The claim that Flores man is a separate human species is being revived again.
Here:
Ever since the discovery of the remains in 2003, scientists have been debating whether Homo floresiensis represents a distinct Homo species, possibly originating from a dwarfed island Homo erectus population, or a pathological modern human. The small size of its brain has been argued to result from a number of diseases, most importantly from the condition known as microcephaly.
Based on the analysis of 3-D landmark data from skull surfaces, scientists from Stony Brook University New York, the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment, Eberhard-Karls Universität Tübingen, and the University of Minnesota provide compelling support for the hypothesis that Homo floresiensis was a distinct Homo species.
Given that even fabled Neanderthal man is probably not much of a separate human species any more, you’d think … oh, wait. The basic problem is that Darwinism needs separate human species in a way that no other widely accepted theory of human origins does.
So, guess they’ll just have to keep inventing them.
But there IS progress. At least this isn’t a fraud, like Piltdown Man.
See also: Missing link still missing
Also: When you “find” him, lose him again, will you?
The basic problem is that Darwinism needs separate human species in a way that no other widely accepted theory of human origins does.
I’m sorry, what are the other “widely accepted theories of human origins”? You don’t mean scientific theories, surely?
FWIW, the claim isn’t being “revived”, as it was never discarded. This just tips the evidence further.
It’s been under fire for some time, actually. The Neanderthal genome didn’t help.
No. Some people have argued the skeletons where sick modern humans, but it’s never been the accepted (or even particularly well supported) position.
The neanderthal genome is utterly irrelevant to the question of Homo floresiensis, and hasn’t done what you think it has to neanderthals either.
Others think they were just small. But let’s face it, some need other human species, others don’t. Svente Paabo is right; there are more paleontologists in the world than important fossils. Until that changes, Darwin’s men will tell whatever stories they need to tell, to pop science writers.
I’m sorry, no one thinks they “were just small”. In fact, the problem the few people who think they were sick have is trying to argue why sick modern humans would have skeletal characters that mimic other extinct human species.
It’s not a matter of “needing” other human species. There are plenty of them, the hard part is working out how they relate to each other.
Does ID need it not to be a separate humans species?
Wouldn’t really matter much. But the pop science media on these subjects speak volumes about Darwin’s deplorable culture, and that matters to some of us.
There is an excellent article called “Icon Illusion” on the CMI’S website where two prominent evolutionists claim the famed chimp to man graphic illustration is an illusion. Not that they don’t believe it didn’t happen, but that the graphic is totally misleading. They claim that human origins are notoriously hard to pin down and end by telling people to take new pronouncement a with a grain of salt. Bernard Wood was one of them. Worth a read!
http://creation.mobi/a/6450
I’m sorry, news, you’r really going to have to tell me who reporting on this study is an example of “Darwin’s deplorable culture”.
This is science. People propose explanations, then they test them. In the case, the evidence is very much for H. floresiensis being a distinct species. What’s deplorable about that?
tjguy,
Yes, that figure absolutely did not happen, and in fact the person who drew it knew that to be the case and wasn’t trying to illustrate a lineage. The “march of progress”, as the figure is called, is almost universally hated by people who study human origins.
Google should point you toward critiques of the diagram that are based on what we actually know about human origins (rather than the weird interjections at CMI)
Denyse:
Wouldn’t matter to “Darwinists” either. Clearly the flores were closely related to us. The more evidence we get, the better chance we will have of finding out just how close.
First the clue is to examine the females. if they show they would of had pain at childbirth because of their skeleton’s ability to deliver the kid then its a human. Only female people have this unique skeleton issue that gives pain at childbirth.
i remember when they said Australian natives were another species of mankind because of looks and dumbness as they perceived it. They dropped that theory these days.
Again brain size is invoked for smartness.
Who said that brain size is a indicator for smarts.
evolutionism only says this.
Why don’t they do it today for the different races and sexes , anmd go public, if they think thats true.
Do ID people think its true about brain size??
YEC don’t because its only our soul that thinks. No brains need be involved.
Wd400, you only got half the point. Wood have some very interesting advice as well as some revealing admissions about ape to man claims. He said to take most new claims with skepticism. He said that human origins are still quite muddled and that it is a very difficult job to piece it all together. So at least this evolutionist thinks that it is no where near as clear as we are led to believe. You seem to have missed the best part of the article. Gotta love it when evolutionists themselves make your point for you.
Sure, he still believes it, but at least he admits the evidence is hard to pin down and is unclear.
These evolutionists need to take a deep breath or a time-out session, read some literature on phenotypic plasticity, and stop jumping to wild conclusion based on slightly altered fossil morphologies.
This is a great introduction to PP, and explains how commonplace such phenomena is, and how the exact same species of animal can exhibit extremely varied phenotypes based on different environmental conditions.
“What is Phenotypic Plasticity and Why is it important?”
http://www.eeb.cornell.edu/agr.....nsects.pdf
One can only wonder how many times the fossils of creatures of the same genotype living in different terrains or climates have been chalked up to some “radiation” of different species due to morphological variation.
Here are the papers that question whether homo floresiensis is a separate species:
Note that both have the same three authors, including the well known Charles Oxnard. I also haven’t read these papers, or the newest one mentioned above.
tjguy.
Well, yeah, butit’s kind of obivious that there isn’t a minutely mapped out path from ape to us among the fossils we have – otherwise why would there be competing theories!
The point about hating the “march of progress” and the way people depict human origins is precisely that it makes people think the only interesting fossils are those few that are ancestral to us. But that’s not how evolution works. We can learn about our origins by sudying all human species, and mapping their traits and their relationships.
Of course, no one thinkgs the “hobbits” are ancestral to modern humans, which makes O’Leary’s take on this all the stranger.
wd400, I know you are enamored with all things Darwinian and probably have a shrine built to Darwin for all I know, but this quote of yours,,
has me scratching my head. I’ve asked Darwinists for years for an example of Darwinism ‘working’. As in asking for just one example of a single molecular machine arising from scratch, and have NEVER been presented with or seen in the literature an actual demonstration of Darwinism working at all to produce a molecular machine. What I have seen is a lot of deception from Darwinists trying to sell snake oil instead of hard science that Darwinism can do what is claimed of it. For example:
Thus my question to you wd400 is ‘why do you so dogmatically defend a theory that has such an abject poverty of evidence supporting its claims and which has become synonymous with deception?’ It seems that a reasonable person would step back and take notice of such a thing. Why not you?
Further notes on the fossil record:
The ‘artistic license’ taken by Darwinists in their ‘reconstruction’ of the parade of apes in their march to man is just plain fraudulent:
One can see that fraudulent ‘artistic license’ for human evolution being played out on the following site.
Please note, on the preceding site, how the sclera (white of the eye), a uniquely human characteristic, was brought in very early on, in the artists’ reconstructions, to make the fossils appear much more human than they actually were, even though the artists making the reconstructions have no clue whatsoever as to what the colors of the eyes, of these supposed transitional fossils, actually were. ,,, Yet, despite the fraudulent nature of these reconstructions, this is what is continually impressed upon the public’s imagination although it is, in the words of Henry Gee, editor of Nature, complete nonsense.,, Here is a much more apt depiction of man in the grand scheme of things than those deceptive march of apes cartoons:
Verse and Music:
wd400, I know you are enamored with all things Darwinian
I’m actually quite un-Darwinian, as far as evolutionary biologists go.
As you know, I don’t read the link-spam. If you have a simple point to make, or a question to ask, please try and do that in your own words.
my question to you wd400 is ‘why do you so dogmatically defend a theory that has such an abject poverty of evidence supporting its claims and which has become synonymous with deception?’ It seems that a reasonable person would step back and take notice of such a thing. Why not you?
Well, you’ll be amazed to learn BA, that I reject premise of that question.
In this case we are talking about the origin of modern humans. The fact that we descend from apes is as well attested as anything science, so I really don’t know what you are going on about.
wd400 you claim:
“The fact that we descend from apes is as well attested as anything science,”
Oh Really? Please do tell. I’m still waiting for any evidence whatsoever demonstrating that Darwinian processes can generate a single molecular machine much less change a ape into a human. Whereas Quantum Mechanics and gravity are tested towards something like 13 of 14 decimal places of accuracy:
“On the other hand, I disagree that Darwin’s theory is as `solid as any explanation in science.; Disagree? I regard the claim as preposterous. Quantum electrodynamics is accurate to thirteen or so decimal places; so, too, general relativity. A leaf trembling in the wrong way would suffice to shatter either theory. What can Darwinian theory offer in comparison?”
(Berlinski, D., “A Scientific Scandal?: David Berlinski & Critics,” Commentary, July 8, 2003)
Shoot it seems no one can even find a mathematical basis in Darwinism in which to make accurate predictions with:
Oxford University Seeks Mathemagician — May 5th, 2011 by Douglas Axe
Excerpt: “Grand theories in physics are usually expressed in mathematics. Newton’s mechanics and Einstein’s theory of special relativity are essentially equations. Words are needed only to interpret the terms. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection has obstinately remained in words since 1859.” …
http://biologicinstitute.org/2.....emagician/
“For many years I thought that it is a mathematical scandal that we do not have a proof that Darwinian evolution works.”
Gregory Chaitin – Proving Darwin 2012 – Highly Respected Mathematician
Interestingly math, insofar as math is able to be applied to Darwinism through population genetics, it falsifies Darwinism:
Thou Shalt Not Put Evolutionary Theory to a Test – Douglas Axe – July 18, 2012
Excerpt: “For example, McBride criticizes me for not mentioning genetic drift in my discussion of human origins, apparently without realizing that the result of Durrett and Schmidt rules drift out. Each and every specific genetic change needed to produce humans from apes would have to have conferred a significant selective advantage in order for humans to have appeared in the available time (i.e. the mutations cannot be ‘neutral’). Any aspect of the transition that requires two or more mutations to act in combination in order to increase fitness would take way too long (>100 million years).
My challenge to McBride, and everyone else who believes the evolutionary story of human origins, is not to provide the list of mutations that did the trick, but rather a list of mutations that can do it. Otherwise they’re in the position of insisting that something is a scientific fact without having the faintest idea how it even could be.” Doug Axe PhD.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....62351.html
Using Numerical Simulation to Better Understand Fixation Rates, and Establishment of a New Principle – “Haldane’s Ratchet” – Christopher L. Rupe and John C. Sanford – 2013
Excerpt: We then perform large-scale experiments to examine the feasibility of the ape-to-man scenario over a six million year period. We analyze neutral and beneficial fixations separately (realistic rates of deleterious mutations could not be studied in deep time due to extinction). Using realistic parameter settings we only observe a few hundred selection-induced beneficial fixations after 300,000 generations (6 million years). Even when using highly optimal parameter settings (i.e., favorable for fixation of beneficials), we only see a few thousand selection-induced fixations. This is significant because the ape-to-man scenario requires tens of millions of selective nucleotide substitutions in the human lineage.
Our empirically-determined rates of beneficial fixation are in general agreement with the fixation rate estimates derived by Haldane and ReMine using their mathematical analyses. We have therefore independently demonstrated that the findings of Haldane and ReMine are for the most part correct, and that the fundamental evolutionary problem historically known as “Haldane’s Dilemma” is very real.
Previous analyses have focused exclusively on beneficial mutations. When deleterious mutations were included in our simulations, using a realistic ratio of beneficial to deleterious mutation rate, deleterious fixations vastly outnumbered beneficial fixations. Because of this, the net effect of mutation fixation should clearly create a ratchet-type mechanism which should cause continuous loss of information and decline in the size of the functional genome. We name this phenomenon “Haldane’s Ratchet”.
http://creationicc.org/more.php?pk=46
Shoot wd400, you can’t even show me where one bacteria was transformed into another bacteria, much less an ape into a human:
Scant search for the Maker
Excerpt: But where is the experimental evidence? None exists in the literature claiming that one species has been shown to evolve into another. Bacteria, the simplest form of independent life, are ideal for this kind of study, with generation times of 20 to 30 minutes, and populations achieved after 18 hours. But throughout 150 years of the science of bacteriology, there is no evidence that one species of bacteria has changed into another, in spite of the fact that populations have been exposed to potent chemical and physical mutagens and that, uniquely, bacteria possess extrachromosomal, transmissible plasmids. Since there is no evidence for species changes between the simplest forms of unicellular life, it is not surprising that there is no evidence for evolution from prokaryotic to eukaryotic cells, let alone throughout the whole array of higher multicellular organisms. – Alan H. Linton – emeritus professor of bacteriology, University of Bristol.
http://www.timeshighereducatio.....ode=159282
So wd400 why did you say that ‘The fact that we descend from apes is as well attested as anything science’ when that is certainly not the case? i.e. did you purposely lie to me or are you really that gullible to believe that?
There you go with the spam again. Humans are apes, the evidence for this is so overwhelming many IDers accept it. Although the morphological and fossil eviedence would be enough to establish this fact by itself, DNA sequences provided difinitive prove we nest within the African Ape clade.
I’m sure you’ll now feel compelled to rip off 12 links to people that don’t know how to calculate sequence homology, or think 98% is a magical number that evolutionists (sorry, “Darwinians” need to prove who are cousins are, or perhaps a write up on the gorilla genome from someone that doesn’t get incomplete lineage sorting…
wd400
The so-called evidence that humans ‘nest’ with African apes (or any other animal for that matter), is based on models built on the presupposition that humans are descendants of apes.
As such, the models are not conceived in such a way to allow for any other possible outcome, and any degree of similarity or difference that is used to distinguish between one kind and another is arbitrary and ambiguous, especially without having most of the ancestors present to compare objectively.
So, the results and conclusions are predetermined by the model builders to confirm a fore-gone conclusion; and, although it is certainly possible that humans are related to apes, establishing that conclusion as a fact is not possible with the evidence at hand, and any such proclamation is unscientific and faith based.
wd400 you claimed that
‘The fact that we descend from apes is as well attested as anything science’
And I showed that that claim was false by showing that other theories of science are validated to stunning degrees of accuracy, yet Darwinism has no validation to any mathematical standard. In fact I showed you that Darwinian evolution has no mathematical basis in which to make accurate predictions with in the first place. I also showed you that insofar as math can be applied to Darwinian evolution through population genetics it falsifies Darwinian claims for how humans originated. Shoot wd400, I pointed out that you can’t even show me where one bacteria was transformed into another bacteria, much less an ape into a human. Yet you claimed that ‘The fact that we descend from apes is as well attested as anything science’. I don’t know which one wd400, but you are either lying through your teeth or you are completely insane if you think ‘humans are apes’ has any kind of rigid scientific basis, because without a mathematical basis, or even a empirical basis for the grandiose claims you are making you are certainly not operating within science but are operating within a faith based position with no actual support within hard science!.
Little john,
[citation neeeded]
BA,
You can compare the odds of getting all the shared-differences humans and chimps have when compared to other genomes if not by common descent. It’s as astronomical as any of the other numbers you mentioned here.
I don’t why you are going on about bacteria, to be honest.
I wonder what the odds are that kangaroos and humans would also share significant portions of their genomes, or do odds only count when they support your position and not count when they go against your position:
Kangaroo genes close to humans
Excerpt: Australia’s kangaroos are genetically similar to humans,,, “There are a few differences, we have a few more of this, a few less of that, but they are the same genes and a lot of them are in the same order,” ,,,”We thought they’d be completely scrambled, but they’re not. There is great chunks of the human genome which is sitting right there in the kangaroo genome,”
http://www.reuters.com/article.....P020081118
First Decoded Marsupial Genome Reveals “Junk DNA” Surprise – 2007
Excerpt: In particular, the study highlights the genetic differences between marsupials such as opossums and kangaroos and placental mammals like humans, mice, and dogs. ,,,
The researchers were surprised to find that placental and marsupial mammals have largely the same set of genes for making proteins. Instead, much of the difference lies in the controls that turn genes on and off.
http://news.nationalgeographic.....m-dna.html
And many other studies I can list that contradict evolutionary expectations in the same manner, but the main point being wd400 is that you have absolutely nothing solid within science (mathematical, empirical, or otherwise) that you can point to to support your grossly exaggerated claim that ‘The fact that we descend from apes is as well attested as anything science’. That statement is patently false and you are either lying when you say it or you are severely deluded as to what constitutes rigid proof for a particular hypothesis within science.
BA,
That’s the number of genes that are homologous to a human gene. Not the number of shared-differences in nucleotides.
Well wd400 don’t you find it the least bit suspicious that you can’t even show me how a single gene or protein was arrived at by Darwinian processes in the first place and that now you want to claim that genes, which you can’t even explain the origination of, prove that ‘humans are apes’. Moreover, as I’m sure you are well aware, the gene studies of Darwinists are notorious for ‘cherry picking’, i.e. assuming their conclusion, in the way they collect data so as to match what they believe beforehand. It is all a crock wd400 and you are a fool to swallow it hook, line, and sinker!
wd400, I want to apologize for saying ‘you are a fool’ as that was too harsh and mean. But I will stick by the much more subdued observation that I hold you to be gullible in what you accept as proof for ‘The fact that we descend from apes is as well attested as anything science’. You simply have are no where near that level of proof!
Elizabeth Liddle:
Unlike Darwinism, ID is not about something people need to be true.
Define “separate human species.” The phrase is nonsensical.