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ineresting article on Kow Swamp fossils

Not sure what this guy's agenda is, but whatever it is, he is desparate to win people over to it:

(l0.) H.erectus braincase narrower than the zygomatic arch.

Dr. Brown allows this feature and then argues that it is only natural to expect this in "a dolicochephalic vault with a well developed masticatory system".

Amazingly, he seems to have said, "what can you expect with such a Homo erectus-like skull?" !!
[emphasis his]

I don't know about you all, but to me, he seems to have said "a dolicochephalic vault with a well developed masticatory system", and not "Homo erectus-like skull."

Dr. Brown’s only comment here is to cite the largest of the KS samples WLH50 at (plus or minus) 1500 ml and the average for the KS-Coobool Creek males (l404 ml). He adds as an aside that modern Australian aborigines have a mean value of only 1271 ml implying that, if anything, these so called erectus-type fossils are less archaic than present day aborigines ! Of course he doesn’t give mean values for the other groups under discussion and he certainly doesn’t list any of the individual low scores such as Talgai and Cohuna (plus or minus l300 and l000 ml respectively). If he did, he’d be falling within the H.erectus "range"(!).

Jim VanHollebeke mentions two specimens with low crainal capacity, 1300 and 1000 ml - yet he doesn't tell us anything else about these two apart from their names and when they were found (and how they have been unfairly ignored). Like, for instance: how accurately their cranial capacity was measured, and by what method, whether the specimens were shown to be adults, degree of deformation of the skulls if present, etc...

Why wouldn't he mention this?

This page claims that the Talgai skull was probably from a 14-15 year old male. That might have something to do with the 1300 ml cranial capacity.
http://www-personal.une.edu.au/~pbrown3/Talgai.html

If VanHollebeke has glossed over, or was unaware of relevant data on Talgai, I have to wonder if he has left out something important about Cohuna.
 
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randman

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So you found something in there after all, Jerry.

Maybe you should reread this.

"Scientifically, the KS types don’t seem to "fit in" with their primitive features yet recent age. They have remained as odd footnotes in the world of Paleoanthropology. That their relevance has been ignored is regrettable enough but their rejection as a late chapter to the H.erectus story is unacceptable to this writer. Accepting these fossils for what they are has been a problem for many anthropologists. Part of this problem , possibly, is the fact that the present aboriginal population in this area of the globe, to varying lesser degrees has been known to exhibit some or all of the traits that make the Kow Swamp type so controversial. This would indicate an obvious line (or lines) of descent."
 
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randman

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Maybe this will help, and he does include more data. Look at the pictures, and if you doubt his data, you can verify elsewhere.

"Shouldn’t he have allowed that there do seem to be similarities between Kow Swamp and H.erectus that really must be more than superficial ?

And why does he go out of his way to put miles of distance between these unique fossils and H. erectus ?

Most people in this field of research have their theories and it is easy to rationalize against opposing facts, to "hang on" as it were. But the VIGOR that has been employed to deny these bones their due as important (and amazing) footnotes in the history of Homo Sapiens - escapes me.

One might say a coyote is not a wolf and be correct provided a further explanation is issued to clarify such a pronouncement. To further state that a coyote is nothing like a wolf enters the realm of misleading or (at the very least) erroneous information."
 
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randman

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I think the point of the article is that here is a mjor find, but due to the fact it doesn't fit neatly into current models, it is dismissed, and that is my point in posting it.

I don't see the evolutionists as honest in their approach to the data. They want a particular result, and strive to make everything fit into that result. If they truly followed their stated principles, all of the evidence would be laid out there much more clearly for all to see.
 
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Looking at the pictures and the descriptions in both of these articles, plus the one I linked to (and others from that site), it isn't hard to conclude that the KS group of fossils are Homo sapiens, and have only variations that can be accounted for by ethnicity. It isn't hard to see that these fossils have gotten attention. They were mentioned not only on these two pages but numerous unrelated pages.

Some other pages they are listed on are creationist pages. One particular (I believe it was evol.net) listed it as H. erectus. This is interesting, since the one thing they obviously are not is H. erectus.
 
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randman

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Well, it is clear that some who such as the guy at Talkorigins who try to say it isn't homo eructus is just full of BS propoganda as the article points out.

They certainly appear to be something prior to what is called modern homo sapien, but I think a large part of the misunderstanding is the issue of racial variance. Remember my post about the killer whale sub-family interbreeding with the porpoise sub-family of dolphins. There was a huge range exhibited, but really, they could and did sometimes interbreed in the wild. They were of one kind.

I think applying the same standards to another large mammal, human beings, would lead one to conclude that a whole lot of these pre-humans are really not pre-human at all, and to some extent their traits may even be well-represented among lving human beings.

Aborigines, for example, exhibit a noticeably different anatomy in bone and cranial structure than the typical modern homo sapian listed in the literature, but are they not just as human as you and I. If their bones were found at an older strata, would they be listed as human, or pre-human?

I think Neanderthal, Cro-magnon, and some of what is labelled homo erectus, from my little study, all appear to be the same species, the same kind, if species is too arbitrary. Kind here denotes the ability to interbreed.
 
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Originally posted by randman
Well, it is clear that some who such as the guy at Talkorigins who try to say it isn't homo eructus is just full of BS propoganda as the article points out.

You should said: as the article tries to convince us... The article is obviously written with an agenda, and it the author obviously doesn't mind making appeals to rhetoric (as I quoted), and to concealing relevant data (as I pointed out).

I think the fact that we can distinguish these fossils as homo sapiens despite their slight variation doesn't say very much for your notion that we would make big mistakes in classifying aboriginal bones should they be found...

I'm not a paleontologist. You aren't either. Why are you so bold as to second-guess them without learning their discipline?
 
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randman

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Because of the way evolutionists present data. I may not be an expert here, but I do know false rhetoric and propoganda when I see it, and almost everytime I read an evolutionist's argument to support their data, this is what I see.

Overstatement can be useful and proper in certain areas of life when the reader can clearly see it is an overstatement. It is a lie though when calculatingly used in science.

From what I can tell, from reading the data, evolutionists tend to disclude data that doesn't agree with them, and it appears they are doing so with these Kow Swamp fossils. This is not the first article I have read about these bones by the way.

As far as homo eructus, is there even a hard and fast definition of what that is?

Also, you have to understand I can still remember when Neanderthal was called a missing link. There is good reason to doubt the evolutionist scientific community in this area.
 
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I have no problem with "kinds" except that it seems to be just as fuzzy a definition as species.. species are fuzzy because of evolutionary effects. Kinds are fuzzy because creationists make claims about them being absolute boundaries, but can never say what those boundaries are, and why we should think they are absolute... Species is nomenclature for convenience: evolutionists do not claim that species are invioable or that any organism must fit cleanly into one or the other. Kinds are nomenclature to reflect a position: that kinds are specially created, and therefore every organism must fit cleanly into one kind. That's why kind has retreated from the species to the genus, and now family level... hypocrisy my foot.
 
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Originally posted by randman
Few evolutionists I have talked to have ompared "kinds" to "species" in the way you have as terms that both pose problems. The usual spin is that "kinds" are wholly unscientific while species is fully established.

Well, its true that there is no scientific concept of "kinds", and that science has managed to make significant headway with the terms they have defined. Is that the "spin" you are talking about?
 
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LewisWildermuth

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Actualy RandMan, the original clasifications were to support the biblical "kinds" but upon learning more the clasifications are constantly reworked.

But again what does a small group of homo-erectus that seem to have survived longer than thought have to do with evolution? Not much but an interesting side note. The person writing the artical is mad at the wrong group for ignoring him. He should be yelling at anthropologists, not just at biologists in general.

There is an other point on why scientists might not want to touch this one. The aboriginal people of australia have already suffered at the hands of the white collonists calling them less than humans by the religious and early evolutionists. Same with the american indians and africans. If it did not really affect any of the theories why touch such an explosive and derisive issue? Why put a lifetimes worth of work on the line when all that can come of it is not discovery but a political nightmare?
 
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Originally posted by npetreley


It sure has. Species used to mean the difference between a frog and a tiger. Now it means the difference between a mosquito and a mosquito.

Nick, can you tell me at what point in time the difference between a frog and tiger became a species level (not Phylum level) difference? Did you grow up thinking there was only one species of mosquito? Do you know what genus mosquitos belong to?
 
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