Secular Scientists Get Desparate

[Soldier4Christ]

A full skeleton found is being acclaimed by secular scientists as being a new species of humans that "evolved separately" from other humans and supposedly is 18,000 years old. The following news article explains the secular viewpoint. It is also said by them to be "definite proof" of evolution.


'Hobbit' is a new people species

A tiny "Hobbit" whose 18 000-year remains were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003, is a member of a separate species of people and not one of a group of modern humans who are pygmies or have microcephaly, a genetic disorder that results in an abnormally small skull.

This is according to a new scientific paper published in this week's issue of the prestigious journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States) by world-renowned palaeo-neurologist Dean Falk and a team of international experts.

The discovery of the skeletal remains of the Hobbit-sized human, a female about one metre tall with a brain size just one-third of that of modern humans, created a major stir.

Archaeologists also found sophisticated tools and evidence of a fire near her remains, so some scientists have argued that the specimen must have been a pygmy or a microcephalic.

This was because a creature with such a small brain would supposedly not have been able to make the tools or use fire.

But Falk, chairman of Florida State University's anthropology department, and her team have concluded that the so-called Hobbit was actually a new species, Homo floresiensis, and was closely related to modern humans, Homo sapiens.

The scientific importance of this finding was that this creature was around at a time when Homo sapiens were believed to be the only hominim species on the planet.

"It's the $64 000 (about R) question: Where did it come from?" asked Falk. "Who did it descend from, who are its relatives, and what does it say about human evolution? That's the real excitement about this discovery."

Hominids are from an ancient evolutionary line that includes ancestors of both people and the great apes; hominims are that part of the line that gave rise only to people.

Falk and her team from the United States, Indonesia, Australia and Austria studied normal human brains and microcephalic brains. They came away convinced that they were correct and that the hobbit was definitely not a human born with microcephaly.

They had previously created "virtual" casts of the Hobbit's braincase from a three-dimensional computer model, which reproduced the surface of the brain including its shape, grooves, vessels and sinuses.

These endocasts revealed that large parts of the frontal lobe and other anatomical features were consistent with higher cognitive processes.

"LB1 (the Hobbit) has a highly evolved brain," said Falk. "It didn't get bigger, it got rewired and reorganised, and that's very interesting."

The researchers compared 3-D, computer-generated reconstructions of nine microcephalic modern human brains and 10 normal modern human brains.

They found that certain brain shape features separated the two groups and that the hobbit could be classified with normal humans, rather than with microcephalic humans.

But they found the Hobbit's brain to be unique in other ways and this supported the case for it to be a new species.

The hobbit brain was the "antithesis" of the microcephalic brain, said Falkt.

[Soldier4Christ]

Soggy dwarf bones

An Indonesian island reveals the existence of an extinct group of pygmy humans

Homo floresiensis. That’s the scientific name given to skeletal remains just discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores.1 The name implies that they belong to a different species from people living today, Homo sapiens.

The researchers found the skull and part of the rest of the skeleton of what might be a female, plus bones and teeth from at least seven other individuals. From preliminary reports, this relative of ours (a term used in some of the articles on the find) was only about one metre (3’4”) tall!

There is every reason to believe that assigning a separate species name is not justified at all. These remains, despite their smallness, give every indication of humanity. The site gives evidence of the controlled use of fire, and shows that they made sophisticated stone tools. There is evidence that they hunted the pygmy elephants on the same island. And of course, the question arises of how they reached the island. It would suggest that these people or their ancestors had substantial seafaring skills.

Interestingly, the bones, found in a cave, were apparently not fossilized (mineralized), and due to the damp climate had the consistency of ‘wet blotting paper’. One would think that given this, long-agers would themselves get a bit wary about the ages assigned to them. (The youngest ‘date’ for the bones themselves is said to be 18,000 years, ranging to more than 38,000, though stone tools have been ‘dated’ such as to indicate that the date of occupation of their settlement ranged back to 800,000 years ago).

The remains have many features strikingly similar to Homo erectus, which we have also long maintained is really just a variety of Homo sapiens. The researchers who discovered the Flores bones apparently think that they are dwarfed descendants of Homo erectus. We would agree.

‘Progressive creationists’ who follow the teachings of Hugh Ross would seem to be in a dilemma. If they admit that these individuals were humans, i.e., descendants of Adam, they would have to reject the hundreds of thousands of years in the above datings of tools. They have shown themselves unwilling to accept the humanity of Homo erectus (see Skull wars: new ‘Homo erectus’ skull in Ethiopia and the response to a critic), presumably because the whole reason for long-age ‘reinterpretations’ of the Bible depends upon the supposed validity of secular dating methods. And having rejected erectus as human, it might be embarrassing to hold a contrary position on such miniature versions of erectus.

If, however, these specimens are to be written off in the usual Rossist approach as ‘soulless non-humans that look a bit like humans’, it raises the awkward question of non-humans doing all those things mentioned, that only humans do today.2 It seems much simpler and more consistent to accept that these were descendants of Adam, part of the post-Babel dispersion.

So how do they happen to be so diminutive? We have written much about natural selection and adaptation as non-evolutionary realities (see Q&A: Natural Selection). The same forces and genetic pressures can apply to human populations. Islands have long been known as places where special adaptive pressures are rife. For example, the loss of wings in birds and beetles, detrimental elsewhere, becomes an advantage on a small windswept island where to fly means risking being blown out to sea (see Beetle bloopers: Even a defect can be an advantage sometimes).

There are also many instances of mammals becoming a dwarf or pygmy variety on islands. A classic example is the 1-metre high fossil elephants on Sicily and Malta—and indeed, the pygmy elephants these dwarf humans hunted! These may well have arisen because places with limited resources favour the transmission of already-existing genes which consume less of those resources—e.g., the genes for ‘smallness’.

Even a mutational stunting, like some hereditary instances of dwarfism today, might be favoured in such a situation and come to dominate a population. Such losses of information, and genetic shifts based on existing genes, are of course not evidence for ‘goo-to-you’ evolution, which relies on the continual appearance of creative genetic novelty. Stunting of humans, and shuffling/culling groups of genes by selection, gives no evidence of such a process.
Small brains, big achievements

The brain of ‘Flores Man’ (or should that be Flores Woman?) was significantly smaller than that of modern humans, even when their body size is taken into account. But interestingly, some of the tools appear to be so sophisticated that even some evolutionists are speculating that perhaps modern humans ‘dropped in’ to the island and left them behind! It reminds us of the fact that brain size and intelligence do not correlate well. Less likely, but possible, is that the ancestors of Flores Man not only made the sea journey to this island, but made the more sophisticated tools, and generations later we are seeing their mutationally degenerate offspring.
Conclusion

In short, the discovery is exciting and interesting. Evolutionists are surprised and astonished by it. However, they will doubtless find ways to fit it into their ever-flexible evolutionary framework, even using it to reinforce evolutionary notions. The Flores discovery fits very nicely into a biblical view of history. But it seems somewhat awkward, to put it mildly, for those who attempt to marry the millions of years and the Bible (see also Refuting Compromise ch. 9).3

Finally, the quite unfossilized, fragile condition of these bones should raise serious doubts in thoughtful people about the whole long-age framework. For more on this, see Q&A: Radiometric Dating and Q&A: Young Age Evidence.

For an update on this fascinating find, please see Hobbling the Hobbit?
Addendum
Some very short modern people:

According to the Guiness Book of Records website, the shortest-ever actress in a lead role was America’s Tamara de Treaux, who was 77 cm (2 ft 7 in) tall as an adult. Normally proportioned, she played ET in Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster. The Filipino paratrooper and black-belt martial arts exponent Weng Wang, who also starred in films and performs all his own stunts, measures just 83 cm (2 ft 9 in) tall. The shortest married couple were the Brazilian pair Douglas da Silva and Claudia Rocha. When they married in 1998, they were 90 cm (35 in) and 93 cm (36 in) respectively.

NOTE: We are not suggesting that the anatomical features of the Flores woman were simply those of a (miniature) modern type human. They are those of a (miniature) Homo erectus, a variant of the modern type, but within the human kind (see also How different is the cranial-vault thickness of Homo erectus from modern man?). Like the evolutionist anthropologist Milford Wolpoff and his allies, who are also aware of the differences between H. erectus and H. sapiens, we are saying that Homo erectus (and thus also the Flores people) should really be classified as H. sapiens. The human kind/species had a greater range of variation than exhibited today.
References and notes

   1. Morwood, M.J., et al., Archaeology and age of a new hominin from Flores in eastern Indonesia, Nature 431:1087–1091, 28 October 2004. See also pp. 1029, 1043–44 and 1055–1061 same issue.
      Ancient, tiny humans shed new light on evolution, <www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4127713>, 28 October 2004.
      Associated Press, Scientists find prehistoric dwarf skeleton, 27 October 2004.
   2. Rossist views were similarly on the back foot with the discovery of undoubted Homo sapiens fossils that were ‘dated’—by methods Ross accepts!—to 160,000 years ago. See Ethiopian ‘earliest humans’ find: A severe blow to the beliefs of Hugh Ross and similar ‘progressive creationist’ compromise views.
   3. For a full discussion and a powerful refutation of ‘progressive creation’ and all other compromise views on Genesis, see Sarfati, J., Refuting compromise, Master Books, Arkansas, USA, 2004.

[Soldier4Christ]

This is more information based on a secular scientist.


Hobbling the Hobbit?

Indonesian scientists reject the hype about “Flores Man”

This is a brief update to our article on “Flores man,” also nicknamed “The Hobbit” after one of Tolkien’s fantasy groups of quasi-humans. Those who have not yet done so are recommended to read the article titled Soggy Dwarf Bones. (The previous post made on here.)

This tiny 1m (3’4”) alleged evolutionary sensation was found on the Indonesian island of Flores and regarded as a “new species” of human (Homo floresiensis). It was said to be at least “18,000 years” old, with the site dated as up to “800,000.”

In a recent development, Indonesian scientists have strongly refuted many of the sensational evolutionary claims about Flores man (so called in spite of the fact that the skeleton was claimed to actually be that of a woman). The country’s influential Jakarta Post (JP) ran an article on 8 November 2004 titled “RI scientists refute Flores Man finding.” (RI = Republic of Indonesia.)

The article reports Dr. Teuku Jacob, a paleoanthropology professor from Gadjah Mada University, as saying:

    “The skeleton is not a new species as claimed by these scientists, but simply a fossil of a modern human, Homo sapiens, that lived about 1,300 to 1,800 years ago.”

While acknowledging the small brain size (380 cc, less than that of a chimp) and obvious differences with typical modern humans, he apparently stated that the remains were those of a member of the “Australomelanesid race, which had dwelled across almost all of the Indonesian islands.”

Referring to the skeleton’s eye socket shape and hip bone curves, Jacob suggested that it was not of a woman at all, but a male who died aged around 30. Interestingly, he also criticized as unethical the action of the Australian scientists who announced the discovery. Both Jacob and Prof. Dr. R. P. Soejono, head of Indonesia’s National Archaeology Institute, said that the Australians should have involved them when making the announcement, especially considering that the Australian scientists were not there when the discovery was made. Soejono claimed that the work on Flores was actually started by Indonesian scientists in 1976, and forced to a halt by the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

Whether the refutation was influenced in part by “turf wars,” and/or national sensitivities, it is interesting that professional academic paleoanthropologists could have two such radically different views about both the identification and particularly the age of the same specimen. Certainly our view (that this is likely a miniature human being exhibiting part of the same range of post-Babel human variation as encompasses the larger so-called Homo erectus) is not harmed, if anything the opposite, by this Indonesian opinion.

The mysterious “little people”

The Indonesian comments about a pygmy Australomelanesian group of people is interesting in light of the many reports one used to hear from missionaries, mostly from the early part of last century and before, about what they often called “the little people.” These reports, mostly concerning far northern regions of Australia (hence closer to Indonesia) were of an allegedly distinct (but now no longer extant) population of very small humans, i.e., a group quite distinguishable from the local Aboriginals. Could at least some of these have been the same (or a closely related) people group as those whose skeleton has been found on Flores? Controversial Australian historian Keith Windschuttle recently published a definitive study on Australia’s short-stature tribes, referred to variously as Pygmies, Negritos, Tasmanoids, and Barrineans.1

A of photographs (In following post.) claiming to be of these people appear in the autobiographical book by Will and Marjorie Sharpe called What an Experience (Boolarong Publications, Esperance Western Australia, 1989, p. 9).


But wait, there’s more...

The non-European in the bottom photo is clearly of normal skull-body ratio. An article in Britain’s Observer quotes Dr. Jacob as suggesting the abnormality known as microcephaly (in which a human is born with a lower brain size) was responsible for Flores man’s small brain/skull size.2 This is disputed by well-known human evolution authority, Britain’s Dr. Chris Stringer, who points out that Flores Man has other features, not just a reduced brain, distinct from the typical human today.


However, an item posted on 1 November by Anatomy Professor Maciej Henneberg gives significant support to the “Flores Man was a microcephalic” view.3 Henneberg is the Head of the Department of Anatomy at South Australia’s Adelaide University, and has studied human evolution for 32 years. He says that the dimensions of the face, nose and jaws do not differ significantly from those of modern humans, unlike the very small braincase. He says, “The bell rang in my head” as he recalled a Minoan period human skull from Crete, which has long been identified as that of a microcephalic. Prof. Henneberg says that doing a statistical comparison of the two skulls (using the meticulous dimensions provided on the Nature website) “shows that there is not a single significant difference between the two skulls though one is reputedly that of the ‘new species of human’, the other a member of a sophisticated culture that preceded classical Greek civilisation.”

Henneberg also says that deeper down in the same cave on Flores, a radius (forearm bone) was discovered. Its length of 210 mm suggests that its owner was 151-162 cm (5’ to 5’3”) tall, well within the normal human range today. And probably consistent with a healthy, good-sized member of the “little people” as depicted in the photo above. [Author’s note inserted 1 April 2005: Although the controversy about microcephaly is reported with interest, and highlights the essential humanness of the specimen, the opinion given in the first of our articles on this find is one I still hold, pending further information. I wrote in the addendum to that article, titled Soggy Dwarf Bones: “We are not suggesting that the anatomical features of the Flores woman were simply those of a (miniature) modern type human. They are those of a (miniature) Homo erectus, a variant of the modern type, but within the human kind.”]

Interestingly, the JP news report also highlighted the same fact we did, namely that the specimen was not really fossilized (mineralized). This of course is more consistent with a much younger age for the skeleton than in the Nature announcement. Dr. Soejono was quoted as saying, “...we were able to find soft tissue so that we could carry out a DNA test. We couldn’t do that if it was already a fossil.” Interestingly, a media release posted by Australia’s Southern Cross University, on 8 November 2004, suggests that the Flores (or Liang Bua, as the site is also known) people may have inhabited the island up to about “500 years ago.”

I hope the DNA results are announced soon, and we await them with great interest. The more identifiable stretches of DNA that are present, the better. We would expect that the results will be consistent with the human identification. The very fact that DNA is still present in an unfossilized specimen is another indicator for a young age, much more likely to be in the ballpark of the figure cited by the Indonesian scientists than the one reported in Nature. (DNA is a fragile molecule that falls apart very quickly, as far as laboratory measurements are concerned—see Salty Saga.)
References

   1. Keith Windschuttle and Tim Gillin, The extinction of the Australian pygmies, Quadrant, June 2002, <http://www.sydneyline.com/Pygmies%20Extinction.htm>. Return to text.
   2. John Aglionby and Robin McKie, Hobbit folk “were just sick humans,” <http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1345519,00.html>. Return to text.
   3. <www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/archives/000884.html>Return to text.

[Soldier4Christ]

Dr J. B. Birdsell, who is 6 ft 1 inch tall, who is pictured with one of the little people mentioned in the previous article.

[Soldier4Christ]

Did the Flores Hobbit Have a Root Canal?
Dental work claim challenges antiquity of hobbit skeleton

And you thought Frodo had it hard. In what is shaping up to be a battle of Tolkienian proportions, the tiny remains from Flores, Indonesia--paleoanthropology's hobbit--have once again come under attack.

Most paleoanthropologists believe that the hobbit belongs to a new species of human, Homo floresiensis. But now comes word that the specimen used to define the species--a largely complete female skeleton known as LB1--appears to have had some dental work. If so, it would mean that, rather than being an 18,000-year-old representative of a new species, the hobbit was just a modern human with a growth disorder that left it with a brain the size of a grapefruit, among other odd traits, which is what critics have argued all along.

Maciej Henneberg, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Adelaide in Australia contends on the basis of photographs that LB1 had a filling--and possibly a root canal--in its lower left first molar (technically known as the M1). He believes the tooth was drilled and the cavity filled with a kind of dental cement that was used by Indonesian dentists in the 1930s.

Henneberg shared the photos he studied with several fellow attendees at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists held recently in Columbus, Ohio. He pointed out the color of the alleged filling, which differed from that of the enamel. He also noted that the putative filling appeared to be more worn than the surrounding enamel.

Henneberg says he initially made these and other observations three years ago, but did not want to go public until he had a chance to verify them with the original remains. He has yet to see the bones, but decided to air his theory because it has become increasingly apparent that he may never get the opportunity. (A request to do so was denied.)

Hobbit defenders pooh-pooh the claim. Paleoanthropologist Peter Brown of the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, who led the initial analysis of LB1, says his own photograph of the occlusal (chewing) surface "shows there is no filling. There are no dental materials or dentists who can color match and hide a cavity in a molar to the degree that would be necessary."

Brown has also examined CT (computed tomography) scans of LB1's teeth, which reveal normal, bifurcating roots in the M1. "The CT scans, when combined with the detailed occlusal view, totally refute Henneberg's claim," Brown asserts.

Charles Hildebolt, a paleoanthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis, has also been working on the Flores material and has obtained his own CT scans. "We think that it is highly unlikely that any type of filling material is in the mandibular left first molar," he said in an e-mail. "The defect in the mandibular left first molar does not have the appearance of a cavity preparation made by a dentist in that the defect is shallow, is nonretentive and is not extended in an apical direction interproximally. There is no indication of tooth decay in any of LB1's teeth."

He adds, "if for some reason, a temporary filling were placed in LB1's mandibular left first molar, we should be able to see some indication of it in the CT images, but we cannot--all that we can see is a defect that resembles other defects on LB1's teeth where the enamel has worn away and the dentine is exposed."
 
Paleoanthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was present when Henneberg made his case, notes on his blog  that Brown's CT scan "has rather poor resolution (typical of medical CT scans), and cuts through the lingual cusps of the lower M1, not the buccal (cheek) cusps which appear to have been most affected by the irregularity." He says an x-ray would be more convincing.