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Sunday, 24 March 2024

Complexity all the way down?

 

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More on why ancient humans were Just as human.

 Fossil Friday: Stone Huts, Homo habilis, and Gutsick Gibbon


This Fossil Friday will be a bit different and will show you how an aspiring young anthropologist came to agree that a young earth creationist video made a valid point against human evolution. Here is the truly remarkable story.

A PhD student of biological anthropology named Erika runs one of the more popular anti-creationist YouTube channels under her pseudonym Gutsick Gibbon. Apparently, she feels she has to hide her real identity behind a pseudonym, because it is so “dangerous” to publicly defend the mainstream consensus in academia and mock dissenters, who risked or even sacrifized their careers by speaking out. Nevertheless, I had a quite civil and long debate with her, which you can watch online if you have the enthusiasm for almost 3.5 hours of talking about “The Fossil Record, Evolution, and Intelligent Design.” I thought that after this conversation it might be worthwhile to stay in touch and so I emailed her (June 2 and 3, 2021) with some detailed information she had asked for in our talk concerning anti-freeze proteins and mutation rates in whales. Unfortunately she never responded to my mails.

Anyway, I recently stumbled upon a new video from her on atheist Aron Ra’s YouTube channel, which is part of a series of rebuttal videos against the documentary movie Genesis Impact that you can watch for free on YouTube as well. The latter was produced by an American Young Earth creationist organization named Genesis Apologetics. Since I am not a proponent of this view at all, and am on record as subscribing to an Old Earth and common descent, I might be an unlikely candidate to defend this movie against attacks. However, when I watched, I found it quite well done and well researched, certainly not without errors but raising many valid point against the mainstream view on human evolution. On the other hand, the reaction video “Rebutting Genesis Impact 5 — Homo habilis,” by Aron Ra and Gutsick Gibbon, was not just beyond awful and factually bonkers, but also exhibited a very off-putting arrogance that backfires badly. Let’s have a look at the background information first.

The Background Information

The Genesis Impact movie made the following argument against Homo habilis as a transitional form between ape-like australopithecines and modern humans (time code 36:55-39:42):

In the lowest archaeological beds of the Olduvai Gorge site in Kenya, where the type fossils of the ancient hominin Homo habilis were discovered, the scientists also found a 12-foot circular stone hut foundation made of lava rocks, and this structure had 6 heaps of stone spaced 2-2.5 feet apart for inserting support poles. They described the stone circle as having a striking similarity to the shelters made by present day nomads in the area today. The movie also emphasizes the point that outside the hut area 348 bones of 8 species of slaughtered animals were found but only 11 small fragments and teeth inside the hut area. Thus, 97% of the animal bones were found outside the hut foundations. Likewise, 96% (48 of 50 pieces) of the by-product flakes and chips from stone tool production (called debitage) were found outside the hut foundations.

The movie then concludes that this evidence suggests modern humans lived here and not apes or ape-men. The movie reports that this aligns with the opinion of Mary Leakey, the leading paleoexpert for this locality, who argued that the huts were man-made artificial structures because of the distribution of stones in the stone circle and the disproportionate distribution of animal bones and stone tool flakes inside and outside the stone circle, including a two foot buffer zone around the circle. Leakey said that the structure looked very much like the stone hut foundations people in the same area built today. The movie even shows a slide with a photo of such a hut labeled “Leakey 1979 Plate 3” as its source. Keep this in mind, as it will be important later on.

The argument is also elaborated with more background information on the movie’s accompanying webpage on Homo habilis by Genesis Apologetics, which provides further sources to Leakey (1971 [sic should be 1972], 1979). It also makes clear that “The Stone Circle was found at DK IA, Level 3, Lower Bed I, and several Homo habilis bones were found above this structure.”

Embarrassingly Dumb

In their embarrassingly dumb rebuttal video, Aron Ra and Gutsick Gibbon spend large parts of their 1.5 hour time on stuff that has nothing at all to do with the Genesis Impact movie, such as the straw man argument “If we came from monkeys, why are their still monkeys?”, which is nowhere found in the movie, or stuff about the origin of bird feathers, which is totally unrelated to the movie, as well as boring stereotypical rants about how stupid religious believers are and how wonderful enlightened scientists are. When they address the movie they either avoid the main points or even implicitly confirm them, but consider them irrelevant. The only substantial critique in the video that allegedly debunks a central argument concerns the issue of the stone circle (time code 45:52-54:17). Gutsick Gibbon, who was invited by Aron Ra as an expert on human origins, argues that this is all creationist nonsense and false information, based on misunderstanding real science and either deliberate lies or at least careless confusion of two different archaeological sites in Kenya: one the Early Pleistocene site of Olduvai Gorge where Homo habilis was found in the 1960s, and the other the Iron Age site of Hyrax Hill, where stone huts were found in the 1930s.

Why I Am Bothering

The reason I decided to waste my time in responding to the total garbage video by Aron Ra and Gutsick Gibbon is that it implicitly also attacks me. This is because I had basically made the same point about the stone huts in a Fossil Friday article last summer (Bechly 2023a), which also argues that we now know, that more modern Homo erectus was a contemporary of Homo habilis and the latter rather an australopithecine, which was not a “handy man” but more likely the bushmeat game of real human hunters, who built the stone huts and stone tools.

So, is this true? Did Genesis Impact and I get the facts right, or is Gutsick Gibbon right with her assumed debunking of the stone hut argument? Well, you don’t even need to dive deep into the technical literature, which would of course drive this point home beyond any doubt, such as the excavation reports by Leakey (1972) or the standard textbook on paleoanthropology (Biagi 2015), or various articles (e.g., Potts 1984, Straus 1989).

It would have been fully sufficient to google to find some brief blog posts (e.g., Rensberger 2007) about the discovery or even simply check Wikipedia, which explicitly affirms the claim with sources:

In 1962, a 366 cm × 427 cm × 30 cm (12 ft × 14 ft × 1 ft) circle made with volcanic rocks was discovered in Olduvai Gorge. At 61–76 cm (2–2.5 ft) intervals, rocks were piled up to 15–23 cm (6–9 in) high. Mary Leakey suggested the rock piles were used to support poles stuck into the ground, possibly to support a windbreak or a rough hut. Some modern-day nomadic tribes build similar low-lying rock walls to build temporary shelters upon, bending upright branches as poles and using grasses or animal hide as a screen.[58] Dating to 1.75 mya, it is attributed to some early Homo, and is the oldest-claimed evidence of architecture.[59]

The Wikipedia article on the Olduvai Gorge locality even specifies that it was the older Bed I dated to 1.75-1.9 million years, where the stone circle was found by Leakey, and gives Leakey (1979: 11-17, 40) as source. Don’t trust Wikipedia? You shouldn’t indeed. But maybe you’d rather trust the prestigious Encyclopaedia Britannica, which mentions in its article on the Oldowan industry that “stones arranged in a circle found in Bed I at Olduvai Gorge may have served as weights to hold down the edges of a windbreak used by early hominids.”

This archaeological fact has also made it into many books, such as the book by Tim Ingold, professor on social anthropology at the University of Aberdeen, who wrote (Ingold 2000: 184):

It is in this light that we can understand the extraordinary significance that has been attached to the so-called ‘stone circle’ discovered at the famous site of Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, and dated to some 1.75 million years ago (Figure 10.7). In her interpretation of the circle, Mary Leakey writes that in its general appearance, it ‘resembles temporary structures often made by present-day nomadic peoples who build a low stone wall round their dwellings to serve either as a windbreak or as a base to support upright branches which are bent over and covered with either skins or grass’ (1971: 24). A photograph of such a dwelling, from the Okombambi people of Southwest Africa, is provided to substantiate the comparison.

In the accompanying figure 10.7 it is even more precisely specified as “The ‘stone circle’ from Bed I of Olduvai Gorge.” It is the same figure from Mary Leakey’s (1971/1972) excavation report that was shown in the movie, and that clearly features the stone circle as well as the various found animal bones with their determinations. This association of the bones and the circle is an important fact that Gutsick Gibbon did not grasp and boldly shrugs off in her video response as made-up nonsense.

I suggest it would not have been too much to ask from a PhD student to at least google or check an encyclopedia, before slandering others for incompetence or even accusing them of lying by alleged spreading of false information. Obviously, our anonymous Erika still has to learn a lot about paleoanthropology before she is ready for a PhD in this field, starting with basics like properly researching sources. However, if you are so careless in your research, and obviously guided by prejudice and bias, then maybe science is not really your thing.

But what about this other iron age site? Indeed, Leakey et al. (1943) had also described iron age huts from a different site in Kenya called Hyrax Hill thirty years before the discoveries of the stone circle at the Homo habilis site of Olduvai Gorge. The two have nothing to do with each other, and it is Gutsick Gibbon who is confusing the two and is ignorant about the discovery at Olduvai Gorge, even though this was clearly explained in elaborate detail in the reviewed movie with all sources provided.

Cheeky Incompetence

To document the stunning amount of cheeky incompetence and also a very surprising admission, I here provide the transcripts (with time code) from the relevant parts of the video by Aron Ra and Gutsick Gibbon together with my comments, but you really should watch the video passages afterwards to have a good laugh:

41:51-41:49: “They don’t look at the skulls. They obfuscate and talk about these Stone huts. That again we’re going to get to. So it’s remarkably frustrating.”

Yes, it is remarkably frustrating. How you are going to get the point of the stone huts wrong?

After showing a snippet of the movie, which poses the question of whether the stone tools were used by or on Homo habilis, Gutsick Gibbon commented:

46:19-46:59: “Okay, so first and foremost how do we know if the stone tools are being used on something or by something. When the other remains at the site have stone tool cut marks on them and you don’t find any on the the individuals proposed to have used them. So, when you find Homo habilis with stone tools what do you do? You look at Homo habilis, does it have any cut marks on it? No! Do the other animals at the site have cut marks on them? Yes! That means that the only guy capable of using tools found at the site was probably using the stone tools on the organisms that do have cut marks on them, processing them, butchering them, etc. That is like the easiest kind of association you can make.”

Fair enough, but this ignores three important points:

Many more animal bones have been found at this locality than Homo habilis bones. So, when only a fraction of all bones has preserved cut marks, then it is statistically much more likely to find animal bones with cut marks.
Cut marks are mostly found on long bones, but only few long bones of Homo habilis have been found.
Meanwhile, hominin long bones with cut marks from this time and region have indeed be identified at the Homo habilis locality of Koobi Fora in Kenya (Pobiner et al. 2023). I reported about this in another Fossil Friday article (Bechly 2023b). This omission would arguably be excusable, as the publication of the new study overlaps with the time of the making of Aron Ra’s video.
After another snippet from the movie that talks about the 12-foot circular hut foundation nearby in the same archaeological bed, which was described as having a striking similarity to the shelters made by present-day nomadic people in the same area today, Gutsick Gibbon responds:

47:15-47:40: “You’ll notice that what they say is a circular hut nearby. So, we’re talking about the distance between Olduvai Gorge and Hyrax Hill. Hyrax Hill is where they find these Stone Huts. That’s everything that I could find on them, is that all of these these stone huts found by Mary Leakey, who they later say is the one who did the work on these circular structures, that she did her work at Hyrax Hill. That’s where they’re from.”

Nope, that’s not remotely where they are from. As already mentioned, the stone circle was clearly described from Bed 1 at Olduvai Gorge, and Gutsick Gibbon is confusing this with something totally different, because she did not bother to look at the sources provided in the movie and its accompanying website, nor did she bother to just watch the movie and listen to the argument more carefully.

Aron Ra then interrupts to proclaim triumphantly:

00:47:44-00:48:11: “If it’s a different location, and it’s a different elevation, stratigraphically, then it’s not the same thing. And if the creationists are perfectly fine with saying that it is the same thing because it suits their purpose, but if a scientist were to say that they were the same thing that would be fraudulent, why is it only a lie if the scientists do it? Why is it never a lie when the creationists do it.”

Well, because this is total rubbish and a red herring. The movie is not talking about two different localities. It’s just two clueless YouTubers making up stuff because they only hear what they want to hear and are unable to research the facts.

Gutsick Gibbon responded with a real howler:

00:48:11-00:49:22: “Well. I want to hit you with the punch line here Aron, because if you’ll remember in the last video what they said was that — [silly giggling] — what they said was that Australopithecus can’t be associated with Laetoli footprints because Lucy is too far away from the Laetoli footprints and they’re too far from each other. Never mind the fact that Australopithecus is not found just at the site with Lucy, it’s found as a species all over the place and very near the Laetoli footprints, so like that’s an aside. But their argument is that they’re too far from each other, that’s why they can’t be associated. You want to know how far away Hyrax Hill is where this stone structure is from the OH7 type specimen? It’s an eight-hour drive — [both are laughing] — it’s an eight hour drive time. It’s an eight hour drive I just pulled it up, it’s eight hours and five minutes, it is 448.6 kilometres away. Nearby? Nearby? You’ve got to be kidding me. They just throw it in there like as a little aside thing no one will notice. I always notice because I always check, because they’re always conning you, every single time.”

Oh boy. Yes, Hyrax Hill is an eight hour drive away, because you looked at the wrong locality! And Gutsick Gibbon, a PhD student in anthropology, says she is always noticing because she always checks. This is hilarious! The evidence that this is from Olduvai Gorge was plain to see in the slides in the movie. They even quoted Leakey 1979 as a reference, not Leakey 1943. They are not talking about an iron age site that was discovered 30 years earlier by Leakey at Hyrax Hill. This is shockingly embarrassing. The university system definitely has failed these guys.

Next, they show another snippet from the movie, which makes the important point that the stone circles were found in a layer beneath the bones of the Homo habilis type specimen, which suggests that more modern humans were on the scene, building huts and working with tools even before Homo habilis showed up. I totally agree and made the same point in my earlier articles (Bechly 2023a, 2023b). Gutsick Gibbon responds with more rubbish:

00:49:44-00:50:42: “Now here’s the important bit. You know, those stone circles, they were initially, um, excavated by Mary Leakey in the 1930s, as I alluded to earlier. Now, wouldn’t you know it work was done later on these stone circles, um, by I think it’s Sutton at al. in 1987. Sutton at al. in 1987, um yeah, he radiocarbon-dated some of the charcoal found at this site. They’re 200 years old. They’re from the Iron Age Stone. The circles are from the Iron Age, which is why I thought to myself, it’s quite strange you know, that they’re saying, oh you know, these stone circles they’re found in a layer below Homo habilis nearby, eight and a half hours away. Nearby, huh? Same layer, huh? [You really have to watch the video to experience the combination of ignorance and arrogance]. I couldn’t find anything on these things being in the same layer or even being close to each other, stratigraphically speaking, which makes sense given they’re from the Iron Age, right? By radiometric dating they’re found to be in the Iron Age!”

Of course, you could not find anything, because checking Wikipedia, not to speak of the primary sources, was too much work for a PhD student. The stone circle in the movie was discovered by Mary Leakey in 1962 at Olduvai Gorge, not in the 1930s at Hyrax Hill. Nobody denies that the latter locality is from the Iron Age, and the movie does not talk about it.

Gutsick Gibbon then goes on (00:50:42-00:50:18) and makes another irrelevant point, that even young earth creationists accept radiometric dating as a relative dating in terms of older and younger, so that even internally the argument that the stone circle is older than Homo habilis would not work. Again, irrelevant because it is a different site, which is not Iron Age and not younger but older than the Homo habilis bones. So, the argument is perfectly valid and supported by the evidence, which she later will admit.

A Gem of Wisdom

Aron Ra interrupts for a gem of his wisdom:

51:33-51:57: “… what generally happens, which usually happens these kind of things is you’re looking for stuff on the surface so whatever has eroded on the surface so there’s different layers of erosion and so some group go to an area where there’s a low uh a low area so so it’s going to be more eroded and then they put circle stones in a circle and build a fire 200 years ago, and that’s what they’re talking about by a lower level.”

No, they don’t. They talk about a lower level because the stone circle at Olduvai Gorge was found in the lowest archaeological Bed 1, dated to 1.75-1.9 million years by Mary Leakey (1979) in her book that is even shown as a reference in the movie, for heaven’s sake.

Gutsick Gibbon unbelievably agrees with Aron Ra’s nonsensical gibberish:

51:58-52:50: “That is my understanding because I can’t find anything in Mary Leakey’s initial publication in the 1930s that’s saying, like she doesn’t even talk about habilis, right? Like I don’t understand where the connection was drawn. I think you’re right. My understanding is that they were like they’re both on the surface therefore same layer, um. But again, I mean this is what they do, they’re taking publications from the 1930s that are very difficult for the average person to track down. If I didn’t have my university association, I couldn’t get a hold of it, right? Like, their whole point is that you can’t double check them, um, but Sutton goes in depth in 1987 of the dating of these circles. They’re not associated with Homo habilis, not even close, not even close, not even close temporally, and not even close geographically. So, like this is just it’s just nonsense again.”

Not Nonsense but a Fact

Nope, it’s not nonsense but a fact that the stone circle was found close temporally and geographically to Homo habilis. Actually, at the very same place and in the same archaeological bed as the holotype OH7, even a bit below its layers. And you don’t need a university association to track down obscure publications from the 1930s. Everybody can google the facts in a few seconds. What a joke! And it is made worse by their mean-spirited insinuations. Aron Ra and Gutsick Gibbon definitely owe a sincere apology to the makers of the Genesis Impact movie and an apology to their own audience that has been misinformed and mislead by their video. I won’t hold my breath, though.

Next, they play another snippet from the movie, where the portrayed scientist admits that the stone hut foundations beneath the Homo habilis bones represent a very good point.

Gutsick Gibbon actually agrees and this is the most important passage in the whole video:

53:21-54:17: “This is, this is incredibly sneaky, right, what they’ve done here. Because, if that was true, if you could actually show, uh, categorically, constructed stone monuments as being earlier than any finding of Homo habilis, that would be a very interesting point to make. That would be a good point in the sense that it would merit further investigation, but that’s not what they found. It’s simply not. It’s like brutally untrue, you see what I mean? So, like yeah, it categorically is a good point just like it would be a good point if we found a rabbit side by side with a trilobite, right? Like that would be a good point, except that’s never happened. It’s not even close, right? Like it it’s just a lie, right? Like I mean, there’s not much else to say except like, you yeah, it’d be a good point in fantasy world, right?”

Wow, we caught you now and will not let you get away with this unnoticed and will disclose and preserve it for posterity. Anthropologist Gutsick Gibbon just explicitly and unequivocally admitted that such stone circles would be a good point, an interesting and valid argument, if it were true! Since it is demonstrably true and not fantasy or a lie, it will be interesting to watch how Aron Ra and Gutsick Gibbon will try to whitewash this, or move the goalpost, or more likely cover up their incompetence and especially their dangerous admission.

Now, add to their complete blunder on the science, the sneering mockery about the “stupid creationists,” the scornful laughter about their assumed ignorance, and the arrogant, condescending, and patronizing style. This simply cried out to be exposed by me. Sorry Gutsick Gibbon, but these creationists got it right and you proved to be clueless about your own field and a sloppy researcher as well. Next time, better be a bit more humble and charitable, and do your homework. Actually, Aron Ra has studied paleontology at the University of Texas himself and has a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Arizona State University, so he is as culpable for this massive blunder as is Gutsick Gibbon. But given his own obvious incompetence in spite of his academic training, Aron Ra should maybe look for some real experts for his next rebuttal video instead of giving a platform to overconfident students.

Not Known for Accuracy

Aron Ra is of course not exactly known for sharing accurate information, including about Christianity. Here is what academic historiographer Tim O’Neill (2019) had to say about him:

Unfortunately the New Atheist activist who calls himself “Aron Ra” is all too typical of this kind of polemicist — he does not let his profound ignorance of history stop him from pontificating about it. In a recent debate he put this on full display, with a remarkable burst of pseudo-historical gibberish proclaimed with supreme confidence and smug self-assurance. Yet virtually everything he said was wrong.

But surely, O’Neill is just a biased fundamentalist Christian, no? No, he is an “atheist, sceptic and rationalist who is a subscribing member of the Atheist Foundation of Australia and a former state president of the Australian Skeptics” (see here).

Here is a litmus test for Aron Ra’: In the seventh and final episode of his YouTube video series against the Genesis Impact movie, he presented a public challenge (time code 1:05:43-1:06:25, see here):

So, um, if you, if you are a fan, if you’re a creationist and you watched this long ass series that I’ve made. Show me something, anything they said in this whole series that is an actual fact, that we can both show is actually true, that hasn’t already been disproved and refuted, but is an actual fact, that is supportive of their position, that hasn’t already been shown to be a lie. And I don’t think that any, even creationists, watching this, I don’t think they’re going to, they’re going to respond to that, because they already know and they already don’t care. They want to believe what they want to believe. They don’t care what the truth is.

Really? Now, let’s see if Aron Ra, a self-declared Satanist (no kidding, see here), cares what the truth is, or if he just wants to believe what he wants to believe. Will he have the guts to admit defeat? Again, I won’t hold my breath.

Unfortunately, poorly researched and highly biased content, mixing factoids with outright falsehoods, more motivated by a dogmatic world view than by any interest in scientific truth, is symptomatic for the new generation of atheist and materialist hardcore Darwinist YouTubers such as Aron Ra, Gutsick Gibbon, Jackson Wheat, Dapper Dinosaur, or Professor Dave and their deplorable ilk. Yeah, I admit it, this case of ignorant chutzpah really steamed me, so enough ranting for today. Fortunately, you have Evolution News and other media that bring you real science and debunk the debunkers.

References



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Cloud wars are coming?

 

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Michael Behe holds court.

 Michael Behe: A Mousetrap for Darwin


On a classic episode of ID the Future, host Eric Anderson interviews biochemist Michael Behe about his book A Mousetrap for Darwin. In this episode, Behe explains that he was spurred to build this collection of essays by a review in the journal Science claiming he had never answered his critics on key points. That annoyed Behe, because he had, multiple times. A Mousetrap for Darwin compiles more than a hundred of his responses, some of them from difficult-to-access places. The book also contains fresh material from Dr. Behe, including some lively behind-the-scenes details about his interactions with colleagues and critics. 

In this episode, the Lehigh University biochemist answers misconceptions about irreducible complexity, responds to the claim that “molecular machines” is a misnomer, relates the surprising confessions some of his fellow biologists have made outside the spotlight about evolutionary theory, and offers his appraisal of why scientists in general don’t know what’s going on with studies in evolution or intelligent design. Behe remains optimistic, though. “You can’t deny the data forever,” he says. Download the podcast or listen to it here
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