Hmm, an ambiguous petroglyph is unimpeachable evidence, eh? So by that criterion a movie that shows Godzilla stomping Tokyo into the dust is unimpeachable evidence that gigantic dinosaurs were living on earth in the 50's? The movie unquestionably exists, and people as we know don't imagine things but always accurately depict reality, so dinosaurs existed 50 years ago too? That's basically your argument, Gunga, applied to a different example, and clearly it doesn't work for today, or the past.
And, of course, if we regard folk tales as "unimpeachable evidence", then the human population of Europe was outnumbered by centaurs, unicorns, fairies, elves, brownies, nixies, dryads, banshees, trolls, ogres, and vampires as recently as the earliest 20th century. Hell, Gunga, there's certainly documentary evidence in plenty for them too, Gunga. It's actually printed in millions of copies in the folklore section of your local library, so it's just gotta be true, right, Gunga?
Hard to say what is more evident in gunga's pathetic rambles - ignorance, desperation, or a symbiotitic synthesis of the two. Whatever - slapstick is fun to watch.
Some of you geniuses might want to do a google search on 'Vine DeLoria'. I should not have to tell you who he was. Vine was as far from being a Christian fundamentalist as you can get on the planet. Copies of "Red Earth, White Lies" are available in Borders and other places where yuppies buy books (you won't have to go out of your way), as well as at university libraries. Other books which Vine wrote are standard university texts on Indian affairs.
I know who DeLoria is. I also know considerably more about Native American archaeology and ethnology than you do. His expertise in the state of Native Americans today in no way qualifies him as an expert on paleontology.
Red Earth, White Lies, arose from a thirty year study of American Indian oral traditions which included pretty much talking to every keeper of oral traditions in North America from Alaska down to South America. He told me that if there was anything which floored him at first it was the extent to which 80% of the tribes retained stories of their ancestors having to deal with not only pleistocene fauna, but dinosaurs as well. He said those stories never read the way you'd figure if they were made up, i.e. they were rarely about some brave Indian killing the monster with his spear; they were usually about building stockades to keep the dinosaurs from trampling their villages. They were more worried about them being stupid and clumsy than being vicious.
timberlandko wrote:real life wrote:I'm sorry EB. I took you to have a little more intellectual curiosity than that.
There's a big part of your problem - you fail to distinguish between legitimate intellectual curiosity and rejectionist theistic sophistry.
Aren't you curious to know why Lucy's foot was 'reconstructed' with bones (specifically with a bone to serve as an arch and thus furnish corroboration for the humanlike Laetoli footprints), which evolutionists say
a. belong to a 'completely different species' (H. habilis) and
b. are separated from Lucy by well over 1,000,000 years
Doesn't it make you the least bit curious?
Whenever Gunga appears, threads devolve....
I had hopeful delusions when it started . . .
They trashed your thread, EB, but you can't expect to fend off the loonies forever. It was an interesting article, and i'm glad you linked it.
edgarblythe wrote:I had hopeful delusions when it started . . .
Is there a particular aspect of the new discovery you wanted to discuss?
It's a fantastic discovery, and it's always nice to add more data to the fossil record, but does this fossil tell us anything new, or does it just add detail to the 'Lucy' epoch?
real life wrote:timberlandko wrote:real life wrote:I'm sorry EB. I took you to have a little more intellectual curiosity than that.
There's a big part of your problem - you fail to distinguish between legitimate intellectual curiosity and rejectionist theistic sophistry.
Aren't you curious to know why Lucy's foot was 'reconstructed' with bones (specifically with a bone to serve as an arch and thus furnish corroboration for the humanlike Laetoli footprints), which evolutionists say
a. belong to a 'completely different species' (H. habilis) and
b. are separated from Lucy by well over 1,000,000 years
Doesn't it make you the least bit curious?
No, rl, your misdirections, mischaracterizations, misapprehensions, and misrepresentations arouse no curiosity at all ... amusement occasionally, other times pity, sometimes contempt, but no curiosity.
rosborne979 wrote:It's a fantastic discovery, and it's always nice to add more data to the fossil record, but does this fossil tell us anything new, or does it just add detail to the 'Lucy' epoch?
The fossil could show hints about the process of Australopithecus afarensis, which might give a view of the position of a.afarensis between chimpanzees, or gorillas and modern humans.
Quoting Scientific American article:
Alemseged and his colleagues describe the fossil and its geological and paleontological context in two papers that will be published September 21 in Nature.
Anybody reading these papers should hopefully start a new thread about it, or post here.
satt fs wrote:rosborne979 wrote:It's a fantastic discovery, and it's always nice to add more data to the fossil record, but does this fossil tell us anything new, or does it just add detail to the 'Lucy' epoch?
The fossil could show hints about the process of Australopithecus afarensis, which might give a view of the position of a.afarensis between chimpanzees, or gorillas and modern humans.
Hi Satt,
What do you mean by the 'process of Australopithecus'? Do you mean something about the growth and age of its individuals?
DrewDad wrote:Whenever Gunga appears, threads devolve....
This thread started off talking about Lucy, which is a cut and dry, simple case of fraud. You can't start off with something like that and then "devolve"; you're at the bottom from jump.
rosborne979 wrote:
What do you mean by the 'process of Australopithecus'? Do you mean something about the growth and age of its individuals?
Sorry, I meant "process of the growth of A.afarensis individuals"..
timberlandko wrote:real life wrote:timberlandko wrote:real life wrote:I'm sorry EB. I took you to have a little more intellectual curiosity than that.
There's a big part of your problem - you fail to distinguish between legitimate intellectual curiosity and rejectionist theistic sophistry.
Aren't you curious to know why Lucy's foot was 'reconstructed' with bones (specifically with a bone to serve as an arch and thus furnish corroboration for the humanlike Laetoli footprints), which evolutionists say
a. belong to a 'completely different species' (H. habilis) and
b. are separated from Lucy by well over 1,000,000 years
Doesn't it make you the least bit curious?
No, rl, your misdirections, mischaracterizations, misapprehensions, and misrepresentations arouse no curiosity at all ... amusement occasionally, other times pity, sometimes contempt, but no curiosity.
Well, timber, I didn't write the article. As I mentioned, it is from
Scientific American. But go ahead and close your eyes. I'll ignore your whining and discuss it with whoever is interested. Cheers.
from
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0005C9B3-03AE-12D8-BDFD83414B7F0000
Quote: Footprints to Fill
Flat feet and doubts about makers of the Laetoli tracks
It is one of the most evocative traces of humanity's ancestors ever found, a trail of footprints pressed into new fallen volcanic ash some 3.6 million years ago in what is now Laetoli, Tanzania. Discovered in 1978 by a team headed by Mary Leakey, the Laetoli footprints led to the stunning revelation that humans walked upright well before they made stone tools or evolved large brains. They also engendered controversy: scientists have debated everything from how many individuals made the prints to how best to protect them for posterity. Experts have generally come to agree, however, that the tracks probably belong to members of the species Australopithecus afarensis, the hominid most famously represented by the Lucy fossil. Now new research is calling even that conclusion into question.
The case for A. afarensis as the Laetoli trailblazer hinges on the fact that fossils of the species are known from the site and that the only available reconstruction of what this hominid's foot looked like is compatible with the morphology evident in the footprints. But in a presentation given at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists meeting in April, William E. H. Harcourt-Smith of the American Museum of Natural History and Charles E. Hilton of Western Michigan University took issue with the latter assertion.
The prints show that whoever made them had a humanlike foot arch, and the reconstructed A. afarensis foot exhibits just such an arch. So far, so good. The problem, Harcourt-Smith and Hilton say, is that the reconstruction is actually based on a patchwork of bones from 3.2-million-year-old afarensis and 1.8-million-year-old Homo habilis. And one of the bones used to determine whether the foot was in fact arched--the so-called navicular--is from H. habilis, not A. afarensis.[/u]
To get a toehold on the Laetoli problem, the researchers first compared the gaits of modern humans walking on sand with two sets of the fossil tracks. This analysis confirmed that the ancient footprints were left by individuals who had a striding bipedal gait very much like that of people today. The team then scrutinized naviculars of A. afarensis, H. habilis, chimpanzees and gorillas. The dimensions of the H. habilis navicular fell within the modern human range. In contrast, the A. afarensis bone resembled that of the flat-footed apes, making it improbable that its foot had an arch like our own. As such, the researchers report, A. afarensis almost certainly did not walk like us or, by extension, like the hominids at Laetoli.
But according to bipedalism expert C. Owen Lovejoy of Kent State University, other features of the australopithecine foot, such as a big toe that lines up with, rather than opposes, the other toes, indicate that it did have an arch. Even if it did not, Lovejoy contends, that would not mean A. afarensis was incapable of humanlike walking. "Lots of modern humans are flat-footed," he observes. "They are more prone to injury, because they lack the energy-absorptive capacities of the arch, but they walk in a perfectly normal way."
For their part, Harcourt-Smith and Hilton note that a new reconstruction of the A. afarensis foot built exclusively from A. afarensis remains is needed to confirm these preliminary findings. As for identifying the real culprit, if A. afarensis did not make the prints, that would put the poorly known A. anamensis in the running. But just as likely, speculates Harcourt-Smith, an as yet undiscovered species left the prints. That is to say, consider the world's oldest whodunit an unsolved mystery.
emphasis mine
Gungasnake said Lucy is a case of fraud, but I'll allow it
may be due to gross incompetence and ineptitude, as unlikely as that may be.
What other explanation can there be for it?
rosborne979 wrote:edgarblythe wrote:I had hopeful delusions when it started . . .
Is there a particular aspect of the new discovery you wanted to discuss?
It's a fantastic discovery, and it's always nice to add more data to the fossil record, but does this fossil tell us anything new, or does it just add detail to the 'Lucy' epoch?
It is more detail, but that is not a "just adds detail" situation. Johanson, who found Lucy, acknowledged the importance of the inferences about arboreal life (rather grudgingly, it seems)--which is important, both because of the view which one would have of
australopithecus afarensis, and because it demonstrates how science works. When the data contradict the existing thesis, the existing thesis is modified to conform to the evidence.
You can bet the loony-tunes characters in this thread did not notice that significance on their own, and are likely to ignore that significance if they are not beaten over the head with it.
real life wrote: Well, timber, I didn't write the article. As I mentioned, it is from
Scientific American. But go ahead and close your eyes. I'll ignore your whining and discuss it with whoever is interested. Cheers.
from
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0005C9B3-03AE-12D8-BDFD83414B7F0000
Quote: Footprints to Fill
Flat feet and doubts about makers of the Laetoli tracks
It is one of the most evocative traces of humanity's ancestors ever found, a trail of footprints pressed into new fallen volcanic ash some 3.6 million years ago in what is now Laetoli, Tanzania. Discovered in 1978 by a team headed by Mary Leakey, the Laetoli footprints led to the stunning revelation that humans walked upright well before they made stone tools or evolved large brains. They also engendered controversy: scientists have debated everything from how many individuals made the prints to how best to protect them for posterity. Experts have generally come to agree, however, that the tracks probably belong to members of the species Australopithecus afarensis, the hominid most famously represented by the Lucy fossil. Now new research is calling even that conclusion into question.
The case for A. afarensis as the Laetoli trailblazer hinges on the fact that fossils of the species are known from the site and that the only available reconstruction of what this hominid's foot looked like is compatible with the morphology evident in the footprints. But in a presentation given at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists meeting in April, William E. H. Harcourt-Smith of the American Museum of Natural History and Charles E. Hilton of Western Michigan University took issue with the latter assertion.
The prints show that whoever made them had a humanlike foot arch, and the reconstructed A. afarensis foot exhibits just such an arch. So far, so good. The problem, Harcourt-Smith and Hilton say, is that the reconstruction is actually based on a patchwork of bones from 3.2-million-year-old afarensis and 1.8-million-year-old Homo habilis. And one of the bones used to determine whether the foot was in fact arched--the so-called navicular--is from H. habilis, not A. afarensis.[/u]
To get a toehold on the Laetoli problem, the researchers first compared the gaits of modern humans walking on sand with two sets of the fossil tracks. This analysis confirmed that the ancient footprints were left by individuals who had a striding bipedal gait very much like that of people today. The team then scrutinized naviculars of A. afarensis, H. habilis, chimpanzees and gorillas. The dimensions of the H. habilis navicular fell within the modern human range. In contrast, the A. afarensis bone resembled that of the flat-footed apes, making it improbable that its foot had an arch like our own. As such, the researchers report, A. afarensis almost certainly did not walk like us or, by extension, like the hominids at Laetoli.
But according to bipedalism expert C. Owen Lovejoy of Kent State University, other features of the australopithecine foot, such as a big toe that lines up with, rather than opposes, the other toes, indicate that it did have an arch. Even if it did not, Lovejoy contends, that would not mean A. afarensis was incapable of humanlike walking. "Lots of modern humans are flat-footed," he observes. "They are more prone to injury, because they lack the energy-absorptive capacities of the arch, but they walk in a perfectly normal way."
For their part, Harcourt-Smith and Hilton note that a new reconstruction of the A. afarensis foot built exclusively from A. afarensis remains is needed to confirm these preliminary findings. As for identifying the real culprit, if A. afarensis did not make the prints, that would put the poorly known A. anamensis in the running. But just as likely, speculates Harcourt-Smith, an as yet undiscovered species left the prints. That is to say, consider the world's oldest whodunit an unsolved mystery.
emphasis mine
Gungasnake said Lucy is a case of fraud, but I'll allow it
may be due to gross incompetence and ineptitude, as unlikely as that may be.
What other explanation can there be for it?
See large red text above (should be clear even to one wearing twit glasses). Also, try to grasp the concepts of preponderance of evidence and multiply interdisciplinary cross-corroboration.
