Daring to doubt (aloud).

Listen: Dissent from Darwin List Tops 1,000 — Now the Scientists Weigh In

 Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC

 

 

Did you know that a growing number of scientists doubt the Darwinian theory of evolution? This in spite of the fact that over the past two decades the scientific establishment has ramped up its support of modern Darwinism with increasing agitation. And ramped up the persecution of scientists who dissent from Darwinian evolution.

On a new episode of ID the Future, host Robert Crowther explores why some scientists are willing to risk their research and careers to voice their skepticism of the theory. Download the podcast or listen to it here. Be sure to visit the Scientific Dissent from Darwinism website to learn more and meet some of the scientists on the list.

Were neanderthals just as 'sapien'

Did Neanderthals Teach Modern Humans How to Make Tools? 
By Charles Q. Choi, Live Science Contributor

Neanderthals apparently created the oldest known examples of a kind of bone tool used in Europe, thus raising the possibility that modern humans may have learned how to make these tools from Neanderthals, researchers say.

Neanderthals were once the closest living relatives of modern humans, dwelling across a vast area ranging from Europe to the Middle East to western Asia. This ancient lineage of humans went extinct about 40,000 years ago, about the same time modern humans expanded across the world.

Neanderthals created artifacts similar to ones made at about the same time by modern humans arriving in Europe, such as body ornaments and small blades. Scientists hotly debated whether such behavior developed before or after contact with modern humans. "There is a huge debate about how different Neanderthals were from modern humans," said Shannon McPherron, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

Now, McPherron and his colleagues have discovered that Neanderthals created a specialized kind of bone tool previously only seen in modern humans. These tools are about 51,000 years old, making them the oldest known examples of such tools in Europe and predating the known arrival of modern humans.

New Neanderthal behavior

The bone tools in question are known as lissoirs ("polishing stones"), which are used to smooth out hides to make them tougher, impermeable and lustrous. Scientists unearthed fragments of four examples of such tools at two Neanderthal sites in southwestern France. The uniform smoothness and rounded edges of the lissoir tips probably resulted from scraping, thus hinting that they were, indeed, used against soft materials such as hides.
"We have found an entirely new aspect of Neanderthal behavior," McPherron said.

Until now, all known Neanderthal bone tools researchers found "have looked just like their stone tools," McPherron said. "In other words, Neanderthals looked at bone as just another raw material to flake into stone tool types like scrapers, notches and hand axes."

"Modern humans, on the other hand, made lots of different kinds of bone tools that took advantage of the properties of bone, to be ground into specific shapes like points, awls and smoothers," McPherron added. "Here, for the first time, we have evidence of Neanderthals doing exactly the same thing. They were taking ribs and shaping them into a tool that looks identical to the modern human tools found 40,000 years ago and to tools still in use today for preparing hides."

"What this means is that Neanderthals did, in fact, recognize that bone could be worked in special ways to create new kinds of tools, and in this way, Neanderthals are not different from later modern humans," McPherron added. "For many researchers, specialized bone tools were thought to be one of the technologies that separate the two groups of humans. This is no longer the case." [Top 10 Things That Make Humans Special]

McPherron cautioned that the researchers are not suggesting that Neanderthals were the first to make bone tools.

"There are sophisticated bone tools that are even older in Africa, for instance," McPherron said. "Neanderthals were, however, the first in Europe to make specialized bone tools."

And these aren't the first Neanderthal bone tools, but instead the first Neanderthal bone tools that weren't just replicas of their stone tools.
   Neanderthal invention?
It remains unclear whether Neanderthals learned how to make lissoirs from modern humans or invented them entirely on their own, or even whether modern humans learned how to make this particular kind of bone tool from Neanderthals.

"The date we have of approximately 51,000 years old is earlier than the best evidence we have of modern humans in Europe, but it is still close enough that we have to mention the possibility," McPherron said. "What we need to do now is look in even older sites for these same tools, to see if Neanderthals had been making these tools for much longer."

"I think that as others look for this bone-tool type amongst their small bones, we will find many more," McPherron added. "I suspect that this new aspect of Neanderthal behavior was actually rather widespread."

For now, these findings "are the best evidence we have that Neanderthals were capable of inventing on their own one aspect of what has been called modern human culture," McPherron said.

The scientists detailed their findings online Aug. 12 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Yet more on how pre Darwinian design continues to make nonsense of the Darwinian narrative.

Greenland Fossils, Earth's Oldest, Pose an Evolutionary Dilemma
David Klinghoffer

The origin of cellular life, with all that implies by way of mind-bogglingly sophisticated biological information in action, now seems to have occurred as early in earth's history as it could have done -- 3.7 billion years ago. Just right off the bat it happens, "immediately," as one paleontologist puts it in amazement: genetic code, proteins, photosynthesis, the works.

It's reported in Nature ("Rapid emergence of life shown by discovery of 3,700-million-year-old microbial structures"). From the New York Times:

Geologists have discovered in Greenland evidence for ancient life in rocks that are 3.7 billion years old. The find, if confirmed, would make these fossils the oldest on Earth and may change scientific understanding of the origins of life.

Experts are likely to debate whether the structures described in the new report were formed biologically or through natural processes. If biological, the great age of the fossils complicates the task of reconstructing the evolution of life from the chemicals naturally present on the early Earth. It leaves comparatively little time for evolution to have occurred and puts the process close to a time when Earth was being bombarded by destructive asteroids. [Emphasis added.]

The microbial mats from the Isua Greenstone Belt involved creatures already "fairly evolved."

Several different species of microbes are involved in stromatolite creation. The Isua structures, if indeed stromatolites, would represent fairly evolved organisms.

Here's the problem:

If life on Earth did not begin until after the Late Heavy Bombardment, then it had a mere 100 million years in which to evolve to the quite advanced stage seen in the new fossils.

If so, Dr. [Abigail] Allwood wrote, then "life is not a fussy, reluctant and unlikely thing." It will emerge whenever there's an opportunity.

But the argument that life seems to have evolved very early and quickly, so therefore is inherently likely, can be turned around, Dr. [Gerald] Joyce said. "You could ask why, if life were such a probable event, we don't have evidence of multiple origins," he said.

In fact, with trivial variations, there is only one genetic code for all known forms of life, pointing to a single origin.

If some unguided chemical and biological evolutionary model must be assumed as explaining the origins of life, then something is wrong. Life springs up easily. It must, "whenever there's an opportunity." If so, it should have happened repeatedly on earth -- why not? -- leaving evidence in the form of multiple genetic codes. But there is no such evidence.

It should also have happened elsewhere in the cosmos, perhaps in our own Solar System, like on Mars. Not just the most simple life, either, but something "fairly evolved." Why not intelligent, too? But there's no evidence of any of that either.

For evolutionists, it's a dilemma without an apparent solution. For advocates of intelligent design, it can be taken in stride. Whether the origin of life, of complex animals, or of homo sapiens with our gift of speech, wonderful things have a funny way of "slipping suddenly into being," in Michael Denton's phrase.


Remember, this is all apart from the devilish difficulties for theories of unguided origins raised by Meyer in Signature in the Cell and Darwin's Doubt. Innovations don't "evolve." They spring into existence, we find again and again, with an alarming abruptness. As if by design.