On Sat, 30 Nov 1996 17:46:30, Glenn Morton wrote:
GM>I just listened to Hugh Ross' program tonight, Reasons to Believe.
>He said a lot of things about anthropology with are totally
>incorrect. He said that the creation of man must have been within
>the last 60,000 years.
I do not necessarily agree with everything Hugh Ross writes, but I
feel I must once again defend him from another one of Glenn's
attacks. At the outset I want to reiterate what I have said many
times before, that I give credit to Glenn for taking the Biblical
account of the Flood as historical and attempting to find a
concordance between it an geology. But....
Firstly, we should all keep in mind that Glenn believes that Adam was
a Homo habilis/erectus who lived 5.5 million years ago, which is
definitely "about anthropology...totally incorrect." In picking
fault with Hugh Ross, for being allegedly "about anthropology...
totally incorrect" Glenn could ponder Mt 7:3: "Why do you look at
the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to
the plank in your own eye?" :-)
Secondly Ross is not as rigid on the "60,000 years" as Glenn makes
out. In his recent Facts & Faith, Ross said it could be "even
earlier":
"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, p6).
GM>He said:
>
>1 The Y-chromosome in men proves that the last common ancestor was
>49,000 years ago.
>
>Fact, the best guess is 270,000 years (see~Robert L. Dorit,
>Hiroshi Akashi, Walter Gilbert, "Absence of Polymorphism at the ZFY
>locus on the Human Y Chromosome,"~Science, May 26, 1995, p. 1184)
>Only the absolutely best set of circumstances allow the last common
>male ancestor to fall into the that range.
Ross acknowledges the "the best guess is 270,000":
"As Y-chromosome studies continue, researchers give new perspective
to the word "modern" in modern man. The Y-chromosome research on
which I reported a few months ago fixed the date of the first male
Homo sapiens at 270,000 years ago or less." (Ross H, "Searching For
Adam", Facts & Faith, Reasons To Believe: Pasadena CA, Vol. 10, No.
1, First Quarter 1996, p4)
However, he bases his lower date on a more recent study published in
Nature:
"More recent studies have shrunk that number significantly and are
revealing how much less it may be. Making the same assumption as the
previous researchers did, specifically that any divergence in Y-
chromosomes found among men alive today must have arisen through
natural evolutionary processes, American molecular biologist Michael
Hammer examined 2,600 nucleotide base pair segments of the chromosome
in 16 ethnically distinct men. His calculations suggested that the
16 descended from one man living betwecn 51,000 to 411,000 years
ago." (Michael Hammer, "A Recent Common Ancestry for Human Y
chromosomes," Nature, 378 (1995), pp. 376-378)
A British team composed of geneticists Simon Whitfield, John Sulston,
and Peter Goodfellow examined a much larger segment of the human Y
chromosome, a segment composed of 100,000 nucleotide base pairs, in 5
ethnically distinct men. The divergence they observed was so small
as to shrink that date projection to somewhere between 37,000 and
49,000 years ago." (L. Simon Whitfield, John E.Sulston, and Peter
N. (GoodFellow, "Sequence Variation of the Human Y Chromosome,"
Nature 378, 1995, pp 379-380 ). This newest date for man's
progenitor has come within the range of Biblically determined dates
for Adam. 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, 1996, p4).
Now Ross may be wrong, but he is basing his view on scientific
evidence, which Glenn no doubt knows about, but fails to mention.
I would repeat what I have said earlier, I am in general agreement
with Ross on his Old-Earth/Young Adam view, but I differ from him in
his view that hominids were not human. In my Pre-Adamite view, they
were human, but not fully human.
>GM>2. There is no evidence for language prior to 40,000 years ago.
>
>Fact: The first evidence for the brain structures which are
>involved in speech are dated to 2.0 million years and come from the
>1470 skull.
This does not mean that Homo erectus had "language" (in any full
sense of the word):
"Paleontologists don't pretend to know everything about how Homo
erectus lived, but it's a safe bet the ancient prehumans passed their
days in unremarkable ways. Their language was probably little more
than a system of gestures and grunts. Their diet, consisting of foraged
fruits and crudely cooked animals, was not an easy one to force
down-if the attachment points on their skulls for stout chewing
muscles and their large front teeth suggest anything. Their skill in
making tools was limited: a flaked stone or a crude ax was probably
as good as it got." (Kluger J., "Not So Extinct After All", Time,
December 23, 1996, p64)
The last sentence is relevant to Glenn's claim that a H. habilus/erectus
named Noah built a 3-decker ark! :-)
GM>Because of this Falk can write:
>
>"Although those of us who study hominid brain evolution
>('paleoneurologists') are notorious for our disagreements, we do
>seem to agree that early hominids may have been capable of language.
>What accounts for this unusual agreement is the strength and
>convergence of biological/comparative evidence that favors an early
>origin for language."~Dean Falk, "Comments", Current Anthropology
>30:2, April 1989, p. 141
Glenn neglects to mention what I have pointed out before, namely that
Falk's is a minority view among anthropologists:
"Although the view that language was a relatively rapid development
coincident with the emergence of modern humans is widely supported,
it does not completely dominate anthropological thinking. Dean Falk,
whose studies of the evolution of the human brain I referred to in
chapter 3, defends the proposition that language developed early:"
(Leakey R., "The Origin of Humankind", Phoenix: London, 1994, p126)
GM>Ross cited a guy I had never heard of as his source for the
>concept that there was no language.
Without the name of this "guy", we cannot Judge whether Ross' "source"
was reliable. But I doubt if Ross actually said "there was no language".
Probably that it was not a "language" in the full sense of the word:
"All the discussion of hominid evolution so far in this book points
to a major change in hominid adaptation when the genus Homo appeared.
I suspect, therefore, that only with the evolution of Homo habilis
did some form of spoken language begin. Like Bickerton, I suspect
that this was a protolanguage of sorts, simple in content and
structure, but a means of communication beyond that of apes and of
australopithecines." (Leakey R., "The Origin of Humankind", Phoenix:
London, 1994, p129)
>GM>3. He said that Neanderthal had no capacity for speech.
>
>GM>One of the most vocal critics of Neanderthal speech capabilities
>wrote:
>
>"This is not to say that classic Neanderthals lacked speech
>capabilities and language. As I have pointed out in every
>publication on this topic, the classic Neanderthal supralaryngeal
>vocal tract would have allowed speech; the archaeological evidence
>of Neanderthal culture, moreover, is consistent with their having
>some form of language, and the new data reported by Bar-Yosef and
>his colleagues reinforce these conclusions."~Philip Lieberman, "On
>the Kebara KMH 2 Hyoid and Neanderthal Speech," Current
>Anthropology, 34:2(April 1993): 172-175, p. 174
Yes, "some form of language", but not necessarily a complex language
like modern Homo sapiens:
"But did they have language-the critical tool we use to store and
pass on information and make sense of our world? `They may not have
had a language as complex as ours,' says Christopher Stringer, a
paleoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London. `We
have past, present, and future tenses. We have symbolism. They may
not have had all that, but at least they could talk to each other.'
" (Gore R., "Neandertals", National Geographic, Vol. 189, No. 1,
January 1996, p30)
>4. He said that anatomically modern humans are not found on any
>continent until 25-30,000 years ago.
>
>Fact:
>
>"Border Cave has provided an infant's skeleton, an adult skull, two
>partial adult mandibles, and some postcranial bones whose
>assignement to Homo sapiens sapiens is undisputed. The deposits
>containing the fossils are clearly older than the 50,000-40,000-
>years-ago range of conventional radiocarbon dating and contain
>artifacts resembling those which are thought to date from the Last
>Interglaciation at Klasies River Mouth, that is, sometime between
>130,000 and 74,000 years ago. "~Richard G. Klein, The Human Career,
>(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 353
If Hugh Ross really said "anatomically modern humans", then he is
wrong. But the problem is that what Ross means by "human" is
different from what an anthropologist would mean by it:
"Bipedal tool-using, large-brained primates (called hominids by
anthropologists) may have roamed the earth as long ago as one
million years...Some differences, however, between the Bible and
secular anthropology remain. By the biblical definition, these
hominids may have been intelligent mammals, but they were not humans.
Nor did Adam and Eve physically descend from them." (Ross H.,
"Creation and Time", NavPress: Colorado Springs CO, 1994, p141)
GM>This makes me want to cry because he is so influential and so
>wrong.
This "so wrong" is from the person who claims that Adam was a Homo
habilus/erectus who lived 5.5 mya! :-)
Ross' ministry is blessed by God, so it must be right in what
matters most. Glenn really should acknowledge this. Even if Ross
is "wrong" in his downplaying of the emergent humanity of the genus
Homo, this is a comparatively minor detail. The most important
point,IMHO, is that Ross is *theologically* right in his desire to
fit broadly in with the Genesis 1-11 genealogies and so posit a
young age for Adam. The discovery of a 10,000 year old pictogram
written language in Syria, supports the conservative evangelical
view that Genesis 1-11 is based on ancient, historically reliable
written family histories handed down from Adam and his descendants:
"Carvings on a series of stones unearthed in Syria may represent an
important "missing link" in the evolution of written communication,
claim French archaeologists. The 10 000-year-old carvings are twice
the age of Sumerian cuneiform, the world's oldest writing. They are
pictograms, abstract symbols which convey meaning but are not as
complex as a true written language. Danielle Stordeur of the Institute
of Oriental Prehistory near Nimes says that the Syrian pictograms
represent an intermediate form of communication lying between
palaeolithic cave art, which flourished between 30 000 and 12 000
years ago, and later forms of writing. The stones were uncovered at
Jerf el Ahmar, an excavation on the left bank of the Euphrates River.
Four of them appear to be some sort of tool with a large groove on
one side and combinations of lines, arrows and animal outlines carved
on the other side. Two smaller flat oval-shaped rocks are engraved on
both sides. One depicts a large insect connected to an owl-like figure
with circles as eyes; its other side is covered with 34 crescent shapes
bearing dots. The second flat stone bears arrows, zigzags, and other
shapes on one side and a grid and snake on the other. "Associations
of abstract signs are thought to have a meaning," Stordeur says.
"When you put that meaning on a stone you have a message." Just
what these ancient messages said will probably remain a mystery,
however. Decoding the messages would require further finds. But the
researchers have only one more digging season before the site, which
is located 2 kilometres north of the Tichrine dam, now under
construction, is flooded." (Crabb C., "`Missing Link' is Written in
Stone", New Scientist, 14 December 1996, p9)
On Mon, 2 Dec 1996 16:56:44 GMT, David J. Tyler wrote:
DT>Glenn, you might like to know that a paper was presented at the
>Mere Creation Conference which has much common ground with your
>views. Sigrid Hartwig-Scherer considered the hominid fossil record
>from the perspective of Basic Type biology. The conclusion was
>that all the Homo fossils (with the possible exception of the
>controversial Homo habilis) can be understood as belonging to the
>same Basic Type (and therefore may be considered descendants of
>Adam and Eve). The australopithecenes were interpreted as another
>Basic Type.
I agree with this identification of the genus Homo as "the same
Basic Type" as "Adam and Eve" but I do not agree that they were
"descendants" of same. If the datings of the first "Homo fossils"
are accurate at 4 bya, then this creates IMHO an insuperable problem
for the Neolithic elements in Genesis 4. Either one would have to:
1. deny the datings; or 2. postulate a 4 my gap between Adam and his
sons Cain and Abel, or 3. postulate a cultural gap between the
pre-Flood world of Genesis 4 and the post-Flood world of Genesis 9.
Neither of these options are attractive, and if the aim is to
reconcile the Biblical picture with the scientific one, they
fail. But if "Adam and Eve" are at *the end* of the Basic Type and
not at its beginning, ie. the "Homo fossils" are ancestors of "Adam
and Eve" not their "descendants", as per the Pre-Adamite model, then
the problem is largely resolved, and the Biblical and scientific
pictures largely coincide.
DT>This paper will eventually be published in the Conference
>Proceedings.
Does anyone know when and how this will be?
DT>It presents quite a different picture from Hugh Ross - who was at
>the conference (although I don't know whether he heard this
>lecture). I can say that he did not make any points during the
>question time.
Agreed. Ross to his credit (in my book anyway) is focusing on the
Biblical picture and the problem of the genealogies. He is not
prepared to write these off as unhistorical myths or stretch them
too far that their transmission requires a special miracle not
mentioned in Scripture. IMHO Ross' main problem is his insistence
that Adam must have been a special creation totally distinct from
the other members of the genus Homo. It is not necessary to do this
Biblically. Genesis 2:7 is easily understood as having symbolic
elements and the words "living soul" applied to Adam in Gn 2:7 are
*exactly* the same Hebrew words `chayyah nephesh' that are applied
to the other "living creatures" (ie. the animals) in Gn 1:21 and
1:24, as even the staunch conservative Berkhof acknowledges:
"This unity already finds expression in the classical passage of the
Old Testament-the first passage to indicate the complex nature of
man-namely, Gen. 2:7...This work of God should not be interpreted
as a mechanical process, as if He first formed a body of clay and
then put a soul into it....The word "soul" in this passage does not
have the meaning which we usually ascribe to it-a meaning rather
foreign to the Old Testament -but denotes an animated being, and is
a description of man as a whole. The very same Hebrew term, nephesh
chayyah (living soul or being) is also applied to the animals in
Gen. 1:21,24,30" (Berkhof L., "Systematic Theology", Banner of
Truth: London, 1966 reprint, pp192-193)
Happy New Year!
Steve
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