>No, it is not sufficient for me, or anyone else who knows modern man. Art
>and religion? Of the type modern man would produce (i.e., a true descendent
>of Noah)? I don't think so. And what happened to all the art and religion
>in the 3 million years before Homo erectus? Were they just too darn busy?
You listed a set of criteria you wanted before you would believe in the
humanity of archaic man. I supplied every one of them yet now you say it is
not enough. Is your theology getting in the way?
>
><<So please cease misrepresenting the modernity of the bodies of Homo
>erectus.>>
>
>When I said ape-like, I was referring well back before erectus.
The fact that 2 million years ago, erectus was spread from Spain to Olduvai,
to Caucasian Georgia, Pakistan, and to Java, clearly shows that H. erectus
lived a long time before this. Otherwise he could not have spread so far.
It takes time for a population to spread that far afield. The time of
erectus was much before 2 million years.
>I think you
>knew that. Here is how Leakey describes some of your Noahic descendents:
>"Other fossils of individuals from the area indicated that not only were
>many of them bigger than Lucy, standing more than 5 feet tall, but also
>that they were more apelike in certain respects--the size and shape of the
>teeth, the protrusion of the jaw--than the hominids that lived in South and
>East Africa a million years or so later. This is just what we would expect
>to find as we moved closer and closer to the time of human origin." [Origin
>of Humankind, p. 30]
While erectus is not apelike, if you now want to talk about the piths, then
that is another matter. They walked just like you an I, fully bipedal.
Their foot prints found at Laetoli are exactly like the footprints you or I
would leave IF we had never worn shoes.
R.H. Tuttle, 'Kinesiological inferences and evolutionary
implications from Laetoli bipedal trails G-1, G-2/3 and A',
LAETOLI - A Pliocene site in Northern Tanzania, M. D. Leakey
and J.M. Harris, eds., Clarendon Press, London, 1987, Chapter
13.3, pp. 503-523.
These are identical to footprints left at 1.5 million years ago at Koobi Fora.
"At Koobi Fora, near Lake Turkana in northwestern Kenya, more footprints
were found in 1979. These are more recent than those at Laetolil and have been
dated to arount 1.5 million years ago. In this case the prints -- about the
size of modern feet-- were made by a single individual who is judged to have
been about 5 feet tall and weighed about 120 pounds. He might have been either
Australopithecus or Homo erectus, but more likely the latter, judging from the
width of the stride."~Victor Barnouw, An Introduction to Anthropology: Physical
Anthropology and Archaeology, 1, (Homewood, Ill: The Dorsey Press, 1982), p.
112.
Now, this would certainly imply that someone with very modern foot
morphology was walking around 3.7 million years ago at Laetoli. The
assumption is that it was Australipithecus but it might have been someone
else. Back to 3 million years ago, the foot morphology is identical to ours
and shows NO transitional features.
>
>Now, since you like to use the Leakeys as the standard, I'll ask you the
>same question you asked me: You know more about this than Leakey? You are
>prepared to go sit with him and tell him these were NOT ape-like creatures
>at all, but fully functional modern humans, with the capacity to worship
>God and create shaman art and talk among themselves?
You are equivocating on the word Leakey. There is Richard Leakey whom you
quote and Mary Leakey whom I quote. I happen to agree with Mary Leakey who
says the phonolite pebble was an intentionally produced work depicting the
hominid face.
>
>Do let's go see him.
he has not spoken about the phonolite pebble so be sure to get you Leakey's
correct.
>
><<The only thing attesting to modernity of mind is behavior. All the
>archaics
>did things which are quite modern.>>
>
>This is where your blind spot is. How you can say this with a straight
>keyboard is beyond me.
>
Actually my keyboard is curved. Due to the nerve problems with my right
hand I got one of those slick ergonomic keyboards. I say nothing with a
straight keyboard. :-)
Are you saying that the production of art is not modern? That the making of
wooden planks is not modern? That the building of huts is not modern? What
is modern?
><<Jim you need a logic class. Absence of evidence is NEVER evidence of
>absence.>>
>
>This is, of course, one of your favorite phrases, since there IS no
>evidence. You use it all the time to get rid of nasty problems. However, in
>archeaology it is a working rule.
These become predictions, things to look for.
>Read some of your books more carefully.
>For example, Leakey, in discussing the replacement theory, states: "Given
>the absence of evidence, we are forced to look for possible alternatives to
>the proposed one of violence. IF NONE EXISTS, then that competing
>hypothesis becomes stronger, though unproved." [Origin of Humankind, p. 98.
>Emphasis added]
How do you have evidence of prayer in the fossil record? There is no
evidence of prayer prior to 3100 BC when writing was created. Does this
mean that there was no prayer prior to this time? Of course not. One must
first determine if it is even possible for evidence to exit.
>
>No wonder Leakey does no field work in Texas.
No, it is because there are no archaic forms in North or South American. Sorry.
>
>Anyway, absence of evidence is one way cases are made in the archaeological
>world. And it becomes an overwhelming obstacle to a hypothesis when the
>absence is striking. In our case, it is striking in the extreme. No modern
>activity for (under your hypothesis) 4.5 million years. None. Zip. (By
>modern, I mean Noahic, not speculative pebbles, not body pits). And yet you
>want us to believe we were around ALL that time, refusing to innovate?
Prior to 1988, there was no evidence of the genus tarsius in any rocks at
all. According to you, absence of evidence is evidence of absence. So we
should not expect Tarius to exist in the past at all. But then in 1988 a 15
million year old Tarsius was found. and in 1994 an eocene (52 million year
old) example of Tarsius was found. So how did evidence of absence turn into
evidence of existence? Because logically one can not prove the
non-existence of any species by noting its absence.
see R. D. Martin, "Bonanza
at Shanghuang," Nature, 368, April 14, 1994, p. 586
>
>It seems, even with my noted gifts of persuasion and charm, I can't
>disabuse you of these notions. I guess now I'll have to get tough with you.
>;-)
Charm????? Who told you that? :-)
I am trying to pound into my lawyer friend's mind that science is not a
courtroom and the rules of evidence in science are different than what you
were trained for. Persuasion is not the goal, but rigor and truth are.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm