>>Glenn, cow pie is not pie. And where was
But you can't claim to be listening any better than you claim I do. No where does the Bible say that Noah must push the ark uphill. Nowhere does it say that Noah would be able to see mountains (indeed it says precisely the opposite, of course, you ignore that fact and claim I am not matching scripture). Maybe neither of us do match scripture. Maybe Scripture is false? That is a possibility you know.
>>Found any stringed musical instruments (Gen. 4:21) dated to 5 million years ago? Now that would be a discovery. Where would you suggest we look?<<<
What about the recognized art of the Makapansgat pebble from 3 million years ago?
"As it so happened, my first book The Biology of Art,
published many years earlier, had been an attempt to trace the
origins of the most ancient of all forms of adult play and to see
how, from biological roots, the great tree of human art could
blossom. The earliest evidence we have of this activity is a
staggering three million years old. In 1925 a strange object was
found in a rock shelter at a site known as the Limeworks Quarry
in the Transvaal in southern Africa. It was a water-worn,
reddish pebble that seemed curiously out of place.
Investigations revealed that it could not have come from the cave
where it was found and must have been carried from a location
about three miles away. What made it special was that it had the
shape of a human skull, on one side of which were small cavities
that looked like a pair of sunken eye-sockets above a simple
mouth. There is no suggestion that this 'face' had been
artificially manufactured but its accidental resemblance is so
striking that it seems certain the object was collected and
brought back to a favoured dwelling place as a 'treasured
possession'.
Known as the Makapansgat Pebble, after the site where it
was found, it is thought to be the most ancient art object in the
world. What makes it so extraordinary is that the cave where it
was discovered was not occupied by prehistoric man but by the
early man-apes known as the Australopithecines. they may not
have been capable of fashioning a model head themselves but they
were at least able to see one in the natural surface-weathering
on a pebble and to be so impressed by the image that they were
moved to carry it home with them, over a long distance.
In performing this seemingly simple action of collecting
an unusual pebble, those primeval man-apes were in reality taking
a giant step. They were seeing a face that was not a face. They
were reacting to something that stood for something else. By
responding to the image on the pebble they were indulging in a
primitive form of symbolism. They were struck by a resemblance,
by an accidental echo, and were so fascinated by it that they
carried it for three miles. This long journey, carefully
transporting the pebble, reveals that their interest in the
pebble-face was not a fleeting reaction but a serious
preoccupation.
"Fashioning an image, as distinct from collecting one,
appears to have been beyond these man-apes, and was still a long
way off in the future. Until recently, it was thought to be a
creative act that occurred only in the last fifty thousand years
of the human story. A recent discovery in the Middle East has
now pushed that date back to three hundred thousand years, but
even this is still quite young compared with the Makapansgat
Pebble.
"The newly found sculptural object - the most ancient
man-made image in the world - is a small stone figurine of a
woman, unearthed at an archaeological site on the Golan Heights.
It is extremely crude, but the head is clearly separated from
the body by an incised neck, and the arms are indicated by two
vertical grooves, apparently cut by a sharp flint tool. It is a
find that establishes the even greater antiquity of the human
fascination with symbolic images." ~ Desmond Morris, The Human
Animal, (New York: Crown Publishing, 1994), p. 186-188.
But Morris is wrong. The oldest man-made piece of art is from 1.6 million years ago. The Phonolite pebble discussed by Mary Leakey in the Olduvai reports.
"In concluding this review of the lithic material from
Oldowan and Developed Oldowan Sites the grooved and pecked
phonolite cobble found in Upper Bed I at FLK North must be
mentioned. This stone has unquestionably been artificially
shaped. But it seems unlikely that it could have served as a
tool or for any practical purpose. It is conceivable that a
parallel exists in the quartzite cobble found at Makapansgat in
which natural weathering has simulated the carving of two sets of
hominid-or mre strictly primate- features on parts of the
surface. The resemblance to primate faces is immediately obvious
in this specimen, although it is entirely natural, whereas in the
case of the Olduvai stone a great deal of imagination is required
in order to see any pattern or significance in the form. With
oblique lighting, however, there is a suggestion of an elongate,
baboon-like muzzle with faint indications of a mouth and
nostrils. By what is probably no more than a coincidence, the
pecked groove on the Olduvai stone is reproduced on the
Makapansgat specimen by a similar but natural groove and in both
specimens the positions of the grooves correspond to what would
be the base of the hair line if an anthropomorphic interpretation
is considered. This is open to question, but nevertheless the
occurrence of such stones at hominid sites in such remote periods
is of considerable interest." ~ M.D. Leakey, Olduvai Gorge
3 Excavations in Beds I and II, 1960-1693, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1971), p. 269
So, please tell me Dick, why must it be a flute? Why won't man-made art or even recognized art work? After all even we recognize natural rock formations if they resemble a human face--The Old Man in the Mountain in New Hampshire I believe.
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