More on Israel as origin for human race

Here:

Qesem Cave is dated to a period between 400,000 and 200,000 years ago, and archaeologists working there believe that the findings indicate significant evolution in the behavior of ancient humans. This period of time was crucial in the history of humankind from cultural and biological perspectives. The teeth that are being studied indicate that these changes are apparently related to evolutionary changes taking place at that time.

Prof. Gopher and Dr. Barkai noted that the findings related to the culture of those who dwelled in the Qesem Cave -- including the systematic production of flint blades; the regular use of fire; evidence of hunting, cutting and sharing of animal meat; mining raw materials to produce flint tools from subsurface sources -- reinforce the hypothesis that this was, in fact, innovative and pioneering behavior that may correspond with the appearance of modern humans.

See also here.

Remember, this means we all have the right of return.

Human evolution: Oldest human remains found in Israel?

Daniel Estrin reports for MSNBC ( 12/27/2010 ),

JERUSALEM — Israeli archaeologists said Monday that they may have found the earliest evidence yet for the existence of modern humans, and if the find is confirmed, it could upset theories of the origin of humans.

A Tel Aviv University team excavating a cave in central Israel said teeth found in the cave are about 400,000 years old and resemble those of other remains of modern humans, known scientifically as Homo sapiens, found in Israel. The earliest Homo sapiens remains found until now are half as old.

"It's very exciting to come to this conclusion," said archaeologist Avi Gopher, whose team examined the teeth with X-rays and CT scans and dated them according to the layers of earth where they were found.

He stressed that further research is needed to solidify the claim. If it does, he said, "this changes the whole picture of evolution."

The accepted scientific theory is that Homo sapiens originated in Africa and migrated out of the continent starting sometime around 80,000 years ago. Gopher said if the remains are definitively linked to Homo sapiens, it could mean that modern humans in fact originated in what is now Israel.

Well, then, we all have the right of return, I guess.

On the other hand, most of these types of claims, the early press notices are the last you ever hear of them.

Just a hack writer, but question ...

Yesterday, another hack writer caught up with me, for an interview, and wanted to know: so why do you fight Darwinism ... ?

Yuh, I know. Why bother fighting the huge Darwinist tax burden. Of course, Darwinism is false, but so? People's careers are wrecked if they oppose it.

Among other things, her editor had demanded that I account for the fact that humans share 98% of our DNA with chimps.

I asked her a simple - and, to me, obvious - question: Let's kidnap a guy off the subway in Toronto. Yes, that is a felony offence, but maybe we can manage the whole thing discreetly and get the charges dropped, if he agrees that it was all a private matter anyway ...

(would help if he was a friend or relative - of course, we could, at worst, be charged with wasting police time ...)

But now! We've got him! We will put a chimp from the local zoo of similar age beside him (securely buckled in, because we would not want anything bad to happen to our man).

If both are more than 30 years old, and are normal specimens, how many people will believe that they are 98% identical?

What woman, otherwise consigned to being a spinster, would marry the chimp if she didn't get the man? After all, the chimp is supposedly 98% of a man.

Actually, the chimp isn't a man at all. He belongs in the wilds, or a preserve, or a zoo somewhere. Whatever works. Every woman in the world knows this.

None are the least bit interested in the chimp - unless entertaining children by a visit to the zoo.

So, my question is, what is this 98% similarity thing based on, other than to discredit genetics?

Human evolution: Ardipithecus, humans, and chimps

Someone wrote to me recently, asking

Ever since the reporting of Ardi, I expected a commentary of it on your blog but so far I have found none unless I missed it. I'm curious to what you have to say about it since the researchers of Ardi claim chimps may have descended from us. That being the case then evolution's tree of life would have to be reimagined. Thoughts?

I think Jean Auel did the best job in Clan of the Cave Bear, and she even admitted that she was writing fiction. Which, in my view, puts her way ahead of dozens of profs who can tell me exactly how long-dead people - who never left any writings behind - thought about stuff like religion and family life.

Anyway, I am putting this to the commenters. What do you think about Ardipithecus? An ancestor of us? Of chimps? Both?

You can go here to comment.

By the way, this blog is a volunteer enterprise. Unlike the Darwinists, I am not part of your tax burden. If you feel like contributing, don't let me deter you. I could blog more if I had more resources.

This is not a coffee moment: Canadian columnist advocates worldwide one-child policy - fast back to the Stone Age

A friend writes, shocked, that a premier columnist, Diane Francis, at Canada's National Post, recently wrote a column advocating a worldwide mandatory one child policy. She got plenty of attention. I replied,

In fairness, that is only columnist Diane Francis's opinion. I have not heard that it was endorsed by the paper's editorial board and doubt that it will be.

Hers would, of course, be a disastrous policy because there would not be nearly enough people to fulfill all the roles in society that make for modern progress, comfort, and longevity.

Population bombers have always failed to grasp this fact: If there were only 2 million people in the world, the pace of innovation would be very slow.

So population bomb-ism will, among other things, slow the pace of innovation.

Is that not a key reason that the pace of innovation in the Stone Age was in fact so slow?

The problem I see is this:

With a low population, you don't have enough people to draw from a large pool of highly specific attributes.

Lots of guys can wield a club, but who can invent trigonometry? Only a few guys could do that, and your chances of drawing one from the pool are higher if the pool is bigger - because the bell curve of achievement has a bigger right hand tail, as well as a bigger left hand tail (but that matters less, because an advanced society can afford to support minimal achievers).

So Stone Age people went from one millennium to the next with few advances.

By contrast today, there must be tens of thousands of nerds in India alone. Advances are so swift, I can't figure out what the kids are doing with those new devices they stare at or yak into on the transit.

Also, a slow pace of advancement feeds on itself.

If nothing has changed since Grandma's day, Grandma can be the authority even if she doesn't know very much beyond the subsistence survival skills she passes on - but does not add to.

So lore becomes doctrine, and the response to potential advances is, "Our people do not do things that way."

No. But maybe they should. Still, it would be impossible to discuss. People caught in this bind feel they are desecrating Grandma's grave when they move ahead.

No wonder an executive, frustrated with a similar problem in a moribund corporate culture, once shouted: "If it's not broken, BREAK it!!"

Out of consideration for my friend, I didn't mention other obvious points, like forced sterilizations, forced abortions, or predominance of boys due to selectively aborting girls. The latter situation leads to trafficking in women, prostitution, and forced marriage.

Also, later on, an unsustainable proportion of the economy mustbe given over to senior care or, alternatively, euthanasia - official or otherwise - becomes mandatory

The interesting thing is that Francis fancies herself a free enterpriser. I guess that applies to money, but not to what matters most - life. Not a recipe for better house and planet, I would say.

Human evolution: Now "the Hobbit" may revise "major tenets of human evolution"?

In "Rethinking 'Hobbits': What they mean for human evolution", we are advised by Scientific American (November 2009),

New analyses reveal the mini human species to be even stranger than previously thought and hint that major tenets of human evolution need revision.

Really?

Not only was H. floresiensis being held up as the first example of a human following the so-called island rule, but it also seemed to reverse a trend toward ever larger brain size over the course of human evolution. Furthermore, the same deposits in which the small-bodied, small-brained individuals were found also yielded stone tools for hunting and butchering animals, as well as remainders of fires for cooking them—rather advanced behaviors for a creature with a brain the size of a chimpanzee’s. And astonishingly, LB1 lived just 18,000 years ago—thousands of years after our other late-surviving relatives, the Neandertals and H. erectus, disappeared

More about the Hobbit (Flores man or homo Floriensis) controversy here.

It's never been clear to me that Flores man is a separate species. I think some people just need them to have been one, and they seize on anything that advances their case. Fortunately for them, no Florensians are alive today, so we can't answer the fundamental question of whether they could produce live, eventually fertile children with other humans.

Anyway, a friend writes to remind me that agnostic Australian philosopher David Stove, author of Darwinian Fairytales, pointed out some while ago:

If you discovered tomorrow a new and most un-Darwinian-looking species of animals, in which every adult pair produced on average a hundred offspring, but the father always killed all of them very young, except one which was chosen by some random process, it would take an armor-plated neo-Darwinian no more than two minutes to “prove” that this reproductive strategy, despite its superficially inadvisability, is actually the optimum one for that species. And what is more impressive still, he will be able to do the same thing again later, if it turns out that the species had been misdescribed at first, and that in fact the father always lets three of his hundred offspring live. In neo-Darwinianism's house there are many mansions: so many, indeed, that if a certain awkward fact will not fit into one mansion, there is sure to be another one into which it will fit to admiration.

—David Stove, collected essaysAgainst the Idols of the Age, p. 244,

It would be wisest to believe nothing and nobody about any of these speculations. All we know is, some intriguing skeletons were found, and the people they once belonged to lived pretty much as other humans did at the time, despite very small brains. Thus, human brain size is not well correlated with performance of basic hunter gatherer tasks. That in itself is not surprising. Check the brain absent stories here, for example. The human brain is very plastic.

Here's more on the Hobbit (Flores man).


Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Human evolution: FoxP2 and speech

A friend warns, wisely in my view, that we be skeptical about vast claims made in the popular science press about human evolution.

One paper asserts that FOXP2 was probably involved in the evolution of speech and language, but another paper has cautioned about being too hasty in making this conclusion.

Well, after the "Ida" fossil took in Michael Bloomberg, I'd be cautious about anything evolutionary biologists say. So should Bloomberg, herafter.

For what it is worth, I also don't believe that Flores man is really a separate human species, because I have seen proportionately formed women on the streets of Toronto who were not more than one metre tall. But it's just the sort of squabble no one cares about, and figures like Michael Bloomberg do not get involved.

Here's one assessment from the science literature: “The finding that FOXP2 is critical to speech and language does not by itself demonstrate the role of this gene in the origin of human speech, because the function of FOXP2 could have remained unchanged during human evolution while other speech-related genes changed.” (Jianzhi Zhang, David M. Webb and Ondrej Podlaha, “Accelerated Protein Evolution and Origins of Human-Specific Features: FOXP2 as an Example,” Genetics, Vol. 162:1825–1835 (December 2002).)

Here's a suitably cautious paper by by Alec MacAndrew on the subject:

No-one should imagine that the development of language relied exclusively on a single mutation in FOXP2. They are many other changes that enable speech. Not least of these are profound anatomical changes that make the human supralarygeal pathway entirely different from any other mammal. The larynx has descended so that it provides a resonant column for speech (but, as an unfortunate side-effect, predisposes humans to choking on food). Also, the nasal cavity can be closed thus preventing vowels from being nasalised and thus increasing their comprehensibility. These changes cannot have happened over such a short period as 100,000 years. Furthermore the genetic basis for language will be found to involve many more genes that influence both cognitive and motor skills

Human mind needs human cognition and human cognition relies on human speech. We cannot envisage humanness without the ability to think abstractly, but abstract thought requires language

One thing to keep in mind is that human language is also governed by the need to communicate things that no ape would need to communicate. So understanding language requires understanding mind.

Assume I have a car. Assume the mechanic at Canadian Tire is trying to explain to me what is wrong with my car.

I don’t know much about cars but I know that the car is not working. I accept his explanation and his promise to fix it. And my big question is, “What will this cost?”

That question assumes an exceedingly complex system of social transactions around that unpleasant subject, money.

I’d also like to know, “When will the car be ready?”

“Some time” won’t cut it around here. I need to know when to show up again on the transit, pay, and drive the car away. I have other things to do. So does the mechanic. He even has a time sheet. So do I.

But that assumes a “clock” view of time, again a complex human idea.

Also, that car is only drivable due to roads and bridges, which are again complex constructions, involving many social transactions that require language.

To me, the nonsense around ape “language” fails to distinguish the way in which human language conveys ideas about things that are meaningless in principle to animals.

If I were an ape, maybe I could solve all my problems by aiming a coconut at another ape’s head and then swinging rapidly through the trees.

Oh, you know what? Compared to paying $499.95 plus PST plus GST at Canadian Tire … maybe ... find someone who really irritates me, and ... WHACK!!!

Naw. He can’t help being an ape and I can’t help being human. Just how life is. Better to keep the coconut for Christmas baking.

Fun with Mark Steyn: But when isn't Mark Steyn fun?

Mark, Canadian columnist to the world, discusses a recent fossil find with Hugh Hewitt:

HH: Well, we cannot let this day pass without recognizing two important things. First of all, we’ve discovered a primate that’s 1.2 million years older than Lucy, and apparently a competition between ancient bones has broken out, Mark Steyn. Are you indifferent as to which is the older and allegedly part of our family tree?

MS: Yes, I am, really. I never get terribly excited about so-called evolution stories, because it seems to me that it’s the tiny little bit of us, I can’t remember what it is now, I think it’s not just that we’re, whatever it is, 97% ape, but we’re supposedly 86% or something pumpkin. And clearly, if that’s true, then there’s something not terribly useful about the scale. It’s the tiny little percentage that separates us from the rest of this stuff that makes the difference.

HH: Well, that pumpkin stuff explains radio producers. I’d never thought of that before.

In case anyone cares what I think, after the "Ida" fiasco, I have sworn off accepting any fossil tales in the early days if their discovery. Time will tell if this is anything to write home about.

See also: Scientific American quietly disowns Ida fossil

Human evolution: More from the Ida? I dunno ... files

Ida? I dunno. I wish I had bet a whack on the pop science press dumping all over it

Human evolution: Hype, tripe, trumpets, and (lagging some way after, way out of breath) truth and realism

Darwinists are forever nagging the keepers of the public purse to generously fund their efforts to sell their story to a disbelieving public, but the money is wasted by definition. The reason people don't believe a lot of this stuff is that it isn't believable. More public relations will actually make more people aware of scandals like "Ida" or the fact that there is little or no response to the ridiculous claims of "evolutionary psychology" - which make the science press sound like the National Enquirer.

Apparently, even New York Mayor Bloomberg got taken in. Trust he knows better now.

Darwinism and academic culture: Recent find upsets "sure thing" theories

According to Steve Connor, Science Editor, for The Independent (Wednesday, 9 September 2009), "A skull that rewrites the history of man: It has long been agreed that Africa was the sole cradle of human evolution. Then these bones were found in Georgia." [the country in Asia, not one of the United States]

A friend helpfully points out that even this doesn't shake Darwinist theories:

The conventional view of human evolution and how early man colonised the world has been thrown into doubt by a series of stunning palaeontological discoveries suggesting that Africa was not the sole cradle of humankind. Scientists have found a handful of ancient human skulls at an archaeological site two hours from the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, that suggest a Eurasian chapter in the long evolutionary story of man.

The skulls, jawbones and fragments of limb bones suggest that our ancient human ancestors migrated out of Africa far earlier than previously thought and spent a long evolutionary interlude in Eurasia – before moving back into Africa to complete the story of man.

Experts believe fossilised bones unearthed at the medieval village of Dmanisi in the foothills of the Caucuses, and dated to about 1.8 million years ago, are the oldest indisputable remains of humans discovered outside of Africa.

Or else it suggests that we know almost nothing about our ancestors , and would - at present - be best to pass over the topic in decent silence.


Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Researchers: Natural Selection Less Important Than Once Thought

From ScienceDaily:

Geography And History Shape Genetic Differences In Humans

ScienceDaily (June 7, 2009) — New research indicates that natural selection may shape the human genome much more slowly than previously thought. Other factors -- the movements of humans within and among continents, the expansions and contractions of populations, and the vagaries of genetic chance – have heavily influenced the distribution of genetic variations in populations around the world.

The study, conducted by a team from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the University of Chicago, the University of California and Stanford University, is published June 5 in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics.

Also:

But even with further research, much will remain unknown about the processes that have resulted in human traits. In particular, Pritchard and Coop urge great caution in trying to link selection with complex characteristics like intelligence. "We're in the infancy of trying to understand what signals of selection are telling us," says Coop, "so it's a very long jump to attribute cultural features and group charactristics to selection."

Which is a convoluted way of saying that evolutionary psychology is nonsense. We simply cannot know - beyond the obvious - what characteristics helped our ancestors adapt, or didn't, and for any given characteristic, it could go either way.

Human evolution: We know little, and with good reason

A friend writes,

This weekend I watched Alien From Earth- a documentary that outlines the consternation that the 'Man of Flores' has caused amongst evolutionary anthropologists. Here is what Nature science editor Henry Gee had to say on the matter ('Evolution of the Gaps' is once again all too evident):

Despite decades of patient work we still know rather little about the evolution of humanity…the remains we have are very scarce and very meager and that means that there are probably lots of different species that existed, lived for hundreds of thousands of years and then became extinct and we know nothing about them…All you need is just one to completely blow apart your well entrenched comfortable idea of the linear progress of evolution.

Basically, it's not clear that the one-metre tall humans who occupied Indonesian island Flores for millennia lived any differently from other ancient humans, so the obsession with classifying them as a different species sounds like just that - an obsession.

See also:

Flores find a clear misfit for human evolution sequence?

The little lady of Flores files

First "hobbits" [an early name for Flores humans], now Pygmies?

Oo-ga! oo-ga! We orangs, NOT chimps!!

British physicist David J. Tyler writes, in "Humanity as the second orang-utan" (ARN, 2 July 2009)

The world of human phylogeny has been hit by a bombshell. Although scholars and textbooks are presenting chimpanzees as man's closest relatives, Grehan and Schwartz have revived the case for orangutans. They consider hominoids to be comprised of two sister clades: the human-orangutan clade (dental hominoids) and the chimpanzee-gorilla clade (African apes). They claim that humans and orangutans "share a common ancestor that excludes the extant African apes". Since it is received wisdom that chimps are the nearest relative to humans because we share over 98% of their genes and since humans are referred to as the "third chimpanzee", the ramifications of the new paper are immense!

You bet, especially for the 98% chimpanzee industry. Read more here.

Human evolution: From a note to a friend:

A friend had published an essay on controversies over human evolution, which prompted me to write:

One thing we might do well to keep in mind is t hat little is known about early humans - compared, say, to what we know about the Roman Empire.

As a result, the field is rife with speculation, but the speculation is often represented as fact. Changing opinion based on fragmentary information is represented as growth of knowledge in the field.

The problem is that one opinion rules out another rather than adding to a body of knowledge.

Just yesterday, I noted an article that claims that Neanderthal Man died out because homo sapiens ate them:

The controversial suggestion follows publication of a study in the Journal of Anthropological Sciences about a Neanderthal jawbone apparently butchered by modern humans. Now the leader of the research team says he believes the flesh had been eaten by humans, while its teeth may have been used to make a necklace.

Fernando Rozzi, of Paris's Centre National de la Récherche Scientifique, said the jawbone had probably been cut into to remove flesh, including the tongue. Crucially, the butchery was similar to that used by humans to cut up deer carcass in the early Stone Age. "Neanderthals met a violent end at our hands and in some cases we ate them," Rozzi said.

Izzatso? Based on the above "vast mass" of evidence?

We don't know why the 'thals went extinct, and there are usually a number of causes of an extinction.And other scientists are not exactly buying into this theory. For one thing, it isn't clear why they didn't eat us.

People read this stuff because they are interested. No harm is done if no one takes it seriously. But some do because it supports their atheistic worldview, in the same way that some Christians take End Times speculation seriously. The former, however, are more likely to receive respect from academic sources, and that matters.

African?: Ota Benga - the missed link?

The book sponsored by Turkish creationist Adnan Oktar, Evolution Deceit, directs my attention to the unfortunate Ota Benga : The African in the Cage, who attracted attention because he was supposed to be a missing link.

The link that was missed seems to me to have been ours, not Mr. Benga's.

I had not known his story. Having trouble keeping up, I have decided to just report in snatches for now, so will now report this.

After Darwin advanced the claim with his book The Descent of Man that man evolved from ape-like living beings, he started to seek fossils to support this contention. However, some evolutionists believed that "half-man half-ape" creatures were to be found not only in the fossil record, but also alive in various parts of the world. In the early 20th century, these pursuits for living transitional links" led to unfortunate incidents, one of the cruellest of which is the story of a Pygmy by the name of Ota Benga.

Ota Benga was captured in 1904 by an evolutionist researcher in the Congo. In his own tongue, his name meant "friend". He had a wife and two children. Chained and caged like an animal, he was taken to the USA where evolutionist scientists displayed him to the public in the St Louis World Fair along with other ape species and introduced him at "the closest transitional link to man". Two years later, they took him to the Bronx Zoo in New York and there they exhibited him under the denomination of "ancient ancestors of man" along with a few chimpanzees, a gorilla named Dinah, and an orang-utan called Dohung. Dr. William T. Hornaday, the zoo's evolutionist director, gave long speeches on how proud he was to have this exceptional "transitional form" in his zoo and treated caged Ota Benga as if he were an ordinary animal. Unable to bear the treatment he was subjected to, Ota Benga eventually committed suicide.
Evolution Deceit pp. 87-88 .

It greatly troubles me that Mr. Benga was probably only a few kilometres from Canada at some points. He could possibly have been rescued from these vile people and their zoos.

Darwinists needed to see this guy as less than human. Because that would support their theory.

Here are some links:

- Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Zoo

"An African's odyssey in savage turn-of-the-century America"

- Book: Ota Benga - The Pygmy in the Zoo, by Phillips Verner Bradford and Harvey Blume (St. Martin's Press 1992).

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Human evolution: More on the Ida? I dunno ... files

Here's David Warren on Ida, our supposed fossil ancestor:

The principal hype artist in this case -- Dr. Hurum mentioned above -- has done several similar splashes. The last one he styled "Predator X." It was mounted on the discovery in Svalbard of part of the jaw of a large and carnivorous Pliosaur that swam the oceans of the Jurassic. That, too, was nothing special: just a better-than-usual chunk of fossil evidence for an animal that was hardly new to science. But an integrated multi-media presentation of a science fiction monster, extrapolated loosely from that jaw fragment, was ready-to-air when the discovery was announced.

PS: Look how low the dying Los Angeles Times needs to reach, in order to malign results-driven schools.

Human evolution: Neanderthals as snacks?

According to Jennifer Viegas at Discovery News, "Early Human Dined on Young Neanderthal":

Foes, Not Friends Discovery News Video

May 21, 2009 -- Sometime between 28,000 and 30,000 years ago, an anatomically modern human in what is now France may have eaten a Neanderthal child and made a necklace out of its teeth, according to a new study that suggests Europe's first humans had a violent relationship with their muscular, big-headed hominid ancestors.

The evidence, which includes teeth and a carefully butchered jawbone from a site called Les Rois in southwestern France, could represent the world's first known biological proof for direct contact between the two human groups.

Possibly the last direct contact, too, I shouldn't wonder.

Darwinism and popular culture: A faint whiff of skepticism in the unlikeliest places

In "How Many Times Will Paleontologists Find the "Missing Link"?: The fossil hunter's favorite phrase", Brian Palmer asks,

The media love the phrase missing link—news stories have used it to describe no fewer than 28 paleontological discoveries in the past decade. Scientists sometimes substitute the phrase for the more technical-sounding "transitional morphologies," which refers to anatomical structures that bear some resemblance to both older and more recent physiology. But the research community tends to frown on the use of such language, and the discoverers of Ida have been criticized in some quarters for overselling their research.

Um, yes. The "missing link" is a cult, one of whose adherents is New York Mayor Michael "the Link - this changes everything" Bloomberg.

In reality, it changes nothing, which is how you know that the Ida thing is a cult.

See also:

Human evolution: Water flows uphill? Science journalists protest latest hype, don't just fall in line ... ?

Human evolution: Hype, tripe, trumpets, and (lagging some way after, way out of breath) truth and realismHuman evolution:

The spin machine in top gear

Related issue: Human evolution: Quest for primitive human backfires

Human evolution: Water flows uphill? Science journalists protest latest hype, don't just fall in line ...

Here's what's really interesting about the current "Ida" freakout (= the supposed "missing link" between primates such as humans and earlier animals). Some science journalists, instead of falling in with the hype, have started to try to rescue the discipline of paleontology from the raves of pop science.

Could've happened sooner, but never mind.

In "Origin of the Specious", TimesonLine (May 24, 2009), Jonathan Leake and John Harlow write

Such finds are usually unveiled to the world through the sober pages of an academic journal but for Ida nothing less than a glittering press conference at the American Museum of Natural History in New York would do.

There, Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, stood beside Ida’s glass box, his arm around a schoolgirl who was wearing a T-shirt advertising a television tie-in. It read: “The Link. This changes everything.” The mayor repeated the missing link claim.

Later the scientists who have studied Ida outlined the details of their research. Their pronouncements were just as extravagant.

But that's not what they said to other scientists:

... in the research paper detailing the discovery, the scientists had painted a rather different picture. Ida, they said, “could represent a stem group from which later anthropoid primates (including humans) evolved but we are not advocating this here”.

In fact,as Leake and Harlow detail, it is a huge PR hype. The also report,

Robert Foley, professor of human evolution at Cambridge University, believes many people misunderstand the huge timescales involved in assessing fossils.

“This animal lived around 47m years ago but human-like creatures only appeared in the last 2m years,” he said. “That’s a gap of around 45m years with many other species lying between us and that era. Any one of them could be called a missing link. Really, the term is meaningless.”

Not only that, we have no way of knowing whether "Ida" just died out, and didn't leave any descendants. Primates could just as likely - or more so - have descended from one of many similar species.

Ida "changes everything" only in a world where hype replaces science. Good for Leake and Harlow for refusing to be intimidated by blowhards, and talking about this. There are enough scandals in science already.

See also:

Human evolution: Hype, tripe, trumpets, and (lagging some way after, way out of breath) truth and realism

Human evolution: The spin machine in top gear

Related issue: Human evolution: Quest for primitive human backfires

Human evolution: Quest for primitive human backfires

Best news I've heard all year, actually. Also the worst. Bear with me.

A friend writes to tell me that

Jared Diamond, geography prof at UCLA, ornithologist and popular science writer, is in hot water for writing a story in the New Yorker last year that described "vengeance wars" among tribes in Papua New Guinea that apparently has angered the tribes. The convoluted episode has resulted in his being vilified by anthropologists and by Stephen Jay Gould's widow, who runs Art Science Research Laboratory.

He is being sued for defamation by his New Guinea subjects.

The story is told in Science by Michael Balter, who also has a summary on his blog.

An anthropologist can no longer just visit a native tribe, take notes, and come home to write pretend science articles about their "primitive" habits. Today, many members of traditional peoples have computers, jobs, and political clout. Anthropologists are answerable to the people they write about, who are now paying attention.

In truth, this whole area has been marked by huge scandals over the years. I strongly recommend Patrick Tierney's Darkness in Eldorado, as a remedial text for anyone who took anthropology under a materialist system, where the profs were looking for evidence of "primitive" humans, and caused huge disruptions in aboriginal communities as a result.

Want to see a "primitive" human? Go to the bathroom and look in the mirror.

But ... I am concerned that this may be an instance of libel tourism. That just means looking for a favourable jurisdiction in which to launch a suit that would be considered frivolous in most jurisdictions, and would not gain standing in a court.

The only solution, in my view, is the one we are embarking on in Canada - reform of the defamation laws to clarify what we do and do not consider defamation. For example, if my - very traditional - view is adopted, we don't consider dead people, abstract ideas, religions, or groups to be plaintiffs for defamation. Defamation means that a live person suffered specific, identifiable harm as a result of demonstrably false or unprovable statements made about him/her.

If the person is a public figure, that bar should obviously be lowered. He who seeks greater power than his fellows must deal with greater detraction.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Human evolution: Hype, tripe, trumpets, and (lagging some way after, way out of breath) truth and realism

In the flailing New York Times, we read

STONY BROOK, N.Y. — Six years after their discovery, the extinct little people nicknamed hobbits who once occupied the Indonesian island of Flores remain mystifying anomalies in human evolution, out of place in time and geography, their ancestry unknown. Recent research has only widened their challenge to conventional thinking about the origins, transformations and migrations of the early human family.
Indeed, the more scientists study the specimens and their implications, the more they are drawn to heretical speculation.

A friend comments, "I sure am drawn to heretical speculation."

While we are here, a reader wrote me to ask,

Do you think that finds like the recent Messil Pit (Lemur) fossil and the Flores "Hobbit" find work against a case for Intelligent Design?

I replied,

It’s unclear to me that Flores man is really a separate species, but even if they were, they lived exactly like other ancient humans.

This recent Messil Pit find bolsters the case of the lemur supporters against the previously dominant tarsier supporters.

That only creates more confusion about origins, it seems to me, rather than resolving anything.

Where you have opposing histories, evidence that strengthens one history must weaken the other.

It does not necessarily add up to a gain in information.

What if the tarsier advocates find a fossil that bolsters their case in, say, 2012?

And who’s to say that won’t happen - as it has happened already?

One science writer, Ed Yong, seems to have got free of the hype.

Yesterday, the entire world changed noticeably as the media, accompanied by some scientists, unveiled a stunning fossilised primate. The creature has been named Darwinius masillae, but also goes by Ida, the Link, the Chosen One and She Who Will Save Us All...

Heck, even Google bit the farm. And here are some more links to the media meltdown.

I can but hope that many colleagues join Yong. We can't know what really happened until we establish what really didn't happen. There has not been a lot of that in this area.

Amid the media meltdown, here's an appropriately skeptical article from a source I would not have expected, New Scientist, (Chris Beard, "Why Ida fossil is not the missing link", May 21, 2009),

Apart from anything else, the actual history of the fossil would suggest approaching it with extreme caution rather than treating it as another occasion for ridiculous Darwin worship.

But too much is at stake for most pop science media; they can't stop now.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy: