The Cro-Magnons were normal people,not monkeys; and they provide no evidence of transition from ape to man.
With all due respect, that is one of the most ridiculous proclamations I have even seen.
Show me where any
scientist has ever said that Cro-Magnons were "monkeys".
Show me! Show me where any
scientist has ever said that Cro-Magnons were evidence of ape-to-man transition.
Show me!
Only creationists would make the ridiculous claim that any scientist would make such a claim. Just as creationists have tried to claim that scientists think that the ancient Egyptians (the ones who built the pyramids) were "ape-men". Complete and utter
bullshit!
What kind of trough have you been feeding from? You really need to consider radically altering your brain's diet.
Rudolph Virchow, a German anatomist, said the bones were those of modern men afflicted with rickets and arthritis.
Do you have any idea at all who Virchow was? More importantly,
when he was? His Wikipedia article is at
Rudolf Virchow - Wikipedia. The guy was pure
19th century! Did you know that? If not, then why not? Here's the skinny on him and Neanderthal ("Creationist Arguments: Neandertals" at
Creationist Arguments: Neandertals -- do some reading and start to learn):
quote:
In the 1800's the famous pathologist Rudolf Virchow was one who claimed that the first Neandertal fossil found was of a rickets sufferer. As Trinkaus and Shipman (1992) point out, Virchow, an expert on rickets, should have been the first to realize how ridiculous this diagnosis was. People with rickets are undernourished and calcium-poor, and their bones are so weak that even the weight of the body can cause them to bend. The bones of the first Neandertal, by contrast, were about 50% thicker than those of the average modern human, and clearly belonged to an extraordinarily athletic and muscular individual.
Lubenow (1992), relying on the authority of Virchow and Ivanhoe (1970), claims that Neandertals (and H. erectus and the archaic sapiens) were caused by a post-Flood ice age: heavy cloud cover, the need to shelter and wear heavy clothes, and a lack of vitamin D sources, would all have combined to cause severe rickets.
This explanation fails for many reasons:
- Rickets does not produce a Neandertal, or Homo erectus morphology; it is clear from many sources (Reader 1981; Tattersall 1995) that the original Neandertal skeleton was unlike any previously known, even in a century in which rickets was a common disease.
- Evidence of rickets is easily detectable, especially on the growing ends of the long bones of the body. Radiology courses routinely teach the symptoms. It has never (so far as I know) been detected in Neandertals or Homo erectus.
- Even Virchow did not claim rickets as a sole cause. Virchow in 1872 decided that the first Neandertal Man fossil had had rickets in childhood, head injuries in middle age, and chronic arthritis in old age. A whole population of such people strains credibility, to say the least, although Lubenow says that this diagnosis "is as valid today as when [Virchow] first made it".
- The long bones of Neandertals, like those of rickets victims, are often more curved than normal, but rickets causes a sideways curvature of the femur, while Neandertal femurs curve backwards (Klein 1989).
- Humans could hardly have stayed in shelter all the time; food gathering would have required them to spend a lot of time outside (and probably a lot more time than most modern urban humans).
- The most extreme differences from modern humans (H. erectus) are mostly found in regions such as Africa and Java, which were always tropical; the reverse of what would be predicted by Lubenow's hypothesis.
- Creationists usually claim that most of the fossil record was laid down by the Noahaic Flood. And yet there are hundreds of fossils of "post-Flood" humans, who supposedly lived in a period of low population and little fossilization. Why, underneath these post-Flood humans, do we not find far larger numbers of fossilized pre-Flood humans?
Please note that Virchow had examined the first Neanderthal fossils in
1872 (duh?), which were (relying on my memory now) those of an old arthritic individual. Since then, we have found fossils of over a hundred individuals of all ages. The claim that Neanderthal features are the result of rickets completely ignores the evidence and is just plain
ignorant.
There is a cure for ignorance. It's called "learning". Ever hear of it?
The then-Governor of Mississippi explaining why he was campaigning so hard for education reform in his state:
quote:
We've already tried ignorance, so we know that it doesn't work!
(Quoted from memory from an NPR radio newscast circa 1990, give or take half a decade)
OBTW, we do indeed have the ape-to-man transition. Handed to us by the
creationists!
We have transitions from Homo erectus and Homo Neanderthalensis (or Homo sapiens neandertalensis, depending on where you stand on that controversy -- yes, science does indeed have controversies, but real ones, not the fake and fraudulant ones that creationists hawk). Creationist claim that Home erectus was "100% ape" while Neanderthal was "100% modern man". With these transitions from H. erectus to H. Neanderthalensis, we do indeed have the ape-to-human transition.
Thank you for your support, even though it was unintentional.
Edited by dwise1, : OBTW
{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy.("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world. (from filk song "Word of God" by Dr. Catherine Faber,
No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML)
Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one.(Sherlock Holmes in
The Hound of the Baskervilles)
Gentry's case depends upon his halos remaining a mystery. Once a naturalistic explanation is discovered, his claim of a supernatural origin is washed up. So he will not give aid or support to suggestions that might resolve the mystery. Science works toward an increase in knowledge; creationism depends upon a lack of it. Science promotes the open-ended search; creationism supports giving up and looking no further. It is clear which method Gentry advocates.("Gentry's Tiny Mystery -- Unsupported by Geology" by J. Richard Wakefield,
Creation/Evolution Issue XXII, Winter 1987-1988, pp 31-32)
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