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Humans descended from ape-like creatures? A skeptical look at the fossil record

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From the new special edition of science and culture mag Salvo on science and faith:

Casey Luskin asks,”Has Science Shown That We Evolved from Ape-like Creatures?

It is not uncommon for evolutionary scientists like Wetherington (even those who teach at Christian universities) to be adamant about the evidence in favor of human evolution. Digging into the technical literature, however, we find a situation that’s starkly different from the one presented by Wetherington and many other evolutionary scientists who engage in public debates.

A closer look at the literature shows that hominin fossils generally fall into one of two categories—ape-like species or human-like species (of the genus Homo)—and that there is a large, unbridged gap between them. Despite the claims of many evolutionary paleoanthropologists, the fragmented hominin fossil record does not document the evolution of humans from ape-like precursors. In fact, scientists are quite sharply divided over who or what our human ancestors even were. Newly discovered fossils are often initially presented to the public with great enthusiasm and fanfare, but once cooler heads prevail, their status as human evolutionary ancestors is invariably called into question. More.

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Creationism declares there is a bright-white line between humans and apes. Creationsis can't agree on the line. Evolutionary biology predicts no such clear distinction, and that reconstructing evolutionary history will be particularly difficult when we focus on recent and/or rapid events. Evolutionary biologists don't agree on the phylogeny of recent hominids. Which of those do you think is the most telling fact?wd400
September 28, 2013
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wd400 claims that "creationists can't agree where it is?" seems that wd400, in his rush to smear all things 'creationist', forgot to note that evolutionists can't agree on the evidence either: Human Evolution Excerpt: Tattersall thinks H. erectus was an evolutionary dead end. Uconn says he was our immediate ancestor. There are several other differences which we won’t take the time to point out. A recent issue of Science presents the six different explanations of hominid evolution at the right, which they refer to as “Figure 1.” Their caption says: Figure 1. Cladograms favored in recent early hominin parsimony analyses. (A) Most parsimonious cladogram recovered by Chamberlain and Wood (19) using Chamberlain’s (18) operational taxonomic units. Homo sp. = H. rudolfensis. (B) Most parsimonious cladogram obtained in Chamberlain (18). African H. erectus = H. ergaster. (C) Cladogram favored in Wood (9). Homo sp. nov. = H. rudolfensis and H. aff. erectus = H. ergaster. (D) Most parsimonious cladogram recovered by Wood (2). A. boisei includes A. aethiopicus. (E) Most parsimonious cladogram obtained by Lieberman et al. (20). 1470 group = H. rudolfensis; 1813 group = H. habilis. (F) Cladogram favored by Strait et al. (17). http://scienceagainstevolution.org/v4i4f.htm The Truth About Human Origins: Excerpt: "It is practically impossible to determine which "family tree" (for human evolution) one should accept. Richard Leakey (of the famed fossil hunting family from Africa) has proposed one. His late mother, Mary Leakey, proposed another. Donald Johanson, former president of the Institute of Human Origins in Berkeley, California, has proposed yet another. And as late as 2001, Meave Leakey (Richard's wife) has proposed still another.,," http://books.google.com/books?id=J9pON9yB8HkC&pg=PT28&lpg=PT28 Moreover skulls have been grossly manipulated by Darwinists in the past to fit their preconceived conclusion: "One famous fossil skull, discovered in 1972 in northern Kenya, changed its appearance dramatically depending on how the upper jaw was connected to the rest of the cranium. Roger Lewin recounts an occasion when paleoanthropologists Alan Walker, Michael Day, and Richard Leakey were studying the two sections of skull 1470. According to Lewin, Walker said: You could hold the [upper jaw] forward, and give it a long face, or you could tuck it in, making the face short…. How you held it really depended on your preconceptions. It was very interesting watching what people did with it. Lewin reports that Leakey recalled the incident, too: Yes. If you held it one way, it looked like one thing; if you held it another, it looked like something else." Roger Lewin, Bones of Contention, Second Edition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997), p 160 “Dr. Leakey produced a biased reconstruction (of 1470/ Homo Rudolfensis) based on erroneous preconceived expectations of early human appearance that violated principles of craniofacial development,” Dr. Timothy Bromage http://www.geneticarchaeology.com/research/Mans_Earliest_Direct_Ancestors_Looked_More_Apelike_Than_Previously_Believed.asp DeWitt’s digital manipulation of skull 1470 - August 13, 2012 Excerpt: The skull as presented in the news websites has some significant issues that suggests that the facial reconstruction is seriously off. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/dewitts-reconstruction-of-skull-1470/ Artistic reconstructions are an even bigger joke: “We have all seen the canonical parade of apes, each one becoming more human. We know that, as a depiction of evolution, this line-up is tosh (i.e. nonsense). Yet we cling to it. Ideas of what human evolution ought to have been like still colour our debates.” Henry Gee, editor of Nature (478, 6 October 2011, page 34, doi:10.1038/478034a), "National Geographic magazine commissioned four artists to reconstruct a female figure from casts of seven fossil bones thought to be from the same species as skull 1470. One artist drew a creature whose forehead is missing and whose jaws look vaguely like those of a beaked dinosaur. Another artist drew a rather good-looking modern African-American woman with unusually long arms. A third drew a somewhat scrawny female with arms like a gorilla and a face like a Hollywood werewolf. And a fourth drew a figure covered with body hair and climbing a tree, with beady eyes that glare out from under a heavy, gorilla-like brow." “Behind the Scenes,” National Geographic 197 (March, 2000): 140 Moreover where we do have good fossil evidence, instead of reconstructed fossil fragments, we find that the Darwinian narrative falls apart,,, If Modern Humans Are So Smart, Why Are Our Brains Shrinking? - January 20, 2011 Excerpt: John Hawks is in the middle of explaining his research on human evolution when he drops a bombshell. Running down a list of changes that have occurred in our skeleton and skull since the Stone Age, the University of Wisconsin anthropologist nonchalantly adds, “And it’s also clear the brain has been shrinking.” “Shrinking?” I ask. “I thought it was getting larger.” The whole ascent-of-man thing.,,, He rattles off some dismaying numbers: Over the past 20,000 years, the average volume of the human male brain has decreased from 1,500 cubic centimeters to 1,350 cc, losing a chunk the size of a tennis ball. The female brain has shrunk by about the same proportion. “I’d call that major downsizing in an evolutionary eyeblink,” he says. “This happened in China, Europe, Africa—everywhere we look.” http://discovermagazine.com/2010/sep/25-modern-humans-smart-why-brain-shrinking Further note: Human/Ape Common Ancestry: Following the Evidence - Casey Luskin - June 2011 Excerpt: So the researchers constructed an evolutionary tree based on 129 skull and tooth measurements for living hominoids, including gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans and humans, and did the same with 62 measurements recorded on Old World monkeys, including baboons, mangabeys and macaques. They also drew upon published molecular phylogenies. At the outset, Wood and Collard assumed the molecular evidence was correct. “There were so many different lines of genetic evidence pointing in one direction,” Collard explains. But no matter how the computer analysis was run, the molecular and morphological trees could not be made to match15 (see figure, below). Collard says this casts grave doubt on the reliability of using morphological evidence to determine the fine details of evolutionary trees for higher primates. “It is saying it is positively misleading,” he says. The abstract of the pair’s paper stated provocatively that “existing phylogenetic hypotheses about human evolution are unlikely to be reliable”.[10] http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/06/following_the_evidence_where_i047161.html#comment-9266481bornagain77
September 28, 2013
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Ah, yes, the bright white line between man and ape that is obvious that.... creationists can't agree where it is?wd400
September 28, 2013
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KN@3 - lolMung
September 28, 2013
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I'm afraid I would have to (very respectfully) disagree with Casey's claim that "the fragmented hominin fossil record does not document the evolution of humans from ape-like precursors." He does make some very good points in his article in Salvo magazine, but I think the fossil evidence for the fact of human evolution is strong, despite the presence of several gaps. Here's why. There are indeed gaps in the human fossil record, but there are no gaps between the first true human beings and their immediate (non-human) precursors. The real gaps in the record are between those precursors and the common ancestor of humans and apes. We still don't know what the common ancestor of humans and apes was, and we don't know where Australopithecus came from. There is a gap between Australopithecus and early Homo, who appeared about 2.3 or 2.4 million years ago, but it's not a huge one. There's also a gap between early Homo and Homo ergaster (or erectus if you prefer), but once again, it's smaller than we thought it was ten years ago. From an anatomical standpoint, there isn't a real gap between Homo ergaster (or erectus) and Heidelberg man. (From a neurological and chromosomal standpoint, the situation may well be very different.) But Heidelberg man (and not Homo erectus) was the first true human being, in terms of possessing reason. Benoit Dubreuil argues in a 2010 paper that Heidelberg man was the first hominid capable of what he calls co-operative feeding and co-operative breeding - that is, altruistically taking part in group hunting expedition for large animals such as mammoths and saber-tooth tigers, even at considerable risk to one's own life, and making a commitment to enter into a monogamous relationship with a woman and help raise her child over a prolonged and extended period. Those are quintessentially human commitments, requiring a great deal of self-sacrifice, coupled with a rational capacity to envisage the long-term future. You can see the difference between Homo ergaster / erectus (who appeared 1.8 million years ago) and Heidelberg man (who appeared at least 750,000 years ago) in their tools, too. A tool like this: http://www.cope.co.za/archaeo/images/master%20axe%20fullsize%20side%20b.jpg (made in Kathu Pan, South Africa, 750,000 years ago, by an unknown hominid) or like this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ee/Boxgrove_handaxe.jpg/450px-Boxgrove_handaxe.jpg (made by Heidelberg man in Boxgrove, at least 500,000 years ago) possesses an artistic symmetry and beauty that is altogether lacking in a tool like this: http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/8/31/1314790652152/Early-human-hand-axe-008.jpg (made by early Homo erectus, 1.76 million years ago). I might add that the very earliest forms of Homo erectus (found in Dmanisi, Georgia) didn't even make hand-axes. I'd also like to point out that until a few years ago, many anthropologists believed there was a huge gap between Australopithecus and Homo erectus, and some of them also believed that Homo habilis was really on the Australopithecus side of the fence. Collard and Wood argued as much in 1999, and again in their 2007 paper, Defining the genus Homo. That picture is now out of date. Recent papers published in 2012 - see here, here and here show that the transition from Australopithecus to Homo habilis was about the same size as that from Homo habilis to early Homo erectus. As for the transition from Homo erectus to Heidelberg man, it's been known for a long time that this was a fairly smooth one, anatomically speaking - so much so that some anthropologists, such as John Hawks, don't even recognize Heidelberg man as a separate species. (When I say "smooth," I'm just talking about anatomical changes; I'm not talking about the four or so sudden changes in hominid brain structure, which took place 3.5 million years ago, 1.8 million years ago, 700,000 years ago and 200,000 years ago, or about the discontinuous transition from 48 to 46 chromosomes, which took place some time between 3,000,000 and 740,000 years ago.) Here's a quote that conveys the tenor of the new view among anthropologists:
Recent fossil and archaeological finds have complicated our interpretation of the origin and early evolution of genus Homo. It now appears overly simplistic to view the origin of Homo erectus as a punctuated event characterized by a radical shift in biology and behavior (Aiello and Antón 2012; Antón 2012; Holliday 2012; Pontzer 2012; Schwartz 2012; Ungar 2012). Several of the key morphological, behavioral, and life history characteristics thought to first emerge with H. erectus (e.g., narrow bi-iliac breadth, relatively long legs, and a more “modern” pattern of growth) seem instead to have arisen at different times and in different species. Further, accumulating data from Africa and beyond document regional morphological variation in early H. erectus and expand the range of variation in this species. These new finds also make the differences between H. erectus (s.l.) and Homo habilis (s.l.) less stark and suggest that regional variation in the former may reflect local adaptive pressures that result from inhabiting diverse environments in Africa and Eurasia. The mosaic nature of these acquisitions and the greater range of intraspecific variation, especially in H. erectus, call into question previous inferences regarding the selective factors behind the early evolution of our genus and its eventual dispersal from Africa. They also raise questions about when a modern pattern of life history might have emerged and what role, if any, it played in our early evolution.
And here's another:
The origin of Homo holds particular sway for us and has often been seen as the point in our evolution when the balance tips from a more ape-like to a more human-like ancestor. By the turn of this century, a conventional wisdom had grown up around the origin of Homo and particularly Homo erectus that cast this species as the first hominin to take important biological and behavioral steps in the direction of modern humans (Antón 2003; Shipman and Walker 1989). Homo erectus was envisioned as a large-brained, small-toothed, long-legged, narrow-hipped, and large-bodied hominin with relatively low sexual dimorphism. By virtue of a higher-quality, perhaps animal-based diet, H. erectus is said to have ranged farther, cooperated more, and quickly dispersed from Africa (Aiello and Key 2002; Antón, Leonard, and Robertson 2002; McHenry and Coffing 2000; Walker and Leakey 1993). The paucity of early Homo fossils of Homo habilis sensu lato (including Homo rudolfensis) meant that comparisons of Australopithecus (?Paranthropus) were made to H. erectus (including Homo ergaster) rather than to other early Homo. And the distinctions between Australopithecus and Homo were perhaps overemphasized by the diminutive size of the most complete Australopithecus skeleton (A.L. 288-1; Lucy), on the one hand, and the surprisingly large size of the most complete H. erectus skeleton (KNM-WT 15000; Nariokotome boy), on the other (e.g., Ruff 1993). The comparisons between H. erectus and Homo sapiens were so strongly drawn that the inclusion in the genus of some of the earliest species, such as H. habilis and H. rudolfensis, was seriously questioned on the basis of their more australopith-like postcranial skeleton, among other things (Wood and Baker 2011; Wood and Collard 1999, 2007). The fossil record never ceases to upset conventional wisdom, and over the past 2 decades, new discoveries from East and South Africa, Georgia, and even Indonesia have challenged these stark distinctions between Australopithecus and H. erectus and within non-erectus early Homo. In particular, new small-bodied and small-brained finds from the Republic of Georgia and Kenya call to question claims for universally large size in H. erectus (e.g., Gabunia et al. 2000; Potts et al. 2004; Simpson et al. 2008; Spoor et al. 2007) and focus our attention instead on the range of variation within that taxon. This variation in H. erectus has most often been referred to as sexual dimorphism and/or regional/climatic adaptations (Antón 2008; Spoor et al. 2007), although short-term accommodations and phenotypic plasticity are likely to have played an important role (see Antón 2013). And larger-sized, longer-legged Australopithecus have been found (Haile-Selassie et al. 2010), as have members of that genus who may share some postcranial characteristics with Homo (Asfaw et al. 1999; Berger et al. 2010; Kibii et al. 2011; Kivell et al. 2011; Zipfel et al. 2011). Additionally, new fossil remains of non-erectus Homo and new work on previously known remains emphasize the diversity of the early members of the genus and the ways in which they differ from Australopithecus (Blumenschine et al. 2003; Spoor et al. 2007).
I should say, however, that something very important in human evolution occurred 1.8 million years ago, in terms of brain evolution, and it's described in this article: How Our Ancestors Broke through the Gray Ceiling. The authors argue that by rights, hominid brains should have stopped growing at 700 cubic centimeters, but our ancestors somehow broke through that threshold. The authors argue that co-operative breeding was the behavioral change that made this possible. On that score, they're probably correct, but there's a lot of disagreement as to what kind of co-operative breeding it was. Was it grandmothers helping mothers to find food for their newborn babies, or was it dads helping mums, and making a commitment to stick together for the long term? For Homo erectus, it could have been the former. Only when we get to Heidelberg man, whose brain size falls within the modern human range, does the energetic cost of raising an infant become so great that monogamy would have been an absolute necessity for successful child-rearing. The authors of the paper also suggest that Homo erectus engaged in big-game hunting, but as Dubreuil argues in his paper, while there's good evidence that Homo erectus ate a lot of meat, there's no good evidence that he hunted large-scale game; probably he was an active scavenger, which means that he ate meat from carcasses that other animals had killed, and confronted any creature that tried to stop him eating. Hunting large-scale game was a risky enterprise which hominids who were unable to control their impulses would have chickened out of, as it required an ability to put the group's welfare ahead of your own, and maintain your resolve, even as a highly dangerous animal was charging right at you. Dubreuil argues that changes in the brain's prefrontal cortex made this impulse control possible - and even if you reject materialism (as I do), you can still acknowledge the fact that behaving morally requires having a brain that is wired up in the right way. Dubreuil is wary of claims that human culture emerged in a single step, but as he puts it:
Our conclusions must thus remain relatively modest. Consequently, I will not claim that there has been a single reorganization of the PFC [prefrontal cortex - VJT] in the human lineage and that it happened in Homo heidelbergensis [Heidelberg man - VJT]. I will rather contend that, if there is only one point in our lineage where such reorganization happened, it was in all likelihood there.
Finally, I'd like to point out that while the brain size of Heidelberg man (1100 to 1400 cubic centimeters) overlaps with that of modern human beings, the brain size of early Homo ergaster / erectus (around 700-850 cubic centimeters) does not. Normal human brains vary between 1050 to 1500 cubic centimeters for men and 976 to 1400 cubic centimeters for women (see here). The extreme range for human beings is 900 to 2,000 cubic centimeters (see here). I'm afraid that early Homo ergaster / erectus doesn't make the grade. It took nearly a million years for his brain to grow large enough to fall inside that range. Over that period, the increase was gradual, not sudden. To sum up: there are real discontinuities (neurological and chromosomal, as well as behavioral) between human beings and other animals, but if you were just going by the fossil record, the evidence points to continuity rather than discontinuity between man and his immediate precursor, Homo erectus. Hope that helps.vjtorley
September 28, 2013
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In the words of the prophet Isaiah, it can be said of these theoretical ape-men: “Truth proves to be missing.”—Isaiah 59:15. WHAT THE FOSSIL EVIDENCE ACTUALLY SHOWS ? Fact: At the beginning of the 20th century, all the fossils that were used to support the theory that humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor could fit on a billiard table. Since then, the number of fossils used to support that theory has increased. Now it is claimed that they would fill a railroad boxcar.38 However, the vast majority of those fossils consist only of single bones and isolated teeth. Complete skulls—let alone complete skeletons—are rare. [1] Question: Has the increased number of fossils attributed to the human “family tree” settled the question among evolutionary experts as to when and how humans evolved from apelike creatures? Answer: No. In fact, the opposite is true. When it comes to how these fossils should be classified, Robin Derricourt of the University of New South Wales, Australia, wrote in 2009: “Perhaps the only consensus now is that there is no consensus.” [2] In 2007 the science journal Nature, published an article by the discoverers of another claimed link in the evolutionary tree, saying that nothing is known about when or how the human line actually emerged from that of apes. [3] Gyula Gyenis, a researcher at the Department of Biological Anthropology, Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary, wrote in 2002: “The classification and the evolutionary place of hominid fossils has been under constant debate.” This author also states that the fossil evidence gathered so far brings us no closer to knowing exactly when, where, or how humans evolved from apelike creatures. [4] ANNOUNCEMENTS OF “MISSING LINKS” ? Fact: The media often widely broadcasts the announcement that a new “missing link” has been discovered. For example, in 2009 a fossil dubbed Ida was unveiled with what one journal called “rock-star hype.” [5] Publicity included this headline in The Guardian newspaper of the United Kingdom (UK): “Fossil Ida: Extraordinary Find Is ‘Missing Link’ in Human Evolution.” [6] However, just days later, the UK science journal New Scientist said: “Ida is not a ‘missing link’ in human evolution.” [7] Question: Why is each unveiling of a new “missing link” given wide media attention, whereas the removal of that fossil from the “family tree” is hardly mentioned? Answer: Regarding those who make these discoveries, Robin Derricourt, quoted earlier, says: “The leader of a research team may need to over-emphasize the uniqueness and drama of a ‘discovery’ in order to attract research funding from outside the conventional academic sources, and they will certainly be encouraged in this by the print and electronic media, looking for a dramatic story.” [8] TEXTBOOK DRAWINGS AND MODELS OF APE-MEN ? Fact: Depictions in textbooks and museums of the so-called ancestors of humans are often shown with specific facial features, skin color, and amount of hair. These depictions usually show the older “ancestors” with monkeylike features and the ones supposedly closer to humans with more humanlike facial features, skin tone, and hair. Question: Can scientists reliably reconstruct such features based on the fossilized remains that they find? Answer: No. In 2003, forensics expert Carl N. Stephan, who works at the Department of Anatomical Sciences, The University of Adelaide, Australia, wrote: “The faces of earlier human ancestors cannot be objectively constructed or tested.” He says that attempts to do so based on modern apes “are likely to be heavily biased, grossly inaccurate, and invalid.” His conclusion? “Any facial ‘reconstructions’ of earlier hominids are likely to be misleading.” [9] [Footnotes] [1] Fossils, Teeth and Sex—New Perspectives on Human Evolution, by Charles E. Oxnard, 1987, Preface, pp. xi, xii. [2] Critique of Anthropology, Volume 29(2), “Patenting Hominins—Taxonomies, Fossils and Egos,” by Robin Derricourt, 2009, pp. 195-196, 198. [3] . Nature, “A New Species of Great Ape From the Late Miocene Epoch in Ethiopia,” by Gen Suwa, Reiko T. Kono, Shigehiro Katoh, Berhane Asfaw, and Yonas Beyene, August 23, 2007, p. 921. [4] Acta Biologica Szegediensis, Volume 46(1-2), “New Findings—New Problems in Classification of Hominids,” by Gyula Gyenis, 2002, pp. 57, 59. [5] New Scientist, “A Fine Fossil—But a Missing Link She’s Not,” by Chris Bead, May 30, 2009, p. 18. [6] The Guardian, London, “Fossil Ida: Extraordinary Find Is ‘Missing Link’ in Human Evolution,” by James Randerson, May 19, 2009 [7] New Scientist, May 30, 2009, pp. 18-19. [8] Critique of Anthropology, Volume 29(2), p. 202. [9] Science and Justice, Vol. 43, No. 4, (2003) section, Forensic Anthropology, “Anthropological Facial ‘Reconstruction’—Recognizing the Fallacies, ‘Unembracing’ the Errors, and Realizing Method Limits,” by C. N. Stephan, p. 195.Barb
September 28, 2013
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Our arguments are ad hominid. :)Kantian Naturalist
September 28, 2013
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I still hear the echoes of what used to be my favorite DVD when I was an evolutionist , walking with mammals when they show an Australopithecus walking upright and declaring it to be the first ancestor of ours to walk upright. I hate being fooled and evolution had me fooled for 42 years. Australopithecus being a transitionary form is based on only an inference by biologist who assumed evolution and therefore found what they were looking for. The video did the same thing with ambolucetus giving it webbed feet and a body that waddles , despite biologists not even knowing whether it had webbed feet or not and the evidence showing that it was a powerful mover on land. This is science?wallstreeter43
September 28, 2013
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But isn't the fact that Darwinists usually throw ad hominem feces at anyone who questions Darwinian evolution more than proof enough that we evolved from monkeys? At least proof enough for the Darwinian way of evaluating evidence? I mean really what more do you IDiots want? :) note: Monkey Theory Proven Wrong: Excerpt: A group of faculty and students in the university’s media program left a computer in the monkey enclosure at Paignton Zoo in southwest England, home to six Sulawesi crested macaques. Then, they waited. At first, said researcher Mike Phillips, “the lead male got a stone and started bashing the hell out of it. “Another thing they were interested in was in defecating and urinating all over the keyboard,” added Phillips, who runs the university’s Institute of Digital Arts and Technologies. Eventually, monkeys Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan produced five pages of text, composed primarily of the letter S. Later, the letters A, J, L and M crept in — not quite literature. http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/monkeysandtypewriters051103.htm The story of the Monkey Shakespeare Simulator Project Excerpt: Starting with 100 virtual monkeys typing, and doubling the population every few days, it put together random strings of characters. It then checked them against the archived works of Shakespeare. Before it was scrapped, the site came up with 10^35 number of pages, all typed up. Any matches? Not many. It matched two words, “now faire,” and a partial name from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and three words and a comma, “Let fame, that,” from Love’s Labour’s Lost. The record, achieved suitably randomly at the beginning of the site’s run in 2004, was 23 characters long, including breaks and spaces. http://io9.com/5809583/the-story-of-the-monkey-shakespeare-simulator-project Can Monkeys Type Shakespeare? (Doing the math) - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkEvzRMEP3sbornagain77
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