Recently, a fellow young earth creationist brought to my attention a recent news report that supposedly proves the earth is old. The find is an “ancient” jawbone of a person. Here’s one article reporting this find (I will reference this article below): Jaw bone discovered in Ethiopia is oldest known human lineage remains
First, let’s get our facts straight. I learned something a few months ago from Eric Hovind and the team at Creation Today - checking for “fuzzy words”. Fuzzy words are words in sentences that expresses uncertainty about a certain claim. “Perhaps”, “possibly”, “maybe”, “could have”, “is theorized”, are all examples of fuzzy words. So let’s now look at this news report to remove the fuzzy parts and only leave the real facts:
“A lower jaw bone and five teeth discovered on a hillside in Ethiopia are the oldest remains ever found that belong to the genus Homo, the lineage that ultimately led to modern humans.”
Okay, so far so good - no fuzzy words. But this claim by itself doesn’t prove anything. In reality, this sentence is only referring to the next sentences to back it up, so let’s look there:
“Fossil hunters spotted the jaw poking out of a rocky slope in the dry and dusty Afar region of the country about 250 miles from Addis Ababa.”
That’s true, but that still doesn’t show why this is supposedly ancient. It only shows where it was found. Moving on:
“The US-led research team believes the individual lived about 2.8m years ago, when the now parched landscape was open grassland and shrubs nourished by tree-lined rivers and wetlands.”
Here we have our first fuzzy claim - that this jawbone is 2.8 million years old. This conclusion by the research team are uncertain as to the true age of this fossil. So let’s remove that sentence from the picture to only keep the facts. The report continues:
“The remains are about 400,000 years older than fossils which had previously held the record as the earliest known specimens on the Homo lineage.”
Okay, no fuzzy words here, but again, how do they know this? They certainly haven’t given any evidence so far. Let’s continue:
“The discovery sheds light on a profoundly important but poorly understood period in human evolution that played out between two and three million years ago, when humans began the crucial transformation from ape-like animals into forms that used tools and eventually began to resemble modern humans.”
Here’s another fuzzy claim - human evolution happened about 2-3 million years ago. But according to their own statements, it is poorly understood. So they really aren’t certain that human evolution even happened 2-3 million years ago. Moving on:
““This is the the first inkling we have of that transition to modern behaviour. We were no longer solving problems with our bodies but with our brains,” said Brian Villmoare at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas.”
Here’s another fuzzy claim - humans were solving problems with their brains at the supposed (and uncertain) time of this jawbone. An inkling is another way of saying a hint or a clue. In other words, the research team is unsure about what was happening at the supposed time of this jawbone. Let’s continue:
“The new fossil, found at a site called Ledi-Geraru, has a handful of primitive features in common with an ancient forerunner of modern humans called Australopithecus afarensis. The most well-known specimen, the 3m-year-old Lucy, was unearthed in 1974 in Hadar, only 40 miles from the Ledi-Geraru site. But the latest fossil has more modern traits too. Some are seen only on the Homo lineage, such as a shallower chin bone.”
Okay, no fuzzy words here. We’ll get back to this claim in just a moment. Let’s continue:
“The picture that emerges from the fossil record is that 3m years ago, the ape-like Australopithecus afarensis died out and was superseded by two very different human forms. One, called Paranthropus, had a small brain, large teeth and strong jaw muscles for chewing its food. The other was the Homo lineage, which found itself with much larger brains, a solution that turned out to be more successful.”
Another fuzzy claim. By them saying that they have this information from a “picture that emerges” (e.g. a hint, a clue, just pieces of the puzzle), they are admitting their uncertainty of this claim. Moving on:
““By finding this jaw bone we’ve figured out where that trajectory started,” said Villamoare. “This is the first Homo. It marks in all likelihood a major adaptive transition.””
Yet ANOTHER fuzzy claim. They don’t know for sure that this jawbone they found was the first human being that evolved from an ape. They think it is, but that doesn’t make it so! Moving on:
“What drove Australopithethus to extinction and led to the rise of Homo is a mystery, but researchers suspect a dramatic change in the environment transformed the landscape of eastern Africa. “It could be that there was some sort of ecological shift and humans had to evolve or go extinct,” said Villmoare.”
These are even more indicators for this paragraph that this claim is indeed a fuzzy claim. They don’t know what supposedly made man evolve from ape - they’re just speculating! Moving on:
“Other fossils recovered nearby the new human remains suggest that the region was much wetter than Hadar where Lucy was found. Remnants of antelopes, prehistoric elephants, primitive hippos, crocodiles and fish were all recovered from the Ledi-Geraru site, researchers said. Details of the discoveries are reported in two papers published in Science.”
Again, this is another fuzzy claim. These researchers can’t tell you what climate these animals lived in by simply their bones. That’s insane! Moving on:
“The human jaw was discovered in January 2013 by Chalachew Seyoum, an Ethiopian national on the team, and a student at Arizona State University. He was part of a group that had set off from camp that morning to look for fossils on a hill that was later found to be brimming with ancient bones.”
Finally! A claim that isn’t fuzzy! But they never give the reason why that hill was full of “ancient bones.” Oh well. Moving on:
“Villamoare, who was on the expedition, recalled the moment of discovery. “I heard people yelling Brian! Brian! And I went round the corner and there was Chalachew. He recognised it, and said: ‘We’ve got a human.’ It had eroded out of the stratigraphy. It was in two pieces and was missing some of the teeth, but it was clearly of the genus Homo.””
Okay, no fuzzy claims here. I’m sure it was the jawbone of a human being - I have no doubt about that. Let’s continue:
“The fossil bones are too fragmentary to give them a human species name. The jawbone could belong to Homo habilis, known as “handy man”, the earliest known species on the Homo lineage. But Villamoare is not convinced. It could be a new species that lived before Homo habilis.”
Here we go again! This is just another fuzzy claim that this fossil was a missing link to humans (Homo Sapiens). They have no reason to believe this jawbone belonged to anything other than a human. Moving on:
“Other researchers agree. In a separate paper published in Nature, Fred Spoor at University College, London, reports a virtual reconstruction of a Homo habilis skull. “By digitally exploring what Homo habilis really looked like, we could infer the nature of its ancestor, but no such fossils were known,” said Spoor. “Now the Ledi-Geraru jaw has turned up as if on request, suggesting a plausible evolutionary link between Australopithecus afarensis and Homo habilis.””
More fuzzy claims. They don’t know what Homo habilis (the previously mentioned so-called missing link “handy man”) actually looked like! They only could explore the clues of what he looked like. But they can’t just find out things like facial structure of non-bone facial features like ears, the nose, lips, etc. They can’t even find out the skin color, the eye color, or the hair color - or even that he had hair! That’s why they are “exploring”, because they don’t know, and they can’t know. Plus, they don’t even know if this jawbone they found is the missing link between Australopithecus (the famous “Lucy”) and Homo habilis (“handy man”). This is all mere speculation from a bunch of researchers who have way too much time on their hands for imagination. Moving on:
“But until more remains are found, the mystery will remain. The US-led team has been back to the site this January to look for more fossils, but Villamoare said he cannot yet talk about what they did or did not find.”
In other words, this report is admitting that this entire story they have presented us based on their interpretation of the fossils is a big fuzzy story. Since this article is over, let’s reconstruct this article with only the claims that appear to be factual:
“A lower jaw bone and five teeth discovered on a hillside in Ethiopia are the oldest remains ever found that belong to the genus Homo, the lineage that ultimately led to modern humans.
Fossil hunters spotted the jaw poking out of a rocky slope in the dry and dusty Afar region of the country about 250 miles from Addis Ababa.
The remains are about 400,000 years older than fossils which had previously held the record as the earliest known specimens on the Homo lineage.
The new fossil, found at a site called Ledi-Geraru, has a handful of primitive features in common with an ancient forerunner of modern humans called Australopithecus afarensis. The most well-known specimen, the 3m-year-old Lucy, was unearthed in 1974 in Hadar, only 40 miles from the Ledi-Geraru site. But the latest fossil has more modern traits too. Some are seen only on the Homo lineage, such as a shallower chin bone.
The human jaw was discovered in January 2013 by Chalachew Seyoum, an Ethiopian national on the team, and a student at Arizona State University. He was part of a group that had set off from camp that morning to look for fossils on a hill that was later found to be brimming with ancient bones.
Villamoare, who was on the expedition, recalled the moment of discovery. “I heard people yelling Brian! Brian! And I went round the corner and there was Chalachew. He recognised it, and said: ‘We’ve got a human.’ It had eroded out of the stratigraphy. It was in two pieces and was missing some of the teeth, but it was clearly of the genus Homo.””
Alright, now that we see this more factual version of what was discovered, we find that these claims of great age upon this jawbone is a bunch of hot air. There is no sure evidence provided that these bones are really that old. Plus, the last statement from the real article says that their entire story of the age of this jawbone and it’s supposedly evolutionary history is a fuzzy story. So, let’s further remove those indirectly admitted fuzzy claims and their evolutionary bias (for which they provide no evidence):
“A lower jaw bone and five teeth discovered on a hillside in Ethiopia belong to the genus Homo.
Fossil hunters spotted the jaw poking out of a rocky slope in the dry and dusty Afar region of the country about 250 miles from Addis Ababa.
The new fossil, found at a site called Ledi-Geraru, has a handful of features in common with Australopithecus afarensis. The most well-known specimen, Lucy, was unearthed in 1974 in Hadar, only 40 miles from the Ledi-Geraru site. But the latest fossil has more human traits such as a shallower chin bone.
The human jaw was discovered in January 2013 by Chalachew Seyoum, an Ethiopian national on the team, and a student at Arizona State University. He was part of a group that had set off from camp that morning to look for fossils on a hill that was later found to be brimming with bones.
Villamoare, who was on the expedition, recalled the moment of discovery. “I heard people yelling Brian! Brian! And I went round the corner and there was Chalachew. He recognised it, and said: ‘We’ve got a human.’ It had eroded out of the stratigraphy. It was in two pieces and was missing some of the teeth, but it was clearly of the genus Homo.””
Now that we’ve finally got ourselves a factual article, there is every indication from the facts that all the scientists found was a human jawbone. That certainly is no threat to the Biblical teaching of a young earth, nor an evidence for evolution. What seemed at first to be like solid evidence for an old earth and evolution is just a bunch of hot air and bias.
No comments:
Post a Comment