*"The fossilized craniums, which are estimated to be 160,000 years old, have a previously unseen combination of primitive and modern features, paleontologists involved in the excavation said.
Classified as a new subspecies of Homo sapiens, the remains help boost the theory that modern man came from Africa, according to the group, led by scientists from the University of California, Berkeley.
“They … represent the probable immediate ancestors of anatomically modern humans. Their anatomy and antiquity constitute strong evidence of modern-human emergence in Africa,” wrote Berkeley researcher Tim White and colleagues in Nature."*
I was under the impression that it was considered a fact, that man originated in Africa. Yet the article gives the impression that it’s still a theory. Am I reading too much into the story or is there still some discussion going on concerning the origin of man?
Also what do the Creationists think of this? It looks like sooner of later, we may actually have the complete fossil record of Man’s Evolution…what happens to the argument against evolution?
Well, I think it is safe to say that it can never be absolutely, conclusively provem that man originated in Africa, just because there is always that chance that fossils of men might turn up on a different area, and in an earlier timeline. While one can make a pretty good assumption, one cannot take it directly as fact.
We can say that the earliest know fossils are from Africa, but not that there aren’t earlier fossils elsewhere.
Just a nitpick, but one that inadvertently gives the Creationists a lot of ammo. A theory is not the antonym of a fact. In scientific circles, “theory” is used to define a set of generally accepted principles that explain phenomena. Thus we talk about “the germ theory of disease” or “the atomic theory,” both intellectual frameworks based on solid labwork and observation. The word you should use in the above paragraph is hypothesis, as in " I was under the impression that it was considered a fact that man originated in Africa. Yet the article gives the impression that it’s still a hypothesis."
The arguments against evolution are complete bullshit, and have been for quite some time. The fact is that if you want to believe something that’s false, no amount of facts is going to change your mind - so I doubt it’ll have much effect on anything.
The question is not ‘did Man originate in Africa’?,
but
a/ ‘did Modern Man originate in Africa, then spread out, and replace all the other species of hominids’
or
b/ ‘did the other species of hominid that were already established in Europe, Asia and Australasia also contribute to the genetic heritage of today’s mankind?’
As you can see, it is quite a technical question, and the answer seems to be a/ at the moment.
As eburacum45 noted, there are two competing theories of the origin of Homo sapiens, referred to, loosely, as the “Out of Africa” theory and its opponent theory known variously as “Multiple Region Origin,” “Multiregional Evolution,” and a couple of other names. As noted by holmes in the OP, the “Out of Africa” theory has been so strongly supported that it has had the weight of presumption for a bit over ten years (with a few holdouts such as Milford Wolpoff being notable, but increasingly overridden, voices for Multiregional Evolution). This find, if correctly identified, would seem to be simply one more nail in the Multiregional Evolution coffin.
Actually, the new fossils would seem to fall very well into the Multiregionalist view, as they contend that homo sapiens evolved out of homo erectus in all parts of the globe more or less simulataneously. This would just represent the African part of that equation. I don’t think Milford Walpoff (the chief Multiregionalist) would look at these fossils and say “You know, now that you mention it, those Neanderthals probably aren’t the ancestors of modern Europeans after all.”
It’s the genetic data that really supports the Out of Africa hypothesis as the fossil data is much more open to interpretation. I don’t think you’ll ever show fossil data to the Multiregionalists that will convinve them they’re wrong.
Anthropologists are notoriously argumentative. You could publish a paper claiming that your skeleton supports the “two arms, two legs” theory, and you could probably find someone to argue against it.
Hope springs eternal in the Multiregionalist heart…
The data is pretty daminng, but one can still say “we need more data before drawing a conclusion”. To be honest, though, there are only 4 data points so far (ie, 4 Neanderthal DNA extracts examined). I suspect that in a few years time when we have, say, 25 data point from a variety of geographies, we’ll be a lot closer to a conlcusion.
Also, there are some anomollies in the mtDNA used to support the Out of Africa hypothesis. I don’t recall the details, but there have been some oddly “old” markers found in some living people that leave the door open for possible hybridization. But even if there was some limited modern/Neanderthal hybridization, that would not be the same as saying that Neanderthals evolved, wholesale, into modern Europeans.
Paint with a broad brush much? Would you mind providing some evidence that anthropologist (or archaeologists) are any more argumentative than any other science field?
Smeg is absolutely correct, as anyone who follows anthropoligy knows. Smeg never said they were more argmentative than other scientists, just that they were notoriously so.
Oh, they’re not at all. In fact, I was going to add that all scientists are the same way, but I thought I was straying a bit. Anthropology fights are just usually a bit more public, since they tend to end up in the news more often than, say, geology fights.