A Complete Skull from Dmanisi

[mark kennedy]

Back when the whole Evolution/Creation thing was going strong I got some head trip discussions going on the Dmanisi fossils. They were found in Russian Georgia and up until now have seemed rather ambitious. Finally they dug an intact, almost complete skull up and it's a beauty. I was wondering if anyone on here was still into fossils.

The site of Dmanisi, Georgia, has yielded an impressive sample of hominid cranial and postcranial remains, documenting the presence of Homo outside Africa around 1.8 million years ago. Here we report on a new cranium from Dmanisi (D4500) that, together with its mandible (D2600), represents the world's first completely preserved adult hominid skull from the early Pleistocene. D4500/D2600 combines a small braincase (546 cubic centimeters) with a large prognathic face and exhibits close morphological affinities with the earliest known Homo fossils from Africa. The Dmanisi sample, which now comprises five crania, provides direct evidence for wide morphological variation within and among early Homo paleodemes. This implies the existence of a single evolving lineage of early Homo, with phylogeographic continuity across continents. Science 18 October 2013​

I heard about it on NPR, thought it might make for interesting conversation.

Fossil Find Points To A Streamlined Human Lineage

Your thoughts....

 

[Vaccine]

I guess that fossil throws a wrench in the whole out of Africa model then?

 

[sfs]

I guess that fossil throws a wrench in the whole out of Africa model then?

Not at all. The Out of Africa model isn't about the spread of archaic Homo populations (like the one represented by the skull) out of Africa; it's about where anatomically modern humans evolved. The question was whether modern humans evolved from archaic forms inside Africa, and then spread to the rest of the world ~60,000 years ago, or whether they evolved from archaic forms across a much broader range, covering Africa, Europe and Asia. This skull dates from long before either process happened.

What this skull does show is that there was lots of variation within a single archaic Homo species; this suggests that fossils (especially African fossils) classified as different species because of their different morphologies might actually have belonged to a single species. I'm no paleontologist, but I've always been suspicious of the tendency to declare new fossil species at the drop of a hat. (Or at least I think I've been. It's remarkably easy to convince yourself after the fact that you knew some new idea all the time.)

 

[StormanNorman]

Very cool ... I only wish they could find more human ancestor fossils.

 

[USincognito]

This is an awesome find, but here's a New Scientist article that notes the claims made by Lordkipanidze might not be as paradigm shifting as he thinks they are.
Complete skull of 1.8-million-year-old hominin found - life - 17 October 2013 - New Scientist

Other anthropologists are unconvinced. Spoor agrees that the specimens from Dmanisi are all H. erectus and that the species was variable, but he does not believe that all the African fossils belong to H. erectus. He points out that Lordkipanidze's analysis suggests even the much more ape-like hominins in the genus Australopithecus belong to the H. erectus group. It is not surprising, then, that the new analysis misses the more subtle shape differences between Homo species.

"I think they will be proved right that some of those early African fossils can reasonably join a variable H. erectus species," says Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London, UK.

"But Africa is a huge continent with a deep record of the earliest stages of human evolution, and there certainly seems to have been species-level diversity there prior to 2 million years ago. So I still doubt that all of the 'early Homo' fossils can reasonably be lumped into an evolving H. erectus lineage."​

 

[dad]

Back when the whole Evolution/Creation thing was going strong I got some head trip discussions going on the Dmanisi fossils. They were found in Russian Georgia and up until now have seemed rather ambitious. Finally they dug an intact, almost complete skull up and it's a beauty. I was wondering if anyone on here was still into fossils.

The site of Dmanisi, Georgia, has yielded an impressive sample of hominid cranial and postcranial remains, documenting the presence of Homo outside Africa around 1.8 million years ago. Here we report on a new cranium from Dmanisi (D4500) that, together with its mandible (D2600), represents the world's first completely preserved adult hominid skull from the early Pleistocene. D4500/D2600 combines a small braincase (546 cubic centimeters) with a large prognathic face and exhibits close morphological affinities with the earliest known Homo fossils from Africa. The Dmanisi sample, which now comprises five crania, provides direct evidence for wide morphological variation within and among early Homo paleodemes. This implies the existence of a single evolving lineage of early Homo, with phylogeographic continuity across continents. Science 18 October 2013​

I heard about it on NPR, thought it might make for interesting conversation.

Fossil Find Points To A Streamlined Human Lineage

Your thoughts....

I notice this in your article.. "But Ponce de Leon's colleague, Christoph Zollikofer, notes that all five apparently died within centuries of each other in the same place. They had to be the same species, he concluded. "We are pretty sure that the variation that we see is ... within a species," Zollikofer says, "a single evolving lineage." Finding a human ancestral species with a lot of physical variety from one individual to the next poses another puzzle." Isn't evolving supposed to take long ages according to the theory of evolution? It seems that too much variety over a century or two or whatever (like to see the proof of that 2 century claim) for standard evo belief?

 

[EternalDragon]

Perhaps their conclusions are tainted with the wrong presupposition?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/s...mid=fb-nytimes&WT.z_sma=SC_SFS_20131017&_r=1&

 

[Cheeky Monkey]

I notice this in your article.. "But Ponce de Leon's colleague, Christoph Zollikofer, notes that all five apparently died within centuries of each other in the same place. They had to be the same species, he concluded. "We are pretty sure that the variation that we see is ... within a species," Zollikofer says, "a single evolving lineage." Finding a human ancestral species with a lot of physical variety from one individual to the next poses another puzzle." Isn't evolving supposed to take long ages according to the theory of evolution? It seems that too much variety over a century or two or whatever (like to see the proof of that 2 century claim) for standard evo belief?

There's plenty of variation in today's Homo sapiens. I'm not sure why this finding would be particularly problematic.

 

[lasthero]

Perhaps their conclusions are tainted with the wrong presupposition?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/s...mid=fb-nytimes&WT.z_sma=SC_SFS_20131017&_r=1&

Your link is literally talking about the same thing as the OP, so I have no idea why you felt the need to post it.

Regardless, they haven't made any such presuppositions, except for the basal ones required for science to work.

 

[sfs]

Perhaps their conclusions are tainted with the wrong presupposition?

Perhaps. Perhaps their conclusions are tainted by mind control by extraterrestrial koala bears. One can posit many things. A more relevant question would be whether you can identify any presuppositions (i.e. ideas assumed without evidence or examination) that taint their conclusions.

 

[EternalDragon]

Perhaps. Perhaps their conclusions are tainted by mind control by extraterrestrial koala bears. One can posit many things. A more relevant question would be whether you can identify any presuppositions (i.e. ideas assumed without evidence or examination) that taint their conclusions.

That everything is directed or based on a natural cause. That something outside nature or an intelligent source is not in any way a possibility for what we see all around us. That millions of years are required for their theory. That the fossil record is a representation of those millions of years and not representative of a recent worldwide deluge.

 

[lasthero]

That everything is directed or based on a natural cause.

That's a basal assumption of science. Science is the study of the natural world. You can't ask it to study something it's not designed to study.

That something outside nature or an intelligent source is not in any way a possibility for what we see all around us.

Again, such things, by definition, are supernatural. Science can make no comment on them. That's not to say such things don't exist, only that, even if they do, science can't study them.

That millions of years are required for their theory. That the fossil record is a representation of those millions of years and not representative of a recent worldwide deluge.

These aren't presuppositions, they're conclusions based on evidence. You're confusing 'presupposition' with 'things I don't like'.

 

[sfs]

That everything is directed or based on a natural cause.

I don't think that's really a presupposition of science. I think that's a working hypothesis of scientists, based on several centuries of successful identification of natural causes for millions of kinds of phenomena, coupled with the absence of even a single demonstrable case of a non-natural cause for anything.

Regardless of whether it's a presupposition, however, it is also implicit in pretty much everything you do, too. You assume that about how your car works, your lights, your plumbing, the weather, your computer and your stove. If it's a questionable assumption, why are you so willing to make it?

That something outside nature or an intelligent source is not in any way a possibility for what we see all around us.

If that source operates through natural means, science doesn't assume it's not there. If it does . . . see above.

That millions of years are required for their theory.

As lasthero said, that's not an assumption. That's a conclusion that was reached as early as the 18th century, based on empirical data.

That the fossil record is a representation of those millions of years and not representative of a recent worldwide deluge.

Since the fossil record is wildly incompatible with having been created by a recent worldwide deluge (again, based on evidence), they'd have to be pretty crazy to consider a deluge a viable option.

 

[USincognito]

That everything is directed or based on a natural cause.

That's not a presupposition (a magical word for Creationists), but a framework and constraint that the scientific method must operate within. Are you familiar with how the Catholic Church determines miracles? They send in some scientifically trained priests, often Jesuits, and only after they have eliminated every possible naturalistic explanation for their observations do they conclude - based on faith - that they have discovered a miracle.

That something outside nature or an intelligent source is not in any way a possibility for what we see all around us.

The scientific method cannot deal with the supernatural. Science can explain density and buoyancy and the properties of water, but it simply cannot address an ax head floating on water.

We are not, however, dealing with an ax head floating on water. We are dealing with fossilized hominid skulls that can by analyzed and measured.

That millions of years are required for their theory.

That the facts indicating the earth is billions of years old and these fossils are almost 2 million years old are a presupposition is an exercise in magical thinking by Creationists. An old earth and deep time were established long before the first hominid fossils were ever unearthed.

That the fossil record is a representation of those millions of years and not representative of a recent worldwide deluge.

In the 1820s Adam Sedgewick, a theologian by education and a lifelong and fierce opponent of evolution, had come to the conclusion that the Flood didn't happen.
Adam Sedgwick - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As a geologist in the mid-1820s he supported William Buckland's interpretation of certain superficial deposits, particularly loose rocks and gravel, as "diluvium" relating to worldwide floods, and in 1825 he published two papers identifying these as due to a "great irregular inundation" from the "waters of a general deluge", Noah's flood. Sedgwick's subsequent investigations and discussions with continental geologists persuaded him that this was problematic. In early 1827, after spending several weeks in Paris, he visited geological features in the Scottish Highlands with Roderick Murchison. He later wrote "If I have been converted in part from the diluvian theory...it was...by my own gradual improved experience, and by communicating with those about me. Perhaps I may date my change of mind (at least in part) from our journey in the Highlands, where there are so many indications of local diluvial operations.​

You might want to leave the early 19th Century and join the rest of us in the 21st when it comes to geology.

 

[Cheeky Monkey]

That everything is directed or based on a natural cause.

You can't have an explanation without one.

That something outside nature or an intelligent source is not in any way a possibility for what we see all around us.

That indeed seems to be the case.

That millions of years are required for their theory.

Well there just has been millions of years. It's not a requirement for the theory of volition though. For that you just need a good number if generations in which change takes place.

That the fossil record is a representation of those millions of years and not representative of a recent worldwide deluge.

That much is obviously true. There is only evidence against a worldwide deluge.

 

[dad]

There's plenty of variation in today's Homo sapiens. I'm not sure why this finding would be particularly problematic.

Apparently, the very basis and reason FOR claiming they were the same 'species' was not because they were similar, but because they all died in a relatively small time frame, so they 'had' to be.

Besides, they mentioned wide variation. If five people from the same place died today, would we expect to see wide variation in their craniums?

" The Dmanisi sample, which now comprises five crania, provides direct evidence for wide morphological variation "

 

[dad]

Well there just has been millions of years.

No, there has not. That was easy.

It's not a requirement for the theory of volition though. For that you just need a good number if generations in which change takes place.

In this case a few centuries is what they claim, and what you have to play with.

That much is obviously true. There is only evidence against a worldwide deluge.

Obviously untrue, no evidence whatsoever against the known flood. These craniums were almost certainly post flood anyhow. Let's just get that through our craniums here.

 

[Cheeky Monkey]

No, there has not. That was easy.

In this case a few centuries is what they claim, and what you have to play with.

Obviously untrue, no evidence whatsoever against the known flood. These craniums were almost certainly post flood anyhow. Let's just get that through our craniums here.

Dad you have my official permission to believe whatever the h-e-double-hockey-sticks you like.

 

[EternalDragon]

That's a basal assumption of science. Science is the study of the natural world. You can't ask it to study something it's not designed to study.

Yet that is exactly what it could be studying. If everything were created by an intelligence then whatever science looks at and tests is not natural by default.

Science is not a study of the natural world. It is a study of the world, it's creatures and the universe. Whether natural or created by an ID.

 

[lasthero]

Yet that is exactly what it could be studying.

No, it couldn't. There's no way to study the supernatural through scientific means. It's not testable, it's not predictable, it's not falsifiable. In God's case, we're specifically told not to test him.

. If everything were created by an intelligence then whatever science looks at and tests is not natural by default.

Even if this is actually, really true, science still has to operate as if it's not. For all intents and purposes, the things science study at least APPEAR to be natural. Even if they're really supernatural, knowing this does nothing to help the study.

Science is not a study of the natural world.

Yes, it is. Plain and simple, it is. It always was. It always will be. Science has to operate under the assumption that the world is predictable and testable, that things can be falsified, that there is someway to actually know something about the way things work. If that's not really the case, then there's no point to doing science.

If you want to study the supernatural, fine. But that's the role of religion, not science.