🚀 go-pugleaf

Sam Stone wrote:
> 
> Trevor Wilson wrote:
> 
> >>Are you aware that the LUCY hypothesis is at best tenuous?
> >
> >
> > **Nope. Explain it to me.
> >
> >
> 
> http://www.av1611.org/jmelton/Evolution.html
> 
> FABLE: The findings of such "ape-men" as Java Man, Neanderthal Man and
> Lucy are proof that humans have evolved from apes.
> 
> FACT: No one has ever found an "ape-man." A few examples will make our
> point.

No such thing as an ape man. Never has been.
 
> In 1922, some bones were found in Nebraska by a man named Harold Cook.
> After studying the upper and lower jaws and the teeth of some thirty
> different animals, a complete ape known as Ramapithecus was constructed.
> The neatly drawn pictures in the textbooks give the impression that
> entire skeletons have been found, but this never happened.

Bzzzt. Complete bullshit. Ramapithecus is not a New World find.
 
> Dr. Eugene Dubois discovered the famous Java Man (Pithecanthropus
> erectus) in 1891. This "great discovery" consisted of a small piece of
> the top of a skull, a fragment of a left thigh bone, and three molar
> teeth. But, instead of being found all together, these remains were
> found in an area of about seventy feet, and they were found over about a
> year's time. They were also found in an old river bed with other
> assorted extinct animal bones. This, of course, presents a number of
> problems for Java Man. How can the "experts" be so sure that these
> remains all came from the same being? Better yet, how do such bones
> survive for 750,000 years without decaying? Where's the evidence to
> prove these theories?

Taxnonomy describes how creatures decay. Mechanical action provided by
a river separates bones. Etc
 
> Piltdown man was discovered by Charles Dawson in 1912. Dawson claimed to
> have found some bones, some teeth, and even some primitive implements in
> a gravel pit in Piltdown, Sussex, England. He took them to a British
> museum where anthropologists claimed that they were 500,000 years old.
> Textbooks throughout the world then proclaimed Piltdown Man as the
> greatest find to date. Then in October of 1956, Reader's Digest EXPOSED
> this finding as "The Great Piltdown Hoax." The bones where found to be
> fraudulent. The jaw bone was proven to have belonged to an ape which had
> died only FIFTY YEARS before (not 500,000). The teeth had been filed
> down, and both, teeth and bones, had been discovered with bichromate of
> potash to cover up their true identity! Piltdown Man is a fraud.

So? It's been exposed. We now have much ways of testing finds.
 
> The so-called Neanderthal Man was discovered around 1900 in a cave in
> the Neanderthal Valley near Dusseldorf, Germany. Naturally, he was
> hailed as another great "missing link." Since that time, it has been
> proven that Neanderthal wasn't an ape-man at all. He turned out to be a
> fully erect human being with a cranial capacity of over 13% more than
> that of normal man. Today, he is classified as "Homo Sapiens"
> (completely human) by most all anthropologists.

Not true. The name is Homo sapiens neanderthalensis indicating a subspecies.
The question is whether or not the differences are sufficient to warrant
a separate species.
 
> Finally, we come to Lucy, a 40% skeleton found in Ethiopia by D.C.
> Johanson in the 70's. Johanson claimed that "Lucy" had walked on two
> legs, because of the "angle of the thigh bone and the flattened surface
> at it's knee joint" (National Geographic, December, 1976). However, the
> knee joint was badly crushed; so Johanson's conclusion is mere
> speculation. Anatomist Charles Oxnard said "Lucy" did NOT walk upright,
> at least not in the same manner as humans. The chimpanzee does spend
> some time walking upright, so this was probably just another ape.

Not speculation. The pelvis alone is indicative of upright posture.
 
> There is simply no proof that apes have evolved into men. Every time a

No one has said that because apes were evolving from earlier primates
at the same time. The chimp/homo split is estimated in the 5 -7 mya
range. IOW, a common ancestor.

> case is presented it soon crumbles in the light of further research.
> Only the evolutionists with their prejudiced theories cling to such weak
> "evidence."
> 
> http://www.exchangedlife.com/skeptic/missing.htm
> 
> Lucy
> 
> Considered to be related to the arboreal ape.  No evidence has been
> found that can tie this to modern man nor human development.  However,
> lack of evidence does not deter evolutionist from declaring Lucy to be a
> missing link.

There is no such thing as a missing link. Australopithecines were upright
walking primates and there were several species of them. 
 
> http://www.rae.org/lucyknee.html
> 
> Let's really reflect on what transpired here:
> 1. Johanson offered "proof" that Lucy sired humans consisting of a
> robust femur and pelvis; and a knee with "humanlike" characteristics.
> 
> 2. Only under questioning did he admit that the knee was found over a
> mile from Lucy. To the best of our knowledge this admission has not
> appeared in print!. Roy did not ask the question because he already knew
> the answer, but because of the suspicions of M. Bowden, a British
> scientist. Many articles and drawings of the discovery site make no
> mention of the distance whatsoever and absolutely lead the reader to the
> wrong conclusion about their relative positions!!! Java-man revisited.
> 
> 3. Confronted with the assertion that skeletal similarity (homology)
> between animals does not prove ancestral relationship, he changed the
> subject to molecular homology (DNA similarities).
> 
> 4. Faced with Dr. Patterson's contention that molecular homology was
> proof that evolution was anti-science and anti-knowledge, Johanson
> simply resorted to dogma: "If you don't believe in homology, you don't
> believe in evolution...", which means to him that you don't believe in
> facts. Presumably Dr. Patterson does not believe in facts either,
> because he certainly does not have any kind words for molecular homology.
> 
> What transpired here, then, is that Johanson gave a clear demonstration
> of our assertion that evolution has nothing whatsoever to do with
> science. Belief in evolution has to do with a humanist religious
> viewpoint (Humanism is the religion of all who have chosen to believe
> man rather than God). Johanson not only used bones scattered over a mile
> apart, he presented an argument he should know to be false. As an
> anthropologist Johanson should be fully aware that a large hip joint
> does not prove upright posture, much less does it prove higher
> intelligence or the ability to sire a human. Remember, he gets paid for
> this stuff. By any reasonable standard Johanson misrepresented the
> evidence . . . and he did so for money! A businessman who made claims
> like this to sell his products would be charged with fraud rather than
> paid an honorarium!
> When confronted with an informed challenge, Johanson did not resort to
> evidence or reason, but to dogma (evolution is a fact). He closed the
> meeting with the standard humanistic altar call, "Join us scientists in
> controlling our destiny and in bringing about world peace."

Ah, the old creationist pack of lies about the knee. Both of the following
links have further links that will help dispel your ignorance.

 http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC003.html
 Claim CC003:
 The knee of the "Lucy" fossil (the most complete Australopithecus
 afarensis fossil) was found over a mile away from the rest of the skeleton,
 so it can't be used as evidence that Lucy walked upright. That
 evolutionists have never admitted this fact in print shows their
 dishonesty.

 Response:
 1. The claim is false. The skeleton called Lucy does not have an intact
 knee. A different, isolated knee fossil was found two to three kilometers
 away [Johanson and Edey 1981]. Confusion over the two fossils apparently
 led to the false claim.

 2. Far from indicating evolutionist dishonesty, this claim shows how
 creationists fail to check their claims [Lippard 1999]. 


 http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/knee-joint.html

 Creationists have been making the claim that Donald Johanson found the
 knee joint of "Lucy," a 40%-complete skeleton of the species
 Australopithecus afarensis, in a location "Sixty to seventy meters
 lower in the strata and two to three kilometers away" (Willis 1987).
 They have sometimes gone on to add the claim that "Only under
 questioning did [Johanson] admit that the knee was found over a mile
 from Lucy. To the best of our knowledge this admission has not appeared
 in print!" (Willis 1987; emphasis in original; Also see Brown 1989a, p.
 44) The claim is used by creationists to show that (a) evolutionists
 are dishonest and (b) "Lucy" did not walk upright. It successfully shows
 neither of these things, because it is false. (Even if it were true, it
 would not demonstrate (b), for reasons given in Lippard (1989-90)--the
 knee joint is not the only evidence of bipedality in A. afarensis.)

 The claim is not only false, it is clearly shown to be false in
 Johanson's published writings about "Lucy" (e.g., Johanson and Edey 1981,
 ch. 7-8) and it has been pointed out repeatedly to its proponents that it
 is false. Despite this, none of the major proponents of the claim has
 publicly retracted it. One major proponent has privately agreed that it
 is false, and a few creationists have agreed to stop repeating it. One
 minor proponent made a public retraction.

 The claim originated with Tom Willis, head of the Creation Science
 Association for Mid-America, in an article he wrote for the Bible-Science
 Newsletter (1987). In his article, Willis reported on a lecture by
 Johanson at the University of Missouri on November 20, 1986. Willis
 reported that the following exchange occurred during the question-and-answer
 session which followed Johanson's lecture:

    Q. How far away from Lucy did you find the knee?
    A. Sixty to seventy meters lower in the strata and two to three kilometers
       away.

 This question was perhaps intended by the questioner to mean "How far away
 from Lucy did you find Lucy's knee?", but was clearly interpreted by Johanson
 to mean "How far away from Lucy did you find the 1973 knee joint?" Willis
 does not recognize the confusion in his article, even though the discoveries
 of both the original knee joint (1973) and Lucy (1974) are described in
 detail--including the locations of the finds--in Donald C. Johanson and
 Maitland E. Edey, Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind (1981) and in the
 articles in the April 1982 issue of the American Journal of Physical
 Anthropology. The creationist misunderstanding would never have occurred had
 either of these sources been consulted. Johanson's writings have always been
 clear about the fact that his 1973 knee joint was a separate find from Lucy.
 All of the bones shown in photographs of Lucy were found at a single location.
 ...