Review of "The Genesis Mystery"
Dr. Jeffrey Goodman's book "The Genesis Mystery" attempts to show
that humans could not have evolved by natural selection, and that
some form of outside intervention must be responsible for our most
distinctive characteristics.
Goodman says that:
"For example, while modern man's brain is not particularly
larger than that of his immediate predecessor, Neanderthal
man, most experts acknowledge that it represents a great leap
forward in its improved organization and its infinitely wider
range of abilities." (p. 17)
This is news to me. It is true that, for unknown reasons,
Neandertal culture does not display all the refinements of the Cro-
Magnons, but the same is true of many early modern humans and
archaic forms of Homo sapiens. While many have suggested that they
may have differed behaviorally from us, I doubt any modern
scientist claims that the Neandertal brain is visibly any different
from ours. Trinkaus and Shipman, in a statement that seems far
more representative of modern views, say:
"Anatomically, the Neandertals are quite similar to ourselves,
having a skeletal arrangement identical to ours, brains as
large as ours, and - to the best of our knowledge - the
capability to perform any act normally within the ability of
a modern human." (p412)
Goodman claims each hominid species has a discrete cranial range
that does not overlap with the range of the species supposed to
succeed it. As evidence, he cites (p180) a graph in a paper by
Cronin et al. (1981), which supposedly shows that the cranial
ranges of A. africanus, H. habilis, H.erectus, and H. sapiens do
not overlap. In fact the bars in the graph (except for H.sapiens)
do not represent the entire cranial range, but only 1 standard
deviation on both sides. Cronin et al's data, given in text below
the graph, clearly shows that ranges *do* overlap. For example,
the highest H. habilis value is 752, compared to 727 for the lowest
H. erectus value, and 1225 for the highest H.erectus value, well
into the normal human range, and well above the value of 1100 that
Goodman claims is the top of the H.erectus range.
A similar graph taken from a book by Birdsell is similarly claimed
by Goodman to show separate cranial ranges. Instead, it seems to
be a graph plotting *average* brainsize against time for various
species. The fact that these average values are separate tells us
nothing about widely they were spread about the mean. For example,
the lowest point of Birdsell's line for Homo erectus is about
900cc, even though many H. erectus skulls are known with values
smaller than that.
Goodman says:
"Needless to say, there is no evidence of this transition
[from H.erectus to H.sapiens sapiens] in the fossil record to
date." (p137)
Again, a statement that most scientists would find puzzling.
Fossils such as Petralona, Steinheim, Swanscombe, Saldanha,
Rhodesian Man and Arago are excellent candidates for this
transition. Goodman ignores most of these. Two he does mention,
Rhodesian Man and Saldanha, he claims are Homo erectus, in spite of
the fact that their brains sizes of about 1280 and 1250 cc are
above the maximum H.erectus brain size of 1225 cc, which is in turn
well above the value of about 1100 cc that Goodman claims is the
maximum H.erectus brain size. These skulls are intermediate
between H.erectus and H.sapiens in morphology, time, and brain
size, nicely filling the gap which Goodman claims exists between
them.
Goodman says that
"According to the traditional view, approximately 50,000 years
ago, at the start of the last 1 percent of hominid
evolutionary time, a natural miracle took place: Within a
critical period of 5,000 years - just one-seventh of 1 percent
of the time that has elapsed since the first-known
australopithecine's day - we get more significant evolutionary
change than in the other 99 6/7 percent of that time; ..."
(p186)
This statement can only be described as bizarre. Goodman gives the
impression modern humans are thought to have evolved from
Neandertals about 40,000 years ago, but even if that were true, the
statement would still be absurd. The differences between
Neandertals and modern humans are trivial; far, far less than those
between either of them and australopithecines. Even Homo erectus
is far more similar to modern humans than to australopithecines.
In fact, as Goodman was writing, newer finds were pushing back the
earliest dates for Homo sapiens sapiens to a little over 100,000 years.
Before that, there is a fair-sized group of intermediate fossils that
are (and were, even in the early 80's) assigned to H. sapiens, but
because of archaic features are not considered to be fully modern humans
(H. sapiens sapiens). These fossils include Arago, Petralona,
Steinheim, and Swanscombe and a number of others. Goodman ignores most
of them, but misrepresents at least one: he calls the Rhodesian Man
skull a late-surviving H. erectus, when it is, at 1280 cc., larger than
any erectus skull and falls nicely into the morphological and temporal
gaps which he claims separates H. erectus and H. sapiens.
Another oddity is Goodman's claim that the coexistence of two
species (specifically, H.erectus and H.sapiens) shows that they
cannot have an ancestor-descendent relationship. Many of the
examples he uses to illustrate this point are faulty, due to the
dubious dates and classification he gives for many fossils, but
even if they were valid, the argument fails because evolution does
not require an ancestor species to go extinct when a new species
evolves from it.
Goodman points out, correctly, that the brow ridges of Homo erectus
are more massive than those of H. habilis and H. sapiens and that
this constitutes an evolutionary reversal, but says that:
"Such a pattern of successive turnabouts in skull-wall
thickness and brow size stand in direct opposition to the
continuous developmental process Darwinians espouse." (p179)
However no Darwinian process requires that evolutionary trends
always continue in the same direction; natural selection can reverse
a trend if it is beneficial to do.
I think Goodman misrepresents modern views. For example, he cites
Lieberman and Crelin's attempts to reconstruct the Neandertal vocal
cavity as if it was universally accepted, when in fact the opposite
is much close to the truth. The reconstruction not only had severe
problems, but was based on a Neandertal skull (La-Chapelle-aux-
Saints) later found to have been incorrectly reconstructed by
Boule. (Trinkaus and Shipman, 1992)
There are many minor factual errors that show that Goodman is not
very familiar with the literature on human evolution. He says that
Olduvai Gorge is in Kenya (p. 50) when it is actually in Tanzania.
Pithecanthropus IV, discovered in the late 1930's, "was a nearly
complete skull", when it actually consisted of the back part of a
brain case and an upper jaw. Goodman calls the Homo habilis fossil
OH 7 discovered in 1961 by the nickname "Twiggy", when Twiggy is
the nickname of OH 24, discovered in 1968. He misunderstands the
mitochrondial Eve concept (p. 14), apparently believing that the
age of mitochondrial Eve and the appearance of Homo sapiens sapiens
coincide, when there is not necessarily any relationship between
the two. He calls the skulls found at Kow Swamp in Australia
H.erectus when they are modern humans
When I read the words "outside intervention" in the title of
Goodman's book, I flippantly guessed that he was either had a
religious agenda, or was an "ancient astronaut" nut. This turns
out to be fairly close to the mark, since Goodman's four options
are: God, spacemen, hitchhiking spirits, or "other". Contrary to
my expectations though, Goodman claims no committment to any of
these alternatives.
Even if there was no fossil evidence of the evolution from H.
erectus to H. sapiens, Goodman's theory would be unconvincing.
There is no justification given for his belief that the changes
involved in the origin of H.sapiens could not have been carried out
by natural selection. Even if the gap he claims exists really did
exist, it could be that the transitional forms had not yet been
detected.
Goodman claims that modern humans evolved (or that scientists think
they did; it's hard to say which) in the space of 5000 years, but
he never makes clear when this supposedly happened, and what the
before and after points of the transition were. Some of his
writing only makes sense if one assumes that Cro-Magnons evolved
from Neandertals in the period of 40,000 to 35,000 years ago. A
sudden change could only be documented with reasonable confidence
if there was a good record of non-modern fossils going up to a
particular point in time, followed by the appearance of fully
modern humans. The fossil record documents no such thing; we have
modern humans appearing about 100,000 years ago, preceded by a
number of more primitive fossils spread over the previous few
hundred thousand years.
Goodman spends some time arguing that fully modern man, Homo
sapiens sapiens, is older than 40,000 years. In this he is
correct; when he wrote, recent discoveries were pushing back the
appearance of modern man to over 100,000 years ago. But this
wrecks his argument that modern man appeared suddenly. One can (or
could, in 1981) argue that modern humans evolved in only a few
thousand years from Neandertals, but by claiming that modern humans
appeared over 100,000 years ago, Goodman wrecks his own claim,
since there is no evidence a sudden appearance of modern humans at
that earlier date.
In short, Goodman's work has no merit. His understanding of
evolutionary theory is flawed, his knowledge of the human fossil
record is superficial, he often ignores or defines away data which
does not support his ideas, and even some of the evidence he cites
in his support is so poorly interpreted that it contradicts his
claims instead of supporting them. The problems that Goodman's
"outside intervention" hypothesis is supposed to solve simply do not
exist.
References
Cronin J.E., Boaz N.T., Stringer C.B. and Rak Y.: Tempo and mode in
hominid evolution. Nature 292:113-122, 1981.
Goodman, Jeffrey: The genesis mystery: a startling new theory of
outside intervention in the development of modern man, New
York:Times Books, 1983
Johanson, Donald C. and Edey, Maitland A.: Lucy: the beginnings of
humankind, New York:Simon and Schuster, 1981.
Trinkaus E. and Shipman P.: The neandertals: changing the image of
mankind, New York:Alfred E. Knopf, 1992.
-- Jim Foley Symbios Logic, Fort Collins, COJim.Foley@symbios.com (970) 223-5100 x9765