Re: Homo erectus: racial variants of Homo sapiens?

Jim Foley (jimf@vangelis.co.symbios.com)
10 Jan 1997 22:28:46 GMT

In article <32D4491D.23D8@fast.net>, A Pagano <apagano@fast.net> wrote:
>The following is posted on behalf of David Buckna <dabuckna@awinc.com>:

Why? If it can be shown that Homo erectus lived at the same time as
modern man, Homo erectus may be no more than racial variants of Homo
sapiens. That is what creationists such as Duane Gish ("Evolution: The
Fossils Still Say No!", Master Books, 1995) have been saying for
decades.

Not exactly. Gish has always said that *some* Homo erectus are apes
(Java Man and Peking Man), and that *some* are human (in a quick look
through his 1995 book found I nothing about them being racial variants,
though).

On the face of it, it sounds implausible that two fossils assigned to
the same species could be an ape and a human. And indeed it is. Visit

http://earth.ics.uci.edu:8080/faqs/homs/java15000.html.

to see just how ridiculous Gish's claims are.

In it, you can see that one of Gish's "apes" and one of Gish's "humans"
are extremely similar to each other, certainly far more so than either
is to a human, or to a modern ape. (The above page has a cool new
graphic, courtesy of Brett Vickers, showing the two fossils overlaid
together. They're like peas in a pod)

So we have two creatures, of different 'kinds', more similar to each
other than they are to other creatures of the same 'kind'. Looks like
this:

Hypothetical
Dividing
Line
|
|
|
A B | C D
|
|
modern Java | Turkana humans
apes Man | Boy
|
APES | HUMANS
|

If "C" and "D" are in the same 'kind' (humans), shouldn't it logically
follow that "B" and "C" might be the same kind? Well, yes, but Gish
can't admit that, because then you would have an ape related to a human.

If an ape that looks like a human, and a human that looks like an ape,
aren't transitional fossils, what would be?

-- 

Jim (Chris) Foley,                 jim.foley@symbios.com

Assoc. Prof. of Omphalic Envy      Research interest:

Department of Anthropology         Primitive hominids

University of Ediacara             (Australopithecus creationistii)