PBS’s “shocking” revelations about long-ago humans

_{Denyse O'Leary

June 23, 2015

Human evolution, Intelligent Design, News}

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They reveal: “we met and mated with other types of human – like Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo erectus.”

Further to: 40 kya human bones contain Neanderthal and current genes (And raise an interesting question about the use of the term “hybrid.” Is every mixed ancestry human being today a “hybrid”?), PBS notes, re a new series on human evolution that premieres June 24, tomorrow night:

It’s a story that revolves around a shocking revelation. In prehistoric times, we met and mated with other types of human – like Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo erectus. This mixing of genes helped us survive – and ultimately thrive.

Scientists are beginning to realize that ours is not a pedigree species, but a patchwork. We are all hybrids.

The “shocking” part isn’t that intermingling occurred, but that it came as such a surprise.

It shouldn’t have. And it did so only because of Darwinian thinking.

Incidentally, note that the series guide uses the term “other types” of human, not “other species” of humans (the usual Darwinblather in both pop science writing and journals).

Wonder if they’ll sneak “species” in later, once the coast is clear.

To understand the Darwinblather about many separate human “species,” see the vital role racism has always played in Darwinian thinking. It’s not a bug; it’s a feature, and one that can’t be directly discussed because it is integral to the theory.

We discuss it here.

The odd part is, who goes along with it all, and wants Darwin up there beside Lincoln in “liberating” people. Not who you’d expect. Once suspects that large swathes of these politicians’ core voters just don’t know.

See also: What we know and don’t know about human evolution

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Comments

Pagans were Creationists. Who knew? Just about every race that ever lived were Creationists- who knew? Africans captured and sold their fellow Africans- must have been creationists- who knew?Virgil Cain_{June 24, 2015
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Mapou: Actually, southern white racists consider blacks to be closer to apes, not unlike Darwin and his followers (wink, wink). Most of the slave owners believed in creationism, therefore creationism justifies and leads to slaveryvelikovskys_{June 24, 2015
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Certainly churches seek to persuade otherwise as well as the family, hasn’t it always been true that youth rebels? It seems strange that the schools that are viewed by their critics as completely inept at teaching the basics are so overwhelmingly successful in overriding the church and family and the threat of eternal suffering.
schools are overwhelmingly successful in overriding good with evil, like the gambling industry, and the movie industry, and the advertising industry, and the industry of politics, etc.
That’s why offensive Darwinian thought needs to be removed from public schools
All science or just biology?
It seems to me Darwinian thought should be banned just like creationism in the science and biology classrooms. Focus on what is observed and measured through repeatable experiment, the what and the how, and leave the who, when and the why to open philosophy classroom discussion.awstar_{June 23, 2015
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Its all just comparing dna elements. It all ignores options for innate ability of peoples bodies to change. Yes we have all genes from all humans that ever existed. this because we are all from Adam/Eve. They were not Africans by the way. Gene extrapolation is just guessing. .Robert Byers_{June 23, 2015
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awstar: The hindering comes from those who persuade youth that they don’t really need treatment Certainly churches seek to persuade otherwise as well as the family, hasn't it always been true that youth rebels? It seems strange that the schools that are viewed by their critics as completely inept at teaching the basics are so overwhelmingly successful in overriding the church and family and the threat of eternal suffering. That’s why offensive Darwinian thought needs to be removed from public schools All science or just biology? even more than the offensive symbol of racism needs to removed from sigh Many of the people who agree with you about the former disagree about the removing the symbol of treason from the Capitol grounds.velikovskys_{June 23, 2015
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Actually, southern white racists consider blacks to be closer to apes, not unlike Darwin and his followers (wink, wink).Mapou_{June 23, 2015
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velikovskys #11
Exactly, not as a product of evolution and most particularly not as a product of human and a ” lesser being”. If number of churches is any sign, no one is hindered from the ” treatment”
The hindering comes from those who persuade youth that they don't really need treatment. That's why offensive Darwinian thought needs to be removed from public schools even more than the offensive symbol of racism needs to removed from sight.awstar_{June 23, 2015
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awstar: Well since you ask: I believe the majority of the residents of South Carolina believe they are descended from a broken human being. But praise God we all have access to the great Physician. Now if only everyone would accept the prescribed free vaccination before it’s too late. — But alas, there seems to be some who would rather hinder everyone from receiving treatme Exactly, not as a product of evolution and most particularly not as a product of human and a " lesser being". If number of churches is any sign, no one is hindered from the " treatment".velikovskys_{June 23, 2015
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velikovskys #8
I think the majority of the residents of South Carolina don’t believe they are descended from a mix of human and animal, do you( wink wink)?
Well since you ask: I believe the majority of the residents of South Carolina believe they are descended from a broken human being. But praise God we all have access to the great Physician. Now if only everyone would accept the prescribed free vaccination before it's too late. -- But alas, there seems to be some who would rather hinder everyone from receiving treatment, for some reason.awstar_{June 23, 2015
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The “shocking” part isn’t that intermingling occurred, but that it came as such a surprise. It shouldn’t have. And it did so only because of Darwinian thinking
H'uh? What about "Darwinism" makes hybridization impossible? Moreover if this was true, and Dariwnism has such a stranglehold on the academy, why was the possibility of hybridization between neanderthal and modern human been an active question in anthropology for so long?wd400_{June 23, 2015
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Awstar: I see what you mean. You think those South Carolinians might not be quite as — you know (wink, wink) — “evolved” as the enlightened ones, such as yourself?: I think the majority of the residents of South Carolina don't believe they are descended from a mix of human and animal, do you( wink wink)?velikovskys_{June 23, 2015
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as to:
"It’s a story that revolves around a shocking revelation. In prehistoric times, we met and mated with other types of human – like Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo erectus. This mixing of genes helped us survive – and ultimately thrive."
Now I knew that Neanderthals and Denisovans were linked directly to humans through genetics but I did not know Homo Erectus was. In fact, in the previous article that you referenced it was stated that genetic evidence from Homo Erectus is not yet available:
Neanderthal-Human Hybrid Unearthed - Bob Grant - June 22, 2015 Excerpt: “I’m really looking forward to the day when we can get DNA out of Homo erectus,” said Nielsen. “That might really change our view of human evolution. I think that will come, and I think that’s really exciting.” http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/43354/title/Neanderthal-Human-Hybrid-Unearthed/
The reason why I question the genetic evidence of the homo erectus fossils is because these fossils are particularly controversial fossils.
Hominids, Homonyms, and Homo sapiens - 05/27/2009 - Creation Safaris: Excerpt: Homo erectus is particularly controversial, because it is such a broad classification. Tattersall and Schwartz find no clear connection between the Asian, European and African specimens lumped into this class. “In his 1950 review, Ernst Mayr placed all of these forms firmly within the species Homo erectus,” they explained. “Subsequently, Homo erectus became the standard-issue ‘hominid in the middle,’ expanding to include not only the fossils just mentioned, but others of the same general period....”. They discussed the arbitrariness of this classification: "Put together, all these fossils (which span almost 2 myr) make a very heterogeneous assortment indeed; and placing them all together in the same species only makes any conceivable sense in the context of the ecumenical view of Homo erectus as the middle stage of the single hypervariable hominid lineage envisioned by Mayr (on the basis of a much slenderer record). Viewed from the morphological angle, however, the practice of cramming all of this material into a single Old World-wide species is highly questionable. Indeed, the stuffing process has only been rendered possible by a sort of ratchet effect, in which fossils allocated to Homo erectus almost regardless of their morphology have subsequently been cited as proof of just how variable the species can be." By “ratchet effect,” they appear to mean something like a self-fulfilling prophecy: i.e., “Let’s put everything from this 2-million-year period into one class that we will call Homo erectus.” Someone complains, “But this fossil from Singapore is very different from the others.” The first responds, “That just shows how variable the species Homo erectus can be.” http://creationsafaris.com/crev200905.htm#20090527a
The controversy surrounding homo erectus is further illustrated on the following site.
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
Just how controversial this hyper-variable 'hominid in the middle' erectus fossil can be was recently highlighted in fairly dramatic fashion with this following find:
Skull of Homo erectus throws story of human evolution into disarray - OCT. 17, 2013 Excerpt: Over decades excavating sites in Africa, researchers have named half a dozen different species of early human ancestor, but most, if not all, are now on shaky ground.,,, If the scientists are right, it would trim the base of the human evolutionary tree and spell the end for names such as H rudolfensis, H gautengensis, H ergaster and possibly H habilis. http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/17/skull-homo-erectus-human-evolution
But even with this hypervariable homo erectus, there still appears to be an unexplained 'big gap':
(Homo Erectus) Skull "Rewrites" Story of Human Evolution -- Again - Casey Luskin - October 22, 2013 Excerpt: "There is a big gap in the fossil record," Zollikofer told NBC News. "I would put a question mark there. Of course it would be nice to say this was the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and us, but we simply don't know." http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/10/skull_rewrites_078221.html
Although I don't know exactly where in the fossil record Mayr was referring to, even Mayr himself, ahem, 'inventor' of the erectus series, admitted that there are unexplained gaps in the fossil record for supposed human evolution:
Man is indeed as unique, as different from all other animals, as had been traditionally claimed by theologians and philosophers. Evolutionist Ernst Mayr (What Evolution Is. 2001)
Leaky himself also admitted to unexplained gaps
"If pressed about man's ancestry, I would have to unequivocally say that all we have is a huge question mark. To date, there has been nothing found to truthfully purport as a transitional species to man, including Lucy, since 1470 was as old and probably older. If further pressed, I would have to state that there is more evidence to suggest an abrupt arrival of man rather than a gradual process of evolving". Richard Leakey, paleo-anthropologist, in a PBS documentary, 1990.
Richard Lewontin admitted to gaps as well
When we consider the remote past, before the origin of the actual species Homo sapiens, we are faced with a fragmentary and disconnected fossil record. Despite the excited and optimistic claims that have been made by some paleontologists, no fossil hominid species can be established as our direct ancestor. Richard Lewontin - "Human Diversity", pg.163 (Scientific American Library, 1995) - Harvard Zoologist
As does Ian Tattersall
“Something extraordinary, if totally fortuitous, happened with the birth of our species….Homo sapiens is as distinctive an entity as exists on the face of the Earth, and should be dignified as such instead of being adulterated with every reasonably large-brained hominid fossil that happened to come along.” Anthropologist Ian Tattersall, The Fossil Trail: How We Know What We Think We Know about Human Evolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 246. (emeritus curator at the American Museum of Natural History) "A number of hominid crania are known from sites in eastern and southern Africa in the 400- to 200-thousand-year range, but none of them looks like a close antecedent of the anatomically distinctive Homo sapiens…Even allowing for the poor record we have of our close extinct kin, Homo sapiens appears as distinctive and unprecedented…there is certainly no evidence to support the notion that we gradually became who we inherently are over an extended period, in either the physical or the intellectual sense." Dr. Ian Tattersall: - paleoanthropologist - emeritus curator of the American Museum of Natural History - (Masters of the Planet, 2012)
Moreover, Niles Eldredge and Ian Tattersal hold that the gaps are real and are not an artifact of a poor fossil record
How do Theistic Evolutionists Explain the Fossil Record and Human Origins? - Casey Luskin - September 14, 2012 Excerpt: Consider what paleontologist Niles Eldredge and paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersal (who are both committed evolutionists) co-wrote in a book on human origins: "The record jumps, and all the evidence shows that the record is real: the gaps we see reflect real events in life's history -- not the artifact of a poor fossil record." (Niles Eldredge and Ian Tattersall, The Myths of Human Evolution, p. 59 (NY: Columbia University Press, 1982).) http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/09/how_do_theistic_1064301.html
Moreover, analysis of dental evidence reveals an unexplained gap
No Known Hominin Is Common Ancestor of Neanderthals and Modern Humans, Study Suggests - Oct. 21, 2013 Excerpt: The article, "No known hominin species matches the expected dental morphology of the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans," relies on fossils of approximately 1,200 molars and premolars from 13 species or types of hominins -- humans and human relatives and ancestors. Fossils from the well-known Atapuerca sites have a crucial role in this research, accounting for more than 15 percent of the complete studied fossil collection.,,, They conclude with high statistical confidence that none of the hominins usually proposed as a common ancestor, such as Homo heidelbergensis, H. erectus and H. antecessor, is a satisfactory match. "None of the species that have been previously suggested as the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans has a dental morphology that is fully compatible with the expected morphology of this ancestor," Gómez-Robles said. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131021153202.htm
Thus, hopefully, you can now see why I would question their inclusion of Erectus with Neanderthals, and Denisovans.bornagain77_{June 23, 2015
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velikovskys #5
But I bet they would be “surprised”, not in a good way, who their ancestors were.
I see what you mean. You think those South Carolinians might not be quite as -- you know (wink, wink) -- "evolved" as the enlightened ones, such as yourself?awstar_{June 23, 2015
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aw star: Now that the offensive Confederate flag has been removed from sight because it is symbolic of racism, Not from sight, just from the grounds of the state capitol and not until the state legislature votes to. maybe in the spirit of quid pro quo Interesting concept we could remove offensive Darwinian thinking from our public schools because it is the source of racism. No aware Darwin was that popular in South Carolina or the source of racism in the state. But I bet they would be "surprised", not in a good way, who their ancestors were.velikovskys_{June 23, 2015
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Ah, I see.daveS_{June 23, 2015
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DaveS at 2: We'll see. Series hasn't been shown yet. But the use of the term "types" suggests a commendable level of uncertainty about something that is really quite uncertain under the circumstances.News_{June 23, 2015
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Incidentally, note that the series guide uses the term “other types” of human, not “other species” of humans (the usual Darwinblather in both pop science writing and journals). Wonder if they’ll sneak “species” in later, once the coast is clear.
I might be misreading your post, but "everyone" knows that Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Homo erectus are currently classified as distinct species from Homo sapiens, so I don't think they're trying to sneak something past us.daveS_{June 23, 2015
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To understand the Darwinblather about many separate human “species,” see the vital role racism has always played in Darwinian thinking. It’s not a bug; it’s a feature, and one that can’t be directly discussed because it is integral to the theory.
Now that the offensive Confederate flag has been removed from sight because it is symbolic of racism, maybe in the spirit of quid pro quo, we could remove offensive Darwinian thinking from our public schools because it is the source of racism.awstar_{June 23, 2015
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