rebel_conservative said:
yeah that was a pretty stupid mistake, so why do creationists keep making it:
Creationists often make many claims about the human or ape nature of certain fossils, suggesting that particular fossils are just "funny looking chimpanzees" or "strange apes" or "deformed old men". However, rather ironically, the creationists often do not even agree over whether a particular fossil is human or ape. While it is perfectly natural for evolutionary scientists to disagree due to the gradiated nature of evolution, it is difficult to see how this should be the case for Creationists - surely it should be abundantly clear that a particular fossil is human or not. Disagreements between different creationist groups aside, here is a particularly interesting case where a creationist cannot even really agree with
himself, never mind anyone else:
This particular disagreement is over the Java Man and Turkana Boy fossils, both of which are classified by modern scientists as
Homo erectus. Duane Gish
This is
Duane Gish, in 1993 talking about Java man:
"Now we can see the skullcap is very apelike. Notice that it has no forehead, it's very flat, very typical of the ape. Notice the massive eyebrow ridges, very typical of the ape" ...
here is a pic of the Java man skullcap
now he talks about Turkana Boy:
...the features of the Nariokotome juvenile were remarkably human with few exceptions." (Gish 1995)
here is a picture of the Turkana boy skull.
now this is interesting. what happens if we overlay the two?
what an astounding coincidence. and yet Gish still claims that Java Man is an Ape and Turkana is human. Here is a human skull (diagram)
now we can see here rather alot of differences, just simply from looking. the volume of the human cranium is significantly larger. The set of the teeth and jaw are much different. The face in the human is not as "pushed forwards". Gish claims that the only difference between H. Sapiens and Turkana boy is in the skull capacity and postcranial region and this is simply not true.
Gish D.T. (1993): The "missing links" are still missing (part 2). Science, Scripture and Salvation (ICR radio show) Sep 18, 1993. Gish D.T. (1995). Evolution: the fossils still say no! El Cajon, CA: Institute for Creation Research. (an updated version of Gish 1985)
update: In the following document, page 6 #3, Morris et al claim that Java man was a gibbon skull with a human femur
http://www.creationevidence.org/youth_conf/youth.pdf
so was java man a gibbon?
on the left is a gibbon skull, and on the right is the Java man skullcap (which we have already demonstrated to be Homo Erectus)
so where did this come from?
well it was extracted from his 1934 and 1937 papers on the topic, however one can see that he is not saying that it is a gibbon, but in a genus allied to gibbons.
"Pithecanthropus [Java Man] was not a man, but a gigantic genus allied to the gibbons, however superior to the gibbons on account of its exceedingly large brain volume and distinguished at the same time by its faculty of assuming an erect attitude and gait [2]. It had the double cephalization [ratio of brain size to body size] of the anthropoid apes in general and half that of man."
"It was the surprising volume of the brain - which is very much too large for an anthropoid ape, and which is small compared with the average, though not smaller than the smallest human brain - that led to the now almost general view that the "Ape Man" of Trinil, Java was really a primitive Man. Morphologically, however, the calvaria [skullcap] closely resembles that of anthropoid apes, especially the gibbon."
"... I still believe, now more firmly than ever, that the Pithecanthropus of Trinil is the real 'missing link'."
"E. Dubois: On the gibbon-like appearance of Pithecanthropus erectus. While possessing many gibbon-like characteristics, P. erectus fills the previously vacant place between the Anthropomorphae and man as regards cephalic coefficient. (Amsterdam Royal Acad., Proc 38, No 6, June 1935)". (Reported in Nature, 136:234, Aug 10 1935)
and to quote his 1938 paper
I never imagined Pithecanthropus as a 'giant Hylobates' [gibbon], only as a giant descendant from a 'generalized' form, which had inherited from its ancestor, the 'gibbonlike appearance', but had ... doubled [its] cephalization ... (Dubois 1938, quoted in Shipman 2001)
in other words, he is not saying it is a gibbon at all, and not denying its link with humans.
more misrepresentation.
