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evolution-digest Sunday, April 11 1999 Volume 01 : Number 1402
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Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 10:33:00 -0700
From: Pim van Meurs <entheta@eskimo.com>
Subject: RE: Origin of Life and RNA
Cool to see how research is advancing on the issue of origin of life. A tough
isssue indeed.
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Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 10:35:13 -0700
From: Pim van Meurs <entheta@eskimo.com>
Subject: RE: Question for Paul Nelson and Bill Dembski re Tufts lecture
Paul Nelson: The exchange with the secondary school teacher took up
several minutes, nearly becoming a mini-debate, and the
reporter compresses remarks made minutes apart. I said
to the teacher that I thought he would be intelligent
enough to explain design reasoning to his students,
I was always wondering what the "intelligent" in ID stood for :_)
but he protested this (as he did nearly everything else
Dembski and I said, alas). Neither Bill nor I would ever
say "It is not scientific," which appears to be implied by
the sentence fragment and ellipsis, as both of us are
persuaded that design is scientific, and, more to the point,
true. [The fragment may refer to something else being
"not scientific," of course, but it's hard to tell from the
limited context provided by the report.]
I wish that one could however make a scientific case for ID. How for instance
does one suggest to separate apparant design from ID ?
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Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 12:31:21 -0500
From: "Glenn R. Morton" <grmorton@waymark.net>
Subject: 800 kyr old human development pattern
Last week I rain into an article on the web that confirms once again
what I have been saying for the past few years, namely, that humanity
has been on this planet for at least 2.5 myr and probably longer. This
article is consistent with the evidence that Homo rudolfensis and Homo
erectus had a human, not ape, pattern of birth and development as long
ago as 2.5 myr.
(see http://www.calvin.edu/archive/evolution/199806/0242.html
and
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/birth.htm
Thus I disagree with Bromage's statement below--see G.R. Morton "Dating
Adam," PSCF June 1998 in press).
The widely popular view among Christians that humanity suddenly appeared
within the past 100,000 years has been falsified so many times that one
must wonder why Christian apologists don't do a better job of keeping
the laity and themselves informed of the latest developments in the
fields they claim expertise. I will document another sad case in another
post.
Christian apologists, unfortunately, have had a centuries long tradition
of ignoring the latest findings and never allowing observational data to
alter one's theological position. This, to me, is merely hiding one's
head in the sand. One gentleman I was having a conversation with last
week, claimed that he had to merely watch anthro from an outsider's
position and thus didn't feel comfortable making judgments about data
with which he was personally unfamiliar. If any reader feels this way,
then I would ask, Do you believe that God holds the unbeliever
accountable for the spiritual light they are told about and yet reject?
If so, why does God not equally hold us Christians accountable for
dealing with the scientific knowledge we are shown regardless of whether
or not it is within the confines of our field of expertise or regardless
of whether it supports or contradicts our theological position? To
ignore data simply because it is outside of our field of expertise is
not the honest thing to do.
Christians and christian apologists simply must begin to deal with data
that contradicts their preferred theological position. Here is the
article:
The Weekly Newsmagazine of Science
Volume 155, Number 14 (April 3, 1999)
Human Growth Displays Ancient Roots
By B. Bower
Three unfortunate youths who died about 800,000 years ago have provided
a hint that the prolonged period of childhood growth and development in
humans has surprisingly old origins.
This form of delayed maturation, accompanied by protracted child care
and a complex social life, is often regarded as a hallmark of modern
humans. However, the ancient youngsters, who may belong to a species
that preceded Homo sapiens, exhibit a tooth-development pattern similar
to that of people today, contends a research team led by paleobiologist
Jos M. Bermdez de Castro of the National Museum of Natural Sciences in
Madrid.
"This evidence supports the view that as early as [800,000 years ago],
at least one Homo species shared with modern humans a prolonged pattern
of maturation," the researchers report in the March 30 Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences.
Bermdez de Castro and his team found the fossils in a cave in northern
Spain's Atapuerca Mountains. They assign the specimens to a new species,
Homo antecessor, although other investigators go no further than placing
them in the Homo line (SN: 5/31/97, p. 333).
For each fossil individual, the scientists noted the relative maturity
of pairs of teeth from the front and back of the mouth. The team then
compared these data with dental measures obtained by other researchers
for living apes and humans, as well as for older fossils in the human
evolutionary family.
Only the Spanish fossils exhibited a pattern of dental development much
like that of modern humans, with relatively late eruption of many teeth,
the investigators say. The third molar in the Atapuerca specimens
reached maturity sooner than in current European populations, although
the timing of its appearance lies within the worldwide human range,
theynote.
Analyses did not allow for precise chronological age estimates for the
three fossil individuals. Two died in early adolescence and one as a
young child, according to the researchers. One of the adolescents
exhibited a tooth deformation caused by a severe childhood growth
disturbance.
Humanlike dental development in the Atapuerca fossils renders more
plausible an earlier report that they had brain-case volumes nearly as
large as those of modern H. sapiens, Bermdez de Castro and his
coworkers hold. The Spanish scientists had estimated this volume from a
cranial fragment believed to have come from one of the fossil teenagers.
"There's still some primitiveness in these teeth, but they also show the
delayed system of maturation seen in modern humans," comments
anthropologist F. Clark Howell of the University of California,
Berkeley. "The Atapuerca individuals seem to have crossed some kind of
growth-related Rubicon."
The new study provides "the first substantive evidence" for extended
individual development before the emergence of H. sapiens, adds
anthropologist Tim Bromage of Hunter College in New York City.
Intriguingly, major abnormalities from the growth disturbance that
afflicted one of the Atapuerca youngsters likely required the child to
receive extensive care from adults, in Bromage's view. "I find something
human in that," he remarks.
Neandertals, which lived from about 135,000 to 30,000 years ago, also
exhibited a modern human life-history pattern, presumably retained from
ancestors such as those at Atapuerca, Bromage says.
If the new findings indeed come from an earlier Homo species, they
challenge the assumption that prolonged individual development can serve
as a distinguishing trait of modern humanity, the New York researcher
asserts.
Much remains unknown about the pattern and rate of growth in ancient
human ancestors, according to Howell. Other Atapuerca remains, which
date to 300,000 years ago and belong to a Neandertal-like species (SN:
4/10/93, p. 228), include juvenile specimens that the researchers now
can subject to dental analyses, he says.
References:
Bermdez de Castro, J.M., et al. 1999. A modern human pattern of dental
development in Lower
Pleistocene hominids from Atapuerca-TD6 (Spain). Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences
96(March 30):4210.
Further Readings:
Bower, B. 1997. Spanish fossils enter human ancestry fray. Science News
151(May 31):333.
______. 1993. Neandertals take big step back in time. Science News
143(April 10):228.
Sources:
Jos M. Bermdez de Castro
Musco Nacional de Ciencias Naturales
Departamento de Paleobiologa
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientficas
J. Guitirrez Abascal 2
28006 Madrid
Spain
1999, Science Service.
**
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Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 12:46:06 -0500
From: "Glenn R. Morton" <grmorton@waymark.net>
Subject: Misrepresenting what science says
This week, I saw the new Connections, put out by Reasons to Believe. I
will merely cite the assertions of the article "Art's Own Big Bang
Affirms Special Creation," Connections, 1st Qtr 1999, p. 2. In this
article Hugh Ross claims,
"If the naturalists and Darwinists were right about the evolution of
humankind, we would expect both the quantity and the quality of human
artwork to increase gradually over time. New research, however, shows
that the opposite is the case. Anthropologists have discovered what they
call the 'big bang' of artistic expression. Previous to about 30,000
years ago, art appears to have been both rare and 'rough,' or
crude.'"(10) Such 'art' (if it can really be called that reflects the
expressive ability we see in some advanced mammalian and avian species.
After that date, art becomes suddenly ubiquitous and intricate, art that
only humans-spiritual creatures-can produce."
Reference 10 is to Tim Appenzeller, "Art: Evolution or Revolution,"
Science 282(1998):1451-1454. Far from proving the existence of an
artistic revolution, Appenzeller is discussing the current debate going
on in anthropological circles questioning the whole idea of an artistic
revolution. Appenzellar quotes anthropologists from both sides of the
debate. Ross does not inform his readers that this is what the article
is about and he acts as if this article only supports his position. For
Ross to act as if this article is a one-sided, conclusive piece about an
artistic explosion is pure mis-representation. I am outraged, appalled,
and saddened that such a misrepresentation of the article would appear
in a Christian apologetical work. Christians have a responsibility to
represent what is actually the case rather than seeing only what they
want to see. God WILL hold us accountable for such misrepresentations.
Here are some quotations from the original article and the introduction
to the special section. You judge if the article has been fairly
represented in Connections:
"To most archaeologists, both art and complex language are part of a
behavioral revolution that swept the Old World some 40,000 years ago.
But the evidence leaves room for debate. As Tim Appenzeller and
Constance Holden describe (pp. 1451 and 1455), a handful of sites and
artifacts, scattered widely in time and space, have convinced some
archaeologists that this was no revolution at all, and that well before
40,000 years ago, humans were already making art and speaking much like
us." Tim Appenzeller, Daniel Clery, and Elizabeth Culotta "Transitions
in Prehistory" Science, 282(1998):1441 also at
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/282/5393/1441
"Sometime around 250,000 years ago, an early human living on the Golan
Heights in the Middle East picked up a lump of volcanic tuff the size of
a plum and started scratching at it with a harder stone, deepening its
natural crevices. Not long afterward, a volcanic eruption buried the
soft pebble in a bed of ash, preserving it from erosion. A quarter of a
million years later, in 1980, archaeologists dug it up, and since then,
the pebble has been the object of rapt attention--far more, perhaps,
than it got when it was new. By chance or design, those long-ago
scratchings created what looks like a female figure--and a puzzle for
the archaeologists who study the beginnings of art." Tim Appenzeller,
"Art: Evolution or Revolution?", Science 282(Nov 20, 1998), p. 1451
Of the Berekhat Ram figurine, two former critics tried to disprove it
was made by humans and came to the opposite conclusion.
"It's extremely clear that it's humanly enhanced. It's definitely an
art object,' says Bahn. D'Errico and April Nowell of the University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, actually tested Marshack's claims by going
to the site and comparing the object with hundreds of other bits of
tuff. They, too, are persuaded that it is human handiwork. 'No other
pieces have this kind of modification,' d'Errioc says." Tim Appenzeller,
"Art: Evolution or Revolution?", Science 282(Nov 20, 1998), p.
1453-1454,
To fairly represent d'Errico's position, he does not call it art, but
does agree that it was modified by a human.
"As Richard Klein of Stanford University puts it, 'There was a kind of
behavioral revolution [in Africa] 50,000 years ago. Nobody made art
before 50,000 years ago; everybody did afterward.'
"But other developments have raised awkward questions about this 'big
bang' theory of art, as some critics call it, hinting that art and the
sophisticated cognitive abilities it implies may have a longer history.
After years of doubt, most archaeologists accept that the so-called
Berekhat Ram object from the Golan Heights is the work of human hands,
although there is no consensus about what-if anything-it means." Tim
Appenzeller, "Art: Evolution or Revolution?", Science 282(Nov 20, 1998),
p. 1451-1452,
**
"Perhaps most telling, many archaeologists now think of an array of
grooved teeth and other ornaments from a cave called the Grotte du
Renne, at Arcy-sur-Cure in central France, is the handiwork of
Neandertals. The age of the Arcy deposits is in dispute; most
archaeologists think they date to around 35,000 years, a time when
modern humans were already spreading into Europe and making stunning art
of their own. But the date could be as early as 45,000 years ago, before
modern humans arrived. To some researchers Arcy puts the lie to
arguments that nonmodern humans like the Neandertals did not-perhaps
could not-- express themselves in art and ornament. It supports the view
that artistic habits going back tens or even hundreds of thousands of
years could have prepared the ground on which the ice age explosion took
place." Tim Appenzeller, "Art: Evolution or Revolution?", Science
282(Nov 20, 1998), p. 1452
**
In last April's Journal of Archaeological Science, Stanley Ambrose of
the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), describes his
excavations at a rock-shelter in the Rift Valley of Kenya, at a site
called Enkapune Ya Muto. There he found a cache of beads made of
ostrich eggshell, blanks, and shell fragments. Some of the beads, says
Ambrose, 'are shiny, obviously worn, as if someone was wearing them as
part of some ornament.' They must have served as symbolic markings, he
says, 'expressing an awareness of the self and how to enhance it.'"
"It's the same phenomenon seen in Europe 38,000 years ago-but it may be
several thousand years earlier at Enkapune Ya Muto, says Ambrose, who
has carbon-dated the shells and come up with an age of at least 40,000
years. 'These early ostrich eggshell beads are perhaps the earliest
indicator' of symbolic behavior anywhere, say Klein. 'And it's very
important that they first appeared in Africa,' just as expected if the
crucial biological innovation had occurred there." Tim Appenzeller,
"Art: Evolution or Revolution?", Science 282(Nov 20, 1998), p. 1452.
**
"Most archaeologists agree with Mellars about the timing. But some note
that the Neandertal beads aren't direct imitations of what nearby modem
humans were making. The people at Arcy chose different kinds of animal
teeth and used different techniques to work them, which leads these
archaeologists to suggest that the Neandertals were drawing inspiration
from their neighbors rather than simply mimicking them making beads in
their own way, for their own cultural purposes.
"If so, the Arcy deposits could still have unsettling implications for
the idea that art, and the complex culture it implies, is unique to
modem humans. Says Chase, "If this really is symbolism, and taken at
face value it is, then you've got Neandertals who were capable of the
same symbolic behavior as modem humans." Klein is also mystified. "I
want the Neandertals to be biologically incapable of modem behavior. So
[the Chatelperronian] is a real problem." Tim Appenzeller, "Art:
Evolution or Revolution?", Science 282(Nov 20, 1998), p. 1454
**
"At a 250,000-year-old rock-shelter site in the Czech Republic,
archaeologists found a bed of ochre and the rubbing stone used to make
the powder-not art, but perhaps the means of making it. And there is
the 250,000-year-old carving from Berekhat Ram, which Marshack has
studied closely and interprets as the figure of a woman with an
elaborate coiffure." Tim Appenzeller, "Art: Evolution or Revolution?",
Science 282(Nov 20, 1998), p. 1453
While the article didn't mention it, I would also cite Mary Leakey's
discovery of a phonolite pebble which had a carved face on it. It is
reported in the Olduvai Gorge reports she wrote. It dates at 1.6 myr
ago.
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End of evolution-digest V1 #1402
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