Elbein: “The monkeys — long-tailed macaques — seem to have made their artifacts by accident, not by design. But in many ways, that only makes the finding more disruptive.”
Human evolution
At VICE: Our view of intelligent [human] life upended by tools find?
So it’s sort of like your great-uncle and aunt made the tools, not your great-grandparents. And that’s supposed to make all the difference? Meanwhile, another “subhuman” candidate to scratch off the list.
Astrophysicist insists on the need to distinguish ourselves from nature
But wait! What fuels the possibility of separating ourselves from nature? Every run-of-the-mill science writer knows that we are merely the 99% chimpanzee that cannot transcend the accidental blob/monad-to-man history of life. This human exceptionalism could be the most radical suggestion that Avi Loeb, no stranger to controversy, has ever made.
“Junk DNA” to blame for humans’ big brains?
The way it’s described sounds like a plan, doesn’t it? Not an accident.
Arrows found in 54,000 year-old cave
Where is the Stupid Brute when we need him? Now that the Neanderthals have checked out of the program altogether … Can we find an out-of-work actor and TEACH him to be a Stupid Brute?
Claim: Flores man is still alive and living in Indonesia
Hope springs eternal. The hope for an ape-man is likely to be disappointed.
Bad data from the academy? Darwinism makes it worse
But by embracing a Darwinian perspective, Breuning flushed down the toilet any chance of understanding the reality of human life and the human mind. Those pop psych academics she opposes are then doing the right thing and she should support them.
Denisovan bracelet from 30,000 – 40,000 years ago shows high degree of skill
Looks like we are going to have to scratch the Denisovans off the ape-man list too. The way things are going, we might end up having to mock up those apelike ancestors using CGI.
What science media make of the 3 million year old tool assembly, recently found
Some of us suspect that it is long past time someone shone a light on how these classifications of early humans are really created. How much is evidence and how much is underlying assumption?
At Smithsonian Magazine: Stone tool kits from 3 million years ago?
The basic difference between any type of human and other animal life forms seems to have been evident three million years ago.
From Frontiers Science News: Neanderthals cooked and ate crabs too
Well, that’d never do. We are all expected to be slack-jawed in amazement when what we might have expected – that is, if we didn’t buy into that Darwinian Ascent of Man stuff – turns out to be true. We are paying more for Darwinism than we might sometimes think.
At Smithsonian Magazine: Neanderthals hunted and butchered massive elephants
“…yet another piece of evidence to suggest that humans’ closest ancient relatives were more sophisticated and skilled than the brutish oafs popular culture has made them out to be.”
Just a minute here. Popular culture did NOT get that idea from thin air. It was carefully inculcated by science popularizers because it tied in with Darwinian Ascent of Man stuff. If it’s not true, let’s be honest about how the correct information affects the establishment science narrative.
Claim: Language originated in hand gestures. How do we know?
Researchers say, because humans can interpret chimp hand gestures. But wait…
Human DNA evolution as a “balancing act”
If humans and chimps differ in only 1% of our DNA, obviously, DNA is not the best place to look for the differences.
At Mind Matters News: Do cave paintings from 20,000 years ago show symbolic writing?
The find challenges the idea that human consciousness underwent a long, slow evolution in recent millennia. It was mainly our technology that evolved.