Homo Habilis and Homo Erectus, Found Living in Parallel Harmony, Not in Evolutionary Succession! A Blow Against Evolution?
Darwin had a brilliant idea, but was it brilliantly wrong? Homo habilis-2.4 M- 1.6 M, Homo erectus, 1.6 M-0.3 M, living unexpected parallel lives, not in evolutionary succession, Anthropologist Professor Emeritus Pete Bagnolo is on target with unorthodox prediction again, Darwin set about outlining his theory to everyone. Others ran with it. He made a great discovery and I will have more to say about the technical aspects of it later. Read it ALL, please!
In the first years after the discovery of Homo habilis, some scientists rejected its validity, feeling that all specimens should be classified either to the genus Australopithecus or to Homo erectus. Now, however, H. habilis is widely, though not unanimously, accepted as a species in its own right. From the fossil evidence, Homo habilis was active from before 2.3/2.6 million, to 1.6 million years ago, and Homo erectus, 1.8 Million years BP-.03 Million years BP. However, some persist in believing that the fossil evidence is too thinly spread and weak, too fragmented and extended over too vast a time to justify its genus classification.
Some H. habilis specimens with uncharacteristically massive features: Brows, braincases, teeth, etc. are often classified as Homo rudolfensis. The average male H. habilis is thought to have been about five feet tall and 100 pounds (females about 20% smaller). Homo habilis, (meaning "handy man") was so named because of the vast quantity of tools that have been found with its fossils. The average H. habilis braincase was considerably larger than that of Australopithecus', and its ostensive shape is more like H. Sapiens. The bulge of Broca's area (brain segment), necessary for speech, is visible in one H. habilis' brain cast, making him possibly capable of some crude form of speech.
Those questionable species from my college days, Homo habilis, and Home Erectus have come home to roost, as I predicted as a graduate student and more recently on one of my blogs, circa, 2006, (see blog at): http://bagnolosprophetics.blogspot.com/2006/10/thus-saith-lord.html These two fossils found in Kenya have shaken the human family tree, possibly rearranging major branches thought to be in a straight ancestral, evolutionary line to Homo sapiens.
Homo erectus was palpably unlike H. habilis and all of the other Australopithecus species, in that it ranged far beyond Africa. In some cases, scientists have divided H-erectus into three species using the unearthed specimens geographic region, re: H. heidelbergensis (Europe). Homo ergaster (Africa), H. erectus (Asia) some even believe heidelbergensis specimens to be archaic H. sapiens as the gauge for divisions.
Generally, H. erectus, in comparison to Homo sapiens (us) possessed larger molars, a long, a low skull, heavy brow ridges, and a receding chin. The skeletal structure of H. erectus was heavier, more powerful/robust, than ours, so were muscle insertions. However, a few arm/leg bones of "Peking Man" indicate a shorter, stockier build, however, another specimen, "Turkana Boy" (Estimated age: 1.6 million years, date of discovery: 1984) was tall and slender, very much like modern humans from the same district. This almost Choate skeleton of a 9- to 12-year-old boy remains one of the oldest- specimens of H. erectus, yet unearthed. He was about 5 feet 3 inches tall when he died, projecting full growth, might have topped out at about 6'-1" upon maturity.
Is The Two-Disconcerting Specimen, A Contradiction of Darwin? The two disconcerting specimen, have been analyzed, dated and defined by Scientists at: Homo habilis 1.4-million BP, and a Homo erectus at 1.5 Million years BP. The archeologist/anthropologists involved claimed that their discoveries challenge the traditional theory in which the belief was that the two species evolved in direct, evolutionary, succession, one to the other -- Homo habilis to Homo erectus. Perceivably, instead they led parallel existences for about 500,000 (H. Habilis: 2.3-1.4 Million years: H. erectus 1.8 Million years BP: 0.3 Million years BP, in eastern Africa. Such existences all but completley rule out direct evolutionary succession.
If, indeed, this theory is correct, and it appears so at this point, the genus Homo, in its early periods is proving increasingly a mystery, clouding the accepted theory of human evolution. The discovery of H. erectus and H. habilis points at the possibility that they both issued from a common ancestor – simultaneous brothers, for which the paternal/maternal fossil record is non-existent-some 2,500,000 to 3,000,000 years BP. However, it is entirely possible that there are other options, however, there is probably not enough useful DNA remaining to find out.
Scientists are claiming that this discovery does not challenge the belief that Homo erectus is a direct ancestor of Homo sapiens, but the small skull size, was unexpected, and the implication is that they were that much less like Homo-sapiens than expected. However, I do and have, and still insist, that my original theories, along with in Undergraduate school and the later Computer generated, Berkley 1987 experimental "Eve" with the DNA of all of modern humankind, is not a match for either Homo-Erectus or Homo-Habilis. I still hold with Berkley that our DNA emerged between 220,000-160,000 BP. Where is my evidence? I have none, just my hunch, based on observation, experience and an unknown, (to most people), source, which have in past been found to be more accurate that what some call "Tangible evidence," but nonetheless, supported by the Berkley experiment which came somewhat less than a score of years after my graduate thesis.
Other anthropologists and archeologists, whose polestar is on anthropology, see the revelation as a powerful argument that the early transition from ape to human ancestors is becoming less clear, or is at least not at all well understood. Admitting that the origins of the genus Homo are still beyond our knowledge, the search for those origins needs to be widened, as I have stated here recently, and elsewhere long ago.
Darwin's Brilliant, Beagle trip ideation, is slowly slipping in credibility-there is a link missing in the hoped for transmigration of more than one dozen seeming attempts at something like man. Now the question is arising, were any of them successive morphs from one to the other? The strongest evidence that they did not, is the seeming out-of-nowhere, appearance of Homo sapiens, because there was not time for evolution of an organism of that size and complexity and such a massive mutation would be unseemly and with scant, if any, verifiable precedent.
Fred Spoor, Professor of Evolutionary anatomy at University College London in the Journal of Nature, stated his belief that this discovery will pose remonstration of the evolutionary linear succession of the three Homo species. Meave Leakey and daughter Louise Leakey, co-directors of the Koobi Fora Research Project, which made the discovery, appear to agree.
These two fossils with accompanying deposits of volcanic ash were unearthed just east of Lake Turkana in Kenya in the year 2000, and which dates of existence University of Utah geologists defined. It has taken several years to clean, to prepare and identify the fossils, which were caked with the tough sediment, hence the current news long delay at being made public.
Of late, some scientists not involved in the project, have speculated that, recent studies were hinting at some tighter connection between the habilis and erectus. Lacking conclusive evidence however, and with such radical possibilities, the matter was put on the proverbial back burner.
Daniel Lieberman, a professor of biological anthropology at Harvard, says, "The oldest Homo habilis we had known of was about the same age as erectus." "Now we have extended the duration of the habilis species, and there's no doubt that it overlaps considerably with erectus."
In their report, Spoor and colleagues wrote, "With the discovery of the new, well dated specimens, H. habilis and H. erectus can now be shown to have co-occurred in eastern Africa for nearly half a million years." My thoughts, exactly in 1972-1973. The idea occurred to me while studying a burial of Neanderthal and Homo sapiens in the same grave levels, obviously a co-habitation of the same cave. Did they enter-mate? Were there children? In addition, my own experience with the study of The Flower Children Of Shanidar, in which Neanderthals tangibly displayed emotions and deeper feelings, most usually applied by Anthro-archeologists, only to Homo sapiens.
Professor Bagnolo is a Renaissance man: Cultural Anthropologist, Architectural designer, painter, writer, novelist, theologian. As a child prodigy, abed with polio for almost two years, with an off the charts IQ, reading at the graduate level by 5th grade, offered an opportunity to skip three grades at age 8. Later He was a recipient of an Art Institute scholarship at age 11, a Ford Foundation Fellowship in Anthropology and in Painting and a merit scholarship in art, and was appointed a Graduate Research Assistant position in college. He holds a triple bachelor's degree in Painting and Drawing, Anthropology, Architectural Design Advertising. MA's in Cultural Anthro, Painting and more. After being tenured he taught; architecture, anthropology, Theology, advertising, painting and drawing, entrepreneuring and Creative Profit Making. He produced a star-studded Music festival, had a radio talk show in Chicago, and cable TV show. Now, retired from Teaching, he paints, writes, and pursues other ventures.
The above bio harvested from the comments of Deans, colleagues, students, clients and collector's.
Great article. You point out the fantastic aspect of science which is that it is a process of growth and self-correction. Scientists try to make “approximations” of the world that help tie larger amounts of data into a coherent picture. Many specific scenarios posited for evolution can have trouble as more data comes out, but many larger aspects of evolution theory, ranging from “convergence” to “missing links” as indicative of gradual change in form, are finding great support in new findings.
The idea that humans evolved from ancestral primates in a single, stepwise fashion, one species to another, is simplistic. Many distinct hominids and other primates have lived and adapted over long periods of time to shifting environments, and we and the existing primates are the ones that have persisted to date. The others have gone extinct.
We will never know exactly what happened, too much evidence has been lost. We will eventually be able to put together a pretty good approximation of evolutionary history over the last 500 million years though, which is certain to have some errors, but will be close enough for our purposes.
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John R Moffett (78 articles, 14 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 591 comments)
on Friday, August 17, 2007 at 6:44:35 PM
Yes, John, I have no doubt they will find the links or an approximation of them. For all of his brilliance in this simple sketch of how life works on planet earth, like many of us his family life, a step from a Stephen King novel darkened his view and kept him from seeing a few things clearly. They will see blanks filled in and while I have no clue what the final scenario will be, I have a feeling that each step is/was a sketchpad. I think that there is an kind of inter-connective ness, a transmigration, in which, like the sexual dance, chemistry (for want of searching for the right term) the genes communicate in some manner from one being to another and a massive mutation of forms, in some spiritual, or invisible way takes place in which one subspecies is replaced, in a massive Gestalt, not some slow movement, one gene at a time, though I think there is some of that, but one kind of replacement, running side-by-side with that which it will replace. It happened with Neanderthal and Homo sapiens too.
Did you ever read, THE FLOWER CHILDREN OF SHANIDAR? I READ IT IN undergraduate school, lost it, and cannot find a copy. Great story of the find in Kurdistan of a cave occupied for 51,000 years continuously by Kurds from Neanderthal to the present day and the burial of one guy which story discovers the humanity of the tribe 51,000 years ago who did successful amputation surgery on him, including tying off the artery, and because he could no longer hunt had him help the women in the cave, and when he was killed by falling Stalactites, they had a massive funereal feast burial for him with a plethora of symbols of their belief 51,000 years ago of an afterlife. I wrote an analysis of the symbolism that were published and was used by my Profs for years and they commissioned me to flesh-on in paintings a series of skulls of Neanderthal, and several other steps to the doorstep of Homo sapiens. My explanation here is sketchy of the transitions because I haven't quite figured it out yet. Like Einstein's struggle with the simple elegant unifying principle, there is in evolution a vast but simple, overlooked reality staring us right in the face that is being missed because of a kind of professional loyalty, almost religiosity of the scientists to their loyalty to old stuff. It is there the simple answer and it may be as easy as electronic signals from one male to one female, that gives way to a whole new species, I see that clearly, HOMO Modernis.
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Professor Emeritus Peter Bagnolo (144 articles, 1 quicklinks, 95 diaries, 1216 comments)
on Friday, August 17, 2007 at 7:40:08 PM
