Early Man Stories Becoming More Convoluted

Trusting the Darwinians about human evolution requires willing suspension of disbelief.

Varieties of Homo

Neanderthal and early modern human stone tool culture co-existed for over 100,000 years (Phys.org). Try to visualize 100 thousand years—more than ten times recorded human history. In the history we know, human beings went from grass shacks to every corner of Earth, and sent rovers to Mars in just 6,000 years. Evolutionists give various names to styles of stone tools, but people living today have different quality levels of tools. That proves nothing. Evolutionists are forced by their adherence to the evolutionary timeline to fit evidence into time slots that may have nothing to do with reality. In this article, they make up a story that Neanderthals and “modern” humans (a distinction without a difference) shared the same toolmaking skill for 100,000 years! And they believe the Acheulean toolmaking style began 1.75 million years ago! Look at the reckless drafts they make on the bank of time: 100,000 years here, 200,000 years there; pretty soon they’re talking real looney.

The Acheulean was estimated [by whom, Paleface?] to have died out around 200,000 years ago but the new findings suggest it may have persisted for much longer, creating over 100,000 years of overlap with more advanced technologies produced by Neanderthals and early modern humans.

Neanderthals had the capacity to perceive and produce human speech (Binghamton University). This is the latest nail in the coffin of the Neanderthal myth (i.e., that they were missing links before modern humans replaced them). The coffin is running out of room for more nails.

“This is one of the most important studies I have been involved in during my career,” said [Rolf] Quam [Assoc. Prof. of Anthropology at Binghamton U]. “The results are solid and clearly show the Neanderthals had the capacity to perceive and produce human speech. This is one of the very few current, ongoing research lines relying on fossil evidence to study the evolution of language, a notoriously tricky subject in anthropology.”

New Scientist agrees that “Neanderthal ears were tuned to hear speech just like modern humans.” In addition, many previous studies have equated Neanderthal capabilities to modern human capabilities. Why, then, is there still a continuing insistence on portraying them as more primitive?

Thus, Neanderthals had a similar capacity to us to produce the sounds of human speech, and their ear was “tuned” to perceive these frequencies. This change in the auditory capacities in Neanderthals, compared with their ancestors from Atapuerca, parallels archaeological evidence for increasingly complex behavioral patterns, including changes in stone tool technology, domestication of fire and possible symbolic practices. Along these lines, the study provides strong evidence in favor of the coevolution of increasingly complex behaviors and increasing efficiency in vocal communication throughout the course of human evolution.

But there was no course of human evolution! Those statements are false. There was no “increasingly complex behavior,” and the timeline is unreasonable as shown by the previous article. The evidence shows that all members of Homo are equivalent, and all the other fossil remains belonged to non-human primates. It’s way past time to stop the lies.

How old are the oldest Homo sapiens in Far East Asia? (PNAS). In this commentary, Jean-Jacques Hublin squirms and wrestles over recent claims that modern humans found their way to east Asia 100,000 years ago or more (e.g., 22 July 2019). If true, that really messes up the old out-of-Africa theory that has been taught to students for decades.

A more modern depiction shows Neanderthals as strong, intelligent and culturally astute. Image by Mauro Cutrona.

The vibrant lives of Neanderthals (Science Magazine). Need more evidence that the Neanderthal myth is dead? Read Emma Pomeroy’s book review of Kindred by Wragg Sykes. The book has some stern moral lessons about the way paleoanthropologists have mistreated Neanderthal Man. One point Sykes makes is that we should have expected our Neanderthal brethren to have had different tastes and habits; that does not make them inferior, any more than the diets of Inuits or any other living human tribe might gross out the tribes inhabiting Parisian cafes. It’s past time for evolutionary anthropologists to apologize and to recognize Neanderthals as our kinfolk.

In Kindred‘s final chapter, Wragg Sykes tackles broader ethical questions faced in paleoanthropology and adjacent fields, which have recently come into sharp focus. She highlights the problematic ways in which human remains and cultures have been treated in research, arguing that these practices must change and, where possible, be redressed. These are uncomfortable topics to confront, but it is vital that we do so in order to understand the full legacies of the field and to hold future research to higher ethical standards.

….Kindred closes by returning to the value of empathy and compassion, arguing that both deserve a more prominent place in our theories about Neanderthals and in our attitudes toward our fellow humans and other sentient creatures.

Update 3 March 2021: Merijn Van Nuland of Leiden University says there has been a “Shift in scientific consensus about demise of [the] Neanderthals” (Phys.org). The admission falls short, though, of an apology.

Think of Neanderthals and you’re likely to think of a bunch of savages, a kind of half-ape that pales in comparison with modern humans with their boundless intelligence and refined manners. This image is often linked to the demise of the Neanderthals: they had to die out when their brainy cousin Homo sapiens came on the scene.

Indeed; that is still a common misconception. This week, for instance, President Biden disparaged the decision by Governor Greg Abbott of Texas to end the state’s mask mandates and re-open businesses an example of “Neanderthal thinking” (not intended in a good sense). Van Nuland continues,

But recent Leiden research has shown that most experts—in Palaeolithic archaeology or anthropology—no longer believe this competition theory to be the most plausible explanation for the disappearance of the Neanderthals.

Researchers at Leiden U were “surprised” that the competition hypothesis is still “deeply rooted in people’s minds—scientists too” because Neanderthals were “not so dumb after all” as seen in their tool-making prowess, artwork, and eons of success. The team also found that the competition hypothesis was not a political view preferred by right wingers, while left-wingers preferred demographic explanations. No, “this theory can be consigned to the scrap heap,” they concluded; they could find no evidence for it.

“Let’s stop viewing the competition thesis as the standard. I still read all too often about how Neanderthals were more intelligent than was thought, when most experts haven’t viewed this human species as dumb for a long time.”

How about an apology, then, for their predecessors who misled the public for over a century?

Australopithecines

Ancient Skeletal Hand Could Reveal Evolutionary Secrets (Texas A&M University). This article is a big lie balanced on a half truth. The half truth involves fossils that evolutionists call Ardipithecus, supposedly a pre-Lucy human ancestor. The hand bones of this ape-like creature indicated it swung from the trees, but the evolutionists tell a story that it was trying to evolve into a human. “A 4.4 million-year-old skeleton could show how early humans moved and began to walk upright, according to new research led by a Texas A&M anthropology professor.” That fibber is Thomas Cody Prang, assistant professor of anthropology at the school. who tells this whopper:

“Additionally, we found evidence for a big evolutionary ‘jump’ between the kind of hand represented by Ardi and all later hominin hands, including that of Lucy’s species (a famous 3.2 million-year-old well-preserved skeleton found in the same area in the 1970s). This ‘evolutionary jump’ happens at a critical time when hominins are evolving adaptations to a more human-like form of upright walking, and the earliest evidence for hominin stone-tool manufacture and stone-tool use, such as cut-marks on animal fossils, are discovered.”

Prang said the fact that Ardi represents an earlier phase of human evolutionary history is important because it potentially shines light on the kind of ancestor from which humans and chimpanzees evolved.

To expose what is false about this tale, read Casey Luskin’s analysis at Evolution News. Even pro-Darwin New Scientist says, “Earliest human ancestors may have swung on branches like chimps.” See also the secular write-up on The Scientist, which says, “the hominin was likely capable of swinging beneath the branches of trees, as chimps do today.” It ends with Prang essentially admitting that his lie is baseless:

“Given everything that’s been suggested about the fossils since 2009, we didn’t expect it to look so ape-like, and it was quite a shock that it does,” Prang says. “The fossil evidence suggests that early human ancestors and the last common ancestor of humans and chimps was far more similar to chimpanzees than to any other living primate.”

It was an ape, OK? It was not starting a big “evolutionary jump.” It was not evolving into human beings! Tell the public the truth. Prang’s paper in Science Advances uses the e-word evolution and evolved 141 times! Get this guy out of his Darwin tree and down on the ground of reality.

Update 3 March 2021: Anthropologists at the Max Planck Institute admit now that “no specific point in time can currently be identified when modern human ancestry was confined to a limited birthplace, and that the known patterns of the first appearance of anatomical or behavioural traits that are often used to define Homo sapiens fit a range of evolutionary histories.”

The crash you hear is all the museum displays showing an orderly sequence collapsing. If a range of histories is possible, how about the Biblical account? It doesn’t require the emergence of human brains from some random mutation in an ape skull.

Paleoanthropologists know how to dig for bones in caves and wrap fossils for analysis. They know how to use radiocarbon dating, and can scientifically identify most parts of a skeleton. That does not make them historians. Most of them are blind to the fact that they are working within a paradigm that is drunk on Darwine, which permeates their every thought. When their mistakes require reversals, they never apologize for having misled the public sometimes for decades. If they want to stay employed, let them clean and classify bones for museums, but get them out of the history business. They have blown their credibility too many times to speak about the unobserved past.