a complex symbolic language:
"Man is distinguished by the presence and use of complex symbolism or,
more specifically, of language. While the making of tools and burial of the
dead point to a fairly sophisticated pattern of behavior, it is language which
makes possible the type of relationship with God which would be
experienced by a being created in the image of God. On this basis, one can
correlate the beginning of man in the full biblical sense with the evidence of
a great cultural outburst about 30,000 to 40,000 years ago." (Erickson
M.J., 1985, pp484-485)
GM>"In 1986 Tim White, of the University of California at Berkeley, and
>one of Don Johanson's collaborators on, for example, the 'Lucy' skeleton,
>published a detailed analysis of the scratch marks on the Bodo skull. He
>found marks around the orbital and nasal regions, on top of the brow
>ridges, and along the back of the preserved skull cap. White considered
>every possibility he could think of to account for the marks: natural
>weathering of the specimen, rodent or carnivore gnawing, even abrasion or
>trauma before the skull became buried in the ground. After ruling out all
>of these possibilities, White was left with the possibility that these
>scratches were, indeed, cut marks. And if , he reasoned, they were cut
>marks, it probably meant that the skull had been defleshed. In fact White
>found that the patterning and locations of these cut marks were virtually
>identical to cut marks taxidermists made while defleshing the chimpanzee
>and gorilla skulls housed in the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.
>White kept open the question of why the Bodo skull might have been
>defleshed, but it would certainly seem reasonable to assume that the
>defleshing had been done after the Bodo individual had dies.
Tattersal, in the very place that Glenn cites Bodo Man on his web page:
"Mankind is the only being who has been known to scalp his own kind and
the first evidence of this is from Bodo, Ethiopia from a skull dated at
300,000 years old. (Tattersall, 1995, p. 244)" (Morton G.R., "A Theory for
Creationists," 1996, http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/synop.htm)
says it is "anybody's guess" why the Bodo skull was defleshed:
"Interestingly, we also begin to pick up evidence for the intentional
defleshing of human remains, as evidenced, for example, by stone tool cut-
marks on the forehead and within the orbit of the Homo heidelbergensis
cranium from Bodo. Whether this scalping indicates cannibalism (which
seems a little unlikely) or some other ritual behavior is anybody's guess."
(Tattersall I., "The Fossil Trail," 1995, p244)
GM>Furthermore,
>we are left with the very real possibility that, whatever species of
>hominid the Bodo skull represents, this species' social behavior included
>some kind of mortuary practice.
Tattersal in the quote above thinks the Bodo part-cranium is Homo
heidelbergensis. Nelseon says its classification is "murky" and it could be
"H. erectus" or "archaic sapiens":
"Discovered in 1976 in northeast Ethiopia, in the general area where Lucy
was found (see Chapter 14), is an incomplete cranium (Bodo) dating from
the Middle Pleistocene Like Broken Hill, to which it has been compared,
the skull displays a mixture of H. erectus and more modern features.
Bodo's classification is also murky. It has been called H. erectus and also
archaic sapiens; i.e., transitional between H. erectus and a.m. humans.
(Nelson H. & Jurmain R., "Introduction To Physical Anthropology," 1991,
p505)
GM>"At present, the Bodo skull represents the oldest example of any hominid
>giving special treatment to the body or skeleton of a comrade. Even if
>this was not a widespread activity for this hominid, the Bodo skull and the
>Krapina and Shanidar Neandertal skeletons raise the possibility that tow
>distinct, non-sapiens species of Homo had had rituals and cultural
>practices that we have assumed are only within the capacity of members of
>our own species." ~ Jeffrey H. Schwartz, What the bones Tell Us, (New
>York: Henry Holt, 1993), p. 19
There is no evidence that this was necessarily "giving special treatment to
the body or skeleton of a comrade". Scalping is practiced by Homo sapiens
on *enemies*:
"Scalping, cutting and tearing the skin of the scalp from an enemy, either
alive or dead. The severed scalp was believed to bestow on the victor the
power of the victim and frequently served as a trophy. Scalping was
practiced in Europe by the ancient Visigoths and Franks and in Asia by the
Scythians. Among American Indians it was originally limited to a small area
of the eastern U.S. and in the lower Saint Lawrence River region of
Canada. During the French and Indian War, when the French offered
bounties for British scalps, and the British retaliated by offering bounties
for French and Indian scalps, many Indian tribes adopted the practice."
"Scalping," Microsoft (R) Encarta. Copyright (c) 1993 Microsoft
Corporation. Copyright (c) 1993 Funk & Wagnall's Corporation
GM>"A cranium from Bodo, Ethiopia, belonging to Homo heidelbergensis displays
>diagnostic stone tool cut marks around the eye sockets, on the cheekbone,
>on the forehead, and on the top and back of the cranium. It shows no sign
>of chewing by carnivores. Because the bone had not begun to heal around
>the grooves sliced into it and because the marks pass under the rock matrix
>sticking to the skull, the cut marks were made either while this hominid
>lived or just after he died. Around 600,000 years ago, this individual was
>intentionally defleshed, in the earliest such incident known. But whether
>the butcher ate any of this flesh cannot be answered." ~ Donald Johanson
>and Blake Edgar, From Lucy to Language, (New York: Simon and Schuster,
>1997), p. 93
Tattersall observes that "dating of most of these finds is imprecise" but
dates Bodo Man more recently "in the...general time range of 400-200 kyr
ago":
"At least one highly distinct species of this kind is known worldwide; this is
Homo heidelbergensis, represented by fossils from sites as far apart as
Kabwe in Zambia, Bodo Ethiopia, Arago in France, Petralona in Greece,
and (probably) Dali in China. Dating of most of these finds is imprecise, but
in the same general time range of 400-200 kyr ago we also find (in addition
to late-surviving H. erectus) fossils such as those from Ndutu and
Steinheim, whose morphology does not fit comfortably within H.
heidelbergensis." (Tattersall I., "The Fossil Trail," 1995, p243)
GM>Now lest anyone think that this is something that modern humans don't
>engage in, (i.e. the defleshing of human bones) medieval monasteries are
>filled with bones of monks, primates and saints whose bones were treated
>EXACTLY as those of the 600,000 Bodo man. On the same page of Johanson and
>Edgar is a discussion of one even earlier possible defleshing of bones at
>780,000 years ago from the Gran Dolina near Atapuerca, Spain.
In the case of Bodo Man, we are talking about *17* claimed cutmarks on a
part-cranium:
"There are several interesting points associated with Bodo. Some evidence
suggests that animals were butchered at the site. Acheulian tools (see Fig.
17-5c) are associated with several hippopotamus skeletons, and cutmarks
are found on the human skull (Conroy et al., 1978). White (1986)
examined the skull and counted 17 cutmark areas. These are located in the
interorbital area, on the supraorbital torus, cheek bones, and on the
posterior parietals. White believes this argues "for a patterned intentional
defleshing of this specimen by a hominid(s) with (a) stone tool(s)" (White,
1986, p. 508). That is to say, Bodo was scalped, and this is the earliest
solid evidence for deliberate defleshing (see Fig. 17-6, a and b)." (Nelson
H. & Jurmain R., 1991, p505)
Glenn concludes citing no evidence at all that these 17 cutmarks on the
Bodo part-cranium are "EXACTLY" the same "as those on the "bones of
monks, primates and saints" in "medieval monasteries".
Even if they were the "exactly" the same (which is unlikely considering the
medieval monks no doubt used steel knives), it does not follow that the
*motives* were the same. Scalping a monk in a mortuary ritual in AD 1276
may look something like scalping General Custer in a battlefield in AD
1876, but the *motives* are entirely different! Assuming that the motives
of a *different species* Homo heidelbergensis in BC 400,076 are the same
as either is a bit too much of a long bow to draw!
GM>No longer is it the case that modern humans or Neanderthals are the first
>people who treated their dead specially.
The question-begging term "people" is noted! Glenn assumes what he sets
out to prove. If Homo heidelbergensis were "people" then there would be
no need even to produce evidence that they "treated their dead specially."
If they were "people" we could just assume it, becuase were are "people"
and we treat our dead specially.
But in fact there is no evidence from the cuts on the Bodo part-cranium
that the owner was a) "dead" when he was scalped; or b) that he was
"treated...specially", ie. in the sense of a mortuary ritual. The Bodo Man
could just as easily been scalped by his *enemies*.
Steve
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Perth, West Australia v "Test everything." (1Thess 5:21)
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Group
On Tue, 11 Aug 1998 21:28:37 -0500, Glenn R. Morton wrote:
GM>Only humans bury their dead and engage in mortuary practices. The
>following is the oldest proven case of human burial and it is very old. Two
>citations for this activity.
There is no evidence in my anthropology books or presented by Glenn that
indicates that Bodo Man was buried, and it may not be as old as Glenn
claims (see below).
Also, Glenn as usual plays on the word "human" to make his case that
Adam was a "Homo habilis or Australopithecine":
"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)
But Donald Johanson whom Glenn quotes below to support his case,
admits that anthropologists have no clear set of physical criteria as to what
is "human":
"In fact, how did one even define a human? It may seem ridiculous for
science to have been talking about humans and prehumans and
protohumans for more than a century without ever nailing down what a
human was. Ridiculous or not that was the situation. We do not have, even
today, an agreed-on definition of humankind, a clear set of specifications
that will enable any anthropologist in the world to say quickly and with
confidence, `This one is a human; that one isn't.'" (Johanson D.C. & Edey
M.A., "Lucy The Beginnings of Humankind," 1982, pp103-104)
and indeed on evolutionary physical criteria alone Johanson admits it
cannot be decided where humanness begins:
"There is never a clean break in a line of evolutionary descent. An
australopithecine mother never gives birth to a human son. There will be a
period during which both mother and son will have such a blurry mixture of
traits that assigning them to either species will be almost impossible. If one
could assemble a complete series of mother-son-mother-son skeletons
covering a couple of million years of time and in the process going from
something that unmistakably was not human to something that
unmistakably was, one would be hard pressed to place a finger on the
approximate spot - let alone the exact spot - where the crossover to
humanness took place." (Johanson D.C. & Edey M.A.," 1982, p107)
Alan Walker, the discoverer of the Homo erectus skeleton called
"Nariokotome boy", believes that being fully linguate is the determining
criteria for fully humanity and that this was "a very recent acquisition":
"In my mind, these varied lines of evidence - anatomy, archaeology and
genetics - all point to a single conclusion. True language seems to me to
have been a very recent acquisition, one that just precedes and enables the
evolution of anatomically modern humans and fully modern behaviors....
(Walker A., & Shipman P., "The Wisdom of Bones: In Search of Human
Origins," 1996, p234)
Because Homo erectus was speechless,Walker had had to change his mind
and admit that Homo erectus was not fully human:
"Homo erectus was speechless, illinguate. Not only does this conclusion
contradict the accepted wisdom that language acquisition demarcates the
origin of the genus Homo, it leaves me with a haunting and novel image of
the Nariokotome boy. Here was a young man, tall, black, lean, and
muscled, thoroughly adapted to his environment. He made tools that,
although crude, represented a substantial advance over those of his
predecessors and he made these tools according to a distinct and repetitive
plan, using deliberate techniques. He lived in a group with strong social
ties, one that nurtured helpless infants and nourished their mothers. He and
his kind were very successful in obtaining high-quality foods, almost
certainly by hunting, so successful that the evolution of big brains and large
bodies could occur. The boy's species, Homo erectus, was perhaps the
cleverest that had yet walked the face of the earth. Long-legged and
immensely strong, this species strode out of Africa. They were such
effective predators that they could invade and colonize most of the Old
World at a rate that appears virtually instantaneous to our modern dating
techniques: less than a hundred thousand years to get from Africa to Java,
not by deliberate migration but by simple population expansion, year after
year. All of this looks and sounds so human, and yet...and yet the boy
could not talk and he could not think as we do. "(Walker A., & Shipman
P., 1996, p234. My emphasis)
Indeed, Walker says that Homo erectus was just a non-human animal:
"For all of his human physique and physiology, THE BOY WAS STILL
AN ANIMAL - A CLEVER ONE, A LARGE ONE, A SUCCESSFUL
ONE - BUT AN ANIMAL NONETHELESS. This final discovery of the
boy's speechlessness had an enormous emotional impact on me. Over the
years that had passed since Richard, Kamoya, and I had first excavated his
bones, I had thought I was growing to know the boy, to understand him, to
speak his language, metaphorically. I grew fond of his form; his face took
on the familiarity of a member of the family or an old friend. I could almost
see him moving around the harshly beautiful Turkana landscape, at a
distance looking enough like the Turkana people to be mistaken for human.
He did this, I would think, he knelt there to scoop up water or crouched
behind a bush like this one to stalk an antelope. But then, as I approached
him closely, preparing mentally to hail him and at last make his
acquaintance in person, it was as if he turned and looked at me. In his eyes
was not the expectant reserve of a stranger but that deadly unknowing I
have seen in a lion's blank yellow eyes. He may have been our ancestor,
BUT THERE WAS NO HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS WITHIN THAT
HUMAN BODY. HE WAS NOT ONE OF US." (Walker A., & Shipman
P., 1996, pp234-235. Emphasis mine)
In another place Walker clarifies his thinking that "being fully human is
predicated upon being linguate":
"But for me the most telling discovery revolved around language. I had
never anticipated that Homo erectus would prove illinguate. Not until Ann
MacLarnon's analysis of the vertebral column and the stunning new
evidence of brain function derived from PET scans undermined the
credibility of language in early Homo did I see how intimately language is a
part of being human. At some deep level, BEING FULLY HUMAN IS
PREDICATED UPON BEING LINGUATE." (Walker A., & Shipman P.,
1996, p238. My emphasis)
Therefore Walker concludes that Homo erectus was "was profoundly in-
human":
"This meant that the boy my colleagues and I spent so many years
discovering and analyzing WAS PROFOUNDLY IN-HUMAN. He was
large, he was strong, he was a toolmaker, a hunter, and an intensely social
animal adapted to a rigorous, active life in the tropics. BUT HE WAS NOT
HUMAN, DID NOT THINK LIKE A HUMAN, AND COULD NOT
SPEAK. Had I met him in the flesh, we would be unable to communicate,
not because we had no language in common - the problem I experienced in
meeting the Turkana woman described in the prologue - but because we
had no perception in common. The truth is that language is as much a
perceptual mechanism, a means of ordering and Understanding the world,
as it is a communicative device. To me the boy is a creature of human size
and appearance with superhuman strength and a peculiar combination of
tender sensibilities and a practiced, predatory cunning, an almost human
whose perception of the world is utterly alien and incomprehensible. This
image fills my mind with questions I cannot yet answer. He was an
extraordinary combination of the familiar and the strange, an animal that
looked and walked and sweated and cared as we do, yet one who could not
talk and whose ability to make mental maps of his world was extremely
limited." (Walker A., & Shipman P., 1996, p238. Emphasis mine.)
This fits with contemporary evangelical Christian theology's identification
of humanness with being able to have a personal relationship with God:
"What is man? Yes, that is a most important question. And it is a question
to which the biblical revelation gives the best of answers. Let it be said for
the moment, however, that whatever it is that sets man apart from the rest
of the creation, he alone is capable of having a conscious personal
relationship with the Creator and of responding to him. Man can know God
and understand what the Creator desires of him. Man can love, worship,
and obey his Maker. In these responses man is most completely fulfilling
his Maker's intention for him, and thus being most fully human, since
humanity is defined in terms of the image of God." (Erickson M.J.,
"Christian Theology," 1985, p472)
which itself depends on the possession of a complex symbolic language:
"Man is distinguished by the presence and use of complex symbolism or,
more specifically, of language. While the making of tools and burial of the
dead point to a fairly sophisticated pattern of behavior, it is language which
makes possible the type of relationship with God which would be
experienced by a being created in the image of God. On this basis, one can
correlate the beginning of man in the full biblical sense with the evidence of
a great cultural outburst about 30,000 to 40,000 years ago." (Erickson
M.J., 1985, pp484-485)
GM>"In 1986 Tim White, of the University of California at Berkeley, and
>one of Don Johanson's collaborators on, for example, the 'Lucy' skeleton,
>published a detailed analysis of the scratch marks on the Bodo skull. He
>found marks around the orbital and nasal regions, on top of the brow
>ridges, and along the back of the preserved skull cap. White considered
>every possibility he could think of to account for the marks: natural
>weathering of the specimen, rodent or carnivore gnawing, even abrasion or
>trauma before the skull became buried in the ground. After ruling out all
>of these possibilities, White was left with the possibility that these
>scratches were, indeed, cut marks. And if , he reasoned, they were cut
>marks, it probably meant that the skull had been defleshed. In fact White
>found that the patterning and locations of these cut marks were virtually
>identical to cut marks taxidermists made while defleshing the chimpanzee
>and gorilla skulls housed in the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.
>White kept open the question of why the Bodo skull might have been
>defleshed, but it would certainly seem reasonable to assume that the
>defleshing had been done after the Bodo individual had dies.
Tattersal, in the very place that Glenn cites Bodo Man on his web page:
"Mankind is the only being who has been known to scalp his own kind and
the first evidence of this is from Bodo, Ethiopia from a skull dated at
300,000 years old. (Tattersall, 1995, p. 244)" (Morton G.R., "A Theory for
Creationists," 1996, http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/synop.htm)
says it is "anybody's guess" why the Bodo skull was defleshed:
"Interestingly, we also begin to pick up evidence for the intentional
defleshing of human remains, as evidenced, for example, by stone tool cut-
marks on the forehead and within the orbit of the Homo heidelbergensis
cranium from Bodo. Whether this scalping indicates cannibalism (which
seems a little unlikely) or some other ritual behavior is anybody's guess."
(Tattersall I., "The Fossil Trail," 1995, p244)
GM>Furthermore,
>we are left with the very real possibility that, whatever species of
>hominid the Bodo skull represents, this species' social behavior included
>some kind of mortuary practice.
Tattersal in the quote above thinks the Bodo part-cranium is Homo
heidelbergensis. Nelseon says its classification is "murky" and it could be
"H. erectus" or "archaic sapiens":
"Discovered in 1976 in northeast Ethiopia, in the general area where Lucy
was found (see Chapter 14), is an incomplete cranium (Bodo) dating from
the Middle Pleistocene Like Broken Hill, to which it has been compared,
the skull displays a mixture of H. erectus and more modern features.
Bodo's classification is also murky. It has been called H. erectus and also
archaic sapiens; i.e., transitional between H. erectus and a.m. humans.
(Nelson H. & Jurmain R., "Introduction To Physical Anthropology," 1991,
p505)
GM>"At present, the Bodo skull represents the oldest example of any hominid
>giving special treatment to the body or skeleton of a comrade. Even if
>this was not a widespread activity for this hominid, the Bodo skull and the
>Krapina and Shanidar Neandertal skeletons raise the possibility that tow
>distinct, non-sapiens species of Homo had had rituals and cultural
>practices that we have assumed are only within the capacity of members of
>our own species." ~ Jeffrey H. Schwartz, What the bones Tell Us, (New
>York: Henry Holt, 1993), p. 19
There is no evidence that this was necessarily "giving special treatment to
the body or skeleton of a comrade". Scalping is practiced by Homo sapiens
on *enemies*:
"Scalping, cutting and tearing the skin of the scalp from an enemy, either
alive or dead. The severed scalp was believed to bestow on the victor the
power of the victim and frequently served as a trophy. Scalping was
practiced in Europe by the ancient Visigoths and Franks and in Asia by the
Scythians. Among American Indians it was originally limited to a small area
of the eastern U.S. and in the lower Saint Lawrence River region of
Canada. During the French and Indian War, when the French offered
bounties for British scalps, and the British retaliated by offering bounties
for French and Indian scalps, many Indian tribes adopted the practice."
"Scalping," Microsoft (R) Encarta. Copyright (c) 1993 Microsoft
Corporation. Copyright (c) 1993 Funk & Wagnall's Corporation
GM>"A cranium from Bodo, Ethiopia, belonging to Homo heidelbergensis displays
>diagnostic stone tool cut marks around the eye sockets, on the cheekbone,
>on the forehead, and on the top and back of the cranium. It shows no sign
>of chewing by carnivores. Because the bone had not begun to heal around
>the grooves sliced into it and because the marks pass under the rock matrix
>sticking to the skull, the cut marks were made either while this hominid
>lived or just after he died. Around 600,000 years ago, this individual was
>intentionally defleshed, in the earliest such incident known. But whether
>the butcher ate any of this flesh cannot be answered." ~ Donald Johanson
>and Blake Edgar, From Lucy to Language, (New York: Simon and Schuster,
>1997), p. 93
Tattersall observes that "dating of most of these finds is imprecise" but
dates Bodo Man more recently "in the...general time range of 400-200 kyr
ago":
"At least one highly distinct species of this kind is known worldwide; this is
Homo heidelbergensis, represented by fossils from sites as far apart as
Kabwe in Zambia, Bodo Ethiopia, Arago in France, Petralona in Greece,
and (probably) Dali in China. Dating of most of these finds is imprecise, but
in the same general time range of 400-200 kyr ago we also find (in addition
to late-surviving H. erectus) fossils such as those from Ndutu and
Steinheim, whose morphology does not fit comfortably within H.
heidelbergensis." (Tattersall I., "The Fossil Trail," 1995, p243)
GM>Now lest anyone think that this is something that modern humans don't
>engage in, (i.e. the defleshing of human bones) medieval monasteries are
>filled with bones of monks, primates and saints whose bones were treated
>EXACTLY as those of the 600,000 Bodo man. On the same page of Johanson and
>Edgar is a discussion of one even earlier possible defleshing of bones at
>780,000 years ago from the Gran Dolina near Atapuerca, Spain.
In the case of Bodo Man, we are talking about *17* claimed cutmarks on a
part-cranium:
"There are several interesting points associated with Bodo. Some evidence
suggests that animals were butchered at the site. Acheulian tools (see Fig.
17-5c) are associated with several hippopotamus skeletons, and cutmarks
are found on the human skull (Conroy et al., 1978). White (1986)
examined the skull and counted 17 cutmark areas. These are located in the
interorbital area, on the supraorbital torus, cheek bones, and on the
posterior parietals. White believes this argues "for a patterned intentional
defleshing of this specimen by a hominid(s) with (a) stone tool(s)" (White,
1986, p. 508). That is to say, Bodo was scalped, and this is the earliest
solid evidence for deliberate defleshing (see Fig. 17-6, a and b)." (Nelson
H. & Jurmain R., 1991, p505)
Glenn concludes citing no evidence at all that these 17 cutmarks on the
Bodo part-cranium are "EXACTLY" the same "as those on the "bones of
monks, primates and saints" in "medieval monasteries".
Even if they were the "exactly" the same (which is unlikely considering the
medieval monks no doubt used steel knives), it does not follow that the
*motives* were the same. Scalping a monk in a mortuary ritual in AD 1276
may look something like scalping General Custer in a battlefield in AD
1876, but the *motives* are entirely different! Assuming that the motives
of a *different species* Homo heidelbergensis in BC 400,076 are the same
as either is a bit too much of a long bow to draw!
GM>No longer is it the case that modern humans or Neanderthals are the first
>people who treated their dead specially.
The question-begging term "people" is noted! Glenn assumes what he sets
out to prove. If Homo heidelbergensis were "people" then there would be
no need even to produce evidence that they "treated their dead specially."
If they were "people" we could just assume it, becuase were are "people"
and we treat our dead specially.
But in fact there is no evidence from the cuts on the Bodo part-cranium
that the owner was a) "dead" when he was scalped; or b) that he was
"treated...specially", ie. in the sense of a mortuary ritual. The Bodo Man
could just as easily been scalped by his *enemies*.
Steve
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Stephen E (Steve) Jones ,--_|\ sejones@ibm.net
3 Hawker Avenue / Oz \ senojes@hotmail.com
Warwick 6024 ->*_,--\_/ Phone +61 8 9448 7439
Perth, West Australia v "Test everything." (1Thess 5:21)
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