Homo naledi Is “Startlingly Young” – Can’t Be a Missing Link

H. naledi. Image courtesy of John Hawks, Marina Elliott, Peter Schmid et al, Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).





Joel Kontinen

“All we know of the Missing Link is that he is missing,” G.K. Chesterton famously said roughly a century ago.

This is still true.

Evolutionists hoped that Homo naledi could be the link between Australopithecines (such as Lucy aka Au. afarensis and Au. Sediba) and humans, when the first paper on the fossils was published in 2015.

Professor Lee Berger, who with his colleagues discovered the remains, believed that H. naledi could be as old as “3 million years”, a convenient age for a transitional fossil.

However, the remains were recently dated, giving an age between “236,000 and 335,000 years,” yet they had very primitive features.

“This is astonishingly young for a species that still displays primitive characteristics found in fossils about two million years old,” Chris Stringer told BBC news.

Three new papers published in the journal eLife report on the discovery of a second cave near the first, featuring relatively complete remains of H. naledi.

Their message does nothing to help evolution. What has been missing since Darwin’s days is still missing.

Sources:

Rincon, Paul. 2017. Amazing haul of ancient human finds unveiled. BBC news (9 May).

University of the Witwatersrand. 2017. Homo naledi's surprisingly young age opens up more questions on where we come from: Homonin [sic] discovered in 2015 by the Rising Star team in South Africa was alive between 335,000 and 236,000 years ago. Science Daily. (9 May).

Homo naledi Turns Out to Be Much Younger Than Expected

Homo naledi. Image courtesy of Lee Roger Berger research team, Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0).




Joel Kontinen

This has been an interesting week for the evolution of two assumed human ancestors.

First, the journal Science suggested that Australopithecus sediba should be tossed out of the human family tree. Then, National Geographic acknowledged that Homo naledi is “only” 200,000 – 300,000 years old, making it far too young to be a direct human ancestor.

Both discoveries were known to be very controversial.

In 2010 Lee Berger and his team discovered Australopithecus sediba that was once touted as a human ancestor but was later practically tossed aside by some other anthropologists.

Then, in 2015 Professor Berger and colleagues published a paper on what they claimed to be a new human species. Found in a cave in South Africa, their discovery consisted of 1,500 pieces of teeth and bones that were not dated, and some experts thought they might be too young to fit into our family tree.

One of the estimates put their age at 912,000 years BP (before present).

Now, in an interview published in National geographic, Berger suggested that H. naledi might be a lot younger.

For evolutionists, the curved ape-like fingers, small skull and other primitive features of H. naledi are an enigma. They believe that modern H. sapiens appeared some 200, 000 years ago, leaving practically no time for evolution.

Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London thinks that H. naledi might be “a relic species, retaining many primitive traits from a much earlier time.”

Prof. Berger has likened it to the Coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae), the living fossil that was supposedly able to retain primitive features for 400 million years.

Others have compared it to the hobbit or H. floriensis that has been the source of heated debate since its discovery in 2003.

And least one thing is sure: there’s no end in sight for updates to our assumed family trees, and artists will hardly have to fear for their jobs until the day comes when Darwinian evolution will be tossed out as pseudoscience.

Source:

Barras, Colin. 2017. Homo naledi is only 250,000 years old – here’s why that matters. New Scientist (25 April).

Homo Naledi Might Be Too Young for Human Evolution

H. Naledi was put together from tiny bits and pieces. Image courtesy of the Lee Roger Berger research team, Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0).





Joel Kontinen

While the entire idea of human evolution has always been more or less fuzzy, it has now turned out to be a total mess.

We can thank a new assumed date of 912,000 years BP (before present) for Homo Naledi for this devolution.

In 2015 Lee Berger and his colleagues published a paper on what they claimed to be a new human species. Their discovery consisted of 1,500 pieces of teeth and bones.

Lee Berger is also known for the discovery of the very controversial Australopithecus sediba that was once touted as a human ancestor but was later practically tossed aside.

The success of purported human ancestors tends to be very brief. Some, like nutcracker man and Taung child a.k.a. Australopithecus africanus, have fared a little longer.

Soon after Berger and colleagues published the discovery of H. naledi in the rather obscure journal eLife, some anthropologists voiced their scepticism of its inclusion in the human family tree. They even doubted that all the bones and pieces belonged to the same species.

This scepticism hasn’t gone away. And the fossils were never dated.

Several studies have suggested that radiometric dating cannot be trusted, as it tends to give too old dates for fossils.

However, it seems that Darwinists can come up with a date for fossils without actually dating them. In their method, the evolutionary tail wags the Darwinian dog:

Mark Collard, a biological anthropologist at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, and his colleagues developed a computer model with which they could analyse skull, jaw and tooth features of assumed human ancestors.

The model suggests a date of 912,000 years BP for H. naledi, which would make it too young for a human ancestor, as the oldest specimens of the fully-human H. erectus are much older.

The Hobbit or H. floresiensis has likewise rocked the Darwinian paddleboat that is now drifting in the wrong direction.

Source:

Choi, Charles Q. 2016. Newfound Human Species Suggests Africa Was Evolutionary Melting Pot. Live Science (29 June).

Anthropology Professor Doubts Homo naledi

Homo naledi. Image courtesy of Lee Roger Berger research team, Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0).





Joel Kontinen

The recent discovery of 1,500 pieces of teeth and bones has made headlines in the media. While some are willing to hail Homo naledi as a human ancestor, others take a more cautious approach.

Paleoanthropologist Lee Berger and his colleagues published a paper on their discovery in the journal eLife. It seems that the discovery raised some doubts at an early stage, as they did not choose a more prestigious journal, such as Nature or Science or PNAS.

Or maybe they did, but their paper was turned down.

Lee Berger is know for the discovery of the very controversial Australopithecus sediba that was once touted as a human ancestor but was later practically tossed aside.

The success of purported human ancestors tends to be very brief. Some, like nutcracker man and Taung child a.k.a. Australopithecus africanus, have fared a little longer.

H. naledi could be on its way out at this early stage.

Writing in Newsweek, Jeffrey Schwartz, professor of biological anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh, takes a very sceptical view of Homo naledi:

“Why is it a species of Homo? Because some specimens seem to be like us. Why australopith? Because other specimens have some of their features. Why do all belong to the same species? Because they were found in the same cave, but the published images tell a different story.”

He then goes on to say what is wrong with this assumption:

“Viewed from the side, two partial skulls are long and low, with a long gently sloping forehead that flows smoothly into the brow – nothing like us, or most specimens regarded as Homo. A third partial skull is very short and rounded, with a high-rising forehead that is distinguished from a distinct, well-defined brow by a shallow gutter – not like the other skulls, and not like us or most specimens regarded as Homo. The femur has a small head (the ball end that fits in the hip socket) that is connected to the shaft of the bone by a long neck, and, below the neck, is a "bump" of bone that points backward. These features are seen in every australopith femur. In us, and all other living primates, the head of the femur is large and the neck short, and the "bump" points inward. Further, the teeth are very similar to those from a nearby fossil site that has yielded various kinds of australopith. Even at this stage of their being publicized, the 'Homo naledi' specimens reflect even greater diversity in the human fossil record than their discoverers will admit.”

Finally, he gives some advice:

“What to do? As I recently advocated in the journal Science, it's about time paleoanthropologists acknowledged what a taxonomic and undefinable mess the genus Homo has become, and restudy the human fossil record without preconceived notions and the historical weight of overly used names. We must start from scratch, comparing in greater detail than usual specimens in order to see how they sort out, first into groups one might call by species, and then into larger groups we may give genus names to. It may be necessary to revive genus names that had been proposed early on, but what I predict is that we will see a picture of hominid taxonomic diversity that mirrors the diversity of virtually every other animal [sic].”

A further problem with H. naledi is that the bones – or the cave – have not been dated.

What many scientists are reluctant to admit, is that the gulf separating humans and apes is simply too wide. Nothing can make an ape-like being into a human in any time.

Source:

Schwartz, Jeffrey H. 2015. Why the Homo Naledi Discovery May Not Be Quite What it Seems. Newsweek (10 September).