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Evidence Found for Earliest Modern Humans
Hugh Pickens writes "Researchers at Arizona State University report that they have pushed back the date for the earliest modern humans to 164,000 years ago, far earlier than previously documented. Paleoanthropologists now say that genetic and fossil evidence suggests that modern human species — Homo sapiens — evolved in Africa between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago and in seeking the "perfect site" to explore for remains of the earliest populations, researchers analyzed ocean currents, climate data, geological formations and other data to pin down a location. "The world was in a glacial stage 125,000 to 195,000 years ago, and much of Africa was dry to mostly desert; in many areas food would have been difficult to acquire. The paleoenvironmental data indicate there are only five or six places in all of Africa where humans could have survived these harsh conditions," said Curtis Marean, a professor in ASU's School of Human Evolution and Social Change. Photos from the cave at Pinnacle Point in South Africa show where the team found ochre, bladelets and evidence of shellfish — findings that reveal the earliest dated evidence of modern humans."
Only if you followed the calculations of the Bishop of Ussher, who came up with that date. Many evangelicals who are not fundamentalists don't accept a young earth theory, and even among fundamentalists, there are many who believe in an old earth. Some of the debates on fundamentalist boards like Rapture Ready become heated.
I can respect their desire to conform to the Word of God, for they feel if the Creation story is an allegory, what else is an allegory? However, the physical evidence is there, and many of us belive God does not lie in either nature or in scripture. For us, the answer is "We don't have enough evidence yet to understand the whole picture." There really are no such things as paradoxes, merely incomplete models. We'll find out soon enough.
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The original poster's write-up misses the point. It's NOT news that both fossil and genetic evidence points to the development of anatomically modern humans in Africa somewhere in the 100,000 to 200,000 year range, with several important apparently anatomically modern human fossils at the older end of that range.
What is new in this article is the early date for the use of ochre dye, small "complex" tools, and shellfish in the diet which are all taken as evidence for modern-like human cultural behavior at 165,000 years ago.
To date, the most incontrovertible evidence for modern-like cultural behavior dates back to around 45,000 years ago, with some more ambiguous evidence (similar to that presented in the article in question) dating to around 100,000 years ago.
Pffft. Swinburne is for community college drop-outs and pedophiles. You want a real treatise on the subject? Check out Blume's Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret." That book will knock your fucking socks off. Not wearing socks? Get some fucking socks, man; you want to catch a cold?
You're right that this finding does contradict the traditional savannah theory of human evolution, as do many other findings, but it fits right in with the ever increasingly popular aquatic ape theory of human evolution.
The idea is basically that as the climate dried up human ancestors stuck closer to rivers and oceans, where the trees and water were, and ate shellfish and other seafood. (It doesn't mean we became fully aquatic, like mermaids. Just that we became as aquatic as we are now.)
The rich seafood diet has plenty of all the stuff needed to fuel a large brain. It also explains why we can hold our breath and babies can instinctively hold their breath underwater, and why we have no body hair, downward pointing nostrils, webbed fingers, dilute urine, and why we find homo fossils in sediment but not chimpanzee fossils, and why baboons, which came down from the trees and onto the savannah, didn't become human-like, etc, etc.
The savannah theory says that as the climate dried up human ancestors that had previously lived in trees started to move out into the savannah.
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So, it appears God is in trouble. He is claiming to have invented Man 6000 years ago. (Al Gore made a speech earlier in which he claimed to have invented man and that certain parts of the Bible were based on his and Tipper's love affair.)
However, it now appears that there is prior art, far predating God's claims. While no suit has been filed, experts believe God would lose handily if the originator of the earlier design can be found. God did not return any calls when a message was left with his representatives, the Vatican Cathedral and Boys Ranch (Rome), Beth-Bagel Temple (NYC), LDS Church and Wife Emporium (Salt Lake City).
Noted patent and copyright critic, Richard Stallman, stated that this is exactly why copyright and patent laws are bad, "It is clear that God is in the same group as all other profit hungry capitalist swine, like Bill Gates and that smelly Steve Jobs. Really, man is just an idea, and believe me, I have a few ideas about a few men. Which is why I don't use Google because then most of you would know the sites I'm going to, and that would be embarrassing. But...Where was I? Oh, yeah, God is evil. I'm hearby demanding that the new discoveries be called GNU/Homos. Heh, heh, I said, 'Homo.' But, enough of that, if God thinks he can control me..." We were unable to contact Stallman after the line went dead.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
What they actually believe is that a cosmic Jewish zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and drink his blood and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in all humans because a woman made from a rib was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree and thereby pissing off an invisible wizard
who lives in the sky. Makes perfect sense really.