by Mile 0 10 Replies latest jw friends
Not long ago, I caught the tale end of a show where this biologist believes that both apes and humans evolved from a common ancestor. Therefor there is no so-called "missing link". We've been looking for something that was never there. Has anyone heard about this theory?
Mile 0
Mile,
As I understand it, the "missing link" refers to the transitional fossils of developing species that connect humans to some primate. We are actually closer in relationship ancestry to the Chimp then we are to Apes. The "missing link" is a term most often employed by young earth creationists, anti-evolutionist, and fundamentalists. We have on record today millions of fossiles and other related evidence that humans have been on this earth for hundreds of thousands of years and descended from the same common ancestor as our simeon and chimp cousins. Currently, in the islands around Indonesia, such as Flores, transitional fossiles are being discovered. What appears to be "hobbits" are also being discovered. Fossiles are very fragile and can be easily destroyed due to natural earth movements, weather and water damage. Also, they are not easily formed. So, one would not expect to find a lot of transitional or other fossiles. Yet, we do have a lot which help us in understanding our ancestry. We will find more examples of transitional fossiles that will help complete or closely complete the evolutionary development of humans. But it will not likely be in our lifetime.
Jim Whitney
I remember reading on the BBC news online about the discovery of the "hobbits" on Flores Island. They also said that fossils of giant rats and lizards and pygmy elephants were discovered there. Doesn't that sound like some kind of movie? Miniature humans surviving among giant animals. Instead it turns out to be the truth. So much more interesting than creation, isn't it?
"Scientists last week announced the discovery of a new, tiny species of human that lived 12 000 years ago on the Island of Flores in Indonesia. At only 1 metre high the hominid has been nicknamed the Hobbit. Other fossils from Flores already indicate that huge rats and monstrous lizards lived alongside pygmy elephants."
from the BBC news online, some time in 2004.
From:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/10/27/1098667841536.html?oneclick=true
Lost race of human 'hobbits' By Stephen Cauchi Science Reporter
October 28, 2004
A painting of a male Homo floresiensis.
Artwork: Peter Schouten
The story of man is being rewritten. Australian and Indonesian scientists have dug up skeletons of a previously unknown human species - real "hobbits" that stood only a metre tall - that lived on the Indonesian island of Flores, west of Timor, until relatively recently.
The scientists found the first skeleton in September 2003 in Liang Bua, a large limestone cave on the island. The one-metre-tall female, aged about 30 and dubbed "Hobbit", lived about 18 000 years ago.
Six similar skeletons were later found, some of whom lived in the cave just 13 000 years ago. The scientists have speculated that the species may have lived on Flores - which they dubbed the "lost world" - until the 16th century.
They were dark and hairless with sunken eyes, a flat nose, large teeth, a projecting mouth and no chin.
Despite having a small brain, the species could cook, hunt large prey and build rafts, the scientists say. Stone artefacts and animal remains were found with the skeletons.
The new species has been officially named Homo floresiensis, and it is the most recent living human relative by far: until this week, the only other human species known to have coexisted with modern humans (Homo sapiens) were Neanderthal man and Homo erectus. Neanderthal man lived in Europe, becoming extinct 30 000 years ago. Homo erectus lived in Asia, becoming extinct possibly 100 000 years ago, although this figure is disputed.
The discovery is published in this week's edition of Nature.
One of the scientists and a co-author of the Nature paper, Bert Roberts from the University of Wollongong, told The Age the team was stunned by the discovery.
"It's come out of left field," he said. "No one was predicting this. It's one of those big leaps forward as opposed to the incremental advances we make most of the time.
"We were expecting to find the remains of early modern humans. Instead, what we found is a completely new species of human."
Professor Roberts said the discovery would redraw the human family tree. "It's one of the most important (discoveries) because it shows there was diversity among humans until very, very recently. If you go with the previous models, people say for the past 30 000 years we've been the only human species to inhabit the planet, whereas in fact that's rubbish.
"For most of human history, there's been more than one human species. Right now, it's unusual for us to be the only one around. In actual fact, that's been the case even more recently than we ever believed possible."
"They've got a brain the size of a grapefruit, yet they can make stone tools just as well as we can make them . . . they were cooking, they were making fire and they were hunting those little stegodons, those little baby elephants . . . they were intelligent and almost certainly had language."
The Liang Bua cave was inhabited from 95 000 years ago, he said, but archaeological evidence indicated that the species arrived on Flores hundreds of thousands of years before. They would have needed rafts to get to the island, but they were probably much bigger than they later became - genetic isolation over the millenniums causing them to shrink.
The scientists have dismissed the possibility that they found children or dwarfs and say the skeletons are those of fully grown adults.
By contrast, pygmies - the shortest members of Homo sapiens - are about 1.3 metres tall.
The excavation team was led by Peter Brown and Mike Morwood from the University of New England and included scientists from the Indonesian Centre for Archaeology.
A major unresolved question is whether the new species shared Flores with Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens left Africa about 100 000 years ago and had reached Australia, south-east of Flores, about 50 000 years ago.
Professor Roberts said a layer of volcanic ash at the site suggested a volcanic eruption killed the species 12 000 years ago.
But they may have survived elsewhere on the island. "There are lots of local folk tales in Flores about these people which are consistent and incredibly detailed. The stories suggest there may have been a grain of truth to the idea they were still living on Flores up until the Dutch arrived in the 1500s," Professor Roberts said. "The stories suggest they lived in caves. The villagers would leave gourds with food out for them to eat, but legend has it they were the guests from hell - they'd eat everything, including the gourds."
He said isolated Flores was a fascinating "lost world", home to a range of exotic creatures extinct elsewhere, often morphed into giant or dwarf forms through lack of genetic diversity. These included a dwarf form of the primitive elephant stegodon, giant rats, Komodo dragons, and even larger species of giant lizard. The scientists say Homo floresiensis is descended from Homo erectus, who first arrived on Flores about 840 000 years ago, after leaving Africa about a million years ago.
However, Colin Groves, of the Australian National University, said the skeletons had some extremely primitive features, and could be related to an even earlier human ancestor, Australopithecus, which predated all Homo species and was thought not to have left Africa.
Professor Groves, who was not involved in the discovery, called it "very significant . . . absolutely fascinating".
Alan Thorne, also from the ANU, predicted a worldwide storm of controversy over the skeletons, especially with regard to their exact ancestry.
Professor Roberts said the team would continue to dig on Flores and other isolated Indonesian islands to see if other human species existed and whether Homo sapiens may have lived alongside them.
"It's a real lost world . . . until so recently there would have been these tiny little people running around," he said. "It would have been fantastic to see."
From:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/10/12/1128796590142.html?from=top5
By Deborah Smith Science Editor
October 13, 2005
The hobbit-sized humans who lived on the remote Indonesian island of Flores until 12,000 years ago may have had a very ancient family history.
A new study of bones from more members of the tiny species suggests they descended from an unknown primitive ancestor related to australopithecines like "Lucy", who lived 3 million years ago in Ethiopia.
This would mean human-like creatures must have left Africa much earlier than thought - almost 2 million years ago.
Australian and Indonesian scientists stunned the world a year ago with their discovery in a cave on Flores of the skull and partial skeleton of a new kind of human, dubbed hobbit, who was about a metre tall with a brain the size of a chimpanzee's.
"We now have evidence for at least nine individuals," the research team leader, Mike Morwood, of the University of New England, said yesterday.
Independent scientists who were not members of the discovery team said the latest analysis of the finds, described today in the journal Nature , confirmed the hobbits, Homo floresiensis , belonged to a new species of humans, and were not merely pygmies or diseased modern humans, as a small number of sceptics have claimed.
"This clinches it 100 per cent," said Dr Colin Groves, of the Australian National University.
Daniel Lieberman, of Harvard University, said excavations in Liang Bua cave showed it had been inhabited for more than 80,000 years by people hunting pygmy elephants, making stone tools and using fire.
If they were just small, modern humans with brain deformities, they would have had to survive for a very long time.
"Such possibilities strain credulity," Professor Lieberman said.
Peter Brown, a member of the team from the University of New England, said the newly described remains, which included a second jaw, the right arm of the original skeleton and other leg and arm bones, showed some of the adults were even less than a metre tall.
The team had initially thought the hobbits had descended from a more recent human ancestor, Homo erectus , who underwent a dwarfing process on the island similar to the pygmy elephants.
"But increasingly the evidence is pointing towards an ancestor with the same body size and brain size as australopithecines ," Professor Brown said. With long arms, thick bones and small brains, these people had body proportions "exactly the same as Lucy's".
The new fossils were found last year, but the researchers were unable to dig in Liang Bua this year following a custody dispute with a leading Indonesian researcher over the priceless remains, which resulted in them being irreparably damaged.
Instead, Professor Morwood and his colleagues excavated in the nearby Soa Basin and found "very exciting" evidence, including stone tools that pushed back the known human occupation of the island to at least 1 million years.
Photo: National Geographic April 2005
Photo: National Geographic April 2005
Photo: National Geographic April 2005
Photo: National Geographic April 2005
Photo: National Geographic April 2005
Sorry if I'm repeating anything mentioned already, but this is not a new idea. We did not evolve from modern day apes according to biologists. Apes and humans evolved at the same time, parallel to one another, but in different ways. Other pre-humans coexisted for many years and some even interacted.
Like someone else said, evolution really is very interesting. There's so much more to it than what most of us learned in high school. A lot of hypothetical scenarios can be raised. If you look into the details of it, so many other species could have been dominant at this point in time. But, for the moment, it's us. How different the world might be had just a few things gone differently.
Neat.
IsaacJ
That guy had a "hobbit" of a penis
Human evolution is really fascinating I think. I do find it funny that throughout time there's been stories of miniature races of people fighting large dragons or whatnot as fantasy and it's every population has stories like this. I guess it has to be grounded in fact from our past, humans usually don't have that good of an imagination.
Not long ago, I caught the tale end of a show where this biologist believes that both apes and humans evolved from a common ancestor. Therefor there is no so-called "missing link". We've been looking for something that was never there. Has anyone heard about this theory?
Yes, I have heard the theory. I cant figure out if its valid or they are just trying to throw us a curve and confuse us. Not that I think they have a plan and are trying to confuse us. But we end up sharing in their being confused about the reality of our exhistence.
I dont think I believe in the bible creation story or the bible God per se. But I suspect their is a connection between us humans and another dimension. So I guess we are spirits in a material world.
RECENTLY, THEY HAVE STARTED DIGGING AT THE SAME SITE IN FLORES.
