On Tue, 22 Jun 1999 19:44:48 -0500, Glenn Morton wrote:
SJ>Here is a Science News article at:
>http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc99/5_8_99/fob7.htm
>which casts a bit more balance on the recent story about a claimed
>Neandertal-Modern Human hybrid.
>
>After examining the evidence, neither Stringer nor Schwartz are
>convinced that the skeleton is anything more than an "unusually stocky modern
>human".
GM>I am always amused when someone uses the term balanced. It has been my
>observation that when someone says a report is balanced, it usually
>means that it isn't as bad for my side as other reports were.
No doubt. But the fact is that the "other reports" weren't "bad" for
the Out-of-Africa hypothesis (OoAH) side either. But this report is a
little better for it.
GM>It also amuses me that anti-evolutionists like Steve fight had to make
>Neanderthal something other than us.
Glenn makes it sound like its an uphill battle. I don't see it that way
at all. Every round to date has been won by the Out-of-Africa hypothesis,
and if this turns out to be a Neandertal-CroMagnon hybrid, it will be
a minor exception that proves the rule.
GM>If anti-evolutionists would
>include Neanderthal within the human family, they could easily claim
>that since they can breed with us, there really hasn't been any evoution
>at all--just microevolution.
I've got news for Glenn. I don't believe there has been any "microevolution"
either! It is *all* Mediate Creation.
GM>For anti-evolutionists to fight tooth and
>nail to avoid having to include fossil man seem counterproductive for
>their postiion.
See above. If there is any "tooth and nail" fighting it is on the side of
advocates for the Multiregional/Regional Continuity (MR/RCH) hypothesis.
The OoAH is now firmly established, and it is unlikely that the MR/RCH
will make much of a dent in it. If this fossil turns out to be a hybrid, it will
show how rare the interbreeding was. And since most (all?) hybrids are
sterile, it would mean that neandertals contributed nothing to the modern
human gene pool.
GM>While as of this moment, the technical report of the prospective hybrid
>has yet to be published, and thus we don't know its real place yet as
>only some people have seen the evidence. And your article did note that
>some anthropologists were convinced by the data.
Presumably they were all MR/RCH advocates. I would be more impressed if
any OoAH people switched camps on the basis of this evidence.
GM>As to the rejection of Schwartz and Stringer, that was almost to be
>expected. If Chris Stringer and Jeffrey Schwartz accepted it, almst
>everything they had ever written in their careers would be wrong.
Not really, in the reports I have seen Stringer was prepared to accept
it if it is confirmed. He has written a lot more than just the OoAH. He is
already an eminent paleoanthropologist and even if this was a Neandertal-
CroMagnon hybrid, it would make no difference to the main lines of the
OoAH.
GM>I would also point out a disturbing sequence of events. Your report, dated
>May 8, says that Trinkaus reported the result in a meeting the week of
>May 1. Stringer had not seen the data until that meeting.
Where does Glenn get that from? See below.
GM>But on April
>25, Stringer told the AP PRIOR to the May 1st meeting, "Dr. Chris
>Stringer, an expert on Neanderthals at the Museum of Natural History in
>London, who is a leader of the out-of-Africa forces, said that he was
>willing to consider the Portuguese findings with an open mind. He told
>The Associated Press that the current evidence was not sufficient to
>convince him of Dr. Trinkhaus's hybrid interpretation." John Noble, New
>York Times, April 25, 1999
>http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/042599sci-human-fossil.html
>
>The original AP report was on the 16th of April so long before Stringer
>had seen the data, he was rejecting it. Don't blame him if it would mean
>that everything he has written about Neanderthal would be wrong.
>
>So before he had even seen the data, Stringer was telling the press that
>the data was insufficient to convince him. That sounds quite the
>opposite of an open mind.
Glenn should make sure of his facts before he starts casting aspersions.
As the Science News article I posted said, the fact is that the fossil
was actually found in *November 1998*:
"Last Nov. 28, archaeologists working in Portugal's Lapedo Valley, 90
miles north of Lisbon, chanced upon a child's burial. At first the
researchers, led by Joao Zilhao of the Portuguese Institute of Archaeology
in Lisbon, viewed the 24,500-year-old skeleton as an example of modern
Homo sapiens."
Chris Stringer is one of the world's greatest authorities on European
hominoid fossils. It would be *amazing* if the first he knew about the
fossil was not until 6 months later. After all Trinkaus was told about it.
I would be surprised in this day of email if there was not an informal
(or even formal) `grapevine' of all these paleoanthropologists.
GM>Now, I just looked at the PNAS web page and found that the article has
>been published in the June 22 edition. Here is the abstract:
Thanks to Glenn for this.
GM>Vol. 96, Issue 13, 7604-7609, June 22, 1999
>
>Anthropology
>The early Upper Paleolithic human skeleton from
>the Abrigo do Lagar Velho (Portugal) and modern
>human emergence in Iberia
[...]
GM>Contributed by Erik Trinkaus, April 26, 1999
>
>The discovery of an early Upper Paleolithic human burial at the Abrigo
>do Lagar Velho, Portugal, has provided evidence of early modern humans
>from southern Iberia. The remains, the largely complete skeleton of a
>4-year-old child buried with pierced shell and red ochre, is dated to
>ca. 24,500 years B.P. The cranium, mandible, dentition, and postcrania
>present a mosaic of European early modern human and Neandertal
>features.
>The temporal bone has an intermediate-sized juxtamastoid eminence. The
>mandibular mentum osseum and the dental size and proportions, supported
>by mandibular ramal features, radial tuberosity orientation, and
>diaphyseal curvature, as well as the pubic proportions align the
>skeleton with early modern humans.
So far so good!
GM>Body proportions, reflected in
>femorotibial lengths and diaphyseal robusticity plus tibial condylar
>displacement, as well as mandibular symphyseal retreat and
>thoracohumeral muscle insertions, align the skeleton with the
>Neandertals.
It will be interesting to see how specifically Neandertaloid these features
are. Presumably Stringer and Schwartz and the other unconvined
paleoanthroplogists are aware of it and do not find it compelling. The latest
New Scientist, says:
"But Stringer cautions against reading too much into this one discovery. "If
the skeleton is that of a hybrid, it [still] cannot answer the questions of how
common such matings were, whether hybrids were fertile and whether their
genes ever penetrated into early modern populations," he says. And despite
recent revelations, the DNA evidence still suggests that interbreeding
cannot have been widespread. "The evidence does fit with Neanderthals
representing a deep and separate lineage to that of all modern humans," he
says." (Norris S., "Family Secrets," New Scientist, Vol. 162, No 2191, 19
June 1999, p44)
GM>This morphological mosaic indicates admixture between
>regional Neandertals and early modern humans dispersing into southern
>Iberia. It establishes the complexities of the Late Pleistocene
>emergence of modern humans and refutes strict replacement models of
>modern human origins.
If it only "indicates" it, it hardly "establishes" it!
[...]
GM>Now, I would like to point out that in my note to the reflecton on April
>24, 1999, I
>(http://www.calvin.edu/archive/evolution/199904/0260.html) mentioned
>that:
>
>"Neanderthal muscle attachments were different than ours.
>They were extremely strong and some people believe that this evolved in
>response to the way they hunted big game (by getting them to charge and
>at the last minute stepping aside and grabbing the animals fur and
>using short knives to stab the animal and the Neanderthal was carried
>along).
>
>No anatomically modern human has Neanderthal-type muscle attachments.
>If this boy had those types of attachements, then he was a hybrid, no
>doubt."
>
>Trinkaus et al are reporting that this child INDEED HAD SOME OF THE
>CHARACTERISTICALLY NEANDERTHAL MUSCLE ATTACHMENTS!!!!!!
>
>This child is a hybrid.
Glenn is going beyond the evidence. It does not actually say that these
were "characteristically neandertal muscle attachments." If these muscle
attachments really were unique to neandertals then Stringer (who is a
world authority on Neandertals), Schwartz and the other anthropologists
and would not still be unconvinced.
But having said all that, I personally am open to the possibility that
these muscle attachments *could* be uniquely diagnostic of neandertals
and hence that this *could* turn out to be a Neandertal-CroMagnon hybrid.
But even if this were the case, I would not attach a great deal of
importance to it. If Neandertal features can show up in a CroMagnon
body, then where are all the other examples? At best it would show
that Neandertals and CroMagnons rarely interbred, even though they
could. That would underline the very real differences between
Neandertals and early modern humans, and would really represent the
last hurrah of the Multiregional/Regional Continuity hypotheses.
of the effects of the Fall, assuming that it occurred in Asia Minor
at the root of all fully (not just anatomically) modern humans. Indeed,
it would be a lesson that we Biblical Christians need to follow
conservative evangelical theologian/philosopher Carl Henry's sage
advice and not put too much store on the *physical* differences
between ourselves and other hominids:
"Perhaps we are not to rule out dogmatically the possibility that the
dust of man's origin may have been animated, since the animals
before man appear to have been fashioned from the earth (Gen. 1:24).
The Bible does not explicate man's physical origin in detail. The fact
that, after Genesis 1:1 the narrator deals with a mediate creation,
which involves the actualizing of potentialities latent in the original
creation, should caution us against the one-sided invocation of divine
transcendence. The new levels of being arise with quite obvious
dependence on the lower in the creation account. Yet man's
disjunction from the animals appears specific enough...
Be that as it may, it is the ethico-religious fact about man which
marks him off most conspicuously from the animals. Only an age
secular in spirit could concentrate its interest in Homo on
morphological structure seeking to understand man's origin and
nature by focusing solely on prehuman and sub-human forms, then
naming man for the brute, and finding his imago at last among the
beasts."
(Henry C.F.H., "Science and Religion," in Henry C.F.H., ed.,
"Contemporary Evangelical Thought: A Survey", 1968, p282)
Steve
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"I well remember how the synthetic theory beguiled me with its unifying power
when I was a graduate student in the mid-1960's. Since then I have been watching
it slowly unravel as a universal description of evolution. The molecular assault
came first, followed quickly by renewed attention to unorthodox theories of
speciation and by challenges at the level of macroevolution itself. I have been
reluctant to admit it-since beguiling is often forever-but if Mayr's characterization
of the synthetic theory is accurate, then that theory, as a general proposition, is
effectively dead, despite its persistence as textbook orthodoxy." (Gould S.J., "Is a
new and general theory of evolution emerging?", Paleobiology, vol. 6(1), January
1980, p120)
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