Skull of 'Missing Link' Human Ancestor Found In Ethiopia

Originally posted by Jamuhn
My understanding of ID is that they do not deny evolution, but rather they believe that evolution is a directional process.

The critical issue in intelligent design is that there are, according to ID, structures in biology that cannot have formed naturally, and that this means that they were designed by some intelligent being or another. Evolution can occur, indeed, speciation, and transformation between different kinds of animals can occur in ID, and, from what I understand, some of the big propenents of ID agree that man evolved from 'lower' primates too.

[edit on 29-3-2006 by Nygdan]

Yes, quite a bit early, but that has never stopped the "God is dead, crowd" from getting their 'updates' 'headlining' around the world.


I am sorry but the "God is dead, crowd" does not ask, or expect the Christians and God fearing people to believe that God has never existed. So why is it that every time something we believe in is updated or finds new meaning you people have to tear us down?

This is something we find important, something that makes more sense to us than God created everything.

I don't th ink this thread was meant in any way against those of you who believe in God.

[edit on 29-3-2006 by Inanna]

Originally posted by suzy ryan
Yes, quite a bit early, but that has never stopped the "God is dead, crowd" from getting their 'updates' 'headlining' around the world.

I am sorry but the "God is dead, crowd" does not ask, or expect the Christians and God fearing people to believe that God has never existed. So why is it that every time something we believe in is updated or finds new meaning you people have to tear us down?

This is something we find important, something that makes more sense to us than God created everything.

I don't th ink this thread was meant in any way against those of you who believe in God.

Sorry, not sure why the quote didn't work the first time...


Mod Note: Please Trim Quotes – Please Review This Link.

[edit on 29-3-2006 by Benevolent Heretic]

Sorry to the OP for my continuing the digression

Originally posted by suzy ryan
Yes, quite a bit early, but that has never stopped the "God is dead, crowd" from getting their 'updates' 'headlining' around the world.

but it is only a proportion of christians who do not accept evolution. Religious belief and acceptance of evolution are not mutually exclusive.

from the clergy project...

Within the community of Christian believers there are areas of dispute and disagreement, including the proper way to interpret Holy Scripture. While virtually all Christians take the Bible seriously and hold it to be authoritative in matters of faith and practice, the overwhelming majority do not read the Bible literally, as they would a science textbook. Many of the beloved stories found in the Bible – the Creation, Adam and Eve, Noah and the ark – convey timeless truths about God, human beings, and the proper relationship between Creator and creation expressed in the only form capable of transmitting these truths from generation to generation. Religious truth is of a different order from scientific truth. Its purpose is not to convey scientific information but to transform hearts.

We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as “one theory among others” is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. We believe that among God’s good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator. To argue that God’s loving plan of salvation for humanity precludes the full employment of the God-given faculty of reason is to attempt to limit God, an act of hubris. We urge school board members to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge. We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth.

www.uwosh.edu...

Of course, you may well retort that these 10,000 clergy are not 'true' christians...

[edit on 29-3-2006 by melatonin]

Originally posted by Rren
Back on topic...

Only had it for about five weeks or so and i'm sure they've better things to do then post pics on the web, but hopefully they'll have more soon.

Oh, that's NICE, Rren! Good amount of material that they've got there, and the shape is pretty classic. That's going to be one of those index fossils like Lucy.

Here's more about the area (they're investigating sites, so they have some material where folks camped): www.case.edu...

The original press release is here (they talk about some of the it)artifacts and bones found near :
www.stoneageinstitute.org...

It's a very rich site (a good place for toolmaking, too) -- here's one of the discoveries from 2003:
www.sciencedaily.com...

Originally posted by denythestatusquo
From the link above:

""The hominid cranium -- found in two pieces and believed to be between 500,000 and 250,000 years old -- “comes from a very significant period and is very close to the appearance of the anatomically modern human,'' said Sileshi Semaw, director of the Gona Paleoanthropological Research Project in Ethiopia.""

hmm this is hardly a lot of evidence is it? They will need to find a lot more than this.

Actually, it's a key piece of evidence and tells us a lot about the individual. We know the age and that he/she lived in the time AFTER we find a lot of Homo Erectus fossils but BEFORE we find Homo Sapiens. What there is of the skull shows very clearly that it's kind of midway between the two. The thickness of the skull also shows this as well.

One would expect a very smooth transition with evolutionary developments and we haven't been seeing that at all.

We would if every single thing alive got turned into a fossil. However, this isn't true.

Let me give you an example: let's pretend we're aliens from another galaxy and we have a beam that "beams up" out of every billion people. We'd have a sample of 8 people when we were done.

We might have only a few people with almost black skin and some with brown skin and a few very pale skinned people. We could conclude that if we were able to grab more samples, we'd find skin tones of all grades between those extremes.

Same with fossils.

We have a few others in this group but not many. The presence of this one indicates the area was one where we can expect to find other humans... and hopefully we will.

Originally posted by Rren


(AP)

interesting photo,
to my untrained eye- -- the 2 pieces of different sculls are just that!
two different caraniums, - perhaps becoming fossilized at two different eras as the preliminary dating suggests - between 250K and 500K BCE.

Also;

If one were to look at where the fragments were discovered,
Ethopia AFAR Region,
one might see that the area was probably all underwater, maybe around the times that the fossiles were deposited 250,000 - 500,000 years ago.
Then again, the ancient volcanos might have played a part in trapping the unawares, primitive, lone explorers, who become our present day egnimas.

which then leads to questioning just why would one consider that this Afar Region would be prime site for even more fossiles of transitional changes leading to the modern human branch.
the most likely reason that these skull fragments became fossils is because
the creatures were the prey of hunter-scavangers...hardly what one would expect of a superior line of (?ancestral?) mammals.

all in all, its interesting, but i will wait for further developments,
(i just wonder if there is a request for extending the research funding on the table...and the announcement of this find is just coincidence?)

[edit on 2-4-2006 by St Udio]

..hardly what one would expect of a superior line of (?ancestral?) mammals.

Ah, thats the thing though, these things aren't superior. THey're just stupid little pathetic ground monkeys. THe only thing that is relevant at the early stages is that the stance becomes bipedal, that was the distinguishing trait. THen later on the brain grows and what not.

Also, I don;t think that the region was underwater at this point. What was happened was that there was rifting in that part of africa, the rifting that reached such an extent that today its visible as the great african lakes, the red sea, and a series of faults that travel through israel and into turkey.
What happened was that the region, formerly mostly all a tropical jungle, went through rifting, and thus the portions on opposite sides of the rift became seperate, and the populations of silly little monkeys on either side were seperated. Then the forests started to dissapear on one side, and remained on the other (like in central africa). The silly monkeys (ok not technically monkeys) on the jungle side became modern chimps, and on the eastern side, where the land turned to plains with grasses, they became ground walking chimpish animals, and these things became man.

Originally posted by Nygdan

Ah, thats the thing though, these things aren't superior. THey're just stupid little pathetic ground monkeys.

ah ha...that little short lived niche(evidenced by the fossil skull)
in the grande scheme of something akin to a 'progression of evolution'
is declared to be "superior"...
if only because (most scientists) reasoning has it that these mammals/creatures were human ancestors-
which are the apex of evolution on earth....or so they say

i do share your view that these were just Loser Monkeys (or just a singular casuality which happened to become fossilized...& deemed noteworthy)

Rift or Valley or Depression...an arid landscape none the less, which makes one wonder as to how & why that individual 'predecessor' came to be there...
i guess time will tell if the ground there in the Afar Region is littered with more fossils of these missing-links, whom(as is the vision of academia) traveled & migrated or occupied certain areas in their socially oriented families/groups/bands.

actually, there's too much to address...
i hope some of youse guys will join in the fray

I'm a little confused, but, if i do understand correctly, the thing is, its not 'progressive' evolution.

Consider Piltdown Man. The reason why it was so well received was because it was an advanced braincase and a primitive jaw, and the thought was that man was expected to have evolved by way of having apes with increasingly bigger brains, and only then after that did the brutish characteristics fade away.

When rather now the fossil evidence seems to show that man descended from weak and weird little apelings, that, after a long while, just happened to get bigger brains.

Though again this particular fossil is, apparently, between sapiens and erectus, so it doesn't have much to do with the initial increases in brain size.

Also, as far as migration out of africa, this supports that idea because it shows sapiens 'slowly' evolving in africa, whereas if man evolved 'multi-regionally', then we'd see these changes elsewhere.

posted by Nygdan: “If I understand correctly, it is not 'progressive' evolution . . the fossil evidence seems to show that man descended from weak and weird little ape-lings . . after a long while, just happened to get bigger brains. As far as migration out of Africa, this supports that idea because it shows sapiens 'slowly' evolving in Africa, whereas if man evolved 'multi-regionally' we'd see these changes elsewhere. [Edited by Don W]

Does not evidence from Java and China show migration out of Africa took place much earlier than the date on this skull fragment? I’m thinking hominids have always had an insatiable appetite for exploration and travel. A pre-historic wanderlust. So, this find does not rule out enlarging brains from multiple places, IMO. Early humans must have migrated over Asia and Africa. Continuously. While I am a subscriber fo the out of Africa origins of humans, I do not see this find as adding much to or taking away from, what we believe up to now

Originally posted by St Udio
interesting photo,
to my untrained eye- -- the 2 pieces of different sculls are just that!
two different caraniums, - perhaps becoming fossilized at two different eras as the preliminary dating suggests - between 250K and 500K BCE.

As someone who's had a bit of training, they appear to fit together rather nicely.

If one were to look at where the fragments were discovered,
Ethopia AFAR Region,
one might see that the area was probably all underwater, maybe around the times that the fossiles were deposited 250,000 - 500,000 years ago

Erm, based on what data? Other than by "eyeballing" it (heck, you could eyeball coastal Texas and assume it was all underwater 250,000 years ago (it's quite flat and looks rather like that area) but it'd be a bad guess.)

Then again, the ancient volcanos might have played a part in trapping the unawares, primitive, lone explorers, who become our present day egnimas.

I don't believe those were found in ash. Could be wrong, however.

which then leads to questioning just why would one consider that this Afar Region would be prime site for even more fossiles of transitional changes leading to the modern human branch.

Because of the number of fossils found there already. Fossils are often found in the same area (i.e., because it's a swamp, for example, and this is a place where bodies sink to the bottom, remain pretty undisturbed, and get covered with dirt and silt and so forth pretty quickly. Volcanic ash is another area where you may find clusters of fossils.)

the most likely reason that these skull fragments became fossils is because the creatures were the prey of hunter-scavangers...hardly what one would expect of a superior line of (?ancestral?) mammals.

I don't know about you, but I'd fare pretty poorly against a night-stalking leopard or a pride of lions if I had no clothes and was armed only with sticks and rocks. Lots of people would fall prey to modern predators (and still do, in fact) such as sharks, bears, wolves, wild dogs, tigers, jaguars, leopards, wolverines (if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time) plus animals like deer and horses and bison and cattle and buffalo and pigs and elephants. I don't think you can assume they're all wimpy falling-out-of-the-trees folk. Molars of their ancestors and their descendants show they ate meat and used tools (rocks and sticks).

Dress 'em in cammos and show them how to use an AK-47 and I imagine they'd be as capable of showing you who was top predator as any modern human would be.

all in all, its interesting, but i will wait for further developments,
(i just wonder if there is a request for extending the research funding on the table...and the announcement of this find is just coincidence?)

Partial funding is done by allowing students to pay to go on the digs. But digs like these are also funded by grants and ya don't get the grants if you don't make the finds. There has been a very steady stream of finds from that site for the past 20 years or so. I found a bunch of articles on the animals and on other hominds from the area.

Originally posted by Nygdan

..hardly what one would expect of a superior line of (?ancestral?) mammals.

Ah, thats the thing though, these things aren't superior. THey're just stupid little pathetic ground monkeys. THe only thing that is relevant at the early stages is that the stance becomes bipedal, that was the distinguishing trait. THen later on the brain grows and what not.

Remember they're midway between homo erectus and homo sapiens. So they're a member of the "homo" genus.

To date, we have found no evidence of knuckle-walking in either the homo genus or the australopithecus genus. Knuckle-walking produces a fairly typical structure in the hands and arms, and requires a slightly longer spine and shorter legs. The change to bipedal stance begins somewhere in the Ardipithecus lineage, well before Anthropithecus and long long long before Homo.
www.talkorigins.org...

For everyone's reference, here's the hominid timeline:
www.talkorigins.org...

...and the populations of silly little monkeys on either side ...

I know you're being playful, here, but I think I should restate for the casual reader that humans are NOT related to monkeys, according to scientists. We are related to the apes. There is as much a difference between apes and monkeys as there is between tigers and bobcats.

Originally posted by Nygdan
Consider Piltdown Man. The reason why it was so well received was because it was an advanced braincase and a primitive jaw, and the thought was that man was expected to have evolved by way of having apes with increasingly bigger brains, and only then after that did the brutish characteristics fade away.

...ahem...

Piltdown man was a hoax by a British clergyman. In fact, it was known conclusiely as a hoax within 10 years of the discover back in the 1800's.