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evolution-digest Tuesday, March 30 1999 Volume 01 : Number 1369
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evolution-digest Monday, March 29 1999 Volume 01 : Number 1367
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Date: Sun, 28 Mar 1999 13:08:18 -0600
From: "Glenn R. Morton" <grmorton@waymark.net>
Subject: News on fossil man
If this is a second time I apologize. It didn't appear on the archive
so I don't know if it went through
I have been offline for a month now and have this brief access. I won't
be able to respond to anyone since I will be offline again after this
tomorrow. And to the 50 people that left messages for me over the past
month, I am sorry that I haven't replied, but I just got them and won't
have time to reply before I lose touch with my provider here.
But there are two items which are of considerable importance in the
creation/evolution area which have come up over the past month and a
half since my last post in early February. I must confess disappointment
that no one posted anything about this on either of the lists! These
items have tremendous implications for where fossil man fits with the
Bible.
First, lots of Christians have taken the path of least resistance to the
anthropological issues and have identified Adam with the first member of
our species. I say path of least resistance because it is the position
which is least controversial. But as I have pointed out over the past 3
years this position totally ignores the very human activities which
earlier hominids performed. These include art, religion, the use of
tools to make other tools, murder, long range planning, the manufacture
of boats with which to cross the oceans etc.
Examples of this position include David Wilcox:
"Both cultural and physical evidence suggests an abrupt establishment of
the image about 100,000 years ago." ~ David L. Wilcox, "Adam, Where Are
You? Changing Paradigms in Paleoanthropology," Perspectives on Science
and Christian Faith , 48:2( June 1996), p. 94
Hugh Ross who mistakenly claims that this appearance occurred no earlier
than 60,000 years ago:
"Some differences, however, between the Bible and secular
anthropology
remain. The Bible not only would deny that the hominids were men, it
also would deny that Adam was physically descended from these hominids.
Even here, support from anthropology is emerging. New evidence
indicates that the hominid species may have gone extinct before, or as a
result of, the appearance of modern man. At the very least, 'abrupt
transitions between [hominid]species' is widely acknowledged." ~ Hugh
Ross, The Fingerprint of God, (Orange: Promise Publishing, 1991), p.
159-160.
And Stoner:
"More recently, some remains promoted as being 'fully modern humans'
have been found which date (using exotic methods) as early as about
100,000 years old. These fossils are presently classified as 'modern
men' although some of them are said to display some 'primitive
features.' The supplement (loose poster) to the February 1997 National
Geographic pictures one of these skulls. That skull is certainly
missing the brow ridges of the Neanderthals and of Archaic Homo, but the
eye and nose sockets look Neanderthal--not human.
"Are these fossils truly modern men, as has been claimed? Are
they
really some new creature which falls between Archaic Homo and modern
men? Or is something else entirely different going on? Although these
questions might keep both scientists and theologians up nights, they
really aren't that important to us right here; for the present purposes,
it is only important that man fits into his proper place in the
chronological order of God's creation." This much has been properly
established. The conventional date of 35-40,000 years for the age of
true men might be correct, but we must allow that it might be
substantially in error." ~ Don Stoner, A New Look at an Old Earth,"
(Eugene, Oregon: Harvest House Publishers, 1997), p. 168
All of these authors are resting spirituality upon what the man looks
like, i.e. spirituality only rests in the modern human form.
For the past 4 years I have been arguing that more ancient hominids were
spiritual in the same way modern humans are spiritual. I have based
that upon their behaviors inferred from the fossil record. For
references I would point to a evolution reflector note on Oct 11, 1995
entitled Another flood Problem in which I suggested that H. habilis was
human. In my critique of David Wilcox's article dated June 8, 1996 on
the ASA reflector, I argued for the humanity of Neanderthal. And on June
13, 1996 on the evolution reflector I said that humanity goes back at
least 2.7 myr ago. On 2/28/97 on the ASA list I wrote:
" I don't like either of these choices and would offer a Turing test for
ancient man. If he acts like us (or a technologically primitive version
of us, the I would include him in humanity. By this definition, Homo
erectus Archaic Homo sapiens and Neanderthal are all human."
I list those documentations because I want it clearly shown that my
theological/scientific position ANTICIPATED the following. Unlike other
positions my position does not have to react to the latest discovery by
immediately pooh poohing it which will be the modus operandi of many
Christian apologists. Why Christians would rather always be reacting to
new discoveries rather than smiling because we anticipated the results,
I don't understand.
Genetics has come to support my position. First, there is the discovery
that paternal mtDNA does get passed on to the offspring although it is
rare. So the mitochrondrial Eve, just might have been a mitochrondrial
Adam. But the real implication of this is that the last common
mitochondrial ancestor would have lived longer ago than 200,000 years.
If this is the case, then there were NO anatomically modern people on
the planet at that time and Eve was NOT an anatomically modern human.
This is reported on the web at:
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/Reuters19990310_1097.html
"WIRE:March 10, 0:02 p.m. ET
Eve is a lot older than previously
thought-studies
LONDON, March 10 (Reuters) - Eve, the mother of
humankind, is probably a lot older than
scientists had thought, researchers said on
Wednesday.
Evolutionary biologists, who used mitochondrial
to trace human evolution, had estimated that
the woman from whom all others descended lived between
100,000 and 200,000 years ago.
But two studies reported in the journal Proceeding of the
Royal Society discovered that using mitochondrial DNA to
track genetic lineage isn't as accurate as scientists had
assumed.
``Eve may be older than we thought,'' Adam Eyre-Walker of
the University of Sussex said in a telephone interview.
``We thought she lived about 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.
She might be anything up to twice as old now.'' "
The second item concerns a gene which iindicates that Africans and
non-Africans were two separate populations PRIOR TO THE ADVENT OF
ANATOMICALLY MODERN MEN. Here is the report:
Science & Ideas 3/29/99
ANTHROPOLOGY
Out of the African past
Modern DNA provides clues to a division
in the ancestral tree of human forebears
BY BRENDAN I. KOERNER
Backed by their analysis of a minuscule mutation on a single gene, two
researchers contend that the ancestors of Africans and non-Africans
split into separate populations long before modern man walked the Earth.
Population geneticist Jody Hey and anthropologist Eugene Harris estimate
that the subdivision took place nearly 200,000 years ago, predating the
earliest known fossils of modern Homo sapiens by about 70,000 years.
The Rutgers University-based duo, who published their results in last
week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, studied a gene
called PDHA1, involved in glucose metabolism, in 16 Africans, 19
non-Africans, and 2 chimpanzees. Hey and Harris first located 25 spots
in the gene's DNA sequence where their human subjects differed from
chimps. Assuming that the forerunners of humans and chimps became
separate species 5 million years ago, and that mutations occur at
regular intervals, the pair calculated that the PDHA1 gene in ancestral
hominids-Homo sapiens's early relatives-dates back 1.86 million years.
Differences. They next found a place on the gene where every non-African
test subject differed from every African, by virtue of a mutation that
altered a lone base pair of DNA. Extrapolating from their previous
estimate of the age of the gene's origin in hominids, they concluded
that Africans and non-Africans split into separate populations 189,000
years ago.
Hey and Harris caution that their results do not imply that the two
populations evolved into modern humans independently of one another.
Even if they were geographically separated, members of the two groups
probably intermingled, allowing genes to flow between them. Beneficial
genes would have been favored by natural selection, and ultimately the
two populations would have ended up virtually identical-a hypothesis
supported by the fact that racial groups differ very little at the
genetic level. Nor can much be inferred regarding the time line of human
migration. "I don't think our study says very much about where the
ancestral populations were," says Hey. "They could have both been in
Africa for some time after the split."
While welcoming the study as provocative, other researchers of human
evolution would like to see more proof. Genetic data rely on broad
assumptions about time scales and are thus subject to large margins of
error. In a commentary accompanying the PNAS article, Rosalind Harding,
a geneticist at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, England, hails the
work as "unusual" but adds that the estimate of when the split occurred
could easily be off by 100,000 years.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/990329/29afri.htm
This means that IF one postulates that Adam was subsequent to this
split, then either Africans or non-Africans are NOT descendants of
Adam. This is an awful choice full of bad theological consequences.
The way to avoid this problem is as I have suggested, believe that Adam
was very very ancient and that the ancient hominids were fully human, as
were their descendants, both Africans and non-Africans. In this way an
awful theological problem can be avoided. I would repeat my mantra of
the past 4 years: Current Christian apologetics is totally inadequate
and falsified by the anthropological data. It is time for Christians to
belly up to the theological bar and deal with it.
- ------------------------------
Date: Sun, 28 Mar 1999 23:03:15 +0100
From: Vernon Jenkins <vernon.jenkins@virgin.net>
Subject: Re: Evolution's Imperative
To the Forum:
Further to the matter of 1Ki.7:23-26 and the Hebews understanding of Pi:
(1) The ratio, inner circumference:outer diameter is given as 3 - the
number of 'divine perfection' - which also crops up in respect of the
supporting oxen and of the 300 knops on the rim. Further, the Temple (of
which this laver was part) had a cubic 'Holy of Holies'(1Ki.6:20), and
consisted of three parts: the Court, the Holy Place, and the Sanctuary.
We are further informed that it had three chambers round about
(1Ki.6:5,6).
It seems highly likely, therefore, that the laver's designer had chosen
to achieve this ratio so that the result would indeed glorify God. {As a
spin off, the very real problem of representing a fraction in the text
was also avoided).
(2) In our first encounter with the mensuration of the circle and
sphere, Pi is introduced as 'three and a seventh', or 22/7 - an
approximation adequate for many practical applications. As a matter of
interest, this may be expressed as the decimal fraction,
3.142857142857..., and we observe the 6-digit sequence,'142857',
repeated ad infinitum. Treating this as a number in its own right, we
unearth a gem of recreational mathematics, thus:
(a) It is rich in factors:
142857 = 3.3.3.11.13.37
In particular, 37, 407 and 999 are factors.
(b) The 5 numbers formed by rotating its digits are
multiples of itself, thus:
142857 = S, say = 1.S
428571 = 3.S
285714 = 2.S
857142 = 6.S
571428 = 4.S
714285 = 5.S
(c) Reversing its digits, and rotating as before, we find
that 37, 407 and 999 continue as factors of each of the six
numbers.
There is a direct link here with Genesis 1:1. Originally written in
Hebrew (a language with an alphabet of 22 letters), and comprising 7
words (which may be fairly read as numbers), we find:
(a) the verse total = 2701 = 37.73
(b) the 6th word = 407
(c) word 1 + word 3 = word 2 + word 4 + word 5 = 999
So an eye-catching 'recreation' emanating from a first approximation of
Pi leads to something rather significant. From many points of view, the
Bible's opening words are observed to be centred on the surest of all
earthly foundations - the natural numbers! Clearly, such 'coincidences'
do not evolve! However, there are many more. These are described at the
the URLs given below.
Vernon
Vernon Jenkins
[Musician, Mining Engineer, and Senior Lecturer in Maths and Computing,
the Polytechnic of Wales (now the University of Glamorgan), 1954-87]
http://homepage.virgin.net/vernon.jenkins/index.htm
http://www.compulink.co.uk/~indexer/miracla1.htm
- ------------------------------
Date: Sun, 28 Mar 1999 20:41:05 -0600
From: Bill Payne <bpayne15@juno.com>
Subject: Re: News on fossil man
Yes, that was the 2nd time. There must be something wrong w/ the
archives; I think James Mahafee mentioned the same thing.
Bill
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- ------------------------------
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 1999 00:26:10 -0800
From: Pim van Meurs <entheta@eskimo.com>
Subject: RE: Evolution's Imperative
Yawn.
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Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1999 02:30:31 -0800
From: "Donald Frack" <dcfrack@sowest.net>
Subject: Peppered Moths - in black and white (part 2 of 2)
Peppered Moths - in black and white (part 2 of 2)
I like to cover all bases when I make a point. Before submitting my own
evaluation of how Michael Majerus's book has been used (or abused), I
decided to contact him. I explained how his book is being used by
creationists, and asked a series of questions. These questions were either
rather rhetorical - already answered in his book - or points I was
suspicious of because the representation of Majerus's views didn't square
with his book. The latter case specifically refers to the interview Majerus
gave for the Telegraph article cited in the first half of this post.
This is, as they say, from the horse's mouth. ;-)
Don Frack
dcfrack@sowest.net
****** Response from Majerus regarding use of his book ************
Dear Don, thank you for your e-mail. I am afraid that I do not have much
time this week, but your interest and points do demand some brief reply.
Below, following each point I give a response. You may use these as you
see fit, but please do not put my e-mail address on any discussion group
listing.
>
>Could you tell me:
>
>Do you think Coyne's review accurately represents your book and the status
>of pepper moth studies?
No. The review in Nature does not reflect the factual content of the book,
nor my own views. Indeed, Coyne tries to put words in my mouth by saying I
should have used "perhaps" rather than probably, in relation to the
evolution of melanism in Biston involving pollution and bird predation. I
do not even say probably. Indeed, on page 155, I say that my view is that
bird predation is of primary import, possibly to the exclusion of
averything else.
>
>What do you think of Coyne's claims in the _Telegraph_ that "Dr
>Kettlewell's widely-quoted experiments are essentially useless." and that
>"There is a lot of wishful thinking and design flaws in them, and they
>wouldn't get published today."?
My response to this can be gleaned from reading Chapters 5 and 6. Bernard
was a first rate entomologist and scientist. His experiments were
meticulous and generally well designed. In my opinion, many of his
experiments were among the best that have been conducted on melanism and
bird predation. The 'design flaws' in some of the experiments, if you want
to call them that were primarily a result of practical expediency because
Kettlewell wanted to be able to see birds taking moths, and to film them.
The only real flaw may have been his resting site selection experiments,
where he MIGHT (we do not actually know) have used moths from different
populations (see pages 142-143).
>
>Since you make no mention of it in your book, did you say (in the
>_Telegraph_): Dr Majerus said: "He stuck them on low branches because he
>wanted to sit in his hide and watch them being eaten. They actually seem to
>rest in the shadows under branches, which makes even the black ones
>difficult to spot by birds."? This has been translated by
anti-evolutionists
>to mean either pinned or glued (neither of which are necessarily "faked" if
>true).
The Sunday Telegraph article was a terrible bit of journalism. Indeed, one
might say that it is a series of journalistic blunders. I spoke to Robert
for over half an hour. He had not read my book, so I had to explain many
details of the story to him. Even then, he got nearly everything wrong.
For example, the decline in carbonaria frequencies did not start in the
1950s. The two quotes attributed to me were both not quotes from me, and
both are factually wrong. Bernard released live moths onto tree trunks
where they were visible from his hide where he worked with Niko Tinbergen.
This is purely a case of experimental necessity.
The suggestion that Kettlewell ever 'faked' a result is offensive to his
memory. He was an honourable, good scientist who reported his findings
with honesty and integrity. I would suggest that before writing this type
of misleading and error strewn report, journalists should read the book
that has drawn attention to the matter.
>
>Coyne makes complaints to the _Telegraph_ about Kettlewell's rearings and
>"warming" specimens. I don't see what his problem is here, particularly
>since you indicate Kettlewell's moths behaved nicely by remaining in
place -
>as I expect resting moths would. Am I missing some important point Coyne is
>making, or is he nit-picking as I perceive him to be?
This is a spurious argument. All investigative interaction between man and
other organisms has the possibility that the observer influences the
organism to some extent. However, this does not negate the result as long
as one is aware of the possible influences when interpreting the results.
I see nothing wrong with the procedure.
>
>Lastly, I just received a creationist newsletter that claims associates of
>Kettlewell "admitted" that his famous photographs of the typica and
>carbonaria pepper moths on a tree were "faked" by gluing the specimens in
>place. Again, the complaint does not necessarily follow even if the
>description is true, but do you know if Kettlewell glued these specimens
>down?
The photographs are not part of science, they are educational aids to
illustrate the diffence in crypsis of the forms on different backgrounds.
I see nothing wrong in this. Most of the natural history films that appear
on our televisions, including those of our beloved Sir David Attenborough
involve considerable manipulation of organisms to enable footage to be
shot. As long as the behaviour film is what actually happens in true life,
and the organisms are in no way mistreated, there is nothing wrong with
this.
To end, may I put on record to you, that my view is that the rise and fall
of the carbonaria form of the peppered moth has resulted from changes in
the environments in which this moth lives. These changes have come about
as a result on changes in pollution levels which have altered the relative
crysis of the forms of this moth. The main, if not the only selective
factor that has lead to changes in the frequencies of the forms over time
is differential bird predation. The case of melanism in the peppered moth
IS ONE OF THE BEST EXAMPLES OF EVOLUTION IN ACTION< BY DARWIN"S PROCESS OF
NATURAL SELECTION that we have. In general it is based on good science and
it is sound.
To any objective person who wants to consider the evidence themselves, I
would suggest that they read the book, and if in doubt on any points, then
tract them back through the reference section to the original papers.
With my best wishes, and hoping that you can help at least some people
understand the true situation, rather than the distorted, subjective and
unscientific one that has been put forward in the last couple of weeks.
Michael Majerus
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