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Author | Topic: Ape skulls? Human? Hominid? | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Mission for Truth Inactive Member |
I've been noticing a lot lately that creationists are saying that the transitionary fossils (hominids) are either ape or man. What's the deal? How do we tell which are for sure ape, which are man, and which are inbetween?
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Admin Director Posts: 13018 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 1.9 |
Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.
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Unseul Inactive Member |
The thing is we're not really looking for something thats half ape and half man. More for something thats half ancestor (before the major split) and half man. At least thats what id be looking for. But there again we cant really tell how rapid the changes occured, an article in nature explained how our skulls could have changed shape radically due to just one mutation weakening our jaw bones and possible allowing the brain to grow larger. This means intermediates as such could be hard to come by.
Unseul edit to change journal name from science to nature (hope thats right) This message has been edited by Unseul, 05-08-2004 10:49 AM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life....
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sidelined Member (Idle past 5929 days) Posts: 3435 From: Edmonton Alberta Canada Joined: |
Mission for Truth
I remember Richard Dawkins addressed this arguement in his book Climbing Mount Improbable.It dealt with the insistence of locating the "missing link" in the ape-human transition.Since we must categorize apes to one side and humans to another even though we do find close approximations to one another in terms of features we must eventually place it within a category.Over time the distinction becomes finer however there will always be distinctions and therefore must eventually fall into either ape or human.It is a failure of our classification system that there is no actual "in between" classification.Creationists say that the transitionary fossils are either ape or human but fail to think that this is precisely what we would expect from a fossil record that evolved.Now I wonder if they have an explanation of their own?
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NosyNed Member Posts: 9003 From: Canada Joined: |
This means intermediates as such could be hard to come by. But we have a series of specimens that have increases in skull capacity over time already. Not nearly as many as we'd like of course and not yet enough to sort our line out of the tangle in the earlier times. They are hard to come by, but they keep turning up.
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Unseul Inactive Member |
And the fact they keep turning up is a good thing, but as you said theres still not enough to untangle all the lineages yet. Hopefully with more time and more excavations (and luck) we'll get a more clear picture.
Unseul Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life....
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1426 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
You also have the sometimes arbitrary division into species in a lineage where the first samples seem quite different but then more specimens are found in between and you have to draw the line somewhere. It gets to the point in the evolution of a species where the difference between specimens close to the dividing point are less than the differences within the species from oldest to youngest.
Technically you could take each specimen and define a species by it, and the cut it off where ancestors and descendants are too divergent to interbreed, but each other specimen is also a defining point for a species that would overlap many but not all specimens with the first. we are limited in our ability to understand by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}
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jar Member (Idle past 415 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
There's also the big issue of just what IS and ape or man?
The terms Ape and Man carry enormous connotative baggage that can really be misleading. This is true even today. Modern studies seem to indicate that the Chimpanzee is more closely related to Humans than to the Gorilla. Yet people looking at the Chimpanzee see APE. They look at a human and see MAN. Very few look at either of them and see PRIMATE or HOMO. It is even harder as you move back in the fossil record. Where you place a skull, whether it is called APE or Man or something else is fraught with the perils of language. Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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Unseul Inactive Member |
Heh, i've read in one or two articles that their beginning to consider renaming humans, chimps are almost at the point of entering the current defintion of Homo Sapiens (I'm not too sure on the Homo part, but even just the sapiens would be amusing). Course until they start walking around on two legs most the time we're probably safe, but i dont think it would take too much more in other realms (language, toolmaking, even some evidence of having homes).
Unseul This message has been edited by Unseul, 05-09-2004 06:30 PM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life....
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grass monkey Inactive Member |
It's all good and well saying you would expect to see apes and humans if we evolved. But we would also expect to see humans and apes if we didn't. So I guess it is evidence of creation.
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NosyNed Member Posts: 9003 From: Canada Joined: |
The suggestion is to move the Chimps from genus Pan to genus Homo as they are close enough for that. They are not the same species so they would not be called sapiens. They would be Homo troglodytes instad of Pan troglodytes for example. (one of the 3 chimp species).
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Asgara Member (Idle past 2324 days) Posts: 1783 From: Wisconsin, USA Joined: |
Wasn't the original classification Homo troglodytes anyway?
This message has been edited by Asgara, 05-09-2004 07:13 PM Asgara "Embrace the pain, spank your inner moppet, whatever....but get over it"
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NosyNed Member Posts: 9003 From: Canada Joined: |
If we were created all at once all done and final you would not expect to see a series of species that are more and more like us as we get closer in time. That is not explained by creation ideas.
It isn't just the differences in form but also the time relationship between them. This makes no sense from the creationist view.
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grass monkey Inactive Member |
If we were created all at once all done and final you would not expect to see a series of species that are more and more like us as we get closer in time. No, I am saying that that poster is saying apes and humans make evolution. That's all he said, apes and humans. So that's all I'm talking about - apes and humans. I didn't mean anything else.
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sidelined Member (Idle past 5929 days) Posts: 3435 From: Edmonton Alberta Canada Joined: |
Spawn
But we would also expect to see humans and apes if we didn't. So I guess it is evidence of creation. We would not expect to see expect according to Creationists fossil skulls evidencing traits differing from either modern humans or modern apes.Yet we have ample collections of both these.We have transitional fossils which run the gamut between man and other primates. This is the point I was trying to get at. Please check out this website http://www.theistic-evolution.com/transitional.html and see if you can determine where in the creationist model these skulss fitRemember that there is no transitionals between humans and other primatesin creationist views.
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