Amateurs. The Discovery Institute has already weighed in on the recently discovered hominin fossils, and wouldn’t you know it … Casey Luskin squeaks that we must simply disown Homo habilis, and of course he claims that Jonathan Wells has been vindicated in his ‘refutation’ of a straight line of human descent. And of course he quote mines scientists who say the transitions in human evolution are complex and incompletely understood — as if anthropologists have been claiming to have a complete and perfect answer.
The real irony, though, is that little Casey Luskin, pretentious junior lawyer, pompously declaims that he must “favor abandoning theories that aren’t working.” Exactly what theory is he abandoning? The theory that humans descended from an African ancestor with a smaller brain, that they evolved from more primitive apes? Because that theory isn’t refuted at all by the latest evidence, although I’m sure he’d like to pretend it is.
What this evidence reinforces is the observation that humankind was not a specially privileged lineage, that the ape family tree was diverse and complex, and that we had distant cousins who were following several different paths in their history. This is no comfort to creationists of any ideological stripe.
Requiring any sort of use of critical thinking is as comforting to creationists as an eyewash with Tabasco sauce.
Once again, I fail to see how this finding is news at all. First off, this is how science works; theories are constantly tested. Even if this finding suggested a different relationship between H.H. and H.E. than was previously thought, this is totally irrelevant as to whether evolution, as a whole is true or not. It is; get over it.
Second, the finding doesn’t actually change the H.H./H.E. relationship. Why can’t new species co-exist with the species from which they have descended? I see absolutely no reason why this can’t be, and there are perfectly valid explanations for the finding.
This is a case of scientists overstating the conclusions, a major journal not asking enough critical questions of the conclusions in its peer review process, and the mainstream media blowing the findings WAY, WAY out of proportion.
It really does smack of the ‘Why are there still monkeys?” pseduo-argument doesn’t it? Thought the ID crowd had got beyond that . . .
Damn. Scrofulous got there first. Good call.
Ook! :-)
Frankly, I’m more shocked by the scientists here than the creationists. We all knew what the latter would say. But for the authors of the study to come out and say “…these new fossil data highlight that an anagenetic relationship between the two taxa is implausible” is just wrong. It IS the “why are there still monkeys” argument, plain and simple. But it’s coming from scientists, and that’s what is so bad. How did this get through peer review at Nature?
The fact is, there is no reason to think that ANY organism cannot exist with the species from which it has descended. I’m just a molecular biologist, and even I can see that.
I also don’t see how this helps creationists or id’ers.
Unless they deny that these fossils are real or that they resemble homo sapiens, how does the existence of multiple human-like creatures prove the existence of an omnipotent and omniscient God? Did God simply keep experimenting with different body types? Put multiple types of human-like creatures on the planet to see which one would win out? Certainly, a quick appraisal of the current model suggests that God still hasn’t got this creation thing down right.
If these people think an iron axe head sinking is a miracle, it’s no wonder that they would consider this to be support for creationism. They pick and choose what they want to hear and then manipulate it further to fit their ignorant predisposition.
If I’m descended from my grandfather, then why is my cousin still alive?
Could it be because of PYGMIES + DWARFS!?!
No, it is correct that this shows an anagenetic transformation is implausible — it says that the two species are the result of branching. What is published in the Nature article is reasonable and correct.
It’s the statements the authors have made to the press outside the paper that are indefensible — the claim that this proves H. erectus could not have evolved from H. habilis for instance. I don’t know what they were thinking when they were telling reporters crap like that.
Tom, I think it’s the iron axe head (hypothetically) NOT sinking that’s supposed to be the miracle.
Hey, doesn’t DaveScot ban people from UhDuh for proposing silly, discredited arguments such as “…then why are there still monkeys?”
let’s start calling the intelligent design folks what they should have been called all along. IDiots.
I think we have to stop pulling punches.
While there is no doubt that we are the last survivors of a diverse family of early hominids, I don’t give much credence to the current hominid phylogenetic map. Building cladograms out of morphological features (in this case, osteology) is notoriously bad compared to genetic studies, and I think some of the controversies and contradictions in the current map are a direct result of this poor metric.
See: “How Reliable Are Human Phylogenetic Hypotheses?”
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/97/9/5003.pdf?ck=nck
The only way this “helps” creationist arguments is by providing yet another example of scientists changing their minds as the result of new evidence. Look at how that keeps happening, and yet people stubbornly refuse to admit how unreliable science is. Right.
What seems to some people to be powerful evidence for the strength, honesty, and corrective ability of the scientific method evidently looks like exactly the opposite to others. People who have been weaned on the idea that the greatest virtue of the Bible is that you never have to change or revise it — and God is constant, immutable, dependable, and always the same — think that variation and correction means you’re on the wrong track. That’s weakness. You need something stronger to rest everything else on.
As they see it, scientists build on shifting sand and creationists build on a rock. Our human fallibility is apparently no longer an issue when you lose the ability to make a distinction between what you believe and what God is supposed to be.
Seems to me I read recently (was it on Discovery or New Scientist?) that hominids took longer than originally thought to “seperate out” from other primates and that there was considerable cross mating. I’ll have to look back and find that article. Sure was fun telling my fundie family and friends that the “human” descendents of Adam and Eve had done some monkeying around with monkeys.
Anyway, I don’t get the idea that evolution has to take a straight line from slime to human. If they have to ask “why are there still monkeys?” Why aren’t they asking “why are there still ANYTHING?”
…Or do they assume that at some point in time evolution just suddenly STOPPED producing branches (maybe at God’s command?)
My irony meter was strained enough following the link to EN&V (hey, is there some reason for that acronym sounding so much like “envy”?) but it blew when it got to the bottom of the page:
“The misreporting of the evolution issue is one key reason for this site. Unfortunately, much of the news coverage has been sloppy, inaccurate, and in some cases, overtly biased.”
This is most certainly the case with these fossils. The level of scientific literacy evidenced by these reporters is appalling. Unfortunately, the Discovery Institute is not helping matters at all. Their concept of “correcting” the sensationalist coverage of this find and its conclusions (the latter of which are really not news to anyone with any understanding of the situation) is downright Orwellian.
I suppose that that has been said many times before, here and elsewhere, so I will stop now.
@PZ,
My mistake. The Nature article is correct; my amateur interpretation was incorrect. I can talk to you all day about DNA damage sensing, DNA repair, and apoptosis, but archaeology and evolutionary biology are not my forte.
And yes, I see the irony of overstating my own conclusions in response to the overstatement of the conclusions by the authors.
The bushy-ness of human ancestry isn’t anything new. When I was in college back in the paleozoic, we kept talking about the ‘dryopithicene complex’ because the relationships between dryopithecus, ramapithecus, et. al were still extremely confusing.
However I’m somewhat mystified why the co-existence of H. Habilis and H. Erectus makes it unlikely that the Handyman was the ancestor of Mr. Upright.
But then my paleo-anthro classes are decades behind me.
Simple answer to questions raised by creationists to this finding: what would future paleontologists make of finding chihuahua fossils older than those of some of wolves?
That this sub-species existed at the same time as the parent species, but in a different niche.
Sastra,
You are perfectly correct in positing the mindset creationist have; God is constant, immutable, dependable, and always the same — think that variation and correction means you’re on the wrong track. That’s weakness. I believe this phenomena can be applied to a larger extent of authoritarian people in general, and the Bush Administration in particular. After all the F*ckups, from Katrina to Iraq to Pat Tillman and countless more, this administration refuses to acknowledge any wrongdoing. They spin every negative story to their liking. They simply can do NO WRONG!!
In case you don’t follow the links it could be interesting to read paleoanthropologist John Hawks in “Man bites dog”:
So maybe some anthropologists have an ancient stone ax to grind, but others saw the light at the opening of the cave long before this.
Btw, wouldn’t this evolutionary “bush” be generally more likely than a linear progression, thus confirming the theory more? [I can get that PE or ring species would be expected linear speciation, but this expectation seem to be rather confined in time and space.] So Luskin pretends he “doesn’t get it”.
Kseniya:
ROTFL! [And also freshing up the old IDiots as UhDuh-ots of course!]
We have a Molly winner…, oh, um, never mind.
In case you don’t follow the links it could be interesting to read paleoanthropologist John Hawks in “Man bites dog”:
So maybe some anthropologists have an ancient stone ax to grind, but others saw the light at the opening of the cave long before this.
Btw, wouldn’t this evolutionary “bush” be generally more likely than a linear progression, thus confirming the theory more? [I can get that PE or ring species would be expected linear speciation, but this expectation seem to be rather confined in time and space.] So Luskin pretends he “doesn’t get it”.
Kseniya:
ROTFL! [And also freshing up the old IDiots as UhDuh-ots of course!]
We have a Molly winner…, oh, um, never mind.
That’s actually the skull of Tim LaHaye.
Thorbear, I’m pleased you are amused by my coinage. Remember, you saw it here first! (Actually I first used it a week or two ago in the thread in which DaveScot was revealed to be a capricious little martinet, but nobody seemed particularly amused by it at the time…)
@ Martin07 #13,
If “Building cladograms out of morphological features (in this case, osteology) is notoriously bad compared to genetic studies”, what is the alternative? In most of palaeontology, morphology is the only evidence we have for interpreting phylogeny. As the evidence accumulates, inaccuracy due to sampling error can be expected to diminish automatically; errors due to inaccurate models of character evolution (e.g. not accounting for correlation due to allometry and functional specialisation) take more work, but there’s no reason to expect them to be biased in any particular direction and thus, also should cancel out in a big enough dataset.
Ideally, a morphological analysis should predict the results we would get by analysing complete nuclear genomes, but the latter will never be available for most fossils. Does ‘notoriously bad’ mean ‘shouldn’t be done’? – or just ‘take with pinch of salt and keep working at it’?
John Scanlon:
If you can’t place a lot confidence in your model, then you shouldn’t be wasting time building one. The correct position is “we don’t know,” and the correct response is that poor methodologies “shouldn’t be done.”
Could somebody enlighten me on the subject of PYGMIES + DWARFS!?! I’ve been seeing that a lot lately but have no idea what the reference is. Is it something to do with H. florensis?
BT Murtaugh: this explains it quicker than I can;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharyngula_(weblog)#PYGMIES_.2B_DWARFS
Revealed?
‘Revealed’ in precisely the same way that night is revealed to be dark. It’s a periodic, even daily, occurrence.
hugs,
Shirley Knott
LOL @ Martin and Shirley, touché, and I stand corrected.
(Shirley, nice handle BTW.)
Following the link to the Wiki entry on the original PYGMIES + DWARFS phrasesmith Jim Pinkoski yields this gem:
“Jim Pinkoski is an illustrator who worked with Ron Wyatt. He is known for claims like dinosaurs being destroyed by angels while trying to attack Noah’s Ark.” [emphasis mine]
Wow. Angels battling dinosaurs. I love that!
This is really no different than the old creationist chestnut:
“If we’re evolved from monkeys, then why are there still monkies?”
Wow. Angels battling dinosaurs. I love that!
He, or somebody inspired by him, did a cartoon on that. One of those “you can’t parody that” things.
I also don’t see how this helps creationists or id’ers.
Their objective isn’t to prove anything, they are trying to create uncertainly. God exists only in the “we don’t know”.
Someone may have mentioned this already (I’m too tired to read through this whole thread), but if the IDiot’s response to every scientific finding is “Ha! I knew it all along! This totally supports my theory”, then why aren’t they out there in the field, doing the same digs and research? Could it be they know they’re not telling the truth?