Jim, you can be so frustrating. Words are like jello to you. If they
aren't understood in the way they are emitted from your computer terminal,
then you mold them to the appropriate shape at a later day. This is an
excellent trait for the court room and I would hire you in an instant if I
were ever charged with anything, but this is terrible for science.
You wrote of spiritual art:
>I actually think it
>goes back as far as 35,000 years or so, so I'd expand that number just a
>tad.
How this can meand the opposite, namely that there is no spirital art after
35,000 years is quite puzzling to me. And how such an opposite would help
your position is also beyond me.
>The "shaman's cape" Glenn refers to is a questionable extrapolation from
>the articulated bones of the paw and tail of a leapord. That's it. That's
>all there is. And it is impossible to tell what the arrangement means, if
>anything. Even though there are no other bones near it, the discoverers
>posit that it MAY have been a "cape." Needless to say, this is a rather
>large imaginative leap (except for those who are just itching to have it
>mean something).
>
For you, facts exist alone and isolated from everyother fact in the world.
The paws and tail bones of the cape are in the correct orientation in
relation to the Neanderthal body for having been a cape. Obviously the skin
of the cape is not preserved. So to imply that this means that this was not
a cape is identical to saying that the Neanderthal had no skin because no
skin is preserved. This, of course, would leave Neanderthal as nothing but
a skeleton, but then as an isolated fact I guess that is all we can say
about Neanderthal. He was a skeleton. We can't be sure he had a liver,
spleen or aching back.
If all facts are alone and isolated, then you could not solve any forensics
case, any murder, because there is no relation of the facts to the criminal.
>This sort of leap is what caused one of my favorite journalist, Charley
>Reese, to write recently:
>
>"I've known some long-winded journalists and writers, but none who can
>match those archaeologists who can find one small shard of bone and write a
>whole book about it - 99.9 percent of which is speculation. There is a
>definite limit to the information any piece of physical evidence can yield.
>In most cases, it's not a
>lot."
>
>See Glenn's web page for details.
I will gladly put forth my web page for people's perusal. You are not the
one who even brings up facts like the neanderthal cape, or the fact that
carpentered wood was found. Why is it, do you think, that
anti-evolutionists are so slow to really dig into the details of a field?
Why are you always saying that the experts are wrong (the experts accept the
Neanderthal cape). Why are you always reacting to new information rather
than bringing to this list's attention new facts which had been previously
unknown. A viewpoint which never generates new information is a dead
viewpoint.
Go read some of the young-earth creationist books from early in this
century. They have many of the same arguments agains neanderthal that you
have.
>
>But let's accept Glenn's view for a moment. Let's call it a shaman's cape.
>50k years ago. What happened to all the other capes over 4.5 million years?
>Under Mortonian theory, we were just as human then as now, just as capable
>of the worship, art and ritual we find with Noah, Jabal, Jubal, Tubal-cain,
>Cain and Abel.
>
>So where are ther capes? The shoes?
The wear patterns on stone and bone tools from 1.5 million years ago are the
wear patterns obtained when one works with hides! While the hides may not
exist any longer. You may try to say "So they never existed" But the logic
there is like saying "Since the colossus at Rhodes no longer exists, it
never existed"
>The harps and iron foundries?
No where have I ever said that there must be a direct, continuous line of
people making harps and iron. You have said that. The problem with this can
be shown by the following logic.
Democritus was the father of democracy, but that does not mean that there is
a continuous succession of democracies on earth ever since the time of
Democritus. In point of fact the opposite is the case. There have been
long periods when there was NO democracy. So must we say that Democritus
was not the father of Democracy?
>The
>altars?
Drachenloch, Switerland. A Neanderthal religious site is found.
"In high-level caves of Switzerland, Bavaria and Croatia,
evidence exists of a cult of bears involving the deposition of
bear skulls and bones in certain caves...In a chamber of the
Drachenloch in Switzerland, a stone cist had been built to house
stacked bear-skulls: piles of sorted long bones were laid along
the walls of the cave. Another heap of bones contained the skull
of a bear through which a leg bone had been forced, the skull
resting upon two other long bones, each bone was from a different
beast."J.M. Coles and E. S. Higgs, The Archaeology of Early Man,
(New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969), p. 286-287
"Why Neanderthal man began hunting the Cave Bear is not
certain. It was a formidable animal, standing more than eight
feet tall when reared in anger, and must have been a dangerous
foe. It also lived in much more inaccessible places than most of
the other fame. Nevertheless, it was hunted--perhaps to fulfill
an early hunting ritual. Discovery of bear skulls stacked in a
stone chest in Drachenloch, Switzerland, supports this idea; the
heads may have been trophies."~F. C. Howell cited by Lewis
Binford, Bones: Ancient Men and Modern Myths, (New York: Academic
Press, 1981), p. 10
"How did Neanderthal man reach these altitudes, what induced him to
brave the hardships and dangers involved in such an ascent, and why did he
transport such large quantities of bear bones onto the solitude of the
mountains? Why were fragments of cave bears's skulls piled so neatly on top
of one another, and why were the outer edges of the bone cups so highly
polished, as though they had been worn away by generation after generation of
human hands? Were they neanderthal man's drinking vessels? What was he
looking for so far above the treeline when he could only have visited these
caves in spring or used them as a hunting base in the summer?
"In the Drachenloch, beneath the entrance leading from the first chamber
into the second, Bachler came upon a layer of coal-black material containing
ash and the remains of burnt wood. In the center of this hearth he found a
quantity of small bones and stone fragments, some charred and others only
scorched. The earth beneath the fireplace had been reduced to red, powdery
dust. Examination of the carbonized remains revealed that Neanderthal man had
used pinewood as kindling. Apart from this open hearth, a fire pit was
discovered in the entrance leading from Cave II to Cave III. This was covered
by a flat stone slab about eighteen inches square. Perhaps seventy thousand
years old, the hearthstone's reverse side was stained with smoke, and the fire
pit beneath it contained ash, the remains of charred wood, and burnt bones.
Having explored different possibilities of making fire in the Drachenloch,
Bachler established that smoke was carried away most effectively when the
fires were kindled beneath the entrance to the various chambers.
"Close by the fire pit was the 'bone altar' on which lay the cave bear's
skull with the femur through the aperture in its cheekbone. Emil Bachler
explicitly used the term 'bone-altar,' and it would appear that fire pit and
place of sacrifice were in some way connected."
"The Drachenloch cave is the most interesting and perhaps the most
important cult site in the entire history of mankind, a place where more than
seventy thousand years ago, thank offerings were being made to the supreme
creative being." They were thank offerings for the bestowal of game, but they
may have had an even more important significance, for the Drachenloch cave
contains the oldest stone structure of religious significance in the world;
indeed, it is the earliest stone monument to the human past and the earliest
visible expression of man's regard for an invisible god."Ivars Lissner, Man,
God and Magic, (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1961), p. 187-188
> The cave paintings?
Bednarik explains,
(He is one of the world's leading experts on cave art, and is editor of Rock
Art Research) (Lower paleolithic is prior to 250,000 years ago.
"The petroglyphs in Auditorium Cave are the only rock art we have found
so far from the Lower Palaeolithic, and empiricists might perceive them as
evidence of the earliest rock art. However, taphonomic reasoning renders this
most unlikely: if the earliest available evidence of a phenomenon is the most
deterioration-resistant manifestation of it (e.g., deeply carved cupules, in
the case of rock art), it most likely reflects taphonomic truncation of the
record rather than historical reality."~Robert G. Bednarik, "Concept-mediated
Marking in the Lower Palaeolithic," Current Anthropology, 36:4(1995), pp. 605-
634, p. 611
"The considerations pertaining to the taphonomy of palaeoart are very
similar to those for other largely perishable evidence. For instance,
strings, ropes, and thongs were no doubt used for much of the Palaeolithic,
and the use of such materials suggests the use of knots. We have no direct
evidence of knots from the Pleistocene and almost no remains of cordage . Yet
it is evident from Upper Palaeolithic figurines from Pavlov and Kostenki I
that plaited or twined strings were worn and may have even possessed some
symbolic significance. We have ample evidence from the Middle Palaeolithic for
the hafting of stone tools, which probably involved strings and knots, and
hundreds of Middle Palaeolithic perforated objects which could have involved
the use of cordage."~Robert G. Bednarik, "Concept-mediated Marking in the
Lower Palaeolithic," Current Anthropology, 36:4(1995), pp. 605-634, p. 612
Course, you will say Bednarik doesn't know what he is talking about. If
that is the case, why is he the editor of Rock Art Research rather than you?
Paul Bahn and Jean Vertut note,
Palaeolithic parietal art is by no means limited
to caves -- they are merely the places where it has been best preserved."~Paul
G. Bahn and Jean Vertut, Images in the Ice, (Leichester: Windward, 1988), p.
110-113
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm