Early Man – Introduction
Taking isolated similarities by themselves, the theory of evolution appears to be quite reasonable… to a point. However, it seems that too much weight has been placed on similarities without questioning the differences. To the embarrassment of many a very intelligent man and woman of science, overly confident conclusions and arrogant statements have been made based on such similarities that have, on occasion, turned out to be not only wrong, but painfully wrong. It is fine to hypothesize that similarities between different creatures are the result of common ancestry, but since such similarities have been and are often conflicting when compared with other features, it might be prudent to hold back a little when making conclusions about any sort of definite taxonomic classification model or even relationship. The conclusions that are drawn from the evidence are often and have often been very much exaggerated to fit personal beliefs and biases. Yes, even scientists have biases and favorite theories. No one, not even a scientist, likes to see a theory that has cost a great deal of money and much of one’s personal time and effort, go up in smoke. So, some caution might be in order before even long established theories are accepted as the “gospel truth”, especially when some of the most famous scientists in the field start to question their own life’s work.
In considering the theory of human evolution it is interesting to note that some very well known scientists have actually suggested that the line of human evolution is far from clear. For example, in 1990, Richard Leakey himself said that, “If pressed about man’s ancestry, I would have to unequivocally say that all we have is a huge question mark. To date, there has been nothing found to truthfully purport as a transitional specie to man, including Lucy, since 1470 was as old and probably older. If further pressed, I would have to state that there is more evidence to suggest an abrupt arrival of man rather than a gradual process of evolving.“
Mary Leakey also said pretty much the same thing just before her death at the age of 83. Although Leakey was convinced that man had evolved from ape-like ancestors, she was equally convinced that scientists will never be able to prove a particular scenario of human evolution. Three months before her death, she said in an interview, “All these trees of life with their branches of our ancestors, that’s a lot of nonsense.”
Biases are of course part of human nature. No one is immune from bias. However, bias should at least be admitted. As it is, popular sciences often refuse to admit that there are significant limitations to the evolutionary interpretations that are given out to the public as “gospel truth.” Consider the evidence for yourself and judge if popular science has not and is not overstepping itself when it comes to its conclusions on “Early Man.”
Forbidden Archeology – Secret Discoveries of Early Man and Civilization
Forbidden Science – Shattering the Myths of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; … So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. — Genesis 1:26-27
In July, British researchers dropped a bombshell by reporting the discovery of 40,000-year-old human footprints in a layer of volcanic ash in central Mexico. The finding was highly controversial because it challenged the traditionally accepted view that humans first arrived in North America around 11,000 years ago after crossing the Bering Strait, a land bridge that once connected Russia and Alaska.
In a new twist, other scientists have performed their own dating of the volcanic ash and obtained wildly different results.
Using palaeomagnetic analysis—a technique that looks at the Earth’s magnetic field during past geologic time—and a radioactive dating technique called argon-argon, the team concludes the ash is actually 1.3 million years old.
Top 10 Missing Links
Every few years scientists unearth the bones of humanity’s forefathers. From Lucy to the Hobbits of Flores Island — we are gradually seeing building the puzzle of mankind’s evolution.
Stocky and squat and well suited for the cold, Neanderthals looked distinctly different from modern humans. But they were like us in other ways: they buried their dead, cared for their sick and injured and may have been capable of language and music. Scientists recently put together a complete Neanderthal skeleton and are working on the genome.
These people looked identical to modern humans and lived in Europe between 35,000 and 10,000 years ago. Their cave paintings and sculptures are the earliest known examples of art by a prehistoric people.
It turns out those Floresians were actually on to something. For centuries, their mythology described a race of very small human-like creatures called the Ebu Gogo. Hardly anyone took them seriously, however, until 2003, when word broke that a new species of diminutive hominids was discovered on the Indonesian island.
For H. erectus, it may have paid to be dense. According to one theory, males rammed each other with their thick skulls in order to win females. H. erectus is generally believed to be the direct ancestor of modern humans and also the first hominid to live in caves and tame fire.
Scientists can’t decide whether this African hominid is just a failed predecessor of H. erectus or the rightful ancestor of modern humans. It had a thinner skull than H. erectus and was more proficient at making tools and using fire.
Many scientists believe H. habilis is the missing link between the ape-like hominids like Lucy and the more human-like ones that came after. It had long ape-like arms but walked on two feet and was capable of creating crude tools.
If P. boisei and its relatives weren’t such picky eaters, we might not be here to wonder about them. They split from the line leading to modern human some 2 million years ago and lived alongside our ancestors for millions of years, but died out after failing to adapt their diets.
This early ape-like hominid walked on two legs and lived between 2.8 million and 2.2 million years ago. Based on skull measurements, scientists concluded this species had the smallest adult hominid brain ever discovered.
A. africanus was an early descendent of Lucy and lived in Southern Africa between 2 million and 3 million years ago. Its brain was larger than Lucy’s and its facial features were more human-like.
The most famous member of this species is Lucy, an adult female skeleton discovered in 1974 and nicknamed after a Beatles song. Lucy lived about 3.18 million years ago and was fully capable of walking and running on two legs.
Calico Early Man
The North American Great Basin is an arid expanse that reaches from northern Mexico to southern Oregon. It is presently a land of desert shrubs and isolated mountain ranges separated by arid basins that often contain salt flats or parched clay pans. However, it was not always so. At times in the past it has been a brushy landscape spattered with lakes, large and small, and rich with animal life including extinct forms of bison, horses, camels, mammoths, and their predators. In most lowlands, some 15,000 years of Late Pleistocene and Holocene alluvial deposition has effectively buried and sealed earlier sediments and possible traces of a human presence in the region in Pleistocene time–the “Ice Age”–when tool-making humans were present throughout the Old World and when the Great Basin was not the desert it is today.
However, in the Manix Basin (Lower Mojave River Valley) of San Bernardino County, California, close by the Calico Mountains, a fortuitous combination of environmental factors have exposed a series of deposits that represent more than 350,000 years of Quaternary history. Within these deposits are rocks that, if found outside the Western Hemisphere, could easily be regarded as having been artificially modified to form stone tools, or lithic artifacts.
The obvious antiquity of the geologic deposits containing these objects has caused the most influential North American archaeologists to reject them as artifacts. They are rejected on the basis of where they are more than what they are. Consequently the objects have been regarded as geofacts: artifact-like forms produced by natural geologic processes. On the other hand, many European and Asian scholars familiar with Old World Paleolithic technology do indeed recognize many of the Calico specimens as authentic lithic artifacts, implying a human presence in the Americas for a span of time vastly longer than that generally accepted.
This web site describes and analyzes the Calico Archaeological Site and the Calico Lithic Industry, which have been controversial since they appear to support the presence of tool-makers in California’s Mojave Desert some 200,000 years ago–nearly twenty times more remote in time than the generally-accepted date for the earliest human arrivals in the Americas.
Read More: http://www.calicodig.org/
PS “There Is Nothing New Under The Sun”
A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
and hastens to the place where it rises.
The wind blows to the south
and goes around to the north;
around and around goes the wind,
and on its circuits the wind returns.
All streams run to the sea,
but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
there they flow again.
All things are full of weariness;
a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.
What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said,
“See, this is new”?
It has been already
in the ages before us.
There is no remembrance of former things,
nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be among those who come after.