Alice C. Linsley
The oldest fully human archaic fossils date to about 4 million years and were found in East Africa and Cameroon. The Australopithecus anamensis tibia indicates bipedalism. Australopithecines possess anatomical traits of the pelvis, femur and spinal column that facilitate bipedal locomotion. Their brains were small because they were proportional to their bodies. The size of their brains does not mean that they were more like apes than humans. These humans were anatomically small, but there are people living today in parts of Africa who resemble Lucy and her kin.
Mary Leakey suspected that these were archaic humans after her work in Ethiopia. She certainly had reason to think so after her 1979 discoveries in Tanzania. That was the year that Mary discovered the earliest known footprints of hominids, animals and birds at Laetoli. The footprints were preserved about 3.6 million years ago under falling ash from the nearby Sadiman volcano. The raised arch and rounded heel of the footprints showed that these creatures walked as humans today.
Unfortunately, Lucy and her kin were given the name "Australopithicus" (meaning southern ape) by Donald C. Johanson, though Mary Leakey would have called the finds Homo, as she thought they were. She expressed her regret that "the Laetoli fellow is now doomed to be called Australopithecus afarensis," a name contrary to the evidence that Lucy and her people walked upright, had oppositional thumbs, short fingers, human dentition, controlled fire, shared their food, and used flints to scrap, saw and chop.
The physical evidence suggests that humans appeared suddenly and unheralded on the Earth around 5 million years ago in Africa.
Dr. Eugene McCarthy is a geneticist who studies hybridization in animals. He curates a biological information website called Macroevolution.net. McCarthy believes that human origins can be explained by hybridization between pigs and chimpanzees. Read more here.
The physical evidence suggests that humans appeared suddenly and unheralded on the Earth around 5 million years ago in Africa.
Dr. Eugene McCarthy is a geneticist who studies hybridization in animals. He curates a biological information website called Macroevolution.net. McCarthy believes that human origins can be explained by hybridization between pigs and chimpanzees. Read more here.
If you believe that all living organisms emerged from a common ancestor, there is no obstacle to hypothesizing a chimp-pig origin for humans.
Related reading: A Closer Look at the Chimp-Pig Hypothesis; Evolution Basics: Species Trees, Gene Trees and Incomplete Lineage Sorting; Does the Binary Feature Signal Greater Complexity?
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11 comments:
At some point, I have to ask "Why", is all of this important. If man was created from the jawbone of an ass, what does that make him? or any of the multitudes of the scientists" and "ologists" who have a stake in these claims.
Will that "prove" that there is something bigger than ourselves that did cause humans to "suddenly appear, unheralded" on the face of the earth. I like that statement, because it seems to be closer to the truth than any thing.
In Genesis 1:11-12 God commanded the "earth" to bring forth all living plants, each after their own kind or genus, right?
In Gen 1:21 21 So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
In Genesis 1:24 again God commanded the earth:
24 Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind”; and it was so
And finally in Genesis 1:26-27
26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness;..
27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them
So A-dam or earth man, and the woman called Eve; the mother of all the living, were created after their own kind, their own likeness which was a Being, and exalted Being who looks like us and we look like Him.
If we believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and he really existed in history as a man, like ourselves, then what does God look like, how does he dress or speak?
Jesus said: John 14:7 “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him.”
In Hebrews 1:2-3
2 has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds;
3 who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power,
So if I am just preaching to the choir than we know that Jesus/Jehovah created the earth and all that is in them, are. The earth was a willing participant in this creation and provided the raw materials for all of the species of living things. But if you take Genesis 1 literally; then the raw material provided by the earth, joined with that holy thing, which is our spirit and our souls and came together as a human, we were created in that aspect, so I believe that was the big bang. The supreme creation, that was not like the others, quite unique.
So how do you explain all of the physical evidence for species that were heretofore unknown, unnamed,and doesn't look like you or me; evolution?
Eyes have not seen and ears have not heard. What does man do with all of this "evidence"? He will continue to argue, and write books, and make television shows etc. But then what? Does that cancel out God? If there is no God, their is no us.
Ps: I found a book called Darwin's Dilemma. It seems intriguing.
My policy is:
when a biblical apologist writes on biological matters,
or a biologist writes on biblical matters,
or a geneticist writes on morphological matters,
or a morphologist writes on genetic matters,
take it with a grain of salt...
Ramona, one function of Just Genesis is to inform people about the latest evolutionary discussion. It is important to know what people like McCarthy are claiming and to consider their claims in light of the physical evidence. The truth always confirms of the Biblical worldview.
You might be interested in this essay about the "kinds" of Genesis: http://justgreatthought.blogspot.com/2013/03/theories-of-change-and-constancy.html
DDeden, If all great thinkers, inventors, and scientists were to stay on this narrow track you describe, the world would be much less interesting and civilization would be much more backward.
I'll take that with a grain of salt...
She's right, DDeden. Many great inventions and discoveries would have languished and died if people had been rigidly sticking to their own fields, or had only listened to the experts. There was a time, for example, when the experts insisted that gorillas were mythical. There was a time when the experts ridiculed the idea that meteorites came from space. Specialization and expertise have advantages, but also disadvatages.
Thomas Kuhn's book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is relevant. Kuhn points out that the great breakthroughs in science historically didn't come from people within the field or a groups of scientists collaborating, but rather from people on the margins who saw something others didn't see. This leads to a "paradigm shift." Kuhn's book if worth reading.
Need heart surgery?
Joe the Plumber can install a valve real quick.
Anyone can claim anything about "experts".
Narrow track? No, broad vision.
The author claims hybridization, but obviously it is convergence, 2 different genera converging to a similar overlapping niche within a similar ecosystem.
This part of the comment is helpful: "The author claims hybridization, but obviously it is convergence, 2 different genera converging to a similar overlapping niche within a similar ecosystem."
The rest makes me want to delete the comment. Stay on topic, please.
This idea is very interesting in light of the Judaic prohibition on eating swine, taboos on cannibalism, and the reports that human flesh tastes like pork. Pigs are also more intelligent than dogs. Pig heart valves have been used in humans because they are so similar and there is less rejection. Piglets are also used to teach anatomy because they are so similar to humans. Perhaps this is closer to the truth than we are comfortable considering.
Thoughtful comment, Margaret. Thanks.
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