Christian Anti-evolutionism in Light of DNA Evidence

I missed this and need to reply to Chris. As I noted above, many anthropologists do believe that speech/language is much older than 200kyr ago. And I would challenge you to provide evidence for the assertion that the language for philosphy is no more than 200kyr ago. What form would that or could that evidence take? While I won’t say their language was as efficient as ours, the brain structures we use in language appear with H. habilis.2.4-2.6 myr ago. It is Broca’s area and it is a word processing module (or part of one) Why would a hominid who has no ability to speak evolve one of these?

Secondly, there is very good evidence that H. erectus crossed the straits to Flores. Given that the currents are such that they are perpendicular to the island to island direction, a floating non-steerable ship/raft would be taken into the indian Ocean, away from Flores. Below is the current map.


Here is an enlargement

The reason I started talking about erectines crossing the ocean straits to get to Flores is because those who have studied this problem say they had to have a language in order to build a steerable boat. Yes, this is controversial, but it has appeared in Science:

Most researchers have believed that Homo erectus lacked the social and linguistic skills to pilot the deep, fast-moving waters that separate most Asian and Australian faunas, but in this week’s issue of Nature , an international team presents new dates for stone tools from the Indonesian island of Flores that confirm H. erectus 's presence there 800,000 years ago. Although most researchers accept the new dates for the artifacts, questions linger about whether they are really tools, and researchers are sharply divided over the team’s proposition that H. erectus used rafts and may have had language. But if H. erectus did indeed arrive on Flores by boat, it would mean that their cognitive abilities would be up for reappraisal and that the species was more adaptable than is commonly believed. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/279/5357/1635

Homo erectus was to enjoy a very long career in the East, lasting until perhaps some 300,000 BP, and among his accomplishments in those parts is apparently to be counted the crossing of seas on at least one occasion by means of rafts, for there is an island in the Java Sea with erectus remains which was never connected to the mainland (unlike Java itself) during any fluctuation of sea level during erectus times. Some 19 km of open sea needed to be crossed to reach Flores, apparently in about 800,000 BP!” Paul Jordon, Neanderthal, (London: Sutton Publishing, 1999), p. 167

I want to remind everyone that this is Wallace’s line, one of the most solid biogeographical barriers on earth. Only mankind and the animals he brought with him crossed that line. No rafted mammals made it to Australia and the first barrier is the Lombok strait.

To cross this strait and have a viable population that will survive inbreeding, one must have the cognitive ability to determine the size of the raft in comparison with the number of people embarking, they must know and communicate how to build a rudder. They must have an understanding that building a sail or using paddles will propel the boat, They must understand the direction to point the rudder in order to not be carried out to the indian ocean by the current. They must determine how much food to take, and who to gather it and into what kind of vessel to carry it, They would have to know what material to use to build the boat, dugout, bamboo or what? (hint dugouts won’t work well in rough seas).

Because of all this, many have said that H. erectus had some form of symbolic communication–could it be a complex symbol carrying sign language? Yes, but they had to be able to communicate. H. erectus had the brain structures for word processing, so if it wasn’t used for language what was it used for? If one allows that a language can be used symbolically, then there is no limit to what symbols one can invent, including philosophical and theological symbols.
Even the planning for a fire, and the manufacture of complex tools are indicative of language:

" We cannot even dream of a chimpanzee making a fire, whether it be by rubbing two sticks together or by striking one stone against another to throw a spark into a bed of kindling." Juan Luis Arsuaga, The Neanderthal’s Necklace, transl. By Andy Klatt, (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2002), p. 269-270

Fire requires knowing when to get more wood, knowing wet wood doesn’t burn, knowing how to preserve embers, knowing how to start it by two sticks or sparking. All of this requires loads of intelligence. H. erectus is the first proven user of fire.

The fireplace would be the symbolic center of the group, a beacon by day and by night for the men who had left camp to hunt. At the stage of Homo erectus, there must have been some division of labor, with men specializing as hunters and women as collectors and perhaps preparers of food. No doubt the women looked after the children, fetched wood and water, and kept the fire going. Such groups would be apt to split up during the day but have some agreed-upon place to return to in the late afternoon or evening.
"Planning of this sort requires a language. Primitive though they may have appeared, with their heavy brow ridges, low skulls, and large chinless jaws, these men had relatively large brains, which were often within the range of modern humans. It seems likely that their brains had become sufficiently developed for language to be possible.
"Instruction in toolmaking and the use of fire would certainly be facilitated by the use of language, although perhaps conceivable without it. The tools used by Homo erectus had become more elaborate than those of the australopithecines, and Homo erectus hunted large mammals, which probably demanded planning and collective action.
"Some articles by Philip Lieberman and his associates to be discussed later in this chapter have suggested that Neanderthal communication was deficient. Homo erectus was lower on the evolutionary ladder than Neanderthals; so perhaps, if Lieberman et al. are right, use of language by Homo erectus was even more rudimentary. The view taken here, however is that some sort of language was probably spoken by Homo erectus.” ~ Victor Barnouw, An Introduction to Anthropology: Physical Antrhopology and Archaeology, Vol. 1, (Homewood, Illinois: The Dorsey Press, 1982) p. 147
If we say as some do, that language depends on the modern position of the larynx, then 8-year-olds shouldn’t be able to talk.

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. Most experts, however, believe that speech developed much more gradually. Anatomist Jeffrey Laitman of Johns Hopkins University has studied the position of the human larynx by examining the base of hominid skulls. He found that Australopithecus had vocal tracts much like living apes. He was unable to study the base of Homo habilis crania as they are fragmentary, but Homo erectus had a larynx with an equivalent position to that of an 8-year-old modern child. He believes that it was only after 300,000 years ago, with the appearance of archaic Homo sapiens, that the larynx assumed its modern position, giving at least mechanical potential for the full range of speech sounds used today.” ~ Brian M. Fagan, The Journey From Eden, (London: Thames and Hudson, 1990), p. 87

Put an adult mind with that larnyx and my guess is, that communication will occur, maybe not as easily as we do it, but still language. Maybe they used click languages and avoided some of the sounds Lieberman thinks are so important. There is lots of behavioral evidence for erectines having language–generally it is ignored.

Thank you. But really these are the types of questions that come naturally to my mind.

I never said that I did, hence the question.

And I said to let me know if I am misunderstanding.

In your response to Chris you said.

Instead of the fossil record, how do you address the simple fact that you believe Homo Habilis evolved from what? and then spent 3 million years NOT evolving. That seems to be an extreme case of statis.

I am glad I could help on some of the issues, and I apologize for my attitude.

I don’t know how you got the idea that habilis spent 3 myr not evolving. The general view is that Habilis evolved from an australopithecine, and then evolved into H. erectus, who gave rise to heidelbergensis, neanderthal and H. sapiens. No species even within their lifespan remained unchanged. Erectine brains got bigger as time went forward. .

All of the fossil hominids show evolution and changes over time.Now the dating of various species changes with various researchers, but habilis’ known fossils extend from about 2.5-1.5 myr. The original habilis looked a lot like Australopithecus except bigger–from whom he may or may not have been evolved. Determining relationships is very hard and involved comparisons of skeletal elements and much arguing. There are no hard and fast rules for what makes a new speices–indeed this is one of the problems with Anthro–maybe we were one species that changed through time!

"The bed I ‘Homo habilis’ material, in fact closely resembles Australopithecus sp. from South Africa" Elwyn L. Simons, David Pilbeam and Peter C. Ettel, “Controversial Taxonomy of Fossil Hominids”, Science, 166, October 10, 1969, p. 258

I got this picture and it is a bit fuzzy, but it shows the changes from Australopithecines to H. sapiens

Australopithecus has an ape gut. We know that because the ribs are bigger at the bottom. This was because to process plant matter requires longer intestines, and so, this is the style of ribcage gorillas and chimps have.

Habilis has a little less flaring at the bottom of the ribs, this implies more meat in the diet.

Erectus continued the increase in height and cranial size. Note that the ribs now are like those of homo sapiens, heidelbergensis and neanderthal. The gut has shrunk allowing the barrel ribcage we have, rather than the conical ribicage of the apes.

I just learned that this month an amazing discovery has been announced. H. erectus is at least 200 kyr older than previously thought and he was contemporary with some habilines, and Parathropines.

"The DNH 134 cranium shares clear affinities with Homo erectus, whereas the DNH 152 cranium represents P. robustus. Stratigraphic analysis of the Drimolen Main Quarry deposits indicates that unlike many other South African sites, there was only one major phase of relatively short deposition between ~2.04 million years ago and ~1.95 million years ago. This age has been constrained by the identification of the ~1.95-million-year-old magnetic field reversal at the base of the Olduvai SubChron within the sediments and by the direct uranium-lead dating of a flowstone that formed during the reversal. This has been augmented by direct dating on fossils by means of US-ESR that suggests that the DNH 134 and DNH 152 crania were deposited just before this reversal, with the DNH 134 crania deposited at ~2.04 million years ago. Andy I. R. Herries et al, "Contemporaneity of Australopithecus, Parathropus and Homo erectus in Soouth Africa, Science April 3, 2020.

This illustrates the danger of saying “the oldest fossil of this group means it didn’t live earlier” These kind of discoveries move everything back slowly and will require some re-thinking of evolutionary relationships, which are never proven or secure, but probable.

Hi Glenn. Didn’t realize you were invoking my name over here. I’m a laggard lately. Your summary is pretty close. Let’s see if I can clarify …

As you know, I view ha’adam (the man) as an archetypal symbol. Thus, the story of the garden represents the collective human journey from innocent ignorance to guilty maturity, which every individual replicates. In childhood development, the line between child and adult is “fuzzy.” The same can be said for the line between human and animal in evolution. While the exact location of that line may remain a secret hidden in God, Christians nevertheless will continue to speculate and debate whether Neanderthal, Denisovan, erectus , all hominins, or only sapiens should be thought of as “human.” Without claiming anything approaching a definitive answer, I offer my own educated guess. On the analogy of “the man” naming the animals, I suggest the first speakers of words are adam – the first members of the human family.

In my view, ha’adam represents the human family from H. erectus about 1 million years ago to the “fall” around 65,000 years ago. The garden narrative represents a collective journey from ignorant childhood to mature human beings capable of representing God in his goodness, justice, and mercy.

Just an FYI: The Canadian-American Theological Review has accepted my article outlining these concepts. Double-blind peer review. Not bad for a notorious nobody. Look for it in the Fall/Winter issue.

I explain it in Adam’s Evolutionary Journey Pts 1-3. Check it out sometime.
http://becomingadam.com/index.php/qt-series/becoming-adam-podcast/

When did humans take partners?
Very early. As a way to explain the co-evolution of language and the brain, Terrence Deacon in “The Symbolic Species” proposes a social contract regulating sex (marriage) in multi-male/multi-female groups fed into higher levels of sociality and symbolic reference.

when did humans begin to wear clothes?
About 170,000 years ago, dated by the appearance of clothing lice.

when did humans begin to do small scale ag?
About 15,000 years ago.
when did humans begin to have some form of judicial laws
Judicial codes of “law” had to wait for the invention of writing. “Morality” came first.
when did humans begin to build cities ( village tribes)
Cities or villages? Cities around 10,000 years ago.

You’re talking to him. Glenn Morton is @gbob

Definitely no earlier than 200 kya. More likely around 65 kya in my research.

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Congratulations. I know the feeling. When I got my Med flood accepted in PSCF and Dating Adam also accepted, I felt the same as you. It is always nice when someone new gets their ideas published.

And I am glad I got it fairly close. I didn’t go into your population model for moral development, because that wasn’t the point of my thread. It was the odd observation that almost no one wants Adam to be anything other than an H. sapiens. I think we will disagree on speech and religion in the archaics, but that is ok, God will set each or both of us straight when we get there.

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It’s a race to the finish line! haha

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lol, I think I have the lead. lol

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Sure! I appreciate your gracious attitude, gbob.

You asked for an explanation of why anthropologists and linguists believe that symbolic language is a relatively recent development, so I’ll go ahead and explain what I as a layman have learned.

The first thing to note is that symbolic language showing up 65kya or 200kya is very much consistent with more simplistic language 2mya. Being able to communicate about trees, boats, animals, and hunting 2 mya does not mean that Habilis was communicating about religion and philosophy.

Indicators of symbolic language include burial rites, abstract paintings, and of course (very recently) writing. These make no appearance in archealogy until about 60kya. Those who set an earliest date of 200kya are being extra careful about equating absence of evidence with evidence of absence. Given the number of artifacts from eons past, though, it seems highly unlikely that hominids would have had symbolic language for 2M years without leaving a single symbolic artifact.

I am by no means an expert in the topic and would welcome correction or refinement from those better versed.

Stay safe, gbob,
Chris

Of Lice and Men.

I have always thought this lice thing made no sense. We had H. erectus living in China 500 kyr agowhere winters are very cold, H. erectus living in Dmanisi Georgia 1.77 myr ago where winters are cold. And H. erectus living in Germany 400 kyr ago (where winters are known to be mild! lol) So I decided today to do some more research.

One reason I spend so much time on my posts is that I try to check to see if some new data destroys what I am about to say. The lice evidence for clothing is 10 years out of date. Here is what I found from 2019

The body and head lice have a morphology and biological characteristics almost similar, but differ in their ecological niches (Veracx and Raoult, 2012). Although the taxonomic status of these two types of lice has been debated for more than a century, they are now considered as ecotypes of a single species as opposed to distinct species (Light et al., 2008b; Veracx and Raoult, 2012; Tovar-Corona et al., 2015). Despite numerous studies, the genetic basis and evolutionary relationships among body and head lice remain obscure." Nadia Amanzougaghene et al, “Where are we with Human Lice? A Review of the Current state of Knowledge,” Front. Cell Infect. Microbiol. 2019:9:474 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6990135/

“Until recently, the most predominant opinion was that body louse descended from head louse in nature (Veracx and Raoult, 2012). Indeed, as the body louse lives and lays eggs on the clothing of the host (Raoult and Roux, 1999; Light et al., 2008b; Veracx and Raoult, 2012), it was thought that body lice had only recently appeared when modern humans started wearing clothes (Kittler et al., 2003; Light et al., 2008b). However, the most recent data available do not share the same view. Indeed, a novel theory for the emergence of body lice has been reported recently, suggesting that under certain conditions of poor hygiene, an infestation of head lice can turn into a massive infestation, which has allowed variants (genetic or phenotypic) of head lice able of ingesting a large amount of blood, a typical characteristic of body lice, to colonize clothing (Li et al., 2010; Brouqui, 2011; Veracx and Raoult, 2012). This assumption was based on the genotypic and phylogenetic analyses using highly variable intergenic spacers showing that head and body lice are not indistinguishable (Li et al., 2010). In addition, several researchers pointed that when head lice raised under appropriate conditions, they could develop into body louse ecotypes (Keilin and Nuttall, 1919; Alpatov and Nastukova, 1955). Thus, the divergence of head and body lice is obviously not the result of a single event, but probably takes place constantly among the two shared louse clades A and D (see below for louse mitochondrial clades), this transformation being facilitated by mass infestations (Li et al., 2010; Veracx and Raoult, 2012)”. Nadia Amanzougaghene et al, “Where are we with Human Lice? A Review of the Current state of Knowledge,” Front. Cell Infect. Microbiol. 2019:9:474 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6990135/

"Taken together, these data evidence that the phenotypic shifts associated with the emergence of body lice are likely to be a consequence of regulatory changes, possibly epigenetic in origin, triggered by environmental cues. Such phenotypic modification has been reported to occur in other insects, such as in honey bees, termites, and migratory locusts (Simpson et al., 2001; Hayashi et al., 2007; Lyko et al., 2010). " Nadia Amanzougaghene et al, “Where are we with Human Lice? A Review of the Current state of Knowledge,” Front. Cell Infect. Microbiol. 2019:9:474 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6990135/

So, now we know that lice don’t tell us when clothing was adapted. And I never could figure out how 45 deg latitude Asia could host naked hominids without freezing them do death. Theyu had to have clothes.

Absolutely true, but most people today don’t communicate about theology or philosophy. lol Just noting that.

Let’s look at some of those artifacts from Eons past. I am very tired tonight so I will start with this and post more tomorrow. This is a case of an Australopithecus recognizing his face in a rock, just like you recognize faces and recognize the symbolic relationship. Notice how it took Dart turning it over before he realized what he had. I posted this earlier:

Symbolic thinking is a prerequisite for religion and I want to start with the earliest symbolic thinking I know of. It is the Makapansgat pebble dating to 3 million years ago. A small brained australopithicus recognized a face as a symbol of his kind, in the banded iron pebble he picked up and carried it 5 km to his limestone cave.

" Possibly the oldest known piece of evidence bearing on the predilections of the Late Pliocene hominids is the reddish cobble, with presumably weathered-out features making it resemble a humanoid face, that was found in 1925 by W. I. Eitzman at the site that became known as the Limeworks Quarry, Makapansgat, in the Transvaal. It was recovered from a pink stony breccia, later identified by T. C. Partridge as member 4 in his terminology, overlying the main level with Australopithecus remains (the grey breccia, member 3), and dated on the basis of palaeomagnetic readings at 3 Ma B.P. The cobble weighs ca. 260 g. It is jasperite, or banded ironstone of Precambrian age. The banded character reflects varying proportions of iron and silica in the make-up of the rock. The more deeply weathered layers are probably relatively rich in iron, while the more indurated ones are richer in silica. Banded ironstones outcropping about 3 miles (4.8 km) NNE of the limeworks were the probable source of the rock fragment that was eroded to form this large pebble or cobble. It is obviously very water-worn, as though subjected to fluviatile action, and may first have come to rest in the gravel of a river bed."

“The means by which it was eventually transported from, say, a river bed to a cave breccia is a matter for speculation. On the principle of Occam’s razor, it seems reasonable to accept Dart’s hypothesis (see below), based on the remarkable fact that this reddish cobble was unique, quite foreign to the layer of pink stony breccia in which it was found. J.W. Kitching recalls that when he first saw the specimen it still had some of the pink breccia adhering to it. Dart suggests that one of the australopithecine hominids noticed this reddish head-like cobble (I say, perhaps at a river margin), picked it up and carried it as a treasured object to their temporary dwelling place in one of the Makapansgat rock shelters. To my mind, the colour of the cobble was a very significant aspect. According to Sir James Fraser, in a number of creation myths the first men were modeled out of red clay or earth. Red is the colour most attractive to the Hominoidea, i.e. apes and men. Anyone who doubts this should try offering a tray of boiled sweets, each of a single colour, to a group of children, and the marked preference in favor of selecting the red ones will soon become evident.” ~ K. P. Oakley, “Emergence of Higher Thought 3.0-0.2 Ma B.P.”, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B, 292, 205-211 (1981), p. 205-206

Dart didn’t report on this item for forty years because he didn’t quite get its importance. He tells us of this in a 1964 paper:

" Thus, ultimately with the aforesaid australipithecine reconstructional background I had come finally to realise, if tardily, that it was necessary to study the pebble from an ‘australopithecine’ point of view. In that process i was turning the stone around until it was updise down. then instantly the cause of those inhibitions of antagonisms that had prevented me from looking at it seriously during the previous forty years and more became apparent."

"A complete perceptual transformation had taken place. The two little rounded ‘eyes’ retained their visual status though their contours looked more square and adult. The huge ‘brain’ and ridiculously pinched infantile ‘mouth’ that had involuntarily prevented us sapient observers from orientating it otherwise, were now replaced by a dwarfed, flattened, and indented ‘skull-cap’, above a broadly-grinning, robust and typical australopithecine ‘face’. Its broad ‘cheeks’ and gaping ‘mouth’ have become so wide that even the total absence of nostril openings would have been incapable of preventing any perceptive Australopithecus from recognizing it as anything other than a caricature of one or another of his extremely flat-faced male or female relatives in a positively hilarious mood.

“The ‘facial proportions’ from this new aspect are thus in excellent general agreement with those that reconstructional efforts have caused each modern artist, with minor variations, to produce for Australopithecus. This concordance of itself is sufficient justification of the inference that conceptual processes of a similar nature caused an australopithecine to transport the pebble to the cave at Makapansgat. In addition, the curious and to some extent corroborative fact is that once one admits the possibility that an Australopithecus had the intellectual ability to detect the presence of a face on this alien natural stone, then the social responses that capacity evoked, follow. The pebble would have had no point without an ability on his associate’s part to comprehend and share the emotional reactions, the puzzlement and amusement, that the discoverer had had. And from this it may also be deduced that he and his fellows at the australopithecine phase of human evolution had already reached a humanoid level of self-realisation and self-awareness .” ~ R.A. Dart, “The Waterworn Australopithecine Pebble of Many Faces from Makapansgat,” South African Journal of Science, 70(June 1974), pp 167-169, p. 167-168

A comparison is shown below. The ability to recognize that this rock is a symbol for my my face means that even small brained Australopithecines were capable of symbolic thought–that is a sobering thought because symbolism is a pre-requisite for religion. Could they have had religion? Yes, but we are very unlikely to ever know if they did or not.
image
Given that Australopithecines were capable of symbolic thought, then how can we deny symbolic thought to the larger brained erectines? Indeed, there are other evidences that the erectines engaged in religion. One might even wonder if this is where the mother goddess religions started. First there is the Berekhat Ram figurine. Below are various Venus figurines. The really good ones are from the upper Paleolithic, but then they had better technology with which to cut stone. I think this is an important point. Without fine rock carving tools, one’s artistic abilities can’t produce much of value. Thus Chris Stringer made a chart showing how humans have improved on getting cutting surface out of flint.

Turning it over upside down and you have a more human face.

Edited to correct what Chris Falter suggested. Recognizing one’s face is a matter of symbolism, but doesn’t necessary prove symbolic language. One should always strive for completeness. Thanks Chris

I think that Adam was anatomically like us because he lived in the last 12 kyrs. Even 200,000 years ago catering to some misguided effort to make him some kind of genetic origin of mankind would render him insignificant to us. People 200,000 years ago would be significant to the genetic development of mankind but not to the cultural development of mankind, and I think latter is more important. Thus the supposition of an Adam from that long ago, would cause me to simply discard the story as so irrelevant to our lives that it might as well be nothing but fictional story for children and nothing more.

Why?

  1. Human history is only 3000 years at most. This means that things which happened earlier than this has practically no impact on life today. Any story of events before this could only come to us by word of mouth. And the accuracy and believability of stories coming to us in this manner is going to decrease rapidly with time, until they become indistinguishable from fiction.

  2. 12000 years is the date of the earliest known civilizations so anything too long before that time would mean we talking about something with no significance to the beginning of human civilization.

  3. The stories we have tell of the practice of agriculture which the evidence suggests arose between 12,000 and 23,000 years ago. So if we are talking about people long before this then people must have felt pretty free to add whatever they wanted to the story in the meantime.

In conclusion I see no reason not to believe in an historical Adam and Eve from between 6-12 kya, but I find the idea that these are purely fictional characters to be more believable than an Adam and Eve from a time much earlier than that.

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Hi gbob,

I am not sure that the facial resemblance pebble entails symbolic language. Consider:

  1. Many species besides humans are able to recognize themselves in mirrors: the great apes, magpies, dolphins, magpies, and Asian elephants. Does this mean they can communicate with symbolic languages?
  2. Charles S. Pierce, one of the giants of linguistics, describes 3 kinds of signifiers:
    • Indexes
    • Icons
    • Symbols

That pebble is definitely an icon, not a symbol. Remarkable? Yes! Symbol? No. As I have mentioned, my professional work is in the area of natural language processing and computational linguistics, so–though I do not possess a Ph.D.–I do know something about the field.

Blessings,
Chris

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Anthropologists would disagree with your assessment of the Makapansgat pebble, which is mentioned in every book on paleoart, but that is ok, you have a right to disagree with them if you think they are going off course. Let’s try some more More on symbolism

Let’s start with a biological fact. Some species, probably H. erectus gave rise to H. heidelbergensis, Neanderthal and modern man. It used to be thought that heidelbergensis gave rise to Neanderthal and H. sapiens, but that can’t be anymore.

" More consequentially, the date of this split has been pushed way back. The latest estimate comes from a remarkable cache of fossils called the Sima hominins, the remains of at least 28 ancient humans found in a cave called Sima de los Huesos (pit of bones) in the Atapuerca mountains of northern Spain. They are 430,000 years old and were long believed to be H. heidelbergensis. But in 2016 their DNA – the oldest ancient human DNA ever sequenced – revealed that they were actually Neanderthals, and pushed the split between modern humans and Neanderthals/Denisovans back to between 550,000 and 765,000 years ago . That all but rules out H. heidelbergensis and points the finger at an earlier species. “For about 35 years, I’ve argued that Homo heidelbergensis represents the most reasonable last common ancestor for Neanderthals and modern humans ,” says Stringer. “I don’t believe that any more.” Graham Lawton, “Becoming Human”, New Scientist, April 3, 2020, p.40-41

Now, given that Neanderthals and sapiens went their separate ways for a long long time, not seeing each other, if each of them has artistic abilities, then likely their parent species did as well. Otherwise, one must postulate that two species developed the same cognitive skills in two different lines. That becomes less likely and for the Christian, certainly doesn’t fit our view of an Adam and Eve.

One piece of utilitarian art stands out to me from 250,000 years ago, from West Tofts, England. A hominid–either H. erectus or Neanderthal made it. I think most likely it was by an erectine. By 300 kyr ago, Neanderthals were making Levallois tools–such a counterintuitive way to make tools that language has been deemed necessary. Wiki says:

" The technique is first found in the Lower Palaeolithic but is most commonly associated with the Neanderthal Mousterian industries of the Middle Palaeolithic. In the Levant, the Levallois technique was also used by anatomically modern humans during the Middle Stone Age. In North Africa, the Levallois technique was used in the Middle Stone Age, most notably in the Aterian industry to produce very small projectile points. While Levallois cores do display some variability in their platforms, their flake production surfaces show remarkable uniformity. As the Levallois technique is counterintuitive, teaching the process is necessary and thus language is a prerequisite for such technology. " Levallois technique - Wikipedia

The West Toft hand ax is such a work of art, it says many things symbolically for the owner. “I am someone special”, “This is my masterpiece” etc. It was a symbol of his power.


If one can’t see the art in saving this Spondylus spinossus as a blazon on his hand ax, then not much will convince you of the symbolic ability of the maker, who likely was an erectus.

Let’s compare the above from 250 kyr ago to art from modern man from 8000 years ago–in this case rock carving by modern man within the past 8000 years at Wonderwerk cave in SA.
Wonderwrk cave art
It doesn’t look like much but the guy who made it has a piece in a museum, which is more than I can say for most of y’all, and me. Let’s use this standard, which was applied to modern Homo sapiens 8000 years ago to see similar items from other hominid species. It would seem hypocritical to allow that the above shows intelligence (which is said often of these kinds of markings) when it is applied to H. sapiens, but shows nothing when applied to other speices. Science shouldn’t work that way.

If the above is the standard for artistic work, then what about this from Bilzingsleben, Germany 425,000 years ago, a Homo erectus site? It is an elephant bone.
Bilzingsleben art

At the time Leakey wrote this, the Neanderthal site of Pech de l’aze was the oldest. It isn’t anymore.

The oldest engraved object so far discovered and dated takes us back to an incredible 300,000 years, to the site of Pech de l’aze in France. There in 1969, Francois Bordes discovered an ox rib that had been engraved with a series of double arcs. The motif, once again, is a frequent feature of the art that was to follow more than a quarter-of-a-million years later.” ~ Richard E. Leakey, The Making of Mankind, (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1981) p. 137

Currently there is a controversial claim for Neanderthal cave painting in Spain, 66,000 years ago, before H. sapiens arrived in Europe. Neanderthal artists made oldest-known cave paintings

This claim will be controversial for a long time. People don’t want Neanderthal to do art, yet he made jewelry; isnt that art? (Neanderthal Necklace - Archaeology Magazine

"Eagle talons are regarded as the first elements used to make jeweler by Neanderthals, a practice which spread around Southern Europe about 120,000 and 40,000 years ago . Now, for the first time, researchers found evidence of the ornamental uses of eagle talons in the Iberian Peninsula. https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-11/uob-tln103119.php

Jacque Hublin found other Neanderthal jewelry at the Grotte du Renne from just before modern humans arrived in Europe. There were pendants, there were bracelets, and maybe ear rings.

Modern man didn’t get to Europe until after about 40,000 years ago. Now, while the purported Neanderthal cave art will have to withstand the scepticism and be dated until the art is ruined. If Neanderthal could make Jewelry, what exactly is the problem with painting? Here is a video of that controversial cave art. Neanderthal Origin of Iberian Cave Art (Science) - YouTube

The thing that gives me hope about the neanderthal cave painting is that the criticisms that uranium leached, seems already to be answered:

" These criticisms of cave art ages don’t hold up, responds archaeologist Paul Pettitt of Durham University in England, a member of Hoffmann’s team. He emphasizes that several layers of rock deposits covering each cave painting were dated separately. Age estimates became progressively older moving from the outermost, youngest layers to the innermost, oldest layers situated closest to the art. That’s a good indication that water did not leach into the rock and lower uranium levels, he says. " https://www.sciencenews.org/article/dating-questions-challenge-whether-neandertals-drew-spanish-cave-art

and

" Anticipating objections about its dating method, Pike’s team collected samples from the outer, middle and inner layers of the calcium carbonate crust and dated them separately. As they expected, the inner samples closest to the art yielded the oldest dates, and the outer samples had younger dates because they would have been later layers of precipitate. “We can’t think of any processes that would re-crystalize the calcite and still keep them in stratigraphic order,” Pike says. The researchers waited three years to publish their results after finding their first clearly pre-human date so they could collect multiple examples and publish their methodology ." Neanderthal artists made oldest-known cave paintings

Then there are potential Venus figurines. Such figurines were worshipped and fund as idols in the homes of early civilization.

" A two-inch-long piece of quartzite rock, pulled from a 400,000-year-old deposit near the Moroccan city of Tan-Tan, is a crude human figurine, says Australian archaeologist Robert Bednarik. If he is correct, this innocuous little lump is the oldest piece of art ever found.

"The rock’s discoverer initially didn’t think much of the find-he was more interested in the stone tools nearby-but was sufficiently intrigued by its humanoid-shape to turn the object over to Bednarik, president of the International Federation of Rock Art Organizations in Melbourne,. Eight grooves in the Tan-Tan object seem to create a crude head, neck, torso, arms and legs… 'My first impression was that it was a natural object, *Bednarik says. When he examined the rock under a microscope, however, he noticed that five of the grooves looked as if they were made deliberately. Some grains have fractures, others have been broken apart. It’s an indication of impact…'The only way he was able to recreate these microscopic structures was by using a stone hammer and flake. The artifact also shows microscopic remnants of iron oxide and manganese-oxide, chemicals used in early red pigments, implying it had been painted"

" If the Tan-Tan object is a work of art, then humans must have developed abstract thought hundreds of thousands of years earlier than is commonly believed. Bednarik also claims to have uncovered an artlike object at least 2.5 million years old. Many of his colleagues are skeptical, partly because these claims contradict the standard Eve hypothesis, which holds that modern humans arose in Africa and spread around the world, displacing groups of primitive humans. If those groups had art and collaborative skills, they weren t so primitive, Bednarik says: The only way to maintain the Eve hypothesis is by drawing a thick line between moderns and totally different archaic people. That s not what we see .'" Kathy Svitil, “Leonardo of the Pleistocene,” Discover, October 2003, p. 18

While the Tan-tan and the Berekhat Ram figurine below are not much to look at, everyone who examines them acknowledges that they are in part modified so as to look human.

" Before considering further the emergence of a spatial element to ritual, it is necessary to consider what could be the earliest known archaeological manifestations of any kind of belief system; these are natural objects resembling the human body (or parts of it) which have received minor amounts of intentional modification in order to bring out the similarity further. Three of these pierres figures are known, two from the Lower Palaeolithic and one from the Middle. A lower Palaeolithic assemblage at Berekhat Ram in Golan Heights, Israel, dominated by Levallois flakes and containing a handful of bifaces dated imprecisely to between 230,000 and 790,000 (most probably 340-450,000 BP), yielded a small 3.5 cm in maximum dimensions) pebble of basaltic tuff containing scoria clasts resembling a human torso and head (Goren-Inbar and Pelts 1994). This has been the subject of optical and scanning electron microscope study by D’Errico and Nowell (2000, who concluded that, unlike other pieces of scoriae found at the locale, groves found on the neck and sides of the piece were consistent with those produced by flint points used experimentally and thus that the figurine was intentionally modified. Similarly the Middle Acheulian (~400,00 BP) deposits at Tan-Tan, on the banks of he River Draa in Morocco, yielded a quartzite cobble (5.8 cm in maximum dimension) again reminiscent of a human body and modified with eight grooves and with red pigment (Bednarik, 2003). " Paul Pettitt, Religion and Ritual in the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic, in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion. edited by Timothy Insoll, (OUP Oxford, 2011), p. 333-334

Other odd activities by fossil man, crystal and fossil collecting.

" Crystals of quartz were collected by Peking man many miles from his home, and one may presume that, partly at least, this was because their shape and appearance appealed to him. Some of the finer Acheulian handaxes are masterpieces of artistic craftsmanship, displaying a perfection which exceeds bare technical necessity ." Stephen W. Edwards, “Acheulian Evidence,” Rock Art Research, 20(2003):2:89-135, p. 109

" Oakley was impressed not only by quartz prisms collected at considerable distance and brought into the Choukoutien Lower Cave but also by manuported fossils found with the Swanscombe cranial fragments in England ." . Stephen W. Edwards, “Acheulian Evidence,” Rock Art Research, 20(2003):2:89-135, p. 109

" The bones were later found to have belonged to a young woman. The Swanscombe skull has been identified as early Neanderthal or pre-Neanderthal, dating to the Hoxnian Interglacial around 400,000 years ago. " Wiki

Going back to our original biological issue. We have presented examples of erectus and Neanderthal art. Are we to beleive that these traits arose in two separate hominid lineages at different times or is it more reasonable to believe that their common ancestor also had these abilities, but maybe expressed them in perishable materials, like wood rather than stone. Stone cutting was not very good until the Levallois technique came along. Thus in part, the lack of preserved art could be due to nothing more than their inability to carve stone.

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I agree with what you say about Adam being 200kyr or less. It solves no problems at all. Of course, I am not proposing Adam at 200kyr ago. I have him much older, And I believe that any information in the Bible that is very old, got there by divine inspiration, not by oral tradition. Thus, none of what you suggest even deals with what I am suggesting.

At least I have a new proposal, that can give people a new direction for research. and I explain the Flood, and the Rivers of Eden, which no view of Adam and Eve within the past 12kyr ago can begin to fathom how the described rivers interacted. Thus we come up with things like Kassites (a group never mentioned in Scripture) and claim they were cush.

Hi gbob -

You make a prima facie case for symbolic language being hundreds of thousands of years old, and for its use being present among members of the Homo genus besides H. Sapiens. I don’t think we are that far apart, insofar as I have already supported the case for symbolic language 200kya.

I understand why geological considerations make you want to consider the possibility of Adam and Eve living 5mya. I happen to think that the inception of symbolic language is not going to be pushed back any further than 500kya, and even that is controversial. But I am not an expert, so I will stop there.

The fact that the Scripture portrays Adam and Eve as agriculturalists would seem to pose a problem as well. In other words, the symbolic language issue is not the only one that needs to be solved in order to make your thought-provoking hypothesis tenable.

That’s my take, FWIW. I hope you have enjoyed our conversation and gotten as much out of it as I have, gbob!

Chris

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Part of the problem is that everyone reads an English Bible and don’t realise that the translator had some flexibility in word choice–if he tilted towards agriculture, he could make it look more like agriculture than maybe it really was.

Apart from that there are 3 possible answers to this issue

First they had it and lost it after the flood. Knowing that technnology, even Neolithic technology, requires specialists, it is very hard to see how one can carry technology on with only 8 people who need to eat NOW… That need to be fed today, now, means those 8 people have no time for technology that doesn’t put food in their mouths. Farming is a specialized technology–even in the Neolithic. One needed to have buildings for storage, one needed to have accountants for who put how much in that storage, pottery is required, which means potters, and kilns, Irrigation is also required in many places of the world. Particular kinds of stone tools are required for harvesting, And most importantly, one needs to guard the plants from critters. Coyotes take one bite out of cantelope or watermelon and then go to the next melon. Mice eat the grain crops, as do birds. Deer, cattle etc can ruin a wheat field in a short time, and squires can strip a fruit tree in a single morning.as can deer. If the family is sleeping or off hunting for today’s food, the critters are eating the crop. So, no, I don’t think farming continued after the flood, if it was ever there before the flood. It makes no logical sense with the need to eat, the need to make arrows to kill dinner, the need to make stone spear points, etc.

Secondly, the difference between agriculturalists and hunter gatherers, who also plant and harvest some foods, is not that great as people think. Yes, hunter gatherer plaant tubors to ensure they have them next year. And hunter-gatherer Neanderthals also seem to have ‘tended’ sheep because they got a high percentage of their calories from sheep in the Altai Maountans. yet they were not agriculturalists. All of this is discussed in 3 posts on technology on my blog (and somewhere here on biologos as well. It discusses why I don’t think they are in a ‘neolithic’ setting. It is here

The third answer is one I don’t like. But some might. So many here argue for accommodation and think God gave the Hebrews free range to alter some of the details of the Bible. I am going to turn it around on its proponents. So, why couldn’t it be that they spoke of them in an agricultural setting because that is what the writer knew about? Now, as I said, I won’t go this directions but some might. Consider the stories about King Arthur. He was put into the age of chivalry when in fact he was a 4th or 5th century brutal war lord in SW England. He probably had no chivalry in any of his bones. So for people who tell me that this is the kind of approach we should take to the Bible, I offer it to them now, and ask, then why not take it here? :grinning:

My answers to the technological issues of Genesis 4 are in the three posts about technology on my blog (and here somewhere). Tents long precede the Neolithic, indeed they are so old one wonders why Scripture would say Jabal was the father of those who live in tents. and the same for musical instruments, they to go much further back in time than the neolithic. There was no metal work in Genesis 4. Tubalcain was a teacher of evil.

Whether one likes the answers or not, I have them on this issue.

Edited to add:I too have enjoyed it Chris, these things make me do research. I don’t know how long I will be able to keep this up. By 5 pm yesterday I was so worn out–my doctors told me in January, that I had 6 months to live. When they told me this, I didn’t really beleive them, but the way my strength is leaving me, I now have to wonder about it. Right now at this moment, I feel good, but for how long today, I don’t know.

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I am sorry, but I don’t think the Bible has any place in geology (or visa versa) any more than the Bible has any place in physics (or visa versa).

I must admit there was a time I thought that language itself came from God. But that not only doesn’t work with science because of the interaction between linguistic and evolutionary development, but it is also unrealistic because the role of God in events tends to be a lot more subtle than that. So since then I have realized that the development of language would take more time and God’s communication with us would require some degree of linguistic sophistication first. So we can imagine God looking for someone who shows more imagination than most so that He might take seriously not only the existence of an unseen deity but also abstract ideas like love, responsibility, justice, and personhood.

Incorrect. Everything I said was in terms of upper limits, so it absolutely deals with proposals that Adam and Eve were even farther back in history.

It is difficult to believe in information given by divine inspiration when we have no demonstrable example of this. It frankly just sounds like an excuse for making stuff up – like saying something is true because God told you so (which people do for contradicting science). Religion, philosophy, ethics, and theology is a different matter because of its highly subjective nature.

2 Cor 10:3-5 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: 4 (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;)
Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ

I guess we should throw that passage out of Scripture.

Mitch, with your ideas that god can’t break natural law, I am not surprised that you don’t like my approach. You are a quasi-materiallist, we having been left on our own in this universe by a God who can’t help us here, other than ‘offer us comfort’. God can’t help us because you believe God can’t break his natural law.

My views and assumptions are quite different from yours. I do believe in miracles. I do believe God has control of natural law And when I was a young man, I decided to test the Bible’s claim that there was a flood, and floods leave geological evidence of themselves. Because of that, I do think geology has input to the Biblical record. You have it backwards, I don’t have the Bible in geology, I have geology in the Bible, so you need to keep this differentiation clear.

I didn’t make the maps I have presented–other geologists did that, so I didn’t make up that there were Messinian subaerial sediments in just the correct places for the 4 rivers mentioned in Genesis 2. It is true, I thought, gee, that matches what the Bible says about those rivers, but that is putting geology into the Bible–the map makers had no such concept, without a doubt. They had no idea that I had already suggested the Mediterreanean flood as Noah’s flood, and they probably had no idea what the Bible said about the 4 rivers of Eden. I guess you would just have me go ‘huh’ and walk away from this amazing confluence of ideas. Such an attitude Mich leads to the status quo and I don’t think the status quo is worth a bucket of warm spit. Too many people leave the faith because they don’t think the Bible is true

Incorrect. God can do anything. God can break His own laws if He chooses. He can do evil hateful things if He so desired. But God does not do evil hateful things and God does not break His own laws either. Unlike many of the believers in Him, God has integrity, rationality, and consistency.

Incorrect. God created us for a relationship and thus He is intimately involved in our lives as a participant changing the course of events as He chooses. But this doesn’t require the violation of the laws of nature, because the laws of nature are not causally closed.

You are a quasi-believer in magic like a Wiccan, John Dee, or masonry – all abra-cadabra woo woo.

On both of these things we agree. Where we disagree is what miracles consist of and with the character of God. I don’t believe that miracles consist of violations of the laws of nature. Instead I believe that the laws of nature provide a back door through which God can do things without violating the laws of nature which He Himself created. You seem to believe that God makes rules just so that He can flaunt His own disregard for them much like any criminal or mobster. I do not. What makes something a miracle is God’s hand in our affairs and not some kind of violation of His own laws.

You seemed to have missed or ignored the visa versa clauses in my statements, so you could manufacture some “backwards” accusation.

I certainly never will support these quasi-communist/Nazi revolutionary groups who want to throw all our liberties down the drain so they can shove their religion/philosophy and bigotry down everyone’s throat. I most certainly will uphold law and order, our constitutional liberties, and tolerance – and see all its enemies swiftly sent on to God’s final judgement.

LOL, you go full circle here Mitch, Just fess up, and acknowledge what you ended with, quote “God does not break His own laws either.” It is really hard to take this position seriously when you go from denial to affirmation in 2 sentences