Finding showing human ancestor older than previously thought offers new insights into evolution
Modern humans never co-existed with Homo erectus—a finding counter to previous hypotheses of human evolution—new excavations in Indonesia and dating analyses show. The work was co-directed by NYU anthropologist Susan Antón. Pictured are skulls of Homo erectus uncovered in the 1930s in Indonesia. © Kenneth Garrett Photography (KennethGarrett.com)
(PhysOrg.com) -- Modern humans never co-existed with Homo erectus -- a finding counter to previous hypotheses of human evolution—new excavations in Indonesia and dating analyses show. The research, reported in the journal PLoS One, offers new insights into the nature of human evolution, suggesting a different role for Homo erectus than had been previously thought.
The work was conducted by the Solo River Terrace (SoRT) Project, an international group of scientists directed by anthropologists Etty Indriati of Gadjah Mada University in Indonesia and Susan Antón of New York University.
Homo erectus is widely considered a direct human ancestor—it resembles modern humans in many respects, except for its smaller brain and differently shaped skull—and was the first of our ancestors to migrate out of Africa, approximately 1.8 million years ago. Homo erectus went extinct in Africa and much of Asia by about 500,000 years ago, but appeared to have survived in Indonesia until about 35,000 to 50,000 years ago at the site of Ngandong on the Solo River. These late members of Homo erectus would have shared the environment with early members of our own species, Homo sapiens, who arrived in Indonesia by about 40,000 years ago.
The existence of the two species simultaneously has important implications for models about the origins of modern humans. One of the models, the Out of Africa or replacement model, predicts such overlap. However, another, the multiregional model, which posits that modern humans originated as a result of genetic contributions from hominin populations all around the Old World (Africa, Asia, Europe), does not. The late survival of Homo erectus in Indonesia has been used as one line of support for the Out of Africa model.
However, findings by the SoRT Project show that Homo erectus' time in the region ended before modern humans arrived there. The analyses suggest that Homo erectus was gone by at least 143,000 years ago—and likely by more than 550,000 years ago. This means the demise of Homo erectus occurred long before the arrival of Homo sapiens.
"Thus, Homo erectus probably did not share habitats with modern humans," said Indriati.
The SoRT Project's investigations occurred in Ngandong and Jigar, two sites in the "20-meter terrace" of the Solo River, Indonesia. The sediments in the terrace were formed by the flooding of the ancient river, but currently sit above the Solo River because the river has cut downward through time. The terrace has been a rich source for the discovery of Homo erectus and other animal fossils since the 1930s.
As recently as 1996, a research team dated these sites of hominin, or early human, fossils to as young as 35,000-50,000 years old. The analyses used a technique that dates teeth, and thus provided ages for several animals discovered at the sites. However, other scholars suggested the sites included a mixture of older hominins and younger animals, raising questions about the true age of the hominin remains.
The goal of the SoRT team, which included both members of the 1996 group and its critics, was to understand how the sites in the terrace formed, whether there was evidence for mixing of older and younger remains, and just how old the sites were.
Since 2004, team members have conducted analyses of animal remains, geological surveys, trenching, and archaeological excavations. The results from all of these provide no evidence for the mixing of older and younger remains. All the evidence suggests the sites represent just a short time period.
"The postmortem damage to the animal remains is consistent and suggests very little movement of the remains by water," explained Briana Pobiner, the project's archaeologist and a paleoanthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. "This means that it is unlikely that very old remains were mixed into younger ones."
In addition, clues from the sediments exposed during excavation suggest to the projects' geoarchaeologists, Rhonda Quinn, Chris Lepre, and Craig Feibel, of Seton Hall, Columbia, and Rutgers universities, that the deposits occurred over a short time period. The teeth found in different excavation layers at Jigar are also all nearly identical in age, supporting the conclusion that mixing across geological periods did not occur.
"Whatever the geological age of the sites is, the hominins, animals, and sediments at Ngandong and Jigar are all the same age," said project co-leader Susan Antón.
The team applied two different dating techniques to the sites. Like earlier work, they used the techniques—U-series and Electron Spin Resonance, or ESR—that are applied to fossilized teeth. They also used a technique called argon-argon dating that is applied to volcanic minerals in the sediments. All three methods use radioactive decay in different ways to assess age and all yielded robust and methodologically valid results, but the ages were inconsistent with one another.
The argon-argon results yielded highly precise ages of about 550,000 years old on pumices—very light, porous volcanic products found at Ngandong and Jigar.
"Pumices are hard to rework without breaking them, and these ages are quite good, so this suggests that the hominins and fauna are this old as well," said project geochronologist Carl Swisher of Rutgers University.
By contrast, the oldest of the U-series and ESR ages, which were conducted at Australian National University by Rainer Grün, are just 143,000 years.
The difference in the ages means that one of the systems is providing an age for something other than the formation of the sites and fossils in them. One possibility is that the pumices are, in fact, reworked, or mixed in, from older rocks. The other possibility is that the ESR and U-series ages are dating an event that occurred after the sites were formed, perhaps a change in the way groundwater moved through the sites.
Either way, the ages provide a maximum and a minimum for the sites – and both of these ages are older than the earliest Homo sapiens fossils in Indonesia. Thus, the authors concluded that the idea of a population of Homo erectus surviving until late in time in Indonesia and potentially interacting with Homo sapiens seems to have been disproven.
Provided by
New York University
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Jun 29, 2011
Rank: 4.8 / 5 (21)
Jun 29, 2011
Rank: 2.4 / 5 (5)
Acronyms Scarcely Suffice (ASS)
Jun 29, 2011
Rank: 3.8 / 5 (20)
@dogbert: Feel free to downvote me like you did aroc91, but if you do I expect you to post the following sentence. "I agree with Kevinrts."
Jun 29, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (14)
Also, if God did hand craft the bones that you purport to show why evolution is wrong then why did he leave so many holes? I mean, gods are supposed to be all-perfect and all-knowing beings, right? Are the holes on purpose or did he just forget? Why go through the trouble at all when not fabricating fake evidence creates a much clearer message. And anyways, why would God care in the first place, unless he is vain himself?
Jun 30, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (16)
Another lie from a Creationist is what we have in that remark. Stuff that was alive 500,000 years ago disproves Genesis. It is amazing the way YEC's claim support from stuff that CLEARLY disproves their position.
I see. Reality is filthy and lies that support fantasy beliefs are wonderful. Glad to be clear on that.
Only an idiot could call 500,000 year old bones of that show that humans evolved, support of a young Earth. Do you eat with those same lying fingers?>>
Jun 30, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (14)
It IS science and 'filthy dreamers' is the sort of thing a psychotic fanatic would say. Are you planning an auto-de-fe?
You do? Where? So far nothing supports that claim. This article clearly shows the world has evolution and is far older than Genesis allows.
That is really sick. It is sad that religion could so distort the mind of anyone to the degree they have to lie so much.
Yes. That was a very sad post you made. I sorry that anyone has such a distorted mind.
Now when was the Flood?
Ethelred
Jun 30, 2011
Rank: 1.2 / 5 (19)
I'm not suggesting that they are a plant. I think they were either pre-flood people that died before or during the flood or post-flood people that died within a few hundred years after the flood. My main reason for holding this view is the thickness of the skulls and the size of the brain that would fit in its brain case.
"According to a 2009 paper http://www.ncbi.n...19283594 researchers have found that the average brain loses about 2 grams per year from the age of 26 to 80."
Also, the size and thickness of the skull changes with human aging:
http://www.ncbi.n...0442.pdf
The idea being that if a person were to live for hundreds of years there would be a reduction in their brain mass as well as changes in the size, thickness and shape of their skull. Which is exactly what we see in these so called "homo erectus" skulls. Obviously, they would have lost brain mass at a different rate than we do now.
Jun 30, 2011
Rank: 1 / 5 (16)
"Now when was the Flood?"
According to this essay: http://www.faithf...arth.pdf
the great flood occured in the year 2578 BC.
Also the author of the essay, which is titled: "The Exact Age of the Earth", goes through the entire calculation from the beginning and covers the entire old testament with references all the way in a step by step fashion and he maintains that he believes the calculation has an accuracy of or - 25 years. He concludes that at present the age of the earth is about 6245 years based on figures given in the King James Version of the Bible.
As for me I don't claim to know the exact year, month, or day. However, the calculations in that essay do seem Biblically sound to me. I would be willing to say that his date is probably accurate to within less than one hundred years of time.
I hoped that answered your question!
And I hope you enjoy your evening!
Jun 30, 2011
Rank: 4.5 / 5 (8)
Oooh, a date! I can't wait for the demolition job. Over to you Ethel...
Jun 30, 2011
Rank: 4.4 / 5 (14)
God has no hands. Only tentacles.
rAmen!
Jun 30, 2011
Rank: 4.6 / 5 (11)
And yet these fossils are older than 6245 years, so your young earth and flood belief is just pure bunk with no actuall facts
Jun 30, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (11)
Is religion. There is no actual evidence for a Flood.
Yes. So do other things like cartilage. None of that makes 500,000 year old bones into something that died in the alleged Great Flood.
That would cover Biblical characters that were alleged to have lived for hundreds of years.
No. We see skulls with differently shaped teeth, differently SHAPED eyebrow ridges, the foramen magnum is not in the same place as it is on modern humans.>>
Jun 30, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (11)
No as there is no evidence to support that claim and most of them would likely have died at fairly early ages just as humans do when they live hard lives. And humans don't always lose brain mass. Those of us that keep learning new things DON'T lose brain mass.
That is, give or take a century or two, what I have seen before.
http://www.cynet....line.htm
That one has it 2344BC. There has been a lot of effort to move it back in time. The one you have is the earliest I have seen that actually uses Biblically justifiable dates.>>
Jun 30, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (13)
They are BIBLICALLY sound. Unfortunately they are completely unfounded in real history or physical evidence.
There is this little problem of the Sumerians and the Egyptians actually having written history that goes back farther than that. The Egyptians were building pyramids then. Had been for some time and continued to do so for centuries with no stopping to be drowned and then replaced by an entirely new culture with different language. Nowhere on Earth is there any historical, archaeological or geological evidence to support the idea that the highest mountain was covered by water so a clearly incompetent god could kill all but 8 people right smack dab in the middle of the pyramid building era.>>
Jun 30, 2011
Rank: 3.7 / 5 (3)
Jun 30, 2011
Rank: 3 / 5 (2)
I always thought the Black Sea deluge theory did a good job of explaining a possibility for the myth of the Great Flood (or atleast the basis for the story). Obviously it isn't as the bible depicts it and there is alot of geological controversy over it, but its atleast an explanation that has some evidence for how the story evolved.
Jun 30, 2011
Rank: 1 / 5 (12)
Likely as not the role of 'God' is actually an ancient account of the apparent role cosmic radiation from nearby super massive Nova explosions has in the relatively sudden arrival of new species?
Isnt it likely that 'Scientists' so obviously and fanatically pushing the Marxist dogma that we are just a version of African monkeys and deliberately ignoring much evidence that fails to conform to this theory and in so doing have broken our trust
Ethelred; "There is no actual evidence for a Flood." really? 100m sea level rises didnt actually flood any land? How so?Populated coastal areas didnt suffer? What about the English Channel? Wasnt it once inhabited land before it was flooded?
Jun 30, 2011
Rank: 4.4 / 5 (7)
Troll.
Jul 01, 2011
Rank: 1.4 / 5 (10)
Is that a real technical acronym? let me guess;
Truth's really odd [for the] logically lobotomised
Jul 01, 2011
Rank: 2.8 / 5 (11)
I fixed that for you.
Jul 03, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (3)
Too bad.
As for the replacement vs. multiregional I don't see this as having a lot of relevance. Since we have genetic evidence that Neanderthal interbred with Modern Homo Sapiens the multiregional hypothesis already has real support besides the obvious Neanderthal in Milford Wolpoff's heritage. This simply removes one possible source of Sapiens-Erectus interaction. Considering the serious genetic bottleneck in Homo Sapiens history I suspect that there was a shortage of Erectus to interbreed with whether it was genetically possible or not.
In other words I have serious disagreements with some of the thinking in the article.
And I was really annoyed when my Internet connection went down before I posted the last of my reply to the Fanatic. So here it comes.
Ethelred
Jul 03, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (4)
How did you not notice that the date is incompatible with reality?
Its morning. And I an enjoying it. It is so rare to find a YEC that is willing to answer that question. You and Yellowdart are the only ones on this site so far. The rest follow the Discovery Asylum's demand that YEC's never answer that question. Clearly they know they have a problem with the Biblical date and real history. I gather you didn't know when the Egyptians built the pyramids.
So now that you do know that the Great Flood never really happened are you going to accept reality?
Ethelred
Jul 03, 2011
Rank: 4.4 / 5 (7)
It happened. That is certain. Humans lived there and that too is certain. It MIGHT have inspired some of the flood stories. It isn't at all what Argon believes in or wrote about.
Argon went away instead of answering my questions. Maybe he really didn't know there was a problem with the date he gave.
There are other possibilities. The Tigris Euphrates valley got flooded many times and one of the those could easily be the real source of the older Gilgamesh story.
Ethelred
Jul 03, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (1)
Jul 03, 2011
Rank: 1 / 5 (3)
Jul 03, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (1)
Yes. That fits Argon. Now to see if it fits your post he was replying to. I have this sneaking suspicion that you are the one with the problem with logic. Yes, I wrote that before reading the post in question. Wargasm is such a Trollish name, in both senses of the word.
Sure isn't written that way to anyone else but you. I think the creativity is entirely your own. In other words your rewriting the Bible in an attempt to troll.
Now that could be in the Bible but is the action of Jehovah not civilization. You don't get cities till later in the Bible.>>
Jul 03, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (1)
That is shamanism. Confusing the map with the territory.
No. The Bible is pretty clear the Earth was created in Genesis one. Could be created from matter that was already there as the 'without form' remark in inherently vague. The Sun and Moon's creation is much more clear despite there being light before the creation of the Sun.
No. Got any evidence for one? Novas and Super Novas leave debris and the Bible really isn't even 6000 years old. Not even 4000.
There are no sudden arrivals of new species.>>
Jul 03, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (1)
Idiot. Real scientists not 'scientists'. Neither Darwin nor Wallace were Marxists. Darwin was filthy rich and his wife more so.
Idiot again. We are not monkeys. We are APES. Marxism has nothing to do with that. It is mere reality. Monkeys have tails. Not having a tail but all the other primate characteristics makes it clear that we are of the Primate Clad known as Apes. Only people that can't handle the truth want to pretend that we aren't apes. Yes that includes those Anthropologists that don't have the guts to admit we are less hairy apes. Not hairless. Just look at Robin Williams. Or Milford Wolpoff.
Would you, unlike Argon, care to post even a smidgen of evidence to support that?>>
Jul 03, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (1)
Yes. Really.
Where I did I make that claim? I said there was no GREAT FLOOD as described in the Bible. I am fully aware that the sea levels have gone up over thousands of years since the last Ice Age.
Not very many of those 10,000 years ago. Agriculture was just getting started permanent settlements were rare so moving uphill wasn't a struggle. There is one known town that is under water from prior to, oh say, Jericho but it was pretty small and off the Indian coast not the Mediterranean.
How is that relevant to the Great Flood of the Bible?>>
Jul 03, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (1)
Yeah that was a troll you posted not a reasoned response since you deliberately brought up stuff that you know full well has nothing to do with the Noah's Ark story. Too bad for you I pretend that trolls should be treated as if they could actually engage in reasoned discourse. It makes them look silly. Kind of like carefully cleaning someone off instead of laughing when they fall on a banana peel.
Now if you really want to have a discussion you should try to stick to topic instead of irrelevancies like rising seas that took place 4000 years before YEC's think the Earth even existed and 6000 years before the Flood was supposed to have occurred. You could post evidence that supports you instead of crap that has nothing to do with the actual discussion.
Ethelred
Jul 03, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (1)
http://www.thehis...-map.jpg
Scripture, from the King James, that condemns the round Earth.
Ex 17:12
Joshua 10:12-13
Chron. 16:30
Ps. 136:6-7
Isaiah 12:10
Isaiah 11:12
Isaiah 14:7
Rev. 7:12
The Earth is flat! We are Deceived! The Bible says so.
Hrumpth, cough.
Jul 04, 2011
Rank: not rated yet
In no case does this evidence prove that there was no existing homo erectus existing 50K years ago. There is no evidence either way.
Jul 05, 2011
Rank: not rated yet
Jul 05, 2011
Rank: not rated yet
Heh that map certainly made me laugh inside, especially loved how the heavenly bodies are suspended!
Jul 06, 2011
Rank: 1 / 5 (8)
Jul 06, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (3)
Changed. Due to improved testing. They are now more accurate. And still quite unlike what is in the Bible. Indeed the bones are now known to be older yet.
Lie. They are still the same bones. Just now known to be older.
Would you care to show just where that is? Matches quite well. Its WAY outside of what Genesis allows.
When they lose their minds and stop going evidence.
Those bones show that claim is false. So do the bones of Archaic Modern humans, Neanderthals, and Australopithecus. They show evolution and they show that the world is not even close to 6000 years old. Or whatever lie you are actually telling yourself about the age of the Earth.>>
Jul 06, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (3)
So again I will ask you. Why should we think the Bible is the word of Jehovah when it does not match the world we live in? And where is that evidence you claimed exists for the Flood? And why didn't the Egyptians notice being drowned?
Ethelred
Jul 06, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (4)
About Homo Erectus: We know that the Neanderthals shared Eurasia with the related Denisovan humans (known from the DNA of a single finger bone). These two (and possibly more) relatively advanced archaic human species would have out-evolved and out-competed relic populations of H. Erectus long ago (leaving only a small island population of "hobbits" on Flores).
PS The Flood myth was borrowed into the Old Testament from Mesopotamia during the Babylonian captivity. Analysis of the Hebrew shows this part is younger than other parts of the Old testament. But no fundamentalist will ever bother to check these facts.
The Coast along the Canadian west coast shows a nice, clear story of post-glacial rebound, with the land rising from the sea since the end of the ice age. This sequence alone is more than twice as old as the Fundie "young Earth".
Jul 11, 2011
Rank: 1 / 5 (4)
I think where we differ, at least in matters of determining the age of a structure or artifact, is in that you seem to think that rates are a constant and therefore time is the variable (uniformitarianism) whereas I think that time is constant and rate is the variable (catastrophism). Now it is obvious to me that if you could prove that rates of change have remained constant than the sound conclusion would be reached that vast expanses of time have conditioned the world and the objects we find buried therein (uniformitarianism). However, if you consider that rates of change have varied over time (which has been observed, examples being: floods, droughts, fires, earthquakes, diseases, and human activities) then the sound conclusion is that the rates of change determine the amount of time needed for a change to occur. Without knowing the actual rates of change over time or without assuming a contant rate of change over time it is not possible to even make a calculation of age
Jul 11, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (2)
As for catastrophophism vs uniformity they are not exclusive. Catastrophes that significantly change the rate of, erosion for instance, are rare. Now if you are talking about 100 or 1,000 year floods those are measurable over time and the 1000 year part is pretty well nailed down and the 1000 year bit is pretty clear as well.
Of course there is no evidence of a world wide flood covering the highest mountain so that particular catastrophe is pure fantasy.
Ethelred
Jul 11, 2011
Rank: 1 / 5 (3)
"Of course it is possible to determine age of many things. C14 dating, Potassium-Argon, Uranium all these are quite reliable and cover time from the beginning the Earth."
My point exactly! The dating methods you mention all assume a constant rate over time. However, there is one more thing we must consider in our calculations besides rate and time and that is: quantity; if we don't know how much material we began with then how do we know how much is missing? It's the burning lamp problem: you walk into a room in which you find a burning lamp: how long has the lamp been burning?
In order to have your answer you MUST know: how much oil was in the lamp when it was lit (quantity), the rate of oil consumption at all times during its burning (rate) and that it has not been snuffed out and relit (time, which must be our constant for the answer to be valid)!
By assumming that the lamp was full and the rate of burning has been constant you can only calculate a MAXIMUM age!
Jul 11, 2011
Rank: 1 / 5 (2)
The problem with assumptions is that they can be true or false and every calculation of age is only as true as their assumptions.
So, if you are going to allow your soul to hinge on an assumption: it better damn well be correct!
Jul 12, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (2)
I see, you want to got the Jehovah is a liar route. That is what you do when you claim Jehovah created the world to look exactly unlike what it says in the Bible. Which makes Jehovah unreliable and thus the question is why you think the world is the lie instead of the Bible? Me I go on reality. Men wrote the Bible and they got a lot wrong.
It isn't a lamp. Its radioactive atoms and we know how they formed. In most cases they are a comparison of one kind of atom vs its decay products. We don't care how much potassium was there to begin with.>>
Jul 12, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (2)
http://en.wikiped...c_dating
It isn't a lamp. I only need to know the decay rate and the RATIO of the decay atoms vs the remaining source atoms. The analogy is completely bogus and only people ignorant of how radiometric dating is actually done can be gulled that nonsense. Go get an education from COMPETENT people and not members of Liars For JesusTM such as Ken Hamm.
You can't even manage to get that right. You calculate the MINIMUM age even with that bullshit you were conned into believing. Why did claim a maximum when it is clearly a minimum?>>
Jul 12, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (2)
And all of them are irrelevant to radiometric dating where it is RATIOS that are measured and where we actually do know the rates of decay.
They are ROCKS not lamps. They can't be refueled without there being evidence of the finagling. They CAN loose the decay products since those are often gasses and thus the the actual age would be OLDER if the decay were lost.>>
Jul 12, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (2)
I doubt that there are souls. The source of the claims for their existence is same as that crap you just posted. There is NO evidence that souls actually exist.
If you are going to waste hours each weak you really should think about how the might be better spent. Perhaps you should start with that Wiki I linked to and then you REALLY need a logic class.>>
Jul 12, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (1)
Why should anyone believe an ancient book written by men was actually the work of an all knowing god when it can't even go two chapters without contradicting itself? Why do YOU think it is the word of Jehovah since the Bible doesn't make the claim. Even if it did why should we believe it? It fails so many tests. For instance:
When was the Great Flood? I ask that because some Creationists believe the Earth is old unlike you, but they still actually believe in a Flood that clearly never happened. If you simply run the numbers the Bible has in it you can calculate how long ago the Flood is supposed to have occurred. So when do you think that was? And how do you reconcile that Biblical date with the physical AND historical evidence that shows the date is quite impossible. That isn't even counting all the evidence that MUST be around today if it had actually happened. Evidence that doesn't exist.
Ethelred
Jul 12, 2011
Rank: 1 / 5 (2)
Look 40 posts up
Jul 12, 2011
Rank: 3 / 5 (2)
Fixed that for you.
Jul 12, 2011
Rank: not rated yet
Radiometric Dating
Speed of light
Red Shift
Radioactive Decay
Dendrochronology
Geology
Archeology
Plate tectonics
Evolution
Biology
This is just a short list. I would imagine there have been Thousands(many many thousands) of individuals involved in these sciences for a LONG time who have (if YEC is right) been hoodwinked by incorrect facts.
My major problem is that all these different disciplines and all the people involved in them Missed out on proving their co-workers wrong (the 2nd most important thing you can do in science, second to proving something right).
Occam's Razor comes into play here as well. With YEC's saying that ALL these areas of science got it wrong, i can't help but think that maybe it's the YEC's who are not right here.