🚀 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.
> 
> 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.

Where DO you get some of this?

 From encyclopedia.com:
(rämepethē´kes, -pĬth´e-) , an extinct group of primates that lived from 
about 12 to 14 million years ago, for a time regarded as a possible 
ancestor of Australopithecus and, therefore, of modern humans. Fossils 
of Ramapithecus were discovered in N India and in E Africa, beginning in 
1932. Although it was generally an apelike creature, Ramapithecus was 
considered a possible human ancestor on the basis of the reconstructed 
jaw and dental characteristics of fragmentary fossils. A complete jaw 
discovered in 1976 was clearly nonhominid, however, and Ramapithecus is 
now regarded by many as a member of Sivapithecus, a genus considered to 
be an ancestor of the orangutan."

> 
> 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?

Yes, there are questions about Java Man - aka Homo Erectus.  But so 
what?  There are many questions about the complete evolution of man - 
but one thing is clear, and that is that humans evolved and did NOT 
spontaneously appear on the earth.
> 
> 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.

Yes, Piltdown Man was a fake.  But again, so what? Even archaeologists 
and anthropologists  of the day had little training and few examples to 
go by.  Even worse, most people back then were extremely naive and 
believed in many things if someone in authority told them it was so. Do 
you remember the Orson Welles "War of the Worlds" scare back in the 1930's?
> 
> 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.

Gonna surprise you to know that it's Homo Neandertalis or possibly even 
Homo Sapiens Neandertalis, NOT Homo Sapiens  - and they were pretty 
clearly not the same species as Homo Sapiens.  First, their forearms and 
their lower legs were a good bit shorter than their upper arms and upper 
legs.  Homo Sapiens are typically equal in length.  Second, they had 
huge noses and nasal cavities, and huge anchorages for the muscles in 
their jaws.  Third, they had pronounced brow ridges like a gorilla. 
Fourth, they had a distinctive occipital "bun" structure on the backs of 
their skulls, which were flattened and had little or no forehead. 
Fifth, they had no distinctive protruding chin, like Homo Sapiens. 
Sixth, they were both shorter and physically more robust than Homo 
Sapiens. Many fossils of Neandertal have been found.  BTW, they were 
actually named after the Neander Valley in Germany where the fossils 
were first found back in the early 1800's.  In 2004, the Max Planck 
Institute in Germany did a DNA comparison of Neandertal and some humans 
that lived at the same time and came to the conclusion that the 
Neanderals are actually not the same species as Homo Sapiens, nor a 
sub-species - and are definitely NOT the ancestors of modern day humans.

Last, the Neandertals all died out about 25,000 years back - long before 
there were Isrealites to talk about them in the Bible.
> 
> 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.

No, again.  The skeleton of Lucy is just one of many hominid skeletons 
found.  There are other skeletons of the same species as Lucy that have 
been found.  Enough skeletons have been found of other hominid species 
to show that there have been many other divergent species that simply 
didn't make it into modern times.

But you know what hasn't been found?  Any skeletons of Homo Sapiens that 
go back more than 100,000 years.  And even less than 50,000 years back 
there were differences in skeletons that show there was an archaic form 
of Homo Sapiens.
Go see:
http://anthro.palomar.edu/homo2/archaic.htm

Go look up Australopithecus and look at the divergent species.  Do some 
homework at non-Christian Fundamentalist libraries and you might even 
learn something new.

> There is simply no proof that apes have evolved into men. Every time a 
> case is presented it soon crumbles in the light of further research. 
> Only the evolutionists with their prejudiced theories cling to such weak 
> "evidence."

But there is proof that both man and ape evolved from the same ancestor, 
much as cat and dog had the same ancestor - and you, like all other 
Creationists, refuse to look at it, instead you cite the Bible and 
Creationism, or even Intelligent Design - and you completely bypass the 
hundreds of millions of years it has taken life to develop on the planet 
into what it is today.

> 
> 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's no such thing as a missing link.  There ARE many fossil remains 
that show there were several species of pre-humans.

> 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.

He did no such thing.  Lucy sired more Australopithecus Afarensis.  As 
to that "knee", did you bother to read the site you've quoted?  It's 
100% balderdash, with misdirection, smoke and mirrors, and a complete 
lack of regard for Johanson's work, beginning with the assertion that 
Lucy was nothing more than a three million year-old chimpanzee.

> 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.

Just FYI, here's a fellow who investigated what Patterson really said, 
and why he saidit, with a letter from Patterson himself explaining what 
happened.  Read it or just continue the Creationist's misrepresentation 
of what Patterson said.  (And I didn't thing Christians would lie - but 
I guess I'm wrong!)
Go see:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/patterson.html

> 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."

Neat piece of Creationist spin on Johansen.  The only real controversy 
of Johansens' find was that he later changed his view that what he had 
found was a new species, Australopithecus Afarensis.

By the way, you've completely glossed over the fact that Lucy was only 
the most complete skeleton found at Hadar.  There were a total of 13 
individuals identified at the dig.

-- 
Cheers,
Bama Brian
Libertarian