>Somehow I don't think bodies thrown in a pit is real strong evidence of
>"ritual burial," or professorial bipeds "struggling" with the issues of
>existence.
Here is what Bahn says,
"To reach the pit is an adventure in itself. A few hundred yards
from the trinchera lies the mouth of the Cueva Mayor, an enormous
cave that contains a red painting of a horse's head traditionally
assigned to the last Ice Age, occupation material from at least
the Neolithic onward, and Bronze Age burials. To gain access to
the depths of the cave, one must clamber over rocks and up and
down clay slopes, crab-walk or go on all fours, and crawl through
small spaces between stalagmites. Some 1,600 feet into the
interior is a chamber 65 feet high. A side chamber contains cave
bear nests and claw marks gouged in pockets of clay, looking as
fresh as if they had been done yesterday. The whole cave is
marked with graffiti, the oldest from 1561. Local people have
been coming here for hundreds of years to obtain bear bones and
teeth. According to a tradition, every young man of the region
must present his fiancee with a bear tooth from the Cueva Mayor
as a sign of his prowess."~Paul G. Bahn, "Treasure of the Sierra
Atapuerca", Archaeology, January/February, 1996, pp 45-48, p. 47
If it was anything like that in the past, those Sima people were mighty
motivated to get those bodies into that pit. Even today modern humans will
not often go to such trouble. The pit is not and never was a hole open to
the surface. The excavators had to drill a hole through 40 feet of solid
rock to open a 1 foot wide shaft so that they could drop in tools and take
out bones.
Thus, these people went to a lot of trouble to get those bodies in there.
That strongly implies motivation.
By the way Jim. Is there any set of behaviors which you could name which
would convince you that these people were people? If you cannot or will not
name a set of observations which would convince you to classify these people
as human, then I would suggest that you belief system has nothing to do with
science or observation. A belief system which can not be altered by
observation is faith, which is fine, but don't confuse faith with science or
observational data.
What are the set of observations which would convince you that they were human?
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm