New Fossils and Our Understanding of Human Evolution

"If that's the case, if there were still H. habilis around after H. erectus first appeared, then the straight line depiction of human evolution doesn't work any more."

But if the population of H. habilis that were the ancestors of H. erectus were split from the parent stock well before the parent stock became extinct, wouldn't we expect to see just this pattern? Not all of the ancestral population is changed.

This is why the "Why are there still monkeys?" question is so dumb.

Science Avenger:

As I say, most of the conversation is at the level of bumper stickers. In answer to your questions:

1. I am not aware of any educated Catholic (I can only speak from my own tradition) who thinks evolution means a fish turned into a salamander. Certainly Benedict XVI thinks no such thing (I presume you have, of course, carefully read him and are well-versed in his very erudite work?)

2. I suppose until atheists stop making categorical statements like "There is No God". Who should I believe: you or my own two eyes?

3. I suppose when those who purport to speak for science stop making truth claims.

I have no problem with the notion that science, like theology, builds up its picture of the world slowly and that the bulk of scientific claims, like the bulk of theology, is provisional. Nonetheless, it seems to me to be obvious (and nowhere moreso than in the supposed "quarrel" between science and what is vaguely called "religion" that proponents of evolutionary science are making truth claims. I see nothing wrong with that since the evidence is overwhelming on their side.

The problem seems to me to come in when inexplicably angry people, like yourself, somehow take this to mean something preposterous like a) Benedict and Pat Robertson are somehow saying the same thing and b) all "religion" (whatever that is) is thereby safely ignored. The only thing more preposterous than these assertions are the weirdly un-self-aware claims that outbursts like yours are demonstrative of cool rationality and not, as is manifestly obvious, of deep and unreflective anger.

Once again, a clear, articulate explanation of a complex topic.

The link below is an example of a somewhat over-wrought media piece from AP. The headlince claims that this finding "challenges old evolution theory", when in fact, what it challenges, if anything, is at best one hypothesis of early hominid descent.

The article also implies that if two species are alive at the same time, one could not have descended from the other. The implicit idea that one species "turns into" another species. (The logical equivalent of thinking that, since there are still people in Ireland, it's impossible that some Americans are descended from Irish ancestors.)

Although the article seems relatively accurate in most other ways, and although AP writers may not entirely control headline choice, I almost wondered if some kind of subtle bias might be operating...

At the same time, the fact that stories about early hominids and early humans get so much press and popularity is evidence that Americans implicitly accept the idea that humans evolved from earlier ancestors, no matter what they may say in polls.

http://www.bakersfield.com/897/story/208069.html

Nice post, especially for us biology laypeople. I'm wondering why your second scenario isn't the expected default for any speciation event. In other words, isn't it likely that at least some segment of a population will retain the original genes/characteristics while the rest of the population is undergoing a change in genes/characteristics such that both population segments will coexist for a time?

The people who think this challenges evolution must be the same ones who say "if evolution took place, then how come there are still monkeys?". Speciation doesn't eliminate the mother population. Usually a new species evolves because it's isolated in a different ecological niche from the mother population, and so the two species won't compete much.

"shows us just how utterly ignorant we were about where we came from (OK, I made that one up)"

Sadly, no you didn't. Fundamentalists done it for you.

http://markshea.blogspot.com/2007_08_01_archive.html#746528260143385615

If there was indeed a fourth species, I think we should claim the name Homo Dunford.

Oh, man, that came out wrong. Tis a terrible idea.

Anthropologist John Hawks comments.

I agree w/ the other comments....you've done a great job at explaining what this paper is about in a short clip. Maybe you should write press releases?

What's the opposite of anagenesis then? A quick google suggests that it's "cladogenesis", is that right?

I would like to know what the magnitude of error is in the two dates listed -- 1.55 million years and 1.44 million years. Thank you.

Moridin:

Like Dr. Anton, you appear to know nothing whatsoever of the way in which Catholic theology proceeds. I have no particular problem with the theory of evolution. I simply have reject the thinking of Fundamentalists, whether atheist or religious, who imagine that the truths discovered by science and the truths contained in revelation can contradict each other.

Suggested reading: C.P. Snow's The Two Cultures. A scientific education in modernity tends to leave one ill-equipped for dealing with other modes of thought.

Also you might take a peek at this:

http://thomism.wordpress.com/2007/08/09/sigh/

You don't know how much you don't know.

Derek, you are correct: the opposite of "anagenesis" is "cladogenesis", the continuous branching of one lineage into several. While we often tend to think of evolution in terms of one form following another, this is actually very rare in nature. Most of the examples that one hears of (humans and horses spring to mind) are in fact not particularly anagenetic. We just do not get exposed to, or do not pay attention to, the evidence to the contrary, which more often than not requires a longer attention span than the average American is credited to have.

Hey, Mark...I understand your frustration, but when you write "the truths discovered by science and the truths contained in revelation," I immediately take issue, because science deals in observations, hypothesis-testing experiments, and inferences--not "truth." And whatever revelation might contain, it is not "truth" in anything but a postmodern, thoroughly subjective sense. Revelation contains a stance toward knowledge that might or might not be correct, but by no legitimate stretch can the stance itself be considered "truth." So we have a method for approximating facts on the one hand and an avowal, an existential commitment with no facts behind it on the other. They can't contradict each other because they have so little relationship to each other. It's like the punchline to the child's riddle, "How is a marshmallow like an elephant?" They're both white, except for the elephant. But apart from any purely definitional differences betwee science and revelation, the really important difference between the two is that science works. Science has given us insights, including insights into human nature, that all the centuries of revelation did not, nor could not, provide. You will say that science cannot answer the most basic question: "How then shall we live?" And I will not argue that point, except to say that religion's answer to that question has not worked well for most people in many places over a long period. Science could hardly provide a less effective response, even if its response was puzzled silence.

If dogs evolved from wolves, why are there still wolves around?

If fluffy and Garfield evolved from ME wild cats, why are there ME wild cats still around?

IIRC, the wild ancestors of cows and horses were around until late historical times.

Sure the fundies will try to make hay out of any controversy in paleoanthropology. So what? They would anyway no matter what the findings were. It is rather more dangerous for them that people argue over whether H. habilis was on the direct line to humans or whether both erectus and habilis evolved from a common ancestor.

Seeing pictures of those million year + fossils must make their blood run cold. (It did mine but for opposite reasons.) I bet they had to peek through their fingers if they even had the nerve to look. LOL.

The argument represented here through graphics above is actually a tautology when it assumes that there are three distinct species represented with clusters of different shapes with equal difference between them - represented in the horizontal distance. In fact, there are two clusters: one cluster belongs Homo habilis, the other cluster belongs to possibly a single species with alternating names - Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo sapiens, Homo florensis, Homo neanderthalis, etc - large and very distinct from the first cluster.

The second flaw in the argument of the findings-not-a-big-deal camp is that Homo erectus is a very dominant, mobile, crafty, globalist species. If introspection is disallowed by forced-separation, we know this from its fossil history. If erectus 'evolved' from habilis somewhere in Africa, and erased its 'close' ancestor gradually everywhere in the continent, the two close species competing for the same resources, how is it possible that for hundreds of thousands of years the two species went on to live side by side with similar characteristics on the same valley. Answer is there: they are not close, they did not compete for the same resources and they did not gradually descend from each other. This brings the story to square one: the missing link, the imaginary ancestor, master of the disappearing act.

Let's face it, the relationship between erectus and habilis is that of native Africans (or European colonizers) in the wild and the chimps or bonobos or gorillas scattered around them. Had the erectus race had not been absorbed by contemporary races, they could have told the story, with lots of humor, dancing and chanting, about those lazy funny irrelevant habilis apes.

Lazy funny irrelevant Hakan.

Neanderthal and florensis (and sapiens)a "single species."

I have to tell that story with lots of humor and go dance and chant ("dant") now.

Mary Leakey gave the quote that caused all of the confusion. She came right out and said if habilis and erectus lived at the same time over the same geographical range then habilis cannot be ancestral to erectus. Maybe she is becoming senile.

It will be interesting to see how the YEC's respond to this find. I'll bet AiG's Dr. Menton (their so called expert on the subject) is working on a response right now !

Greg:

No small part of the problem is, as the link I pointed to makes clear, there is a marked laziness on the part of critics of "religion". They seem to have only the haziest notion of what they mean by the word. I'm afraid I find a similar haziness in your remarks. What do you mean by "religion"? If you mean "the worship of a deity or deities" where do you put Buddhism in that? Some people would class Confucianism as a religion. I would not, since I think it is basically an ethical code. In the Catholic tradition, "religion" has a very precise meaning. Saying "religion doesn't work" would, in light of that particular meaning (namely, the practical observance of one's duties to God and neighbor) be a nonsense saying since "religio" is all *about* doing the works God requires such as clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, etc. Religion has, in that sense, worked extremely hard for centuries. But by the same token, not all of Catholic faith consists of "religio". The tradition is too big for that. In addition to work, there is contemplation. Indeed, some of the contemplation gave rise to the sciences because the West came to the settle conviction that the universe was knowable because both it and we were the creation of a God who made us intelligent and it intelligible. (Note before jerking knee: I am not speaking here of "Intelligent Design" but of the philosophic matrix from which the sciences arose.)

Of course, I doubt that by "religion" you mean Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy or liturgical duties to God. I suspect you mean something like "Religion doesn't work at telling us anything about the physical universe". But then (at least from a Catholic perspective), that's sort of like saying Jesus would have been a bad bowler. So what? The purpose of the revelation is not to give us scientific information any more than to give us bowling tips. It is to give us information we need in order to come to the knowledge of God. The Catholic Faith says (in flat contradiction to some religious traditions) that the universe matters intensely since God took on a body of matter in this universe of time, space, matter and energy which he himself had made. Because of that, the West adopted the fundamental attitude that Science was a Good Thing because God spoke through creation. If another religious tradition has been adopted, such as gnosticism, our culture would have never developed the sciences at all, because the whole scientific enterprise would have been regarded as a waste of time since (in the gnostic view) only the spiritual matters and the physical world is a snare, a work of an evil god or an illusion.

That's why it's such a waste of time making general statements about "religion" vs. science. Which religion do you mean? "Religion" teaches and says anything and everything. But then, so does "science" depending on when and where you encounter it. All depends on specificity. And it is at this point the laziness toward defining "religion" tends to kick in and there is much hand-waving as the critic says "All religions make exclusive truth claims and they all say they are the truth." Actually, even this is not true at all. An ancient pagan could have subscribed to any number of cultic observances and felt no obligation to give exclusive allegiance to any of them. Again, we are back to "what do you mean by religion?"

It would be an interesting problem, if people could approach it dispassionately. Unfortunately, so much of the conversation is conducted largely on the level of bumper stickers.

Two final points: it is typical (and telling) that your discussion of "religion" is primarily focused on the ethical. Most people have the notion that "religion" is primarily about the question "How shall we then live?" That is certainly important, particular since, as a century of horrors courtesy of a science unhinged from the revelation of Christ have proven us most incapable of even elementary morality. But morality and ethics is ultimately a secondary consideration. The primary consideration (from a Catholic perspective) is "Who is God and what is our relationship with him?"

This leads to my second point, which is that you seem to me to equivocate in your "Science works/Religion doesn't" scenario. As you admit, science is no guide to morality. And as I freely admit, "religion" (including my own) is not guarantor of moral goodness. But the fact is, of course, there is a choking cataract of testimony from people in various religious traditions that their religion "works" in the sense of answering the question "How shall we then live?" Even given the extremely hazy definition of the term "religion" that you seem to vaguely have in mind, it seems to me to be rubbish to say "Science works/religion doesn't."

However, as I say, much of this conversation is mostly a waste of time until critics of religion get a clear and workable definition of what they mean.

I commented on this last night to various groups. Having read more, it was naive of Meave Leakey to suggest that Homo habilis could not have given rise Homo erectus, if they are found to be coeval a few hundred thousand years LATER. Looking at my data base of South and East African mammalian species, it is not uncommon for a parent species to co-exist with its daughter species for some time. Actually, it is expected. Meave studies the same monkey fossils I do, so I suspect (hope) she was misquoted.

The analogy (in brief) I give to creationists is that, on a grander scale, mammals evolved from reptiles, but there are still reptiles. So why shouldn't it work at the species level?

Heck, we're only talking about an extension of 300 ky or so of Homo habilis, which is just a blip in evolutionary time.

penultimate point: We've known since 1949, when John Robinson along with Robert Broom showed the co-existence of Australopithecus robustus and Homo erectus (then going by other names), that the human tree had branches. For the press to cater to the decades-old view of a straight ladder of human evolution ... and some of my colleagues are guilty here as well ... is irresponsible and not reflective of the state of the science.

ultimate point: Given the many branches hominins have had, what IS somewhat unique about human evolution is that it culminated in just ONE species. Many taxons of other primates, and other mammals, resulted in many more representatives at the same taxonomic level.

Best,
Jeff

The cascade of misunderstanding continues here, with former lawyer, now self-made evolutionary biologist, Casey Luskin.

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2007/08/paleoanthropologists_disown_ho.htm…

Mark Shea said: No small part of the problem is...there is a marked laziness on the part of critics of "religion". They seem to have only the haziest notion of what they mean by the word.

That's nothing compared to the marked laziness on the part of critics of atheism, evolution in particular, and science in general, who have a seemingly permanent aversion to accepting what those words mean, despite being told a million friggin times. I mean really, how many times do we have to tell them that evolution does not imply a fish gave birth to a salamander? How many times must we explain that being an atheist doesn't mean claiming 100% certainty there are no gods? How many times must we explain that science claims no truth, and doesn't deal in proofs?

The critics of religion are paragons of studious virtue by comparison. Richard Dawkins' and Sam Harris' understanding of religion surpasses the Pope's and Pat Robertson's understanding of evolution by orders of magnitude. So get the beam out of thine own eye before you worry about the speck in ours.

Rather than arguing about religion, it would be better to discuss which model of speciation could give rise to this situation. For a punt, I'll go for a combination of sexual selection and specialisation within the shared habitat.

In my experience, it's this "parting point" in speciation that forms one of the biggest stumbling blocks for many people. They imagine evolution as being a process whereby one day an ape gives birth to a baby human. We give them no help by talking about habilis and erectus without pointing out that (assuming habilis was the ancestor) there must have been a period (long in human terms, perhaps short in evolutionary years) when no hypothetical Martian could have said whether they were looking at the one or the other.

Mark and Science Avenger -

I strongly agree with both of you in terms of general gist (your positions are not mutually exclusive).

Mark, I am a far cry from a Thomist, and I don't necessarily agree with every word of your post. My main concern on these boards is not with other peoples' private beliefs at any rate, but with creationist efforts to violate the rights of students in public schools and to influence public policy with pseudoscience in other arenas as well. Having said that, when it turns to religion, it is a mild pet peeve of mine that the topic of "religion" is often treated in an oversimplified, euro-centric, almost straw man way.

It's obviously true, as Science Avenger alludes to, that positions like secular humanism or atheism, are distorted and otherwise unfairly treated by their opponents.

Now let's move on to dealing with some creationist crap...

The argument represented here through graphics above is actually a tautology when it assumes that there are three distinct species represented with clusters of different shapes with equal difference between them - represented in the horizontal distance.

Trying to use a fancy "logic word" and getting it wrong is a bad way to start. A tautology is something that's self-evidently true, to the point that the assertion of its truth is almost trivial.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology_%28logic%29

In fact, there are two clusters: one cluster belongs Homo habilis, the other cluster belongs to possibly a single species with alternating names - Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo sapiens, Homo florensis, Homo neanderthalis, etc - large and very distinct from the first cluster.

This is a worthless pronouncement. It's completely at odds with the scientific consensus, you don't support it with any evidence, and you're almost certainly completely unqualified to hold a serious opinion on the issue.

Your objective, of course, is to make the strained argument that a number of species are actually one species, so that you can claim or imply that the species in question was poofed into existence by magic.

The second flaw in the argument of the findings-not-a-big-deal camp is that Homo erectus is a very dominant, mobile, crafty, globalist species. If introspection is disallowed by forced-separation, we know this from its fossil history.

This is incomprehensible. I believe the problem is that you have used the word "introspection" when you meant to say something else, but I can't be sure.

Your description of H. erectus behavior seems to be somewhat exaggerated, and is irrelevant at any rate.

If erectus 'evolved' from habilis somewhere in Africa, and erased its 'close' ancestor gradually everywhere in the continent, the two close species competing for the same resources, how is it possible that for hundreds of thousands of years the two species went on to live side by side with similar characteristics on the same valley.

One possible answer is sympatric speciation. It is an interesting question.

However, you appear to be a victim of the classic "if x evolved from y, why are there still y?" logical flaw. Simply because one species branches off from an ancestor population does not mean that the original population immediately goes extinct.

Mark, I wish I had the time to give as comprehensive a reply as your interesting post deserves, but all I can spare are a few random and ill-thougt-out reactions; I apologize and hope you receive them in the spirit offered.

My understanding of religion is pretty robust, although you might not approve of its initial orientation. I have a degree in biblical studies from an evangelical college, earned while studying for ministry, and worked for Billy Graham. I read a lot of philosophy, and especially enjoy Pascal from the Christian angle. My favorite fiction has always been Catholic in nature, from Walker Percy and Graham Greene to G.K. Chesterton (whose nonfiction I also devoured) to Flannery O'Connor. I cannot claim your level of expertise, but I am not utterly ignorant of the field.

By religion I chiefly meant the superstitions that people have codified into dogmas, and not their activities. The same activities can be undertaken for a variety of reasons, not all of them related to superstition, but the dogmas and beliefs are all due to a willingness to accept something for which there is no evidence on a basis other than its likelihood to be true--fear, say, or tradition or compassion or some subjective drive. I tried to avoid the insulting, but more accurate, term superstition, and I do not think that religion has any relation whatever to ethics, since I have no religious beliefs or practices but am massively more ethical than is a child-raping priest who knows Church dogma and recites the mass.

What I mean when I say that religion (by which I mean supernatural truth claims) doesn't work is that it provides no meaningful information that can be used on any level. It fails as ethical instruction, that is true, but because it tells us nothing about reality, it cannot even be a source for meaning, because it is demonstrably based on false premises. I am not restricting my claim about religions failure on the flaws of a few votaries; I am saying that religion contributes nothing to overall human flourishing, and its sole excuse for existing any more seems to relate mostly to a false fear and falser comfort. Religion is created the disease so it could provide the cure. This is not useful. What I am saying, Mark, is that as disagreeable as he can be, I agree with Christopher Hitchens that religion poisons everything. If I implied anything shy of that, I apologize for being imprecise.

I am a historian, not a scientist. I have also been a long time fan of Stephen Jay Gould's essays. Anyone conversnat with the work of the late professor Gould would hardly be surprised at this recent development. What is bothersom is that presumed science repo9rters, who ought to be up to date on these matters, show so littel understanding sbout the bush and ladder evolutionary metaphors.

Greg Peterson -

Your comment was addressed to Mark. I have a couple of very basic comments and questions.

What I mean when I say that religion (by which I mean supernatural truth claims) doesn't work is that it provides no meaningful information that can be used on any level.

I guess my question would be, if you mean "supernatural truth claims", why not just say "supernatural truth claims"? Although that term is itself potentially problematic (what's "supernatural"? what's "truth"?), it's even more problematic if you say "religion" when you mean "supernatural truth claims", and some other guy might be saying "religion" and meaning something else.

I do not think that religion has any relation whatever to ethics, since I have no religious beliefs or practices but am massively more ethical than is a child-raping priest who knows Church dogma and recites the mass.

I strongly agree that secular humanists and some others can be as ethical as anyone else, without self-defining as "religious", and that many self-defined religious people are, as in your example, unethical. However, again, it's a matter of clarity, perhaps. This does not mean that "religion has nothing to do with ethics".

I am saying that religion contributes nothing to overall human flourishing, and its sole excuse for existing any more seems to relate mostly to a false fear and falser comfort. Religion is created the disease so it could provide the cure. This is not useful. What I am saying, Mark, is that as disagreeable as he can be, I agree with Christopher Hitchens that religion poisons everything. If I implied anything shy of that, I apologize for being imprecise.

Lacking a definition for either "religion" or "human flourishing", I'll only point out my objection to the general line of reasoning that seems to be associated with Christopher Hitchens.

Apologies in advance if I'm being unfair or oversimplifying, if I make an honest error please correct me in a collegial way rather than accusing me of deliberate dishonesty.

My objection here is the lack of control data. With the possible exception of twentieth century communist societies, we have no model of how humans "would" behave if there was "no religion". Now, you might point out that unjustified violence and theft are things humans do, that are done in all societies, and always have been done, that we have no model of a human socieity lacking those things, and that yet we can logically see that it would be "better" if they didn't do so.

However, the problem is that unjustified violence and theft are directly harmful, and more or less always harmful in all their effects, and more or less easy to define. "Religion" doesn't meet these criteria. Although a great deal of harm is justified or caused by what seems to be religion - including, for example, efforts to teach pseudoscience in public schools - there are many counter-examples of people claiming to feel good or be motivated to do good things by "religion".

I'm not trying to start a flame war here; quite the opposite. I'm just sharing some of my thoughts on why I consider this to be a complex topic, and one on which, in my view, people can hold many diverse, equally valid views, without contradicting the scientific understanding of physical reality.

And I apologize for having to use shorthand because I'm writing on a lunch break during an insanely busy workday. I can't possibly comment here on all the worthy topics you raise, but will only say that I used the term "religion" because that was the term used in the post to which I was responding. From Mark's use of the term, I inferred that he was defining it roughly as something other than "science," which I took to be metaphysical claims. I realize these are slippery terms, and the value of clear definition. I don't wish to align myself too closely with all that Hitchens has written (though the boy has flare to burn), but I do agree with him that a commitment to unproved propositions (including secular ones included in, say, Communism) will almost invariably lead to inhumanity and lethal self-deception. It persists because it can also lead to palliation. In this sense it is perhaps like a drug that will make you relatively (though falsely) "happy," right up to the moment it kills you. Does this happen to everyone, or at the same level, or all the time? No, I wish I had not implied that it does. But the overall effect has not been salutary, I do not think. Your post was thoughtful and provocative and deserves a deeper treatment, so please excuse me that this rapid reaction is all I can afford. Perhaps we can cross wits again sometime--and I'll try to bring more wit to the game.

Oh crud, I can't resist one final note: It is true that we don't have much for controls as far as secular societies go, but we do have controls as far as individuals and even communities of nonbelievers goes, including major portions of Asian and European countries. What we find is not always completely comforting. There are problems. That is the human condition--to have problems. But also to strive toward solutions, I think. And I think the best chance we have at finding solutions is to face reality head-on. I have been more or less successful in tackling many of life's existential challenges thanks to purely secular philosophies (now finances and home repair are other matters entirely!). I know--a sample of one is an anecdote, not a study. But what I'd like to suggest is that the experiment is going on, all around you, as people find a nonreligious, reality-based life deeply satisfying despite the dire warnings by many religionists that such is not possible. We have rats running the maze while being shot at, which should count for something.

Mike,

Fine post, but I have a question.

In the few conversations I have had with Loring Brace and with the few papers I have read in the human evolution field, it is my understanding, however imperfect it might be, that H. habilis material is somewhat fragmentary and rather variable morphometrically speaking. It seems to me that while H. habilis is a good solid taxon, the material that has been assigned to it is rather broad. Therefore, the assignment of a skull of H. habilis is due to its anatomical similarity to the type. Do I have that right? Or is it just the case that H. habilis was probably a somewhat variable species?

Any human evolution specialists care to weigh in?

MB

Greg -

Putting religious issues aside, I very strongly endorse reality-based living.

Thanks, harold my bud. I don't mean to come off so stand-offish, and I think it is important that I state unequivocally that I LOVED being a Christian and derived a great deal of value from the experience. Frankly, religion of that type seems to me a sort of ideal set of training wheels for life. But Paul puts it very well--it's OK to use training wheels as children, but when we are grown we put away childish things. We lose the pleasure of make-believe and replace it with the pleasure of knowledge and discovery and courage. And in that maturation, religious views (faith-based commitments--pick your own term...I think we all know what is intended when religion is used in ordinary conversation)suffer damage. One need not become an atheist, obviously. But simple orthodoxy is not consistent with reality. It just isn't. One solution is to try to warp one's perceptions until they fit a set dogma. But another--I think more successful--tactic is to allow reality to shape our theories about the cosmos. This is the brilliance of science. It's why a new idea about human evolution is never a threat, but an exciting spur to more thought, more research, more discovery. It's what keeps me coming to blogs like this one, and keeps me very skeptical of the rigid claims of the revealed religions.

I was irritated with the Maeve Leakey quotation. Surely she knows that a species may live alongside a decendant species? Apparently not.
But I believe the original debate about the 'missing link' was over whether *any* transitional forms between apes and humans would ever be found. (In 1859, not even Neanderthals had been positively identified.) When creationists argue that finding yet more transitional forms means that evolution from apes to humans is less rather than more likely, it shows just how devoted they are to moving the goalposts rather than having a real debate.

Mr. Dunford,

I enjoyed your explanation of the recent findings. It was especially nice that you explained them in common speech and avoided technical jargon.

Mr. Peterson, Harold and Mr. Shea,

There was a link given to one of my blogposts concerning science and religion. I wrote a better post today that I think clarifies some of the claims made in the original post.

http://thomism.wordpress.com/2007/08/10/why-science-and-religion-procee…

As a reluctantly converted cladist, I have some problems with the analysies of relationships presented here. Hennig's seminal book became available in English in 1966; however, I did not get convinced enought to publish my first cladistic analyis of a group of species until the late 90's.

In general, cladists (there are a number of morphs) hold that ancestors cannot be recognized. One can state a hypothesis of relationship among three species thusly in text. (species A(species B + species C)) The cladogram (which I do not know how to draw here) would have a basal hypothetical ancestor of all three species with two branches ascending. Species A would be at the tip of one branch. The other branch a ways up would have a second hypothetical ancestor unique to species B and C. Species B and C would be at the tip of branches ascending from their unique hypothetical ancestor. The length of the branches might reflect the hypothesized closeness of relationship among the forms mentioned. The hypothesis of relationship thus generated predicts that the unique common ancestor of B and C arose after the unique common ancestor of A, B and C. The tree is drawn based on uniquely shared characteristics of the organisms and whether A,B or C are living today, or only known from fossils is irrelevant.

Among modern systematic biologists, cladistic analysis is the broadly accepted way to generate testable hypotheses of relationship. For various reasons, workers on human related fossil forms have been the slowest to adopt cladistic techniques. Gould's bush example fits cladistics very nicely. A more committed, and not so nice, cladist than myself would tell you that the Leakeys are telling "just so" stories and not doing science in its basic sense of presenting testable hypothes.

I've posted a hasily written but cogent commentary on this at my home page, under "newsworthy." Please have a look. (And now, I go on vacation, hence the haste.)

The fossil discoveries and their 'challenge' to evolutionary theory has itself evolved into a religious debate.

Mark P Shea asked for a definition of 'religion'. First we need to define 'God'. What is 'God'?

How about defining 'God' as a being which science can never explain, that has a consciousness and at some point, interfered with the physical universe, and possibly interferes now, by answering prayers and causing miracles.

(To counter arguments:
i)If God never intervened in our physical universe then it is not relevant to any aspect of our existance.
ii)If science can explain it, then 'God' is just a cleverer being, existing at our level in our phsical universe
iii) I said 'interfered with the physical universe' to include deists and the lowest level of the intelligent designer believers - the 'God' who twiddled the basic factors at the lowest level - the strength of nuclear forces etc and then sat back and watched things develop over the aeons.)

With that, one could define a religion as an organised group that believes in this being which lies beyond science .

Is the above acceptable to you Mark?

Now we've gone there, the next step should be to analyse the data to either support or detract the theory of this 'God'.

Instead, Mark assumes the existance of this 'God' and says "The primary consideration (from a Catholic perspective) is "Who is God and what is our relationship with him?"

This is the wrong starting point. Prove that God exists, and then talk about 'our relationship' with it.

Science moves on, it brings us closer to the truth. There are things that science cannot explain. It appears over 70% of the universe is dark matter, which does not consist of matter as we know it (it is not atoms / electrons / protons or neutrons). Current calculations indicate that pure empty space - space which contains neither matter nor dark matter has energy (appearing to confound the E=mc2 equation).

If you cannot understand that evolution is real (or might be) then the answer should not be 'God', it should be 'I cannot understand this, but there must be an explanation, and that explanation should be knowledgable.' To assume a 'God' is laziness in the extreme. (There is a further level -if humans are so special, and needed an intelligent designer, then is this 'God' not more special and therefore need and even more intelligent designer, and so on ad infinitum...?)

Religion is the true domain of laziness. If it is beyond our understanding, then it is 'God's hand'. Science will march on and will move towards answers.

It' ain't religion, its's how it's marketed. Shea boldly qubibbles about evolution. How many caught it? He has ...no particular problem...with evolution. That's why Mike Dunford confidently "called the shot," predicting that fundies would would claim that we know nothing about human origins. see fer yerself. here's the called shot from Dunford prediting the fundie headline--

"shows us just how utterly ignorant we were about where we came from"

and Shea's actual headline--

"Science Slowly Builds up Its Picture of Just How Ignorant We Are of Human Origins
The more we know, the less we know."

Shea's headline is misleading. It suggests that we are profoundly ignorant of human origins when the opposite is true. Shea is preaching to the converted here--his fundie audience--check out the comments. That's why Shea can say with a straight face that he's got no particular problem with evolution...he's got a bibleful of ""general"" problems but won't come out and actually say so.

It's not a question of science not understanding religion. People don't understand why religouis types have to misrepresent science. That's a form of "bearing false witness," IMHO. Shea complains that critics don't understand religion. What's to understand? The typical manifestation of religion in science circles is distortion of facts, hostility, mistrust and often outright lies. Shea's post is one more example of that. A wise man once said, "By their fruits ye shall know them."

First, produce "good fruit" (tell the truth) and then we'll talk ablut the rest of the orchard.

But, hey, great article on the discovery. Sorry to divert but my rss feed on evolution had both PT and Shea back to back. Too rich

I'm not familiar with the details of evolutionary theory, so what I'm about to say may be completely wrong, but I didn't interpret Leakey's quote to be so ridiculous. I think what she was saying is that the picture in Mike Dunsford's family tree showing Homo H and Homo E splitting from a common (unknown) ancestor is much more likely than the picture in which HH continues to live after HE splits off from it.

As I understand it, (what I'm about to say amounts to the reconstruction of an entire argument from a single remark, which is akin to reconstructing a skull from a piece of a jawbone) the reasoning is that the appearance of two species that inhabit the same ecological niche is unstable. Either one will outcompete the other, or they both will evolve to fill different niches. The first case leads to anagenesis (a word I just learned) and the second case leads to a split of one species into two new species.

The question "If humans evolved from apes, then why are there still apes?" may have the answer: There aren't any more apes of the type that humans evolved from. The common ancestor is extinct.

The idea that most animal speciation is allopatric is likely the majority view among systematic biologists. Alloptric (different country) speciation is speciation after some sort of geographic separtation (vicariance event)of two populations of the parent species. This suggests that the speciation event separating Homo erectus and Homo habilis did not occur in one area, but in two separated areas. Under this speciation model, finding remains of sister species in the same local area at the same time suggests that one had dispersed into the range of the other, not that speciation had occurred in situ.

Species, by definition, are different from each other. We can only speculate on how much niche overlap existed between the two species of Homo. If there was enough niche separation, they could in fact coexist. There are many present day examples of morphologically very similar species living together. I have seen only one study which suggested that the two very similar species living together occupied exactly the same niche. I have seen many other studies documenting (sometimes fairly subtile) nich differences between coexisting sister species. Competition theory says that two species cannot coexist if their niche overlap is too broad. There are a number of interesting evolutionary implications to this.

A noteworthy point to be made: Creationists and ID supporters claim that Darwinists are dogmatic and suppress data that threatens the status quo. The release of this story clearly contradicts those claims. While the creationists may cluck about "how little we really know about evolution," they ignore this clear evidence of science working in the fashion that science should work. ID supporters say they "follow the evidence where it leads." That's pretty clearly what's going on here.
Every time I see a headline like this, I want to ask the ID/creationist camp: "Where are the intelligent design headlines?"

Hi there :)

Very succinct explanation of the implications of that Nature paper. Media does a great job of stirring up controversy, eh?

As for the science vs. faith issues raised once again in the comments, I've said a lot already here:
http://tecigurl.blogspot.com/2007/08/dogmatic-scientists.html
http://tecigurl.blogspot.com/2007/08/darwinism-needs-revision.html
http://tecigurl.blogspot.com/2007/08/inconsistency-on-one-side-vicious…

As objective/open-minded scientists and/or as moral/loving faithful, we need to understand each other more, and be more patient in explaining our side, especially if we're confident that we know the truth right? :) Enough of the personal attacks and labelling. Please take a respectful listen, and maybe "they" will also respectfully listen to you. You need not be "converted" either way, but maybe "they" have some sensible points that you could learn from too.

With love (and exercising as much restraint as possible because I have papers due; just read my blog :D),
--- a Christian physics grad student :)

Why, RedPolygon, the ID headlines are right here!

If a creationist tells me that the Leaky paper refutes evolution, I'm going to remind him that it actually trashes a lot of treasured ideas held by creationists. After all, Leaky found a Homo habilis jaw (So much for Lubenow's claim that H. habilis is an invalid taxon that nobody uses any more) and a largely complete Homo erectus skull (Which even Duane T. Gish couldn't possibly point to and say 'That's a monkey!')Furthermore, finding a Homo erectus in Africa, rather than Southeast Asia, puts it in both the right time and the right place to be the ancestor of Rhodesian man (Homo heidelbergensis.)

QUOTE- "My main concern on these boards is not with other peoples' private beliefs at any rate, but with creationist efforts to violate the rights of students in public schools and to influence public policy with pseudoscience in other arenas as well."

hear hear!

Where did all the religion come into the debate? Its totally irrelevant to the issue.

Frankly I cant understand that observation of two examples of past hominids has anything to do with promotion or decrying the existence of Santa Claus.

If the dating of the two finds is correct then all we have is the continuation of one ape. thought to be extinct.