Christopher Joyce wrote “Fossil Find Points to a Streamlined Human Lineage,” NPR, October 17, 2013 AD wherein he beings by noting:
“Fossils of human ancestors are rare. You could pile all the ones that scientists have found in the back of a pickup truck.”
But, but, but…we have been told that there are mountains of evidence that we evolved from monkeys so what is this stuff about “rare”?
Human skeletons have been found at a site in Georgia (in the former Soviet Union) “dating back almost 2 million years” which are “shaking the family tree of human evolution.”
“The fossil hunters found the cache of bones more than a decade ago in a place called Dmanisi, but kept most of the find under wraps.”
So, for whatever reason(s) this is news from 2003 AD being divulged in 2013 AD.
The bones are said to date to “1.8 million years ago” and includes that which William Jungers (professor of anatomy at Stony Brook University) refers to as an “incredible” skull:
“It’s got to be one of the most complete skulls ever discovered in the fossil record of human evolution.”
Marcia Ponce de Leon (senior researcher at the Anthropological Institute in Switzerland) stated:
“‘For the first time, we can see a population. We only had individuals before,’ she says, referring to the isolated bones of individuals found in Africa from the early Pleistocene.”
Even though the bones were found together and dated to a specific 1.8 miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiillion years ago:
“What puzzled them, though, were the big differences they found in the bones — a lot of variation from individual to individual, and an unusual mosaic of features in some. One adult male, for example, seemed to have almost a grab bag of features — a small brain case, big protruding jaw, and giant teeth. The Dmanisi Five looked like a mix of species.
But Ponce de Leon’s colleague, Christoph Zollikofer, notes that all five apparently died within centuries of each other in the same place. They had to be the same species, he concluded. ‘We are pretty sure that the variation that we see is … within a species,’ Zollikofer says, ‘a single evolving lineage.’” [ellipses in original, emphasis added for emphasis]
And now comes the decade old punchline:
“Finding a human ancestral species with a lot of physical variety from one individual to the next poses another puzzle. The conventional wisdom about early human evolution has it that there were several species that arose in Africa: Homo rudolfensis, Homo habilis, Homo erectus and maybe even more [like the various hoaxes, frauds, extinct apes, etc.].
Now this new discovery suggests that a single species, exemplified by the Dmanisi Five, can have more physical variety than previously thought. In fact, the team found as much variation among modern humans and among chimps and among the Dmanisi Five as there is among those ancient African fossils that have long been thought to be different species.”
That there is variety within a species is called micro “evolution” or, more accurately, reproduction after one “kind” since all humans come from Adam and Eve.
The conclusion is, “that might mean, Zollikofer says, that there weren’t numerous early human species. Maybe there was just one.” But, “You know, I think there are going to be people who won’t like this” added Jungers. Some will not like it due to Victorian Era tall tales about evolution:
“Those people have argued that there were lots of sibling species of early humans that popped up independently in Africa, Asia and Europe, only to die out. They were stages or experiments in human evolution, according to that strain of thought. But the new research suggests a different narrative.
‘There may have been one very successful species that emerges from Africa,’ Junger says, ‘and rapidly spreads to Southeast Asia. That’s a picture of a very successful, cosmopolitan species.’ It’s different from the notion, held by many, of a wide range of early-human-like forms that emerged independently, and eventually were culled until only one was left standing.”
Indeed, this is called Adam and Eve leaving the Garden of Eden and later on, the family on Noah being dispersed after the flood and, later still, the people being dispersed at the Tower of Babel (see Ken Johnson’s book “Ancient Post-Flood History” (see my review at this link).
Lastly, the article notes:
“Like most new ideas about human evolution, this one has skeptics. Brian Richmond, an anthropologist at George Washington University, says the technique used in this new research glosses over the true amount of variation among those earliest African fossils. ‘It doesn’t get at the more fine-grained aspects of anatomy that actually distinguish species from one another,’ Richmond says. ‘It’s a bit like using a telescope when in this case they need a magnifying glass.’
Others say if you look more at individual traits, like the ridges on teeth or the shape of certain bones, rather than a gestalt of the whole organism, you’ll find enough differences to justify splitting those early Africans into separate species. Still, Richmond says the discovery, published in the current issue of the journal Science, is a treasure of new data for scientists to ponder … and argue about.” [ellipses in original]
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