RE: In defense of Paul Seely (Part 1)

Hi Glenn, you wrote:
 
GRM: Define human--someone that that looks like you and I? Someone with a modern forehead? It is hard to know what you mean by the term, human, when you won't define it.
 
Do I look like an anthropologist? Australopithicines have been defined as apes by better qualified than you and me. Teeth has a lot to do with it. Brain complexity, not mere size. Ability to vocalize. Apes don’t make stone tools or build houses out of mammoth bones and hide or track reindeer herds or make bone flutes. All those things are hallmarks of man.
 
Glenn O. Morton is my name (O for Obfuscator)
 
Suspicions confirmed.
GRM: No, if the dam collapse was deep enough (and there is evidence from paleontology that it had to be at least 3000 feet deep) it might have only taken a year to fill the Med. Secondly, I now see your definition of human--someone that looks like us. Do you have prejudicial feelings towards H. erectus or A. afarensis?
Okay, in the year that the Mediterranean was filling up who would have been stupid enough to drown? Just stroll north or south. What, me prejudiced? Some of my best friends …
>>> Only apes lived at that time in geological history. <<<
GRM:That is interesting that you should say that. I think recognizing art is a human thing--seeing a face in a naturally carved stone is a human thing--not an ape thing. Apes don't keep items like that, yet an Australopithecus saw a rock which had a face on it and he carried it several miles back to his rockshelter. When was this? More than 3 million years ago. It is called the Makapansgat pebble.
Why should that be surprising? You surmise farming, raising livestock, tents, musical instruments and metal working two and a half million years before that! I’m sure any verification of that would make the front page of Nature.
GRM: The first manufactured artwork is a 1.6 million year old phonolite pebble into which a face was pecked. Mary Leakey discusses it in her reports on the Olduvai Gorge excavations.
And Homo erectus, a hominid, was alive and well by that time. No quarrel from me.
GRM:Now, clearly this is not evidence of sin, but it is evidence of human-like behavior. And another human-like behavior--only mankind makes stone tools and they were in existence as long ago as 2.6 million years. Why do you call them apes? No animals chips stone except mankind. I think my point is that you are a sapienist.
Add that to my list of faults. I don’t know any undisputed stone tools dating that far back. What’s your source?
>>>Even if a split between what has since become human from what eventually became chimpanzees did occur at 6 million years ago, the line which became human were still apes long after the split. No biological “humanoids” occur in the fossil record earlier than 2.2 million years ago. This puts a massive split of over 3 million years between your “flood” to the advent of our genus R20;Homo.R21; I would like to hear your argument as to how “sin” spread from non-humans to humans.<<<
GRM:Two responses. Are you at all aware of the imperfections of the fossil record? Go look at the gaps between the first and second occurrence of fossil animals. http://home.entouch.net/dmd/gaps.htm. Some fossil animals lived on earth for millions of years and during that interval didn't leave a single fossil for us to find. Yet we know they were here on earth during the interim. Secondly, your view is weak because it claims that humans are a very late creature, but the archaeological evidence says that human behavior goes way back. It is our behavior, not our looks that makes us human.
So the problem is missing human fossils? You’re waiting to find a hominid fossil dated earlier than 5 mya? So your whole thesis rests on finding evidence of humans who had to have lived over 3 million years earlier than can thus far be confirmed. Why wouldn’t you simply accept the judgment of paleontologists who make their living at it?
>>> <http://www.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/timeline/afarensis/afarensis-a.html> Australopithecus ramidus 5 to 4 million years BC
 <http://www.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/timeline/afarensis/afarensis-a.html> Australopithecus afarensis 4 to 2.7 million years BC
 <http://www.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/timeline/africanus/africanus-a.html> Australopithecus africanus 3.0 to 2.0 million years BC
 <http://www.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/timeline/robustus/robustus-a.html> Australopithecus robustus 2.2 to 1.0 million years BC
 <http://www.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/timeline/habilis/habilis-a.html> Homo habilis 2.2 to 1.6 million years BC
 <http://www.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/timeline/erectus/erectus-a.html> Homo erectus 2 to 0.4 million years BC
 <http://www.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/timeline/h-sapiens/h-sapiens-a.html> Homo sapiens- 400,000 to 200,000 years BC
HS neandertalensis 200,000 to 30,000 years BC
 <http://www.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/timeline/h-sapiens-sapiens/h-sapiens-sapiens-a.html> Homo sapiens sapiens <http://www.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/timeline/h-sapiens-sapiens/h-sapiens-sapiens-a.html> 130,000 years BC to present<<<
 
GRM: You seem not to understand that most of this is a relatively smooth transitional sequence.
 
What causes you to think I don’t understand that? Did I say anything about a jerky sequence?
 
There is no major break between anyone from erectus on. Even those supposedly modern humans at 160 kyr (not 130) were quite similar to the creatures we called archaic homosapiens. The earliest of them were quite similar to the erectines. Homo habilis had a fully human birth pattern. We know that from the ratio of the birth canal to the adult head size. Like us, they tripled their brain size AFTER birth. Apes double after birth. The importance of this is that extended maternal care was needed for the infant compared with the Chimps. THat is one of the things which makes us human. But, habilis was not very different from the Australopithecines (although they didn't seem to have the head size tripling after birth). And there are some anthropologists who beleive that they could speak.
 
Or make vocal sounds. Chimps can make sounds and recognize speech.
 
There is a really good case for speech in H. habilis:
 
They’re hominids.
 
"Some physical anthropologists, among them anatomist Philip
Tobias of the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa,
believe that Homo habilis was capable of articulate speech, on
the grounds that Broca's area is developed in early Homo's brain,
but not in that of Australopithecus." ~ Brian M.
Fagan, The Journey From Eden, (London: Thames and Hudson, 1990),
p. 87
 
Course, you get to ignore this again just like the last time I talked about this.
 
I read just fine. Hominids can talk, apes don’t.
 
Another expert:
" But what concerns us here is the surface structure of the
cerebral cortex. During the summer of 1982, Simon Kasinga and I
cast the braincase of the oldest skull representing Homo habilis.
 And guess what. Unlike any of the australopithecine endocasts,
this one (from specimen KNM-ER 1470) appeared to be humanlike in
the revealing convolutions of its left frontal lobe. As Phillip
Tobias first suggested, Homo habilis appears to have had a
Broca's speech area in its brain and, as such, was probably
capable of some form of rudimentary humanlike language." ~ Dean
Falk, Braindance,(New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1992), p. 50
 
GRM: So, you are saying that these guys were apes.
 
Read my human lips. Homo habilis is in our genus Homo. I didn’t say hominids weren’t humanlike. When you find a Broca area in a brain of one of Lucy’s playmates, you’ve got something.
 
Dick Fischer, Genesis Proclaimed Association
Finding Harmony in Bible, Science, and History
 <http://www.genesisproclaimed.org> www.genesisproclaimed.org
 
  
 
 

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Received on Tue Jun 13 00:56:02 2006