On Thu, 21 Sep 95 10:07:35 EDT Joe wrote:
JR>A number of statements have been made objecting to my claim that
>the fossil people described by glenn were just as human as you and I.
>Among the reasons given - no art-work, no farming, no written
>language, no complex language, no animal husbandry, no belief in the
>one true God - to name a few.
JR>Let's consider the Bushmen of the Kalihari. They don't farm; it
>is too dry for most if not all cultivatable crops they eat roots and
>tubers that grow wild.
The Bushmen of the Kalahari are a special case. The Kalahari Desert
doesn't support farming, so it is hardly fair to use this as a
diagnostic feature. The test would be if the Bushmen lived in a more
fertile environment, would they then farm?
In fact, the Bushmen are Hottentots and the latter do farm:
"The term Khosian is derived from the Hottentot roots...it is
therefore an apt portmanteau word to designate the indigenous South
African peoples known as Hottentots and Bushmen...The prevailing view
is that they are of the same genetic stock and differ only in their
cultures, the Hottentots being pastoral while the Bushmen are were
formerly all hunter-gatherers." ("Encyclopaedia Britannica",
15th edition, 1984, Benton, Chicago, 10:448)
JT>No animal husbandry;
>animals must be permitted to range far and wide to find food and
>water for themselves. If the Bushmen want meat, they follow the
>animals, otherwise it's back to eating roots and tubers when the
>animals leave.
I believe for the same reason, the animals
>must be permitted to range far and wide to find their own food and
>water. The Bushmen can move wwith them and hunt them or just eat
>roots when the animals move.
Again, this is just a function of the Bushmen's particular desert
environment. Their near relatives the Hottentots practice "animal
husbandry":
"The Khoikhoin, or Hottentots...were pastoral, grazing their
fat-tailed sheep and long-horned cattle over much of the drier,
western half of the subcontinent." ("Encyclopaedia Britannica",
10:440)
JR>I don't believe they have a written language.
No-one claimed a "written language" was diagnostic of Homo sapiens.
Many primitive tribes don't have a written language, as Wycliffe Bible
Translators would testify. The claim was having a complex language.
The point is that the Bushmen's Khosian language is complex and has
been reduced to writing by missionaries:
"About 10 Khosian languages have been recorded with various degress of
intensity by missionaries and linguists" ("Encyclopaedia Britannica",
1:231)
JR>Complex language??? Suppose the Bushmen had died out 1000 years
>ago. With no written language, how would we know whether or not it
>was complex?
Because we know they were Homo sapiens and we know that some H.
sapiens did have a "written language". The deduction would be that
the Bushmen had a complex language but there either it was
unwritten or that the writing materials had not survived.
H. erectus could not have had a complex language (written or
otherwise) because his skull reveals he did not have the requisite
brain areas for speech:
"Homo erectus was prevalent throughout Eurasia and Africa during the
Pleistocene Epoch, also called the Ice Age, because of the recurrent
cold weather that produced the glaciers of this epoch. Homo erectus
had an average brain size of 1,000 cc, but the shape of the skull
indicates that the areas of the brain necessary for memory, intellect,
and language were not well developed." (Mader S., "Biology", 3rd Ed.,
1990, Wm. C. Brown, Indiana, p435)
JB>No artwork?? So what!! How many of us produce art-work? If we
>don't does that make us less human? If most of my time is spent
>digging for roots, and hunting gazelles, I don't think I'm going to
>expend any energy on artwork.
This is a fallacy. Primitive hunter-gatherers (eg. Australian
aborigines) have plenty of time for art, and they produce it in
abundance. It is the women who dig for roots and the men hunt.
It does not normally take long for stone-age hunters to find enough
meat for the day.
The point is that H. sapiens hunter-gatherers produced abundant
and complex art. But H. erectus did not.
JR>No belief in the one true God? Bushmen have been known to have
>contact with Christian missionaries, come to a saving knowledge of
>the one true God and return back to their people and the typical
>nomadic Bushman lifestyle. If this had happened 1000 years ago and
>the Bushmen had died out since then, what evidence would we expect to
>find attesting to their belief in the one true God? None that i can
>think of; we wouldnt expect a Bible or other writings because they
>don't have a written language.
Joe is assuming that the Bushmen do not leave any tangible evidence
of their Christian worship. The scriptures have been translated into
10 of their languages (see above) so that should be "evidence...
attesting to their belief in the one true God"! :-)
JR>Now having said all that, are we prepared to conclude that the
>Bushmen are less human than you and I?? To answer "yes" is at least
>consistent with the the claim that glenn's fossil people were less
>than human. It is also the same type of belief that allowed the
>Nazis to justify their genocidal behavior....
I think what I have responded above shows that the Bushmen are
fully human. But it does not follow that "Glenn's fossils" were fully
human.
JR>I myself believe that the Bushmen are just as human as you and I,
>and this is consistent with my belief that Glenn's fossil people were
>just as human as you and I.
Joe is welcome to his personal beliefs. It is possible to minimise
the differences and emphasise the similarities, until H. erectus is
"just as human as you and I". However, I do not share his perception.
IMHO the evidence is of an emerging humanity which however
falls short of the full humanity of H. sapiens.
We will probably have to agree to differ.
God bless.
Stephen
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