New BioLogos Post on the Daoxian Modern Human Teeth

My BioLogos post on the new anatomically modern human fossil remains from the South China Daoxian Cave is up.  As always, comments welcome here and there.

Deal Breaker

Ring of Fire has a post on Ben Carson and, if he is being quoted in context, then he has said some truly daft things.  That Dr. Carson is an evangelical Christian is not in dispute, and I personally think it is good to have someone who is so up-front about their faith on the campaign trail.  That is not the problem.  Here is what Justin Lane writes:

During a recent campaign event at a church in Nashville, TN, Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson explained that he believes in creation and thinks the theory of evolution is the work of Satan.

“They say, ‘Carson, ya know, how can you be a surgeon, a neurosurgeon, and believe that God created the Earth, and not believe in evolution, which is the basis of all knowledge and all science?'” Carson posited.

“Well, you know, it’s kind of funny. But I do believe God created us, and I did just fine. So I don’t know where they get that stuff from, ya know? It’s not true. And in fact, the more you know about God, and the deeper your relationship with God, I think the more intricate becomes your knowledge of the way things work, including the human body,” he said.

Carson went on to explain that the theory of evolution, specifically, is the work of the devil.

“I personally believe that this theory that Darwin came up with was something that was encouraged by the adversary,” he said.

Evolution is one of the most highly documented, well-supported scientific theories on the planet and he thinks that it came from Satan? Really?  This is, ostensibly, a highly educated man.  I simply cannot take seriously anyone who thinks this, no matter what their other accomplishments might be.  Nor can I vote for a person who thinks this. 

I simply cannot.

Carson is also on record as saying that he thinks that the pyramids in Giza were built by Joseph to store grain.

Paul Waldman of the Washington Post adds this:

Ben Carson’s ideas about things like the pyramids, combined with what he has said about other more immediate topics, suggest not only that his beliefs are impervious to evidence but also an alarming lack of what we might call epistemological modesty. It isn’t what he doesn’t know that’s the problem, it’s what he doesn’t realize that he doesn’t know. He thinks that all the archeologists who have examined the pyramids just don’t know what they’re talking about, because Joseph had to put all that grain somewhere. He thinks that after reading something about the second law of thermodynamics, he knows more about the solar system than the world’s physicists do. He thinks that after hearing a Glenn Beck rant about the evils of Islam, he knows as much about a 1,400-year-old religion as any theologian and can confidently say why no Muslim who doesn’t renounce his faith could be president.

In this way, he is not very different from many evangelical Christians who seem to be afflicted by an illness that convinces them that they can dismiss any scientific theory they don't like by reading one article on the subject.  If Carson does not moderate his public speaking on these subjects, he will continue to look foolish.  That is a shame because I think he genuinely wants to help the country and has some good ideas.  Just not the scientific ones. 

Ben Carson Repudiates Young Earth Creationism

A persistent meme among the media is that Ben Carson is a scientifically ignorant guy who thinks the earth was created six thousand years ago.  Not so fast.  The Christian Post is reporting on comments Carson made specifically addressing that issue.   Stoyan Zaimov writes:

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson clarified that he believes that God created the world but does not believe the Earth is only 6,000 years old, as young Earth creationists claim. Carson also criticized those who claim there is no way the Earth can be billions of years old, saying that such people put themselves "in the same category as God."I certainly believe that God is our Creator. And interestingly enough, if you look at our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, it talks about certain inalienable rights given to us by our Creator," Carson told Fox News host Bill O'Reilly in an interview.

He still doesn't like evolution. 

Bill Nye at The University of Tennessee Tomorrow Night

Bill Nye will be giving the inaugural Ken and Blaire Mossman Distinguished Lecture at 7 p.m. in Thompson-Boling Arena. Here is the blurb. From the announcement:

Widely known as “Bill Nye the Science Guy,” Nye is creator and host of the Emmy Award-winning children’s television show of the same name, which aired on PBS from 1992 to 1998.

A scientist, engineer, comedian, and inventor, Nye has authored five children’s books about science. His first book for a general audience, Undeniable—Evolution and the Science of Creation, focuses on the discoveries and principles of evolution.

Nye’s mission is to make science entertaining and accessible and to foster a scientifically literate society by helping people understand and appreciate the science that makes the world work. Nye also seeks to raise awareness about climate change and the value of critical thinking and reason.

He is CEO of the Planetary Society, the world’s largest space interest group. He also holds a few unusual patents, including an improved toe shoe for ballerinas, a device to help people learn to throw a baseball better, and a magnifier made of water.

Come if you can.

Human Evolution = Apartheid?

About seven years ago, a Texas county official by the name of John Wiley Price made unwanted national news when he referred to the astronomical term “Black Hole” as racist. From the original story:

Later, Price told MyFOXdfw.com that he believed it and other terms were racist.

"So if it's 'angel food cake,' it's white. If it's 'devil's food cake,' it's black. If you're the 'black sheep of the family,' then you gotta be bad, you know. 'White sheep,' you're okay. You know?" Price said.

Price said people should watch their words when it comes to stereotypes.

"I think people should always be careful. You know, I'm okay if I'm 'bartering' with you. ... But if I try to 'Jew you down,' Oooooh. Is that racist? I thought it meant the same thing? No, maybe it doesn't."

Rather than confirm that the term “Black Hole” is racist, this story, instead, confirmed that science education had completely failed Mr. Price.That he could not distinguish between an astronomical term and a racial epithet was truly amazing.

A story today from South Africa is broadly similar in its absurdity.  As PhysOrg reports:

Some prominent South Africans have dismissed the discovery of a new human ancestor as a racist theory designed to cast Africans as "subhuman", an opinion that resonates in a country deeply bruised by apartheid.

"No one will dig old monkey bones to back up a theory that I was once a baboon. Sorry," said Zwelinzima Vavi, former general secretary of the powerful trade union group Cosatu, a faithful ally of the ruling African National Congress (ANC).

"I am no grandchild of any ape, monkey or baboon—finish en klaar (Afrikaans for "that's it")," he said on his Twitter account, which is followed by more than 300,000 people.

His comments were backed by the South African Council of Churches (SACC), which was historically involved in the fight against apartheid.

Cloaked in the fight against apartheid to give it legitimacy, this perspective is nothing more than anti-evolutionary creationism.  Incredulous, Richard Dawkins comments:

It "breathes new life into paranoia," said prominent British biologist Richard Dawkins on his Twitter account this week. "Whole point is we're all African apes."

He is correct. Importantly, just like Mr. Price, science education has failed Mr. Vavi. We are not descended from baboons. We never were. The large-bodied and small-bodied primates split sometime around the Oligocene Epoch, some 35 to 40 million years ago.  Baboons went one way and the apes went the other.

I am waiting for the Discovery Institute and Answers in Genesis to jump all over this.  The DI has attempted to link evolutionary theory with eugenics and racism before. As far as AiG is concerned, evolution is just plain evil. 

Elizabeth Mitchell, Homo naledi and the Straw Man

Elizabeth Mitchell, of Answers in Genesis, has written the rebuttal to the eLife Science paper on the new hominin find from South Africa, Homo naledi.  Sadly, her opening premise suffers from a fatal logical error, and all that follows proceeds from this premise. She writes:

Berger’s team believes the bones paint a mosaic picture of a species mixing human-like “Homo” and australopithecine ape features. Composites constructed from four partial skulls in the assemblage have small brain capacities—560 cc and 465 cc—that overlap the usual brain capacities of australopithecines. Such braincases are much smaller than those seen in most archaic humans1 and less than half the average for modern humans.

Hidden in this paragraph is a theme which runs throughout the post: that australopithecines were apes.  Compare, for example, these passages.  First, what Berger et al. write about the shoulder girdle:

The shoulders are configured largely like those of australopiths. The vertebrae are most similar to Pleistocene members of the genus Homo, whereas the ribcage is wide distally like Au. afarensis.

Now, what Mitchell writes:

Homo naledi’s shoulder joints and curved finger bones are typical of tree-swinging apes. Its flared hips are typical of australopithecine apes. The lower ribcage widens just like the ribcage of australopithecine apes.

When Raymond Dart discovered the first australopithecine specimen, in 1924, the first thing he noticed was that

it was not an ape.

As I wrote in more detailed fashion here, the find had several characteristics simply not found on any ape. First, the foramen magnum, the hole through which the spinal cord exits the head, was not at the back of the head, as in apes, but was on the bottom of the skull. Second, the teeth were not those of an ape, but had the dimensions of human teeth. In apes, even infant apes, the canines extend beyond the tooth row. In this skull, they did not. Third, the skull was simply too large to be that of an infant ape, based on the development. Fourth, there had never been found any apes in South Africa. Dart was a good anatomist and knew that what he had was not quite human—the skull was too small for that and the front of the face was too ape-like, but he also knew he did not have an ape.  That is why Dart gave it the name he did: Australopithecus africanus, “Southern Ape-Man from Africa.”   

Since this discovery some ninety one years ago,  the validity of this genus has only been reinforced, with the additional discoveries of more than ten different species of Australopithecus, all with variations on the same theme, and all with the following non-ape characteristics:

• human-like teeth (although quite large in some species)
• modern double-s shaped vertebral column
• short, wide hips that resemble humans and not apes
• a valgus knee, with the femoral-tibial articulation at an angle, instead of straight up, as in apes
• a laterally-bending proximal femur to accomodate the wide hips and the connexion to the tibia and
• a modern gait (reflected in preserved 3.6 million year old footprints at Laetoli)

There are countless other small anatomical characteristics that separate apes from these early hominins but the ones outlined above are enough to demonstrate that the initial premise of Dr. Mitchell is, simply, incorrect.

But there is something deeper at work here.  Pick up a paper on australopithecines, any paper, written in the last sixty years and you will find discussions of how these forms differed from each other and, more importantly, how they differ from apes.  Are they human?  Manifestly not.  In some early species, there are characteristics that are, indeed, intermediate between apes and early humans. But even that gives rise to the concept of transitional traits and forms in the fossil record.  That is where the problem lies.  If australopithecines can be painted as apes from the outset, then the task of showing that the new Homo naledi specimen is not different from australopithecines, and therefore, apes, becomes easier.

Then she writes something startling:

The question then is what is Homo naledi? Even the evolutionary anthropologists are not in agreement on that point, though most seem to have jumped on the Homo bandwagon. Yet while the fossil record contains many legitimate examples of extinct varieties of humans, such as Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis, after assessing the published reports, we beg to differ with Berger’s assessment of Homo naledi. We do not believe Homo naledi deserves its Homo designation. [Emphasis Mine]

When did they these fossil forms go extinct? There is no evidence of extinction in the accounts in the Bible. Other writers do not seem to think they went extinct during the flood.  David Menton is firm in his conviction that Homo erectus represents a post-Babel population:

Neanderthals buried their dead and may have worn jewelry. Homo erectus seems to have divvied up jobs to prepare food and sailed the high seas. Even with little to go on, we can be fairly certain the Denisovans wore jewelry, and the much-maligned “hobbits” left tools useful for dicing up lunch. All uniquely human traits—traits that show creatures made in the image of God.

Which one of the biblical patriarchs had an angular torus, large brow ridges, thick cranial bones and a cranial capacity of 900 cubic centimeters? All of these traits would have stood out in any population. The variation present that Menton squeezes into one happy family vastly exceeds that present in any other naturally-occurring genus on the planet, let alone species. 

She finishes her post with the same, time and time again rebutted argument that the reason that Homo naledi is not a human is similar to australopithecines and, therefore, is nothing more than an ape.  This is the vacuum chamber/wind tunnel that AiG operates within.  Despite clear, decisive anatomical evidence to the contrary, the writers keep telling themselves that australopithecines were nothing more than apes.  The argument still has no credibility.

The York Dispatch: The Losers Are Winning in Dover

The York Dispatch has an editorial on the aftermath of the Dover trial and how it has affected the plaintiffs in the case.  In short: not well.  First they remind us of the words of John Jones III at the trial:

"The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for (intelligent design). It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy."

Despite this, as the editorial outlines, Bryan and Christy Rehm have been the target of veiled attacks and have been ostracized:

The Rehms, whose days in Dover Township are numbered, recently told The York Dispatch that they've had enough of the negativity that has followed them since the trial. They're moving.

"It just never goes away," Christy Rehm said. "We have proof it never goes away. We still feel it. We have neighbors that aren't so friendly with us."

Religious literature regularly fills their mailbox, and people call them "heathens" behind their backs, they said.

"We've given so much time, effort and energy to this district," Christy said. "A lot of people — a lot of our friends — have walked away, and we're still here. People just don't stay here."

What a rotten Christian witness from people who don't seem to know better but should.  I am sure there are quite a few people who didn't treat them this way, but the stench remains.  This is one reason (out of many) that I am almost done with modern evangelical Christianity.  Not Christianity, just the way people in the modern evangelical movement practice it.  I have a friend who went that route (not for the same reasons) a few years ago and converted to Orthodoxy.  That is looking better and better. 

Or is Homo naledi Actually Homo erectus?

California Magazine, from the University of California at Berzerkeley, has an article written by Glen Martin, in which he details the skepticism about the taxonomic status of Homo naledi, specifically, that it does not represent a new species.  Martin writes:

The popular science press went bonkers last month with news that fossilized bones of a previously unknown hominid had been discovered in a cave system in South Africa. Dubbed Homo naledi by lead researcher and University of the Witwatersrand paleoanthropologist Lee Berger, these proto-humans appeared to have lived somewhere between 1 to 3 million years ago, used tools, walked upright, and may have buried their dead, a practice that has only been attributed to our own species, Homo sapiens, and Neanderthals.

So there was a lot of talk of a “missing link”—the biggest find in paleoanthropology since Lucy, the skeleton of a female Australopithecus, was excavated from a gully near Ethiopia’s Awash River in 1974. (Donald Johanson, the lead researcher in Lucy’s discovery team, founded the Institute of Human Origins, which later moved from Berkeley to Arizona State.)

As I mentioned in my post on the find, echoed by PZ Myers, at Pharyngula, this notion of a “missing link” is a straw man that has been created by the popular press and jumped on by organizations like the Discovery Institute and Answers in Genesis.  Martin continues:

Amid all the hoopla and confetti, however, a growing number of scientists are advising caution. They’re not denying the importance of the find; the fossils, they say, are invaluable. But they contend that the bones may not represent a new species. The evidence these skeptics point to suggests that the finds may actually be bones from
Homo erectus, the earliest known hominid to manifest the general proportions, stance and gait of modern humans. H. erectus had a long tenure on the planet, living from about 2 million to 70,000 years ago. The species was widely distributed (from Africa to East Asia and possibly southern Europe), used tools and fire, and may have constructed rafts to cross wide bodies of water.

Berger maintains that the skulls are too small, with too many primitive characteristics to be Homo erectus.  Once again, though, we come to the problem of how old the bones are.  Here, White is particularly critical:

One tibia, for example, was white on one end, a clear indication it had been snapped off in the recent past,” said White. “This (region’s) complex is extensive and like Swiss cheese, and it’s a favorite with spelunkers. You find beer cans next to fossils that are 3.5 million years old. So it’s important not to jump to conclusions.”

If the bones are late, as is possible, then the finds (or at least parts of them) might represent a Homo erectus population that has late primitive retentions. Even if there is more than one species present, there is no getting around the fact that the small, primitive cranium is where the Homo erectus traits are found, as well.

Berger is quoted as saying that this debate should play out in the published literature.  I suspect it will and that, eventually, we will figure out what sorts of primitive and derived traits the cache in the cave actually represents, even if we might never know exactly how old they are.

PZ Myers on Casey Luskin

PZ Myers, over at Pharyngula, has some harsh words for Casey Luskin's examination of Homo naledi.  In the post, he points out something that I have pointed out in several posts for BioLogos and in my rebuttal to Luskin's post on Homo naledi: a complete lack of understanding of systematics:

I’m not going to dissect every point in Luskin’s tediously long article in detail — really, he’s just echoing every question anyone has asked about H. naledi in the last few weeks, in an attempt to construct a litany of doubt — but I have to point out the numerous ways he misrepresents evolutionary biology to pretend that H. naledi is somehow a refutation of Darwin. As I’ve pointed out many times before, Luskin is a scientific illiterate who doesn’t actually understand anything remotely biological, from genetics to embryology to molecular biology to, now, paleontology. Actually, this isn’t the first time Luskin has tripped over himself in a rush to deny — he also didn’t like Tiktaalik. So this is just more of the same.

Luskin has a bad case of missinglinkitis. This is the idea that there is a linear series of steps in a progression leading from ape to human, and all we have to do is find each frame in the movie and we can replay everything in science class. He wants a “link”, a word he uses multiple times, and he wants “transitional fossils”, unaware that every individual is a transition between parent and progeny.

The key is to focus on the traits, something that Luskin and other Intelligent Design supporters fail to do. Myers further points out, as I did, that just about every fossil that we find is a mosaic of traits and when we follow the trait patterns, we can develop phylogenies.  This line of thinking has led to remarkable understanding of the evolution of Devonian tetrapods and the transition from theropod maniraptoran dinosaurs into birds. 

He also makes light of a point that Luskin makes about the venue that Berger and colleagues took when they wanted to publish the paper:

I have to mention two other lesser points from the paper. Luskin really knows nothing.

The technical paper, “Homo naledi, a new species of the genus Homo from the Dinaledi Chamber, South Africa,” appeared in a lesser-known journal, eLife. It’s a great find due to the sheer number of bones that were found, but to my mind its publication in eLife is an immediate hint that this fossil isn’t an earthshattering “transitional form,” because if it were, we almost unquestionably would have seen the fossil published in Science or Nature.

No. Wrong. A lot of scientists resent the tyranny of the magical CV-enhancing powers of those two journals, and think they have an inflated and dangerously dominant reputation. eLife is an entirely credible new journal which, to all appearances, has a robust reputation for good, solid peer-review…and is also open source. There are a lot of scientists who are eager to see scientific information disseminated more widely without the limiting restrictions of traditional journal publishing, and Lee Berger, the lead investigator in this work, doesn’t need the résumé reinforcement that publishing in Nature or Science provides.

This is only half-correct. While it is quite true that many scientists like to publish in open-source publications like eLife and PLoS, this is not always the perspective of the managers and department heads, many of whom would much prefer that their researchers publish in high-profile journals, like Science and Nature.  I know this to be true through my work not just in publishing but in dealing with funders.  They like flashy papers.  This often (but not always) conflicts with the desires of the researchers, themselves.  Even though there are plenty of researchers who would like just to publish and get the information out there as fast as possible, I know of quite a few researchers who don't mind padding their resumes a bit with high-profile papers because they are angling for a position higher up on the academic food chain.  We would love to think otherwise, but it just isn't always true. 

Casey Luskin on Homo naledi

Casey Luskin has written a piece for Evolution, News and Views, in which he examines the hype surrounding the new Homo naledi find.  It would take more time than I have to tackle it point by point, but I will hit the high notes.  He writes:

It has long been recognized that we are missing fossils documenting the supposed transition from the apelike genus Australopithecus to the humanlike Homo. Despite what you may be hearing in the media, Homo naledi does not solve this problem.

That's okay. It wasn't meant to. It fills in a bit of a puzzle, that is all. We now have more information than we had about this transition, which appears to have been complex.  He continues:

Some have envisioned the hallowed intermediate link being a creature with an apelike body and a human-like head. For some time, Homo habilis was claimed to be such a candidate -- until cooler heads prevailed, as I noted earlier. Others have hoped we'd uncover something with a more Homo-like postcranial (below the head) skeleton but a more australopith-ape-like body. Indeed, almost exactly four years ago, in a post titled "Hominid Hype and the Election Cycle," I noted these precise arguments with regard to Australopithecus sediba.

Coincidently, we're right now in almost exactly the same place in the election cycle, and seeing almost identical claims about this new fossil discovery. Indeed, Homo naledi was discovered (and is being promoted) by the same researcher, Lee Berger, that unveiled (and promoted) sediba, although, as we'll see, naledi has a very different and unique set of traits from sediba.

One of the issues so far has been the dating of the remains.  Luskin, in quoting Carol Ward's concerns about lack of dating of the fossils, makes a legitimate objection in that we do not know how old the bones are.  That is a problem.  As I pointed out in my BioLogos post, we can date the cave floor, we can date the cave walls and we can date the cave ceiling but we have little to no idea when the bones were dropped in.  It is clear that the floor of this cave was not a living floor.  He writes:

The main claim about Homo naledi is that it is a small-brained hominin (when compared to humans) that has other features that are very humanlike -- especially its hands and feet. As the news headlines suggest, there has been an immense amount of hype about this species, consistent with the hype surrounding Australopithecus sediba, which again was discovered and promoted by the same researcher, Lee Berger. However, while there are some humanlike aspects of its body plan, my overall impression is that this is a highly unique species that doesn't fit well into previously established categories.

He is also correct about that.  It doesn't.  H. naledi has characteristics that link it with many different hominins and the combination of traits is unique.   This is not a problem it is, as Carol Ward commented, shows us that there was considerable hominin diversity at this time and, apparently at other times in the past.  The problem is that he uses selective passages and slanted wording to imply that the case for it having "human" traits is overblown.  For example:

  For example, Luskin writes:

The hands are claimed to be humanlike but they have key unique features and, unlike human hands, are tailored for climbing. ABC News reported: "Homo naledi had human-like hands and feet, but Tattersall said it was impressive that it also had climbing features, more similar to an ape." CNN reports: "Its hands are superficially humanlike, but the finger bones are locked into a curve -- a trait that suggests climbing and tool-using capabilities." And even Berger states: "It's pretty clear from those fingers that they're [for] climbing."

All of this is done to shift the emphasis away from the fact that, while the hominin did possess primitive traits, it also possessed derived ones. Let's see what Berger actually writes about the find:

The hand shares many derived features of modern humans and Neandertals in the thumb, wrist, and palm, but has relatively long and markedly curved fingers (Kivell et al., 2015). The thumb is long relative to the length of the other digits, and includes a robust metacarpal with well-developed intrinsic (M. opponens pollicis and M. first dorsal interosseous) muscle attachments.

Note the characteristics that Luskin leaves out.  With regard to our understanding of its taxonomic designation, Luskin writes:

Even Berger admits, "It doesn't look a lot like us." He also states: "There may be debate over the Homo designation" since "the species is quite different from anything else we have seen."

It wouldn't be surprising if later analyses change our understanding of the fossil.

He then puts in the following quote from an interview of Carol Ward in The Scientist:

Carol Ward, a professor of pathology and anatomical sciences at the University of Missouri who was not involved with the study said she was disappointed by the lack of empirical data presented in the paper. "There are only tiny composite pictures of the fossils, so you can't see them and there are no comparative data comparing it to anything else," said Ward. "There's nothing we can use to make our own judgments about the validity of what they are saying."

The problem is that he leaves out a rather significant statement about the find that precedes that. Here is the entire passage from the article (emphasis added):

“H. naledi possesses a combination of primitive and derived features not seen in the hand of any other hominin,” the authors wrote, but Carol Ward, a professor of pathology and anatomical sciences at the University of Missouri who was not involved with the study said she was disappointed by the lack of empirical data presented in the paper. “There are only tiny composite pictures of the fossils, so you can’t see them and there are no comparative data comparing it to anything else,” said Ward. “There’s nothing we can use to make our own judgments about the validity of what they are saying.”

Luskin has done two things here.  By removing the ellipses in from of the initial part of the quote, he suggests that this is a self-contained thought, which it clearly is not.  Further, by not quoting the initial statement of Ward's, he omits that she sees not just primitive but derived traits as well.  This is a pattern throughout his piece.

He phrases the rest of the piece in the form of four controversies.

The first is “How Old is Homo naledi?”  The irony here is that Luskin could very easily have focused on this topic and left it at that.  He has Berger over a barrel, here.  We don't know how old the bones are.  We have zero idea when they were dropped in. Gunter Brauer had a problem in the 1990s with an important skull in the transition to early modern humans, Eliye Springs, which washed out a bank where the spring entered Lake Turkana.  Great find, no idea what its age is.  As I mentioned in my blog post on Homo naledi, the South African cave sites present a serious problem for dating the hominins in which they are found.  Some success has been had but many finds are simply given wide chronological ranges.

Consequently, if Homo naledi is between 2 and 3 mya, it represents a find that is near where the transition is thought to occur, based on the presence of early Homo in East Africa, although the Ledi jaw may suggest an earlier transition.  On the other hand, if it is late, say 1 mya, then it simply represents a dead end that retained many primitive traits.

Here is what Luskin writes about this:

But some of naledi's advocates think they know what to make of the fossils, despite the compete current lack of an age for these fossils. How do they know? Evolutionary assumptions, which drive a desire among some that the bones should turn out to be somewhere between 2.5 and 3 million years old.

This is not entirely true and Luskin knows it, or ought to. There are perfectly valid reasons to suggest that this find is this old, even if we do not, in fact, know its age. For one thing, we know that we have hominins in East Africa that have derived traits toward modern humans between 2.3 and 1.8 million years ago.  Consequently, we know that the transition to this form(s) took place somewhere between 2.5 and 3.0 million years ago.  Further, this tracks with the discovery of the Ledi jaw, which has a mix of australopithecine and early Homo traits and is dated to 2.8 mya.  Therefore, do we know how old the Homo naledi fossils are?  No, we don't.  Are the estimated dates just being driven by evolutionary assumptions?  Clearly not.

Controversy Number 2: “Is Homo naledi a single species?”  Luskin writes:

The question of whether the bones currently assigned to Homo naledi represent a single species may seem like an academic one but it actually could bear directly upon whether it's something like a transitional form, or nothing of the kind. Jeffrey Schwartz, an anthropologist at the University of Pittsburgh, thinks the bones represent multiple species because of the two different types of skulls found in the cave.

Where Luskin is going with this is that, if there are, in fact, two different species in the cave, then some of them might just be modern human.  He continues:

The fact that Berger appeals to sexual dimorphism (different morphologies between males and females of a single species) to explain the different skulls is revealing. It shows that there is indeed a challenge to his "single species" claim. However, if there are multiple species, then you don't necessarily know that humanlike hands and feet didn't come from something more like us, whereas the small heads came from another species more like an australopith. We just don't know.

Here, he glosses over something very important:  even the human-like skeletal material has characteristics that are not modern for example:

• The small heads have both angular and occipital tori, characteristics only found on Homo erectus.  No australopithecine has these and no modern human does, either.
• The faces, while being small, lack australopithecine traits such as canine jugae and anterior pillars.  Further, there is limited post-orbital constriction, a more modern characteristic.
• Even the “human-like” hands and feet have characteristics that are primitive. For example, Berger writes: 

  The talar head and neck exhibit strong, humanlike torsion; the horizontal angle is higher than in most humans, similar to that found in australopiths. The calcaneus is only moderately robust, but possesses the plantar declination of the retrotrochlear eminence and plantarly positioned lateral plantar process found in both modern humans and Au. afarensis...The phalanges are moderately curved, slightly more so than in H. sapiens. The only primitive anatomies found in the foot of H. naledi are the talar head and neck declination and sustentaculum tali angles, suggestive of a lower arched foot with a more plantarly positioned and horizontally inclined medial column than typically found in modern humans...Overall, carpal shapes and articular configurations are very similar to those of modern humans and Neandertals, and unlike those of great apes and other extinct hominins. However, the H. naledi wrist lacks a third metacarpal styloid process, has a more radioulnarly oriented capitate-Mc2 joint, and has a relatively small trapezium-Mc1 joint compared to humans and Neandertals. Moreover, the phalanges are long (relative to the palm) and more curved than most australopiths.

Therefore, appeals to there being modern humans in the cave along with australopithecines are not warranted. Maybe there was more than one species in the cave and one of them was an australopithecine. What remained, however, was not modern human.  There are no modern humans walking around with angular and occipital tori.

But say there is more than one species down there, and these different species represent different times in the history of hominin evolution.  Would this be a bad thing? What it would mean is that there is a good deal of variability in the human fossil record, something we already suspected anyway.  We know that expanded diversity existed as far back as Ardipithecus.  Why would it not be present at other times?

Controversy No. 3: Did Homo naledi Bury Its Dead?  Here is Luskin:

A major claim being promoted in the media holds that Homo naledi ritualistically buried its dead, a testimony to its supposedly human-like intellect.

and

Even if this story is true, it's not the case that this species buried its dead in any manner like humans bury their dead. The bones weren't buried in the ground. Rather, it seems like the bodies were just tossed into the back crevice of a cave and left there to rot...

Luskin is correct that the media attention to this is overblown and sensationalistic. Luskin goes on, then to quote many different researchers who are skeptical about this claim (skepticism that I think is warranted, by the way) But let's see what Berger et al. say about it. First, the word “burial” never appears once in the original paper by Berger et al. That information comes from the supplementary paper by Dirks et al., who write this:

The Dinaledi collection displays taphonomic characteristics indicative of a depositional history that involved several stages of burial with surface modifications and breakage patterns consistent with repeated reworking of at least part of the assemblage within the confines of the Dinaledi Chamber, involving both biotic and abiotic agents (Supplementary file 2). The distribution of bone material and skeletal part representation indicative of limited winnowing (Table 1) indicate that the fossils of H. naledi must have found their way into the chamber via a difficult route that precluded any other large vertebrates from finding a way in. The distribution of the fossils within reworked material derived from Unit 2, as well-articulated remains in Unit 3 suggests that H. naledi fossils entered the chamber over an extended period of time; that is, not all remains were deposited at once.

So that is what we know, and that is all we know.  First, I was wrong in my post on BioLogos, this is not a standard karst cave with a top opening of any kind.  Consequently, there is no way for the bones to have gotten there unless they were placed there.  There is one possible explanation that is not mentioned by Dirks that is not in the account by Luskin:

Flowstone formation continues today (Flowstone 3), changing the morphology of cave passages. This makes it possible that a more direct access-way or easier passage may have existed when hominins entered. A different entrance into the chamber may also explain the presence of rodent bone concentrations in Facies 1b. However, sedimentation patterns indicate that the accumulation of Unit 2 with fossils occurred below the current entry point into the chamber, and alternate routes did not involve vertical access shafts that connected directly to surface in either the Dinaledi Chamber or nearby Dragon's Back Chamber.

This doesn't address the reliability of the burial hypothesis but it does suggest that it might have been much easier for the bones to get where they were.  I suspect that Jungers is correct in his hypothesis about whether or not they were intentionally buried.

Controversy No. 4: Does "Homo" naledi Belong in Homo? Luskin writes:

Ian Tattersall told ABC News: "We're [probably] looking at a cousin rather than an ancestor, but who knows."

"Who knows..." That is exactly right. Even Berger stated: "We need to be very cautious about proclaiming everything we find as the direct ancestors of humans, it's clear there are a lot of experiments going on out there."

Much is left out of this series of statements. Let's go back to the ABC article from which it is quoted:

Researchers said the newly discovered species most resembles other hominids such as Homo erectus, Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis.

Ian Tattersall, curator emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, said the find was incredibly important and could shed important light on Homo sapiens, modern humans, as a species and the many other early hominoids.

“It’s really very exciting,” Tattersall told ABC News. “What this is doing is definitely increasing the perception that we have -- that evolution of hominids was one of vigorous experimentation of evolution.”

Why would the find shed any light on Homo if it did not have any characteristics of Homo? As numerous researchers have commented, it absolutely does.  Many of the characteristics that align it with Homo erectus have been pointed out, as well as other deviations from australopithecines.

Much of what Luskin is trying to accomplish in this section is focused on the fact that, while the Dinaledi finds have characteristics that align them with Homo, they also have some that align them with australopithecines and maybe we are over-interpreting the early Homo ones.  He then vaguely supports his case by using a series of quotes from researchers who are skeptical that we know exactly what H. naledi actually is.  For example, he writes this:

Schwartz himself wrote a scathing op-ed in Newsweek, "Why the Homo Naledi Discovery May Not Be Quite What it Seems." He argued that "Homo naledi" may in fact represent multiple species, and probably doesn't belong in Homo:

Interestingly, he then quotes Schwartz, who points out only the australopithecine portions of the anatomy, to the exclusion of any of the modern traits that it has.  While it is quite true that there are differing opinions about what these finds represent, it is equally true that there are Homo traits present.  Consequently, to simply lump them in with australopithecines is inaccurate.  It may be years before we have enough information to make a sound judgment about exactly where this fits in the pantheon of human evolution, but for now, we can safely say that, whether or not there are one species present or two, a hominin with some of the traits of early Homo was present at this cave.

But even if

it turns out that H. naledi is, in fact, Au. naledi, after much reflection.  Then it just means that australopithecine diversity is greater than we thought it was and that there were many different morphs that exhibited a wide range of traits, some of which were derived in the direction of Homo.  That we don't know exactly which form gave rise to an early Homo form is not a deal-breaker.  Remember, systematics does not reveal ancestor-descendant relationships, but, instead, sister taxa.  Au. sediba and H. naledi are two different forms that express a mosaic of traits, some of which are advanced and some which are not.  They are both considerably more advanced than the australopithecines that preceded them.

Luskin is focused on the fact that H. naledi is probably not the missing link between the australopithecines and early Homo that everybody was hoping for.  That is beside the point.  The point is we now know quite a bit more about this stage of human evolution.  Even if the bones turn out to be younger than we thought, it still gives us information about human evolutionary development that we did not already have.  That's okay.

Debating Homo naledi on Premier Christian Radio

I took part in a debate on Premier Christian Radio last Thursday with Fuz Rana, of Reasons to Believe, on the new Homo naledi find and the respective cases for evolution and intelligent design.  It was quite fun and very cordial and respectful.  The host, Justin Brierley did a very good job of moderating and asking the right questions.  Let me know what you think.  Fuz spent some time talking about the book Who Was Adam? he co-wrote with Hugh Ross which, I am embarrassed to say, I have not read yet.  I need to do that post-haste. 

BioLogos Post on Homo naledi is Up

My question-and-answer post with Brad Kramer is up at BioLogos.  Comments welcome there and here.

Alabama Adopts Pro-Evolution Curriculum Stance

The state of Alabama has adopted an educational stance that includes an active attempt to teach evolution, rather than a passive one.  The Associated Press carries this:

The current state standard says students "should understand the nature of evolutionary theories," but such knowledge isn't required.

The new standard goes further, stating in the preface: "The theory of evolution has a role in explaining unity and diversity of life on earth. This theory is substantiated with much direct and indirect evidence. Therefore, this course of study requires our students to understand the principles of the theory of evolution from the perspective of established scientific knowledge. The committee recognizes and appreciates the diverse views associated with the theory of evolution."

This is a step in the right direction. Another thing that the article points out is that the new standards were unanimously approved by “Republican-controlled Alabama State Board of Education.” Not the same bunch of Republicans that you find on the Texas State Board of Education, that's for sure.

Darrel Falk's Post on Homo naledi

Darrel Falk has a short post on Homo naledi, in which he discusses the nature of the science and misconceptions that we have had with regard to human evolution.  He writes:

Interestingly, besides all the PR associated with the discovery, it is documented by likely the finest Nova/National Geographic production I have ever seen on human evolution, which is available to view online here. I've watched the first hour of the two hour special which will appear next Wednesday evening (Sept 16) on PBS. I love it because it shows in absolutely exciting detail how the science is done. It also shows how wrong earlier paleontologists were regarding the nature of our early ancestors—they weren't 'killers' as depicted in early film and scientific literature. They were plant eaters with likely the occasional meat meal. The natural forces associated with the evolution of the human body were NOT selection for the fittest killers. Indeed, although not specifically discussed in the film (I've not quite finished it), cooperation was likely a much more important shaper of the distinctively human mind than competition.

As was outlined in the Nova special, it was the work of Bob Brain, who discovered that marks in the skull that had been attributed to interpersonal violence on the part of australopithecines, were, in fact, created by large cat predators.

My BioLogos post on Homo naledi will be out shortly.

Nova Special: Dawn of Humanity

Nova will be airing a special tonight (9/16) on the Dawn of Humanity, focusing on the new Homo naledi finds from South Africa.  The video is also streaming on the PBS site here.  I am currently writing up a piece for BioLogos which should appear soon.  So, too, is Elizabeth Mitchell of AiG, from what I understand. 

York Daily Record: Ten Years Since Kitzmiller

The York Daily Record has an issue on the ten year anniversary of the Kitzmiller decision that devastated the intelligent design movement.  Among the articles, an interview with Judge Jones, the fate of the book that started the problem, Of Pandas and People, and the social and legal consequences of the decision. About Pandas:

In a deposition, school board member Bill Buckingham said he did not know how they were donated to the high school. Another member of the board, Alan Bonsell, denied that he knew anyone, except his father, who was involved in giving copies of the books.

During the trial, Buckingham said members of his church felt there was a need to give money, but that he did not consider that a collection. Bonsell said that he got an $850 check from Buckingham.

U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III wrote in his decision that the "inescapable truth" is that both Buckingham and Bonsell lied during their depositions.

Today, only one "Of Pandas and People" book remains, in the Dover Area School District's administration building, according to the library catalog. The catalog also reports there's one copy of the book that's listed as "lost."

So, what happened to the other 48 books? With the exception of three copies, nobody seems to know.

Hopefully, into the circular file. That is certainly where it belongs.

Judge Jones, when asked about the misconceptions that the Intelligent Design community derived from the case:

I would say the main one is the role of precedent.

In the Kitzmiller case, there's a very clear line of cases from higher courts, including the Supreme Court of the United States, that set out tests that we use in deciding whether a particular policy violates the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment. Those are etched in stone.

Now, people may disagree with those tests, but I have to, had to, as a federal judge, apply them. I have frequently said since the Kitzmiller case that I think any federal judge in the United States would have decided it exactly the same way that I did by applying those tests.

Now, they may have written the opinion a little bit differently, but the result would have been the same. That is, that the board, at that time, had a clear religious motivation, and violated the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment by its policy introducing intelligent design into the curriculum. The misconception arises because, frankly, people either deliberately — or from a lack of understanding — think that we make this stuff up as we go along, and that we're not bound to apply these precedents, these mandates, from higher courts. And that's exactly what I did in deciding the case.

All of the articles are fascinating examinations of the make up of the ID movement and its aftermath.

Hat tip to the NCSE.

Early Homo in South Africa

The New York Times is reporting on a new find out of South Africa, by Lee Berger and his team, that indicates the presence of early Homo there.  John Noble Wilford writes:

The new hominin species was announced on Thursday by an international team of more than 60 scientists led by Lee R. Berger, an American paleoanthropologist who is a professor of human evolution studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. The species name, H. naledi, refers to the cave where the bones lay undisturbed for so long; “naledi” means “star” in the local Sesotho language.

In two papers published this week in the open-access journal eLife, the researchers said that the more than 1,550 fossil elements documenting the discovery constituted the largest sample for any hominin species in a single African site, and one of the largest anywhere in the world. Further, the scientists said, that sample is probably a small fraction of the fossils yet to be recovered from the chamber. So far the team has recovered parts of at least 15 individuals.

“With almost every bone in the body represented multiple times, Homo naledi is already practically the best-known fossil member of our lineage,” Dr. Berger said.

Here is the link to the first paper, Homo naledi, a new species of the genus Homo from the Dinaledi Chamber, South Africa, and here is the link to the taphonomic paper, Geological and taphonomic context for the new hominin species Homo naledi from the Dinaledi Chamber, South Africa. Here is the picture from the main paper, as well as the abstract:

Homo naledi is a previously-unknown species of extinct hominin discovered within the Dinaledi Chamber of the Rising Star cave system, Cradle of Humankind, South Africa. This species is characterized by body mass and stature similar to small-bodied human populations but a small endocranial volume similar to australopiths. Cranial morphology of H. naledi is unique, but most similar to early Homo species including Homo erectus, Homo habilis or Homo rudolfensis. While primitive, the dentition is generally small and simple in occlusal morphology. H. naledi has humanlike manipulatory adaptations of the hand and wrist. It also exhibits a humanlike foot and lower limb. These humanlike aspects are contrasted in the postcrania with a more primitive or australopith-like trunk, shoulder, pelvis and proximal femur. Representing at least 15 individuals with most skeletal elements repeated multiple times, this is the largest assemblage of a single species of hominins yet discovered in Africa.

What does this mean?  Well, the principle problem is that we still have no date for these remains, so it is difficult to place them chronologically.  Berger is standing by his contention that early Homo arose from something like Au sediba, despite evidence to the contrary recently uncovered in Northeast Africa.  If the date is late, somewhere on the order of one million years, then a migration model might explain the appearance of such an advanced hominin in this area.  If it turns out to be much older, then other models might have to be entertained.  More thoughts on this find later.

William Provine Has Died

William Provine, a tireless crusader for evolutionary theory and opponent of creationism, has died.  He was 73.  Provine was a professed atheist, as the NCSE story relates:

Provine was a vocal and persistent opponent of creationism. He wrote thoughtfully on evolution and creationism, e.g. in his essay on "Evolution, Religion, and Science" in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science (2006), but he was perhaps most famous for his views on the connection between evolution and atheism. He once asserted, "As the creationists claim, belief in modern evolution makes atheists of people" — a consequence that he welcomed. His views were formed in graduate school, where, he related in his memoir, "[a]fter reading [Theodosius] Dobzhansky several times and listening to [Lynn] Throckmorton, my belief in purposive nature disappeared for good." He was eager to share his views.

Evolution only makes you an atheist if you have a very limited view of God that has to fit into a young earth creationist box.  I wonder if he ever read the writings of B.B. Warfield and Bernard Ramm.  I do not know if he ever debated a theistic evolutionist, but I do know that constantly debating young earth creationists might very well give one a jaded view of organized religion.

I have long thought that atheism derives, largely, from socio-cultural perspectives and that science cannot “make” someone an atheist.  The fact that the BioLogos Institute exists at all ought to be a good indication of that.

Put another way, if two people examine the same data and conclude that they support evolutionary theory in exactly the same way and one person comes away thinking  “Well, this obviously shows there is no God,” and the other person comes away thinking “Wow, look at the awesome power of God's creation,” then the driver is clearly not science.

The story does not relate the cause of death but I do know that Provine lived decades longer than he thought he was going to be able to.  He came to the University of Tennessee in the late 1990s to give a talk on evolutionary theory and intimated at the time that he had a malignant brain tumor that he thought was untreatable.  Apparently, they treated it very effectively. 

What Would Happen If the Discovery Institute Started Enabling Comments?

Ann Gauger, writing for Evolution, News and Views, has a particularly vacuous post on What If People Stopped Believing in Darwin? For example, she writes:

What would change?

Well, textbooks would change, for one. And a newfound humility might briefly sweep the halls of academic biology. Biology students might feel free to express their opinions on origins. The world would see a new flush of academic freedom.

Guess what? It's happening right now, but it's happening slowly, not overnight. That's because more and more people are recognizing that evolutionary biology's explanatory power is inversely proportional to its rigor. Yet there is still an enormous amount of pushback from people strongly invested in the Darwinian story.

What is your evidence for this, Ann? On what basis do you write this? It certainly doesn't match anything that I read.  One of the principle reasons that nonsense like this gets written on this blog is that they can get away with it with no impunity because the DI specifically does not enable comments. In fact, they don't even publish the email addresses of the members.  One actually has to contact a middle man (Casey Luskin) who then passes on messages.

So how about it, DI?  How about enabling moderated comments for the articles on this blog? 

Here's an Interesting Idea: Modern Humans Teamed with Dogs to Outlast Neandertals

National Geographic is reporting on a study done by Pat Shipman for a new book titled The Invaders: How Humans and Their Dogs Drove Neanderthals to Extinction.  As Shipman relates: 

Předmostí is one of a series of archaeological sites in Central and Eastern Europe. They're really weird sites because they're full of dead mammals. Before modern humans came into Eurasia, there was little evidence that Neanderthals were killing mammoths on a regular basis. They're huge! Attacking them with handheld weapons was probably too intimidating, unless you came across a baby mammoth.

But once modern humans arrive on the scene, you start finding these sites with dozens and sometimes hundreds of dead mammoths. At some, the bones are so concentrated that if the mammoths were alive they couldn't stand in the territory where their bones are.


These mammoth megasites, as they became known, contain an outrageous amount of mammoths. So what's changed that is going to enable modern humans to kill all these animals? Neanderthals couldn't, and they weren't inept. Distance weapons of the kind that humans had might have been helpful, but you had to track the darn thing as it died.

And that's where wolf dogs come in, because wolf dogs are found with lots of mammoth bones. Some of these sites even have beautiful tent-shaped huts made out of mammoth bone. This suggests people were there for a long time. They were living there and building these settlements where the animals died.

Pat Shipman is married to Alan Walker, who was part of the team that excavated and described the Lake Turkana Homo erectus boy, an almost complete skeleton that changed much of what we thought about Homo erectus at the time.  This would be a good read.  Not sure I buy the argument yet, but it is certainly worth consideration.

Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds.