Quote:
Originally Posted by dlish
i meant one point for creationists.
from what im reading of it, is that this is the oldest footprint of the closest human found. not sure, but are homo ergasters' considered human or sub human? im assuming that the laetoli fossil dating 3.6 million years is considered closer to the ape species and less human?
i really dont know all that much about anthropology. but i would love to hear from a proponent of the creationists point of view as well as from darwinists.
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The depends on what you mean by human/sub-human and in the spirit of helping you form one (If you haven't already) I'm going to post 3 paragraphs from an essay by Richard Dawkins titled "Gaps in the Mind".
Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Dawkins
Happenings are sometimes organised at which thousands of people hold hands and form a human chain, say from coast to coast of the United States, in aid of some cause or charity. Let us imagine setting one up along the equator, across the width of our home continent of Africa. It is a special kind of chain, involving parents and children, and we will have to play tricks with time in order to imagine it. You stand on the shore of the Indian Ocean in southern Somalia, facing north, and in your left hand you hold the right hand of your mother. In turn she holds the hand of her mother, your grandmother. Your grandmother holds her mother's hand, and so on. The chain wends its way up the beach, into the arid scrubland and westwards on towards the Kenya border.
How far do we have to go until we reach our common ancestor with the chimpanzees? It is a surprisingly short way. Allowing one yard per person, we arrive at the ancestor we share with chimpanzees in under 300 miles. We have hardly started to cross the continent; we are still not half way to the Great Rift Valley. The ancestor is standing well to the east of Mount Kenya, and holding in her hand an entire chain of her lineal descendants, culminating in you standing on the Somali beach.
The daughter that she is holding in her right hand is the one from whom we are descended. Now the arch-ancestress turns eastward to face the coast, and with her left hand grasps her other daughter, the one from whom the chimpanzees are descended (or son, of course, but let's stick to females for convenience). The two sisters are facing one another, and each holding their mother by the hand. Now the second daughter, the chimpanzee ancestress, holds her daughter's hand, and a new chain is formed, proceeding back towards the coast. First cousin faces first cousin, second cousin faces second cousin, and so on. By the time the folded-back chain has reached the coast again, it consists of modern chimpanzees. You are face to face with your chimpanzee cousin, and you are joined to her by an unbroken chain of mothers holding hands with daughters. If you walked up the line like an inspecting general -past Homo erectus, Homo habilis, perhaps Australopithecus afarensis -and down again the other side (the intermediates on the chimpanzee side are unnamed because, as it happens, no fossils have been found), you would nowhere find any sharp discontinuity. Daughters would resemble mothers just as much (or as little) as they always do. Mothers would love daughters, and feel affinity with them, just as they always And this hand-in-hand continuum, joining us seamlessly to chimpanzees, is so short that it barely makes it past the hinterland of Africa, the mother continent.
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The essay if available in full at:
Gaps in the Mind, by Richard Dawkins and is well worth the read if/when you have time. I first found it in his book
A Devil's Chaplain.
I'm not really sure if this is place to beat this drum or not, but it seems to me as good a place as any. It is getting to the point where I don't feel it is incredibly useful to distinguish fossils in our recent ancestry as non/sub/human. The gaps, or spaces where our fossil records lapse are artifacts of the record itself. The lines between say
erectus and
habilis are imaginary, if we were fortunate enough to discover many, many fossils in our lineage, even the naming conventions would even cease to apply. Choosing whether fossil 3876 of 6500 in a lineage belonged to
erectus or
habilis would be nigh impossible, even defining characteristics developed in steps and a person would have no substantial claim to drawing the line at 3876 instead of 3875.
More useful (or entertaining) questions, I think, are how does this evidence from the changing foot relate to our changing lifestyle at that time, and what other evidence can we add to this (such as the climate/environment) that will enhance our understanding of ourselves and how we came to be.
I'm about to marry a hominid as well, strange coincidence.