Reflectorites
On Thu, 15 Jun 2000 21:20:57 -0000, glenn morton wrote:
GM>For those who may not have heard, I am moving to Scotland. I have left most
>of the lists I was on because I don't have time to go through about 100
>e-mails a day and still get done what I want to do before my move. I am
>trying to catch up on my note taking before I go to Scotland. I may do a few
>more posts like this before I actually move. I won't respond to e-mails in
>reply to this.
Best wishes to Glenn in his new country. Scotland is an interesting country,
especially geologically.
[...]
GM> I am reading the book 'Fairweather Eden' by Michael Pitts and Mark
>Roberts. One of the things that is impressive in this book is the
>description of the life of Homo erectus circa 500,000 years ago at Boxgrove,
>England. They describe a site where 6 or 7 H. erecti sit around a dead horse
>and fashioned stone tools so that the horse could be butchered. It was an
>amazingly human sort of thing to do. In this post, the thing I want to
>emphasize is the invention of a particular style of stone tool manufacture
>by Homo erectus. It was this manufacturing technique that allowed modern
>humans to improve tremendously their skill in making stone tools. And it was
>this increase in technology that led eventually to the Neolithic and
>eventually to the Agricultural revolution.
Glenn continues with his `Homo erectus was human, we are human,
therefore Homo erectus is human just like us' style of argument. The fallacy
is in the ambiguous use of the word "human". Homo erectus was a member
of the genus Homo, so he must, in some sense, be "human". But whether
he was "human" in the same full sense that we apply to our fellow human
beings today, is another matter.
Walker, who found one of the most complete H. erectus fossils, the
Nariokotome boy, eventually reluctantly concluded that H. erectus could
not talk as modern humans do:
"Ann had also discovered that the main difference between humans and all
other primates was an enlargement of the human spinal cord in the region
that controls the lower neck, arms, and thorax, which, fortuitously, was the
very region that was best represented in the boy's remains. Ann confirmed
that the boy's spinal cord was genuinely small in the thoracic region, as I
had suspected That made him anatomically like apes and monkeys and
unlike humans...In other words, the extra nerve cells controlled the
intercostal and abdominal muscles of the thorax. ... The intercostals are a
set of muscles each of which runs between one rib and its neighboring
(higher or lower) fibrin an arrangement that resembles the webbing
between the toes of aquatic animals. These muscles help the rib cage work
as a coordinated unit in breathing, so that all the ribs rise and fall, and move
outward and inward together. The intercostal muscles also contract every
time you breathe in and out; they keep the wall of the chest firm so it
doesn't balloon outward like an air mattress. Overall, then, the intercostal
muscles function to coordinate and control inspiration (breathing in) and
expiration (breathing out) very precisely. Abdominal muscles have a similar
function of maintaining the integrity of the body wall during breathing.
Because babies have such small chests, their abdominal muscles are used
much more than the intercostals during breathing... I considered the
implications. ... It is obvious that human speech is more than just making
isolated sounds, which any animal can do. Humans have to get the
intonation and the phrasing of the sentence right as well as the
pronunciation of the words; otherwise that funny mechanical voice
produced by computers emerges. If Homo erectus did not need the
innervation to control breathing properly, that implied that the boy could
not talk." (Walker A. & Shipman P., "The Wisdom of Bones," 1996,
p.211)
and therefore was not fully human:
"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. 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, p.235)
GM>Most people unfamiliar with flint knapping (the making of stone tools) think
>that stone tools are primitive; that they are made by stupid people; and
>that they are easy to make. Nothing could be further from the truth--this is
>true even for the very earliest KNOWN stone tools made by men 2.6 million
>years ago. Much planning and foresight goes into the manufacture of a stone
>tool. One must plan each blow so that an acute angle is formed which will be
>suitable for cutting. The slightest screw up and the tool is no good. To
>make a stone tool one needs a hammer (which strikes the stone being turned
>into a tool). Often this hammer is another stone. But with the most
>sophisticated stone tools, like acheulean hand axes, arrow heads etc, one
>needs a soft hammer like bone or antler. These soft hammers each chip the
>stone in a unique fashion, leaving a flake whose shape can be analyzed to
>determine what kind of hammer produced it.
No one AFAIK says that "stone tools...are made by stupid people",
i.e. in a derogatory sense. But it does not follow that the ability to
make stone tools was a mark of a *fully* human intelligence. And I
disagree that it takes much "planning and foresight". What it mainly
is *skill*. And even then, archaeological toolmaking sites are littered
with the evidence of failed attempts at making stone tools. Making
stone tools is a craft skill that could have been learned by trial and
error over millennia and passed on by example. It would not even
need a fully human language to do so. Being good with one's hands
is not necessarily the same as being good with one's mind. Einstein
might have been unable to make a flint tool, whereas a tradesman
could. I remember reading that Bertrand Russell was absolutely
*hopeless* at doing anything that required manual skills.
[...]
GM>This planning ability--the ability to see a future need is far beyond the
>abilities of a chimpanzee. They can't seem to plan more than 20 minutes in
>advance. As I pointed out in my article 'Planning Ahead: Requirement for
>Moral Accountability,' in Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith,
>51(1999):3:176-180, such ability to foresee consequences is absolutely
>essential for moral accountability. If we are to be morally accountable, we
>need to be able to see the consequences of our actions far into the future.
>The soft hammers used at Boxgrove show that Homo erectus was capable of
>planning actions at a future time.
That Homo erectus could plan "far beyond the abilities of a
chimpanzee", which in turn can only "plan more than 20 minutes in
advance", can be conceded without conceding much. The hominids
could have been much smarter than the apes, and still be far
below humans. Our major problem is we do not appreciate just
how smart we are. We think that by training a chimp for 20 years to
perform a few simple feats of sign language shows that we are not
that far in front of chimps. But it shows the exact opposite! A human
child at the age of *two* acquires effortlessly with no training,
what an adult chimp can only do with expert training. And then the
chimp stops there, while the human child moves on, to maybe one
day create music like Tchaikovsky, or poetry like Shakespeare, or
theories like Einstein.
GM>1.5 million years ago, Homo erectus was capable of planning his life days in
>advance. They made hundreds of rare obsidian handaxes at one place and then
>carried them 100 kilometers away so that they could be used at Gadeb,
>Ethiopia! That is a 3-4 day march carrying heavy obsidian handaxes. A
>creature with this type of temporal planning would be capable of
>understanding the moral command "You are free to eat from any tree in the
>garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and
>evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."
It does not follow that tools made at one place, which finished up at
another, were made with that end in mind. They could have been made one
by one for immediate purposes, and reached another distant place by trade,
years later. Even if they were made in one place for another, it would not
be evidence of high intelligence.
And it also does not follow that being able to make stone axes, and trade
them for other things, means that one could even *talk*, let alone
understand moral commands.
Glenn's claim used to be that the Flood was the infilling of the
Mediterranean 5.5 million years ago, and therefore Adam and Noah was an
Australopithecine or Homo habilis. So Glenn's strategy was a sort of
`domino effect' argument, something like:
1) produce evidence for the highest achievement that Homo erectus was
capable of 1.5 million years ago, give it the best spin possible, and then
compare it with the lowest achievements that modern humans are capable
of, and then declare that H. erectus was "human";
2) repeat the same steps comparing H. erectus with H. habilis and H.
habilis with Australopithecus;
3) declare that Australopithecus was "human" just like modern humans are
"human".
The problem with this comparing the minimum of one above, with the
maximum of one below, is that there is no place to stop. One would have
to concede that chimps are human, and would end up, as Bertrand Russell
observed, with advocating "votes for oysters":
"There is a further consequence of the theory of evolution, which is
independent of the particular mechanism suggested by Darwin. If men and
animals have a common ancestry, and if men developed by such slow
stages that there were creatures which we should not know whether to
classify as human or not, the question arises: at what stage in evolution did
men, or their semi-human ancestors begin to be all equal? Would
Pithecanthropus erectus, if he had been properly educated, have done work
as good as Newton's? Would the Piltdown Man have written Shakespeare's
poetry if there had been anybody to convict him of poaching? A resolute
egalitarian who answers these questions in the affirmative will find himself
forced to regard apes as the equals of human beings. And why stop with
apes? I do not see how he is to resist an argument in favour of Votes for
Oysters. An adherent of evolution should maintain that not only the
doctrine of the equality of all men, but also that of the rights of man, must
be condemned as unbiological since it makes too emphatic a distinction
between men and other animals." (Russell B., "History of Western
Philosophy," 1961, pp.697-698)
GM>Look at what else H. erectus invented. I will post part of my web
>page, chron.htm, to give you the dates. But H. erectus invented (and we
>still use) woodworking, engraving, clothing, jewelry, art, masonry, altars,
>counting, spears, boomerangs, mineral collection, the domestication of the
>dog, boats, fire, bedding, tanning hides, ritual dismemberment of human
>remains, the artistic portrayal of the human face, and huts for habitation
>With a list like that, if we had to pay on patents for those inventions, we
>would all be poor indeed. Here is the list (a.H. s.= archaic Homo sapiens):
I thank Glenn for this handy summary. But some of these are disputed, and
others are open to alternative interpretations. But even if they are all
conceded, they do not show that Homo erectus was *fully* human in the same
sense that modern humans are. Indeed Glenn's own date ranges indirectly show
this:
GM>240 kyr upper Paleolithic blade tools Kenya ?
>
>[...]
>
>2.0 MYR Oldest Toothpick use Ethiopia Homo
>erectus
This shows that H. erectus took 1.76 my to get from making a "toothpick"
to making "upper Paleolithic blade tools", and then went extinct. Yet as
Wilcox points out, modern humans appeared only 120 kya, and by the end
of that time they were walking on the moon!:
"Once modern humans became established there was a veritable explosion
of innovation. Painting, engraving, and tool manufacture changed so
quickly that archaeologists divide the periods from thirty- five thousand
years ago to ten thousand years ago into six separate cultural periods, each
with its own style of technology and innovations. David Wilcox points out
that by contrast the Neandertal populations displayed cultural stasis like
Homo erectus. The Mousterian tool culture that they developed appeared
around one hundred thousand years ago and remained basically uniform
across Europe for sixty-five thousand years. The modern humans that
apparently replaced the Neandertals were, in less than half their tenure,
walking on the moon!" (Templeton J.M. & Herrmann R.L., "Is God the
Only Reality?", 1994, p.135)
GM>So the next time you use a toothpick, remember your ancestor, H. erectus who
>invented it.
There is a bird that has learned to use a pointed stick to dig out grubs. So
that Homo erectus invented a toothpick is no big deal.
And while I have no problem if Homo erectus was my "ancestor", there is
no conclusive evidence that he, or any of the hominids, was an actual
ancestor of modern humans:
"When we consider the remote past, before the origin of the actual species
Homo sapiens, we are faced with a fragmentary and disconnected fossil
record. Despite the excited and optimistic claims that have been made by
some paleontologists, no fossil hominid species can be established as our
direct ancestor. " (Lewontin R.C., "Human Diversity", 1995, p163)
Glenn may be confusing *sharing* a common ancestor with *being* an
actual ancestor?
GM>And he doesn't even ask for royalties. And in spite of this,
>many Christian apologists want to say that he was not human and that
>spiritual man could not be older than 60,000 years. Why? I don't know.
Glenn is still giving the impression that the "Christian apologists" he cites
are the only mainstream views on this topic. But as I have pointed out
before, there are others like the theologians Kidner and Stott, from the
evangelical Anglican tradition, are proposing other options.
AFAIK Hugh Ross is the only "Christian apologist" who is trying to
reconcile the Biblical genealogies, by `stretching' them back "60,000 years"
to fit the findings of paleoanthropology:
"If the Genesis genealogies are anywhere from 10 to 80 percent complete,
as most conservative scholars suggest, the Adam of Eden lived between
7,500 and 60,000 years ago." (Ross H, "Searching For Adam", Facts &
Faith, Reasons To Believe: Pasadena CA, Vol. 10, No. 1, First Quarter
1996, p.4)
Personally I think Ross may be partly wrong in this program, but I applaud
his efforts in trying. I think he is basically on the right track (see below).
GM>I have never been able to get anyone to tell me what theologian determined
>that the Bible could accomodate a 60,000 year old Adam but fail to
>accommodate a 60,001 year old Adam! Does anyone here know of what theologian
>made that rather dubious claim and what is the reference?
IMHO Ross' argument is not about "60,000" or "60,001" years, but about
*orders of magnitude*. One could reasonably believe that a part oral/part
written history could extend back 10^3 (thousands) or even 10^4 (tens of
thousands) of years. But it gets harder to reasonably believe that it could
extend back 10^5 (hundreds of thousands) of years:
"Given the gaps in some biblical genealogies, the creation of Adam and Eve
could possibly be dated as far back as 60,000 years ago, less reasonably,
even earlier." (Ross H, "The Meaning of Art and Music", Facts & Faith,
Reasons To Believe: Pasadena CA, Vol. 10, No. 4, Fourth Quarter 1996,
pp.6,11)
Glenn used to want to extend it back 5.5 x 10^6 (*millions* of years).
My hypothesis is that the early chapters of Genesis (i.e. 1-11) are based on
real historical events, originally recorded by the first humans starting from
~100 kya, in pictographic (pre-written) form. This would explain the strong
pictorial style of the earliest chapters of Genesis. There is also good
evidence that the early chapters of Genesis were originally on clay tablets:
"Accordingly the present writer feels justified in following Wiseman in the
assertion that Genesis contains in the first thirty-six chapters a series of
tablets whose contents were linked together to form a roughly
chronological account of primeval and patriarchal life written from the
standpoint of a Mesopotamian cultural milieu.
1. The Eleven Tablets. Such a view is based upon the conviction that this
approach alone does the fullest justice to the literary phenomena of much
of Genesis, particularly in the light of what is now known regarding the
antiquity of writing, the diverse nature of literary communications in the
Near East during the second millennium B.C., and the special
characteristics of contemporary scribal techniques. The tablets that may be
isolated will be seen to have a title, a residuum of textual matter, and a
colophon, along with certain additional features to be noted subsequently.
The sources can be described briefly as follows:
Tablet 1: Gen. 1:1-2:4. The origins of the cosmos
Tablet 2: Gen. 2 :5-5:2. The origins of mankind
Tablet 3: Gen. 5: 3-6:9a. The histories of Noah
Tablet 4: Gen. 6:9b-10:1. The histories of the sons of Noah
Tablet 5: Gen. 10:2-11:10a. The histories of Shem
Tablet 6: Gen. 11:10b-11:27a. The histories of Terah ...
... The present writer is of the opinion that the foregoing classification of
material represents the genuine literary sources underlying the first thirty-
six chapters of Genesis." (Harrison R.K., "Introduction to the Old Testament",
1970, p.548)
But when they were translated into writing ca. 10,000 BC, they
inevitably reflected the Mesopotamian culture of the day, just like
our English Bible translations of the original Biblical languages
reflects our modern culture.
I believe that this reasonable hypothesis fits all the Biblical and
scientific facts concerning modern humans, and it is broadly in line
with where Hugh Ross' program is tending.
Steve
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"But as this conviction grew, something else grew as well. Even now it is
difficult to express this "something" in words. It was an intense revulsion,
and at times it was almost physical in nature. I would positively squirm
with discomfort. The very thought that the fitness of the cosmos for life
might be a mystery requiring solution struck me as ludicrous, absurd. I
found it difficult to entertain the notion without grimacing in disgust, and
well-nigh impossible to mention it to friends without apology. To admit to
fellow scientists that I was interested in the problem felt like admitting to
some shameful personal inadequacy. Nor has this reaction faded over the
years: I have had to struggle against it incessantly during the writing of this
book. I am sure that the same reaction is at work within every other
scientist, and that it is this which accounts for the widespread indifference
accorded the idea at present. And more than that: I now believe that what
appears as indifference in fact masks an intense antagonism. It was not for
some time that I was able to place my finger on the source of my
discomfort. It arises, I understand now, because the contention that we
owe our existence to a stupendous series of coincidences strikes a
responsive chord. That contention is far too close for comfort to notions
such as: We are the center of the universe. God loves mankind more than
all other creatures. The cosmos is watching over us. The universe has a
plan; we are essential to that plan." (Greenstein G., "The Symbiotic
Universe: Life and Mind in the Cosmos", William Morrow & Co: New
York NY, 1988, pp.25-26)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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