On Sun, 12 Jul 1998 19:07:13 -0500, Glenn R. Morton wrote:
[continued]
>>>SJ>The second point to make is that if Neandertal man is a totally
>>>>different line from Homo sapiens, then he (Neandertal) cannot be
>>>>human in any Biblical sense. The evidence is mounting that
>>>>Neandertal and Homo sapiens, for all their similarities (which you
>>>>emphasise), were also profoundly different (which you ignore).
>>>>Here is the latest:
>>GM>Ridiculous Stephen and I didn't read the rest of your post.
>SJ>How does Glenn know that what I said was "Ridiculous" if he "didn't
>>read the rest of" my "post"?
>>
>>What Glenn found "ridiculous" was an extract from a recent article
>>from NATURE, the world's premier scientific journal,
GM>No, Stephen, what I find ridiculous is your past use of this 'different
>lineage' to assert that Neanderthals are not human.
I said "if Neandertal man is a totally different line FROM HOMO
SAPIENS..." (my emphasis) "...then he (Neandertal) cannot be human in
any Biblical sense...".
GM>As I have pointed out many times, there are many groups of humans
>who were different lineages yet they are still human. have been isolated
>from other humans for 5000 years, until last century. They also have
>physical differences. The implications of your views are that we
>shouldn't send them missionaries because they are a different lineage... ~
>Josephine Flood, "The Archeology of the Dreamtime, (New Haven:
>Yale University Press, 1989), p. 190-191
And "As *I* have pointed out many times", the Keppel Islanders *are*
*undisputably* Homo sapiens. Neandertal Man wasn't.
GM>which claimed
>SJ>that because "Humans" (i.e. Homo sapiens) "are...unique among
>>mammals in lacking facial projection...whereas the face in all other
>>adult mammals, including Neanderthals, projects to some extent in
>>front of the braincase" and this is caused uniquely by an "early
>>reduction in the length of the sphenoid, the central bone of the cranial
>>base from which the face grows forward", therefore "Neanderthals
>>and other archaic Homo should be excluded from H. sapiens."
>>(Lieberman D.E., "Sphenoid shortening and the evolution of modern
>>human cranial shape," Nature, Vol 393, 14 May 1998, pp158-159)
GM>So would you not share the gospel with a person who had a
>craniofacial deformity? Does the length of one bone, this bone, indicate
>humanity? Does this mean that the image of God resides in the Sphenoid
>bone? The implications of your position is silly.
We have had this argument before. The point is that it wasn't a "deformity"
with Neandertal Man. It was *normal* for him to have different
"craniofacial" features from Homo sapiens. It would be a "deformity" for
Neandertal Man if he looked like us.
[...]
>SJ>I don't know what Glenn's argument is here. My post didn't even have
>>the word "descendant" (or it's cognates) in it! But to answer Glenn's
>>point, "the Greenland Vikings" and "Native americans" *were* Homo
>>sapiens. Neandertals were *not*:
GM>I hope you are sitting down Stephen, but the official name for
>Neanderthal since the 1950s Cold Spring Harbor Symposium is HOMO
>SAPIENS neanderthalensis.
I am sitting down (it's hard to type standing up!) and I have Trinkaus E. &
Shipman P., "The Neandertals," 1993, right in front of me. According to it,
the 1950s Cold Spring Harbor Symposium was "convened to introduce the
new synthesis into physical anthropology..." not to set any "official name
for Neanderthal."
"Indeed, Mayr recalls that at the 1950 Cold Spring Harbor conference on
human evolution, which was convened to introduce the new synthesis into
physical anthropology..." (Trinkaus E. & Shipman P., "The Neandertals,"
1993, p266)
In fact it wasn't until ten years later that Neandertal was lumped into the
same species as Homo sapiens:
"A less radical approach was generally adopted, although it was not
formally suggested until 1960 and was then put forward by a University of
Chicago anthropologist, F. Clark Howell. Howell, articulating what many
were already thinking, slashed the number of genera to two:
Australopithecus, Dart's very primitive, apelike creature; and Homo. For
their part, Pithecanthropus and Sinanthropus were recognized as the same
sort of creature and were merged into Homo, with the trivial name erectus
since that had been proposed first. Such a revision in names is known,
technically and evocatively, as "sinking" taxa and sink the old names did,
with hardly a ripple of protest. With one simple taxonomic revision, the
entire pattern of relationships of fossil humans suddenly became clearer.
The Neandertals were already in Homo, so they presented no problem on
the genus level. However, virtually everyone at the time placed them in
their own species, Homo neanderthalensis...Dobzhansky and Mayr went
one giant step further; they sunk all these forms into Homo sapiens, thereby
removing any species- level distinction between the Neandertals and
ourselves. Even this forcible compression of human taxonomy raised few
cries of protest. In the 1950s and 1960s, the anthropological community
arrayed itself firmly on the side of minimizing differences and emphasizing
the unity of humanity, and the mood carried over to taxonomic decisions."
(Trinkaus E. & Shipman P., 1993, p268)
Trinkaus & Shipman point out the decision in fact was "partly political",
and "took place without any serious reexamination of the fossils":
"This revision of the species name applied to the Neandertals was
fascinating because it took place without any serious reexamination of the
fossils. Whereas once contention and debate had predominated, this very
important taxonomic revision was partly a political and social decision-one
based largely on consensus and sentiment partly a theoretical, biological
one." (Trinkaus E. & Shipman P., 1993, p268)
GM>We are HOMO SAPIENS sapiens.
Even on this basis, I could rest my case, ie. *if* "Neanderthal is Homo
sapiens neanderthalensis" and "we are Homo sapiens sapiens", then
"Neandertal man is a totally different line from Homo sapiens" and hence
"cannot be human in any Biblical sense".
Indeed, so different is Neandertal Man from modern humans that a normal
Neandertal would look like a modern humans with a "craniofacial
deformity"!
But in fact Neandertal Man has been classified and reclassified as Homo
sapiens neandertalensis and Homo neandertalensis" many times:
"Exactly where Neandertals belong in our family tree remains the subject of
debate. In almost 140 years, Neandertals have been cast in virtually every
imaginable relationship to ourselves. They have been subsumed under our
own modern species by some and thrust far out on the most remote branch
of our family tree by others." (Trinkaus E. & Shipman P., 1993, p398)
Trinkaus' own view was that Neandertals were both "biologically and
behaviorally different from modern humans":
"Trinkaus believed, deeply, that Neandertals looked different because they
were biologically and behaviorally different from modern humans; the point
of his career was to understand and unravel what Neandertal anatomy
meant." (Trinkaus E. & Shipman P., 1993, p385)
But even before the latest findings, the trend was to demote Neandertal
Man back to a separate species in the same genus, ie. Homo
neanderthalensis.
"This is a subject on which paleoanthropologists have changed their minds
several times in the last century. Originally, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis
was thought to be a cousin of modern humans rather than a direct ancestor.
Then the opinion arose that perhaps Homo sapiens sapiens did descend
from the neanderthals. Now the pendulum has swung back again, and the
neanderthals are considered to be cousins, a group that became extinct
some time in the last hundred thousand years." (Lampton, "New Theories
on the Origins of the Human Race," 1989, p121)
"I suggested this in a paper published in 1986; and, while I can hardly claim
that my contribution revolutionized paleoanthropology, I think it was at
least symptomatic of a trend that has recently gathered some steam.
Specifically I urged that, at the very least, the Neanderthals be restored to
separate species status as Homo neanderthalensis...Most emphatically of
all, I stressed that our own living species, Homo sapiens, is as distinctive an
entity as exists on the face of Earth, and should be dignified as such instead
of being adulterated with every reasonably large-brained hominid fossil that
happened to come along." (Tattersall I., "The Fossil Trail," 1995, p219)
"Boule's primitive-appearing reconstruction was published at about the
same time as the "discovery" of the far more modern- seeming Piltdown
fake. These two events had the effect of relegating Neanderthals to an
evolutionary sideshow, surely not anywhere near that Holy Grail of
physical anthropologists of the time, the Direct Line of Human Descent. It
was not until the 1950s that more careful reconstructions of the skeletons,
particularly by Camille Arambourg, showed that Neanderthals were fully
erect and really not very different from modern humans...Now opinion is
swinging back again, with the discovery by Erik Trinkaus of the University
of New Mexico and others that there really are distinct differences between
Neanderthals and ourselves." (Wills C., "The Runaway Brain," 1994, p155)
GM>We are racial varieties of each other. See The Neandertals by
>Trinkaus and Shipman, p. 268-269
I have got Trinkaus and Shipman's book, pages 268-269 right in front of
me, and nowhere does it say that Neandertals and modern humans "are
racial varieties of each other."
GM>While there are some individual anthropologists who want to go back
>to William King's 1864 Homo neanderthalensis, they do not have
>consensus and they do not have official sanction.
What "official sanction" is that exactly? Maybe Glenn thinks the 1950s
Cold Spring Harbor Symposium was some sort of Council of Cardinals of
the Church Scientific!
Steve
"Evolution is the greatest engine of atheism ever invented."
--- Dr. William Provine, Professor of History and Biology, Cornell University.
http://fp.bio.utk.edu/darwin/1998/slides_view/Slide_7.html
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3 Hawker Avenue / Oz \ Steve.Jones@health.wa.gov.au
Warwick 6024 ->*_,--\_/ Phone +61 8 9448 7439
Perth, West Australia v "Test everything." (1Thess 5:21)
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