>Again, I wish to reiterate that I appreciate the quotes that Glenn posts
>of recent discoveries in anthropology. I have no problem with them at
>all and they basically confirm my Pre-Adamite views. But
>strangely enough they do not confirm Glenn's extreme Old-Adam views!
>Glenn believes that "the creativity of archaic hominids" was such
>that:
>
>1. An australopithecine/Homo habilis/homo erectus called Noah built a
>three-decker Ark 5.5 mya.
>
Stephen You admitted that H. erectus could have built a boat and now you are
back to criticising me for what you once admitted. tsk.
>2. The Ark landed in Africa after the Flood in the Mediterranean.
You missed my note in response to Bill Hamilton, saying that I would no
longer advocate the African landing but a Turkish one. somehow I don't
think that you will cease critisizing this point either even though I have
altered my position.
>
>3. The technology needed to build the Ark was lost for 5.2 mya but
>slowly began to be regained about 0.3 mya.
>
>4. Evidence of Noah's descendants for these 5.3 years was lost in the
>African jungle.
>
As I have mentioned, there are a few fossils which have Homo-like affinities
from 4.2 MYR ago. You seem to forget that.
(see Brigitte Senut and Christine Tardieu, "Functional Aspects of
Plio-Pleistocene Hominid Limb Bones: Implications for Taxonomy and
phylogeny",in Eric Delson, editor, Ancestors: The Hard Evidence, pp 193-201)
>So these discoveries of emerging hominid intelligence only hundreds
>of thousands of years ago cited by Glenn do not support his extreme
>Old-Adam view at all and in fact they are actually *fatal* to it.
As I have pointed out some of this evidence goes back to at least 2 million
years.
>
>There is of course not even a scrap of Biblical or anthropological
>evidence for these claims by Glenn.
>
>GM>Could this have been modern man? no. Anatomically modern people
>>do not appear until 120,000 years ago
>
>Agreed. So on Glenn's theory, Adam and Noah were not even
>"Anatomically modern people"?
that is correct! Where in the Bible does it say that a man must look like
me to be a man? Pygmys certainly don't look exactly like me. Some South
american Indians actually have blue-colored private parts.
"Aside from these examples, there is little evidence that any of the
other visible differences among the world's people provide any advantage.
Nobody knows, for example, why orientals have epicanthic eye folds or flatter
facial profiles. The thin lips of Causasoids and most Mongoloigs have no
known advantages over the Negroid's full lips. Why should middle-aged and
older Caucasoid men go bald so much more frequently than the men of other
races? Why does the skin of Bushmen wrinkle so heavily in the middle and
later years? or why does the skin of Negroids resist wrinkling so well? Why
do the Indian men in one part of South America have blue penises? Why do
Hottento women have such unusually large buttocks?"~Boyce Rensberger, "Racial
Odyssey," in Elvio Angeloni, Editor, Annual Editions Physical Anthropology
94/95,(Sluicedock,Guilford, Conn.: The Dushkin Publishing Group, Inc., 1994),
p.40-45, p. 43
So I would say that there is no requirement, biblical or otherwise for
someone to look like me to earn the title, human.
If Adam was not of our species, then
>he cannot be our representative.
W may very well have been able to interbreed with H. erectus. In such a
case, he could be our representative.
>GM>This discovery means that other old-earth creationists who believe
>>that humanity was created less than 60-100 thousand years ago must
>>now explain why the making of clothing for warmth is not
>>characteristic of humanity.
>
>They have already done this but blithely Glenn ignores it (as usual).
>For example, Hugh Ross defines the essential "characteristic of
>humanity" as "awareness of God and capacity to form a relationship
>with Him":
>
Hugh Ross says that if spiritual man is older than 60 kyr then the Bible is
wrong. Since anatomically modern man appeared earlier than that, it must
mean non-human humans. Since there is evidence of neanderthal religion,
they surely had an awareness of God and they didn't look like me either.
>"In Genesis 1, God speaks of adham (male and female), and only adham,
>as being made in His image. The point is emphasized by repetition.
>As humanity's story unfolds through subsequent chapters, we discover
>that what makes humans different is a quality called "spirit." None
>of the rest of Earth's creatures possesses it. By "spirit" the Bible
>means awareness of God and capacity to form a relationship with Him.
>Worship is the key evidence of the spiritual quality of the human
>race, and the universality of worship is evidenced in altars,
>temples, and religious relics of all kinds. Burial of dead, use of
>tools, or even painting do not qualify as evidence of the spirit, for
>non-spirit beings such as bower birds, elephants, and chimpanzees
>engage in such activities to a limited extent." (Ross H., "Creation
>and Time" 1994, p140)
>
>Glenn must know that Ross believes this, but he evidently believes if
>you repeat something often enough, people will believe it is true:
>
ROSS IS WRONG. Elephants do not bury their dead in the sense that
Neanderthal and anatomically modern men did. Elephants 'bury' men,
rhinoceras' and other things. They do not dig pits for their dead, nor do
they leave grave goods, which neanderthal left. The following is long but
worth it.
"As curious as the smelling and removal of bones is 'burying' behaviour.
I have never seen this but it has been so widely and consistently reported,
often by reliable witnesses, that it must be accepted as fact. This behaviour
is elicited by fresh corpses or even by animals not yet dead, and it is not
confined to elephant bodies, as the following examples with show.
"George Adamson has written of an old woman he knew who was buried alive
by elephants. She was a Turkana and one evening, when walking home with her
son, he stopped behind a bush bidding her at the same time to follow the route
ahead. She was half-blind and soon strayed from the path. After wandering
until nightfall she lay down under a tree and fell asleep. She was woken a
few hours later by an elephant standing over her playing its trunk up and down
her body. Paralysed with fear she lay motionless. Presently other elephants
came and, trumpeting loudly, buried her under a great pile of branches which
they broke off from trees near by. The old woman was not found until next
morning when her faint cries attracted a herder who released her from the
imprisoning branches.
"Professor Grzimek has recorded four second-hand accounts of elephants,
both bulls and cows, killing human beings and later covering them with
vegetation and soil. The most interesting of these accounts concerns a bull--
it took place in the Albert National Park of the former Belgian Congo in 1936.
A tourist approached this bull on foot with his camera. Despite warnings from
a number of the National Park staff that the elephant was well known to be
extremely dangerous, he persisted in his attempt to get some pictures and the
bull charged. Unfortunately the man had a bad leg and was not quick enough in
getting away. Just as he turned to flee the Park employee took a last
snapshot. The ourist was swiftly overtaken and the elephant smacked him down
with a blow of its trunk. Eye-witnesses allege that he was dead before he hit
the ground, but to make sure the elephant knelt on him and drove a tusk
through his body and under the shoulder blade. The survivors returned after
the lephant had left and found that the tourist's body had been covered in
plants. I was lucky to meet the avenger of the tourist, Professor L. Van den
Berghe who later tracked down the bull and destroyed it. It was discovered
that the cause of his bad temper was a deep ulcerated wound, full of pus, in
his head, which had obviously been cause by a bullet.
"Burying behaviour is not restricted to human bodies. In a Kenya Park
report of 1956 a description exists of a rhino carcass which from tracks
nearby appeared to have been dragged some distance by elephants and then
covered up with grass and branches.
"Another reliable observer, George Schaller, saw burying behaviour in
the Indian elephant and describes it in The Deer and the Tiger, Schaller had
tied a buffalo to a tree as bait for tigers. A mother tiger killed it and
waited while her cubs ate. Soon an elephant appeared from the undergrowth.
The cubs ran off and then the elephant broke down branches and covered the
remains of the buffalo.
"Accounts of elephants burying their own kind are well authenticated.
Myles Turner once made a living by taking out hunting parties. On one safari
a client shot a large bull elephant out of a herd of about six. The survivors
immediately surrounded the dead animal, and stood over him. Myles told his
client that the elephants would disperse after a few hours; meanwhile they
could retire a little and have their lunch. When they came back some hours
later one bull was still by the corpse. The hunters managed to scare it away.
Then they advanced to the dead beast and found to their amazement that the
other elephants had covered the large wound in its head with mud, and had
piled earth and leaves on the body.
"A similar observation, this time of cows and calves, was made by Irven
Buss, one of the first scientists to study elephants' ecology. In Uganda, he
had planned to immobilize an elephant and fix a radio on it. Though he was
never able to do this he secured some unique observations. The first animal
he darted was a cow and he gave it an overdose. The other members of the
group closed up in a defensive phalanx with the result that he was unable to
administer any antidote and presently the cow died. The leading matriarch
took the group away, but then returned to cover the dead cow with branches and
grass.
"Lastly I must include the experience of the ethologists Wofdietrich
Kuhme who made some observations on three captive African elephants at the
Kroneburg Zoo in Germany. The bull when it became aggressive used to throw
straw and objects at him over the railings which restricted it. Once Kuhme
lay down just out of its reach on the far side of the railings. The bull
thereupon threw straw at him until he was almost completely covered."~Iain and
Oria Douglas-Hamilton, Among the Elephants, (New York: Viking Press, 1975), p.
236-238
>Glenn does not have to answer my *posts* (they are to the Group, not
>to Glenn), but on Glenn's own strict standards of honesty and
>integrity that he routinely applies to other Christian apologists,
>Glenn cannot simply ignore the Pre-Adamite *position* as though it
>doesn't exist.
I haven't ignored it Stephen, I have rejected it. There is a difference.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm