Rosa Rubicondior: Anthropology

Showing posts with label Anthropology. Show all posts

Monday 13 November 2023

Creationism in Crisis - What Early Humans Were Doing 1-2 Million Years Before The Mythical 'Creation Week'

A reconstruction of the face of an adult female Homo erectus, as seen on display in the Hall of Human Origins in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. It was based on fossils KNM-ER 3733 and 992. The first hominins out of Africa may have inhabited forests.

Reconstruction by John Gurche.

New research exposes humans’ early ecological versatility | University of Helsinki

Most of the abilities that enabled humans to spread across the world and occupy so many different habitats, from grasslands, forests, Arctic tundra and the icy wastes of Greenland, Northern Canada and Alaska are the result of our evolution on the savannah of East Africa in that long period of history before the mythical 'Creation Week' when creationists think the universe was created. In this case, 1-2 million years before humans and Earth were created according to the creation myths of the Abrahamic religions.

And, because we evolved as a savannah species, it has been assumed that the earliest humans to migrate out of Africa would have migrated along grassland corridors and eventually up into the steppes of Central Asia. But new research by anthropologists at Helsinki University, Finland, led by Tegan I. F. Foister, is casting doubt on that assumption. They argue that human cultural plasticity enabled us to exploit and expand different ecological niches. In effect, we were 'generalist-specialists', which means we could adapt to a new environment, and then quickly become specialist at living in it.

The team have published their findings in the journal Evolutionary Anthropology and explain their work on a news release from Helsinki University:

The origins of human genus have long been associated with savannah and grassland environments of Africa. Due to this association, it was thought that the first human dispersal into Eurasia followed grassy corridors leading from Africa to Asia and to Europe. This link between humans and savannah-grasslands has been considered so strong that it delayed the appearance of early humans in Europe compared to Asia, as open grassy environments appeared in Europe later than in Asia. According to this view, early humans were ecologically clearly less versatile than our own species, Homo sapiens, as we have colonized almost all terrestrial environments on the planet.

“But that’s clearly not the whole story” says the lead author Tegan Foister, a doctoral researcher in the Hominin Ecology group at the University of Helsinki. “Because we knew of some studies suggesting that early humans were living in environments other than savannah-grassland, we thought that it would be interesting to do a more systematic investigation on the environments humans are known to have occupied during this crucial time period”.

The research published in Evolutionary Anthropology is a systematic review of 121 previously published reconstructions of early human habitats and it revealed that humans, when dispersing out of Africa for the first time, started to occupy a diverse set of environments from grasslands to forests.

“We have long associated early humans with savannah-like environments outside of the African continent. However, when the research published over the past two decades is considered together, it shows humans inhabiting diverse environments early in the evolution of the genus Homo. Already one million years ago humans in Europe were occupying fully forested environments”. Foister continues.

Although the analysis shows that grasslands and savannahs were important components of early human habitats, it places humans into a wide spectrum of environments, and in many cases environments with varied vegetation composition. This suggests that commonly held beliefs about early humans are not entirely correct: Humans did not have that strict requirements for their habitats and they seem to have been ecologically more versatile than previously assumed.

The study also indicated regional differences in human habitat characteristics. The grasslands and savannahs show the highest prevalence among African habitats, whereas forested habitats were more prominent in Eurasia making the range of different habitats wider in Eurasia. This suggests a possibility that the first human range expansion into Eurasia was accompanied and potentially even enabled by the expansion of human ecological niche.

The research is part of University of Helsinki and Kone Foundation funded project that investigates the evolution of the human niche over the past 2 million years. Although the present study focuses on the early humans, its findings are important also to the understanding of the origins of uniquely wide niche of our own species Homo sapiens.

Co-author Miikka Tallavaara, leader of the project and the Hominin Ecology group, says: “The ability of Homo sapiens to occupy most of the terrestrial ecosystems has enabled our ecological dominance and triggered the current biodiversity crisis. Our finding that human species in the Early Pleistocene were also able to thrive in multiple environment types provides an exciting target for future research into the evolutionary origins of the human plasticity and ecological success.”

More technical detail is provided in the Abstract and Introduction to the team's open access paper in Evolutionary Anthropology:

Abstract

To understand the ecological dominance of Homo sapiens, we need to investigate the origins of the plasticity that has enabled our colonization of the planet. We can approach this by exploring the variability of habitats to which different hominin populations have adapted over time. In this article, we draw upon and synthesize the current research on habitats of genus Homo during the early Pleistocene. We examined 121 published environmental reconstructions from 74 early Pleistocene sites or site phases to assess the balance of arguments in the research community. We found that, while grasslands and savannahs were prominent features of Homo habitats in the early Pleistocene, current research does not place early Pleistocene Homo, in any single environmental type, but in a wide variety of environments, ranging from open grasslands to forests. Our analysis also suggests that the first known dispersal of Homo out of Africa was accompanied by niche expansion.

1 INTRODUCTION

Our own species, Homo sapiens, has expanded globally to dominate an exceptionally diverse range of ecological settings. This has often happened at the cost of other species, leading to the present biodiversity crisis.^{1, 2} To understand the long-term causes of this, it is necessary to investigate the trait thought to have enabled this rapid expansion—plasticity.³ The degree to which the ecological plasticity displayed by H. sapiens is unique compared to other species of the genus Homo is increasingly studied.^{4, 5, 6} An emerging concept in this research is the generalist-specialist niche.^{4, 7} This term refers to the specific plasticity of H. sapiens and how it allowed the development of highly specialized adaptations to exploit resources across a wide range of different ecosystems.⁶ Evidence on the range of suitable habitats earlier H. species occupied^{8, 9, 10} may provide important insights into the origins of the plasticity which has enabled H. sapiens to adopt its generalist-specialist strategy and colonize almost all environments on the planet.

Here we apply a novel approach to review and synthesize published reconstructions of the environmental context of early Pleistocene humans to explore the current state of the research regarding the variability in suitable environmental conditions. We focus on sites dated to between ∼2.0 and 0.8 Ma. When using the term human, we are referring to any member of the genus Homo. In many cases, human presence is indicated just by archaeological remains, making species identification impossible. However, in this period the human species occupying this site can often be treated as Homo erectus sensu lato. We nevertheless remain agnostic about the taxonomy of Homo in the early Pleistocene and operate at the genus level.

Figure 1.
A map with points indicating the geographic distribution of sites for which environmental reconstructions were extracted from the corpus. Many of the points represent several individual locations, for example in Nihewan, Northern China, what appears as one point is six sites within our data (Supporting Information Appendix and Table 1). The coloring of points corresponds with regions used in the analysis: Africa (Red), Asia (Purple), Europe (Blue), Levant, and Caucasus (Green).

Foister, T. I. F., Žliobaitė, I., Wilson, O. E., Fortelius, M., Tallavaara, M.
Homo heterogenus: variability in early Pleistocene Homo environments.
Evolutionary Anthropology. 2023; 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.22005

Copyright: © 2023 The authors.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

Creationists will tie themselves into knots to explain these finding, invoking 'flawed' dating, 'changing radioactive decay rates', Satanic conspiracy theories and forged fossil evidence, but the fact will remain that 99.97% of Earth's history, and several million years of hominin history such as this paper reveals, occurred in that vast expanse of time before they think the Universe was created.

Monday 30 October 2023

Creationism in Crisis - Some of Our Mental Heath Problems Could Be the Result of Denisovan Genes

Geographic distribution of the substitution identified in the SLC30A9 gene in current human populations and possible scenarios of Denisovan introgression. Ancestral SLC30A9 corresponds to the version of the gene prior to interbreeding between Denisovans and sapiens. SLC30A9 variant, refers to the version shared with Denisovans.

Credit: Jorge Garcia and Elena Bosch.
Licensed under Creative Commons 4.0. Created with mapchart

Denisovan genetic inheritance may have left a mark on our mental health - Focus UPF (UPF)

A team of researchers led by the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE), a joint center of the Superior Council of Scientific Research (CSIC) and Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) , and by the Department of Medicine and Life Sciences (MELIS) of the UPF, has identified one of the most widespread traces of the genetic inheritance of the extinct Denisovans in modern humans.

These genes probably played an important role in helping early Homo sapiens adapt quickly to a cold climate, but, because they are involved in the regulation of zinc and play a part in cellular metabolism could also be a contributory factor in predisposition to mental health disorders such as depression and schizophrenia.

It's tempting to assume that they may also have contributed to a growth in religion since many 'prophets' seem to have had schizophrenic disorders in which they heard voices. However, that's not the main worry for creationists in this research. What they need to cope with is the fact that all this happened in that vast expanse of time before 'Creation week' when creationists believe the universe was magicked up from nothing, just 10,000 years ago.

There is also the matter of Homo sapiens not having a single founding couple who were created without ancestors, and don't even come from a single species, but are a hybrid between several related species.

So, just who were these Denisovans?

Creationism in Crisis - Scientists Reconstruct the Skull of a 12 Million-Year-Old Ancestral Primate

Artist's impression of the face of Pierolapithecus catalaunicus

Credit: Meike Köhler

Extinct Ape Gets a Facelift, 12 Million Years Later | AMNH

No sooner do I write a blog-post in which I predict that it won't be long before yet more scientific papers which quite incidentally refute creationism are published, than along come another one, right on cue.

Of course, since almost all papers dealing with archaeology, paleontology and geology deal with the 99.97% of Earth's history that occurred before 'Creation Week' according to creationist dogma, this is a simple prediction to make. It is actually harder to find a serious science paper dealing with those subjects that doesn't casually refute creationism.

This paper would be embarrassing for creationists on a number of different levels, if they weren’t careful to remain proudly ignorant of it or at least had a strategy for ignoring inconvenient truths. It is a paper on the reconstruction of the face and cranium of an extinct primate that lived about 12 million years ago and which is believed to be close to if not directly ancestral to all the great apes, including humans.

So, we have another of those supposedly missing 'links' this time between the Hominidae and the other primates, and a fossil that is multiple times older than the Universe, according to the creationist creation myths. And yet the creation cult manages to stagger on regardless of all the evidence against it.

The skull is that of Pierolapithecus catalaunicus, which was discovered in Catalunya, Spain, early this century:

Creationism in Crisis - Scientists Have Reconstructed the Head And Face From the Skull of a 700,000 Year-Old Homo Heidelbergensis

Anthropologists Reconstruct Face of Homo heidelbergensis | Sci.News

Frontal view.

Image credit: Aidonis et al., doi: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2023.104206.

Skull of Homo heidelbergensis (the Petralona Skull)

Source: Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED)

The incidental refutation of basic creationist superstitions continues unabated this week.

Following the news that animal and human tracks carved in rocks in what is now Namibia in Southwest Africa, are twice as old as the Universe, according to creationists, comes news that scientists have reconstructed the head and face of an archaic hominin, Homo heidelbergensis, who lived between 700,000 and 200,000 years ago in Eurasia, and news that Neanderthals were hunting cave lions in Europe, 48,000 years ago (to be the subject of my next blog post).

But, given that 99.99% of the known history of the Universe occurred before it was created by magic out of nothing by a magic man made of nothing that popped up from nowhere, if we believe creationists, this is not in the least surprising. Almost all geology and palaeontology, and much of archaeology is concerned with this 'pre-creation' history.

The team who forensically reconstructed the face and head was led by Christina Papageorgopoulou of the Laboratory of Physical Anthropology, Department of History and Ethnology, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece, and included researchers from the Institute for Bio-Economy and Agri-Technology, Centre for Research & Technology Hellas, Greece and the Ephorate of Palaeoanthropology-Speleology, Ministry of Culture, Greece. First a little about H. heidelbergensis and how the Petralona Skull, used in the reconstruction, was dated to between 200,000 and 700,000 years old:

Creationism in Crisis - Humans Were Carving Human and Other Animal Tracks in Rocks in Namibia, 10,000 Years Before Creationists Think Earth Was Created

Large engraving of an elephant at rock art site RAS 8.

How just one set of animal tracks can provide a wealth of information | FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg

Hunter-gatherer people were carving human and other animal tracks in rocks in Namibia during the Later Stone Age (LSA) that began in Southern Africa about 20,000 years ago.

Unlike the Paluxy hoax in America, when crudely forged human tracks were carved by local people on top of dinosaur tracks, to provide souvenirs for gullible tourists during the Great Depression, these carvings are believed to have had cultural significance for the people who carved them.

They depict detailed human footprints interspersed with tracks of hooved animals which are so accurate that experts are able to determine detailed information on the species, age, sex, limbs, side of the body, trackway and relative direction of the tracks.

The carvings are on six rockfaces in the mountains in Namibia.

Creationism in Crisis - Humans Were Walking About in North America 10-13,000 Years Before Creationists Think Humans Were Created

Study confirms age of oldest fossil human footprints in the Americas | Bournemouth University

10,000 years ago, according to the Bronze Age Canaanite creation myths in the Bible, a magic man in the sky created humans without ancestors, and either before or afterwards, according to the two different versions, he created all the animals too. And animals and humans went forth and multiplied to populate Earth.

White Sands footprints

Bennett, et al (2021)

A few thousand years later, in a fit of pique, because his 'perfect' design hadn't turned out the way he intended, he murdered almost everything in a genocidal flood and Earth had to be repopulated from just eight humans and either two or six of the other animal species (again depending on the version) after the humans had sacrificed one of every species as a thank you for the genocide, Earth was again repopulated from these impossibly narrow genetic bottlenecks.

Creationists also insist that all sedimentary rocks were deposited in their mythical genocidal flood.

Some people still believe that myth to be accurate history, despite all the evidence against it and the fact that there is no evidence for it, save only for the origin myths in a book which, as science discovers more, is becoming increasingly 'allegorical/metaphorical' in order to avoid admitting it's just plain wrong.

One piece of evidence was revealed in 2021, by researchers from Bournemouth University, UK, the US National Park Service, U.S. Geological Survey, Cornell University, USA and the University of Arizona, USA., which showed that humans were leaving footprints in mud at the edge of a lake in what is now White Sands National Park in New Mexico, North America, 10-13,000 years before Earth was created according to the ancient origin myths.

Creationism in Crisis - Scientists Have Identified a Likely Human Migration Route Out of Africa - 70,000 Years Before Creationists Think Humans Existed

Early Human Migrants Followed Lush Corridor-Route Out Of Africa | University of Southampton

Fig. 1. Map showing archaeological, paleoclimatological, and paleoenvironmental records from the Levant and Arabia mentioned in the text.

(A) The arrows indicate the suggested routes of human dispersals out of Africa [see (, )]. The blue squares show sites with human fossils and footprints in northern Arabia, including those at Al Wusta paleolake () and Alathar paleolake (), respectively. The green circles refer to paleolake/wetland sediments in the western desert of Egypt and Arabia, namely: Bir Tirfawi and Bir Sahara (), Khall Amayshan (), Mundafan (), Khujaymah (), and Saiwan (). The green triangles show speleothem deposition in caves in the eastern desert of Egypt, including Saqia cave (), Wadi Sannur (), and in southern Arabia including Hoti cave in Oman and Mukkala cave in Yemen (, ). The main dated archaeological site in southeastern Arabia is Jebel Faya in the UAE (blue rhombus) (, ).

(B) Digital elevation model map of the Levant showing the location of the study areas (yellow stars) along the Jordan Rift Valley (Wadi Gharandal and Gregra) and in the Jordanian Plateau (Wadi Hasa), and the paleolakes and speleothem records in the region. Paleolakes are represented by green circles, namely: Qa'a Azraq (), Jurf Ed Darawish (, ), Lake Elji (), Qa'a Jafr (, ), and Qa'a Mudawwara (). Speleothem records in the Levant include Soreq cave (green triangle) (, ), and the blue squares show sites with human fossils including Skhul and Qafzeh caves (). The source of digital elevation model data is derived from www.gscloud.cn.

Abbas, M; Lai, Z; Jansen, J.D., et al (2023) (CC BY-NC 4.0)

According to creationist cult dogma, humans were created by magic 8-10,000 years ago. 70,000 years before that, modern humans were migrating out of Africa, having evolved there during the previous tens of millions of years, according to palaeontological, archaeological and genetic evidence.

There are several possible routes by which they could have migrated into Eurasia and from there into the rest of the world, and archaeologists have just reported finding just one such route up the East African coast, across the Sinai Peninsula, down the Red Sea coast of Arabia, through what is now Yemen and Oman and from there to Coastal South Asia.

An alternative route could have been to cross the narrow sea crossing at the southern end of the Red Sea, to southern Arabia and then go north to the Jordan Valley or along the southern coast of Arabia to Oman.

This conclusion comes from the fact that at that time, the Jordan Valley was a “well-watered corridor” which funneled hunter-gatherers through The Levant towards western Asia and northern Arabia via Jordan. Wandering tribes of hunter-gatherer have no particular destination in mind and would have migrated through where the environment provided food and water, so a watered corridor would naturally provide such a route.

This discovery was made by researchers from the University of Southampton (UK) and Shantou University (China), together with colleagues in Jordan, Australia and the Czech Republic. It is published open access in Science Advances and is explained in a press release from Southampton University:

Creationism in Crisis - People Migrated to Siberia and Europe 40,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'!

Chikoy National Park

Source: Anderey sledopit, via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Pollen analysis suggests peopling of Siberia and Europe by modern humans occurred during a major Pleistocene warming spell | The University of Kansas

The latest piece of science to refute creationism without even trying, is the discovery that modern humans migrated to Siberia and Europe during a relatively warm period during the Pleistocene, about 40-50,000 years ago.

According to creationist superstition, there was to be another 40,000 years before their putative creator god, who had existed for infinite time and, being all-knowing, always knew what it would do and how it would do it, finally found enough time to create the Universe out of nothing, then did the whole thing in 6 days.

The evidence comes in the form of an analysis of pollen in sediment in Lake Baikal which shows that the region briefly became forested, facilitating human migration from South-east Asia into Siberia and from thence westward into Europe.

The research, by Professor Ted Goebel, professor of anthropology at the University of Kansas, together with colleagues, Koji Shichi of the Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute in Kochi, Japan, Masami Izuho of Tokyo Metropolitan University, Hachioji, Japan; and Kenji Kashiwaya of Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Japan, is published in Science Advances and explained in a University of Kansas press release.

First a little about the Pleistocene to set the context for the research findings:

Creationism in Crisis - How African Genetic Diversity Refutes Creationist Origin Myths - It's Those Pesky Facts Again!

San people, Southern Africa

Probing the deep genetic structure of Africa | Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

Creationist dupes believe that all human life on Earth was reduced to a small band of 8 related individuals who survived a global genocidal flood and then got off a boat in Turkey and repopulated Earth from there.

Their problem is that this ludicrously implausible tale gives us a testable hypothesis - that an analysis of human genetics should show this bottle neck and the distribution of humans from that geographical point. We would also expect the greatest diversity to be found around the area of modern Turkey.

And of course, this hypothesis is easily and repeatedly falsified, which normally spells the death of any scientific hypothesis.

The scientific explanation for human origins is that modern Homo sapiens evolved in Africa and spread to the rest of the world from there, preceded, probably by archaic hominids such as H. erectus. A hypothesis stemming from this theory is that the greatest genetic diversity is to be found in Africa, because humans have been evolving there for longer than anywhere else. A recent refutation of it was found in an analysis of the genome of ancient people in the Angola/Namib region of Africa, which also validates the 'out of Africa' theory of human origins.

The work was done by a research team from the University of Bern in Switzerland, the University of Porto in Portugal and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany. The Maz Planck Institute News release explains it:

Upper image shows shaping marks on the tapered side and surface of Part 2 as seen on excavation (Fig. 4). Lower image shows loss of definition during storage. The arrows in the Lower image correspond with the area to the left of centre on the Upper image.

Barham, L., Duller, G.A.T., Candy, I. et al. (2023)

Archaeologists discover world's oldest wooden structure - News - University of Liverpool

Yet more embarrassment for creationists as archaeologists announce the discovery of the remains of the world's oldest known wooden structure to date.

It was discovered in Africa, and has been dated to at least 476,000 years old, i.e., about 466,000 years longer that Earth has existed, according to creationist superstition.

This age places the structure in a time before anatomically-modern hominins had evolved, so showing that at least one archaic species of hominin had mastered the skill of shaping wood and making structures out of it, using nothing but stone and bone tools. Some of the timbers show evidence of jointing.

The discovery was made by a team led by Professor Larry Barham, from the University of Liverpool's Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, as part of the University of Liverpool's 'Deep Roots of Humanity' research project.

The news was announced in an open access paper in the journal Nature and in a University of Liverpool press release:

Creationism in Crisis - No-One Mourns For The Old Dead Gods of Arabia - Part 2

Mirrored building at the ancient al Ula Maraya archaeological site, Saudi Arabia

7,000-year-old animal bones, human remains found in enigmatic stone structure in Arabia | Live Science

Archaeologists are uncovering evidence of religious rituals in Norther Arabia, 3000 years before creationists believe Earth and humans were created!

Creationists love to point to the fact that all cultures, ancient and modern, tend to have religion as a central element to the culture, as though that fact somehow proves the locally popular god is real.

Of course, it also points to the fact that we have evolved to 'fail safe' and assume agency where there is none, to naively believe what our parents believe, to accept simplistic answers to complex questions and find it impossible to imagine total oblivion at death.

But, ask a creationists to explain why we should accept the locally popular god is the only real one and all the ancient gods are false, and they will probably cite much of that list as reasons why they had false beliefs, stopping short of going just one god (or one pantheon) further and applying that logic to their own god(s), citing all sorts of nebulous reasons why they believe in their particular god(s).

The team found animal horns from a variety of animals, including cattle and caprines, or animals in the goat family, at the site.

Image credit: Wael Abu-Azizeh et al. 2022/RCU

So, it must be embarrassing to realise that those nebulous reasons were very probably cited by believers in those ancient gods as 'proof' that they existed.

Did the sun not rise in the morning because they had performed the right rituals? Did the crops not fail when they had failed to chant the right prayers in exactly the right way at the right time, or had broken the rules in some other way?

Did the gods not reward them by helping them prevail in battle or punish them for an assumed transgression when they lost a battle?

And could they too not 'look at the trees' and marvel at the wonders their gods had created? And did their priests not also have the power of prophesy and claim they heard the god(s) speaking to them?

One thing we can be sure about is that belief in their god(s) was a strong motivation for rituals associated with life, death and probably animal husbandry, as it is for believers today. The evidence for that is in the artifacts they left behind as discovered by archaeology, such as that currently going on at al Ula in the Ashar Valley in Northern Arabia, where researchers have now discovered evidence of ritual sacrifice and burials in the remains of stone structures known as mustatils, which are believed to have been used for religious purposes.

To add to the embarrassment for creationists, these structures have been dated to about 7,000 years ago, i.e., some 3,000 years before Earth and humans were created!

Regular readers may recall how the archaeological site in Northern Arabia, close to the Fertile Crescent was the subject of a blog post here last March. Now the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCA), set up to investigate the site, has produced an update. It concerns the remain, both animal and human, found in some of the graves associated with the buildings.

As the RCA news release reports:

Creationism in Crisis - How Human Shoulders and Elbows Show Our Common Ancestry With Chimpanzees

Our Shoulders and Elbows Began as Brakes for Climbing Apes | Dartmouth

Every week is a bad week for creationists but this one is shaping up to be especially bad, with a clutch of peer reviewed papers which either show creationist is a counter-factual superstition, or that any putative designer can only be regarded as a malevolent entity, forever plotting new ways to make its creation suffer with more effective parasite.

The first of these is a paper by Dartmouth researchers, published in The Royal Society Open Science, which shows that the human shoulder and elbow joints probably evolved in an arboreal ape ancestor on the evidence that chimpanzees have the same adaptations.

The adaptations evolved to act as brakes as the apes lowered themselves from trees, reducing their chance of falling or injuring these joints because of their relatively large bodies.

The research, and its significance for understanding human evolution, is explained in a Dartmouth news release:

Creationism in Crisis - An Acute Bottleneck in Early Hominin Ancestral History - Almost a Million Years Ago

Early Ancestral Bottleneck Could’ve Spelled the End for Modern Humans----Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences

African savannah in the Middle Pleistocene (Artist's Impression)

Credit: Peter Schouten

Creationists claim, without any understanding of the biological absurdity of the claim, that the human population on Earth went through a genetic bottleneck of 8 related individuals about 4,000 years ago following a genocidal flood inflicted on Earth by an angry god, annoyed that his design wasn't working as intended.

The one thing right about that claim is the bottleneck, although it wasn't so narrow that it would have almost guaranteed extinction within a few generations because of accumulated deleterious genes and a lack of genetic diversity, it was about 1,280 individuals and it happened about 900,000 years before creationists believe the universe was created, before anatomically-modern humans had evolved.

This is the findings of Chinese researchers led by Haipeng Li, of the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) Key Laboratory of Computational Biology, Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health, and Yi-Hsuan Pan of the Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China.

First, a little about evolutionary bottlenecks and the consequences for humanity had the mythical genocidal flood actually occurred as creationists believe:

Creationism in Crisis - Science is Revising Its Thinking About Human Origins - But It's No Comfort For Creationists

Graecopithecus freybergi, possibly a contemporary of Andoluvius turkae, lived 7.2 million years ago in the dust-laden savannah of the Athens Basin. (Artist's impression)

Image credit: Velizar Simeonovski.

New ancient ape from Türkiye challenges the story of human origins | Faculty of Arts & Science

Science might have the human evolutionary story wrong. But before creationists get over-excited, no-one is suggesting it was all done by magic without any ancestors just a few thousand years ago. The new thinking is over the where, not the how of evolution. That humans and the other apes evolved from a common ancestor is not in any doubt. The question is only where that common ancestor lived - Eurasia or Africa?

This discovery in Turkey adds support to the idea that the African apes, including humans, evolved from an ancestor that migrated into Africa from Eurasia via the Eastern Mediterranean, between 9 and 7 million years ago, having evolved in Western Europe and lived there for some 5 million years.

The news release from the University of Toronto, where the leader of an international team, Professor David Begun, is based, explains the find and its significance for the human evolution story:

Creationism in Crisis - Cave Art in Borneo From 35,000 Years Before Earth Existed (According to Creationists)

Gua Sireh, Sarawak, Borneo, Malaysia

This cave on Borneo has been used for 20,000 years – and we’ve now dated rock art showing colonial resistance 400 years ago

According to creationists, about 8-10,000 years ago a god made of nothing made everything in the Universe out of nothing using nothing more than magic words. It also created humans and all the other animals a few days later. Then, in a fit of anger because its creation hadn't turned out the way it had designed it, it killed almost all of it in a genocidal flood, reducing the human population of Earth to just 8 related people.

While all that was happening, there were people using a large cave in Sarawak on the island of Borneo, in Malaysia from 35-43,000 years before Earth existed and up until and including European colonisation about 400 years ago. These people left a record of their existence and cultural history in the form of drawings on the cave wall. There is no record of a genocidal flood, and nothing about a god creating other people about 10,000 years ago.
But, according to creationists, just a few thousand years ago the island of Borneo was repopulated by people from the Middle East, who, although all descended from 8 related individuals of Middle Eastern origin, mysteriously adopted the same artistic style as the antediluvian population, forgot all about the genocidal flood and the god who caused it, invented their own gods and continued as though nothing unusual had happened.

That is the sort of mental gymnastics a creationist needs to perform to avoid the dreadful prospect of wondering if they could be wrong.

First, a little about the caves in Sarawak and the art and artifacts found in them:

Creationism in Crisis - Why Our Ancestors Evolved to Walk Upright - 21 Million Years Before Creationists Believe Earth Existed

Morotopithecus bishopii

Wooded grasslands flourished in Africa 21 million years ago – new research forces a rethink of ape evolution

Scientists are changing their mind about when and why the ancestors of hominins evolved to walk upright - but it's no comfort for creationists, as it all happened 21 million years before they believe Earth existed and only needs the standard Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection to explain it.

There is no doubt about how it evolved. Needless to say, as always, the paleoanthropologists found nothing that needed magic or a supernatural deity to explain it.

The scientists have published their findings in two papers in Science, one by a team led by Daniel Peppe, Associate Professor, Department of Geosciences, Baylor University, and the second led by Laura M. MacLatchy, Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan.

Three of Laura MacLatchy's team have written about their research in The Conversation. Their article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Creationism in Crisis - Fijian Folk Tale Has Nothing About a Global Flood or The God Who Allegedly Caused It!

Nabukelevu, Kadav, Fiji.
Eruption remembered in riddles and fantastical oral traditions.

A dramatic volcano eruption changed lives in Fiji 2,500 years ago. 100 generations have kept the story alive

2,500 years ago, just 1,500 years after creationists believe the human population of the world had been reduced to just 8 people in a genocidal flood, there was a volcanic eruption on one end of the island of Kadavu in the south of the group of Pacific islands now known as the Fijian Islands.

The people who were already living there, having presumably migrated there from the Middle East in just 1,500 years, remembered the details of the eruption and passed them on, complete with the local gods to whom they attributed the events, not in writing, but encoded in riddles and a symbolic oral tradition which "included fantastic beings flying through the sky, fighting each another furiously and noisily, drinking the ocean dry, and throwing giant spears with force enough to leave massive holes in rocky headlands", according to research by a group of scientists including Professor Patrick Nunn of the University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia.

Curiously, if the Bible tales of a global flood had been true, people to whom a local volcanic eruption was such an important event in their history that they remembered it in such an elaborate way, regarded a genocidal global flood as not worth a mention, and the god who allegedly caused it as unworthy of inclusion in their pantheon.

This is the ludicrously unlikely scenario that creationists have to try to rationalise in order to avoid considering that their favourite Bronze Age fairy tales are anything other than literal truths.

The research which has decoded the Fijian oral traditions is the subject of an article by Professor Nunn in The Conversation. His article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Creationism in Crisis - In Just 2000 Years Humans In Central Asia Had Diverged into Multiple Cultures Each with Distinctive DNA, If Creationists Are to be Believed

Multiethnic structure of Mongolia’s first nomadic empire | Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

The Xiongnu Empire, from 300BC, had a significant impact on the political economies of Central, Inner and East Asia and created extensive trade networks.

Photo: Weibo

Following the news that Ötzi the Iceman, who died just 700 years after creationists believe the human population of the world was reduced to 8 related individuals, was a brown-skinned 'outsider' in Europe, descended from people who had migrated from Anatolia a couple of thousand years earlier, comes news that an early empire in Central Asia, the Xiongnu Empire, had a multi-ethnic origin.

Each of these pieces of news give the lie to creationist claims of a genocidal flood just 4000 years ago because there would simply not be enough time for the human populations of Europe or Asia to diversify to the extent that different genetic populations would be identifiable.

Taken together, they mean even the traditional claim that the scientists knowingly used inaccurate radiometric dating is redundant. Ötzi was dated partly by dendrochronology, which is not a radiometric dating technique, and the dates of the Xiongnu Empire are from contemporaneous records kept by their neighbours in China.

First a little background, courtesy of the AI source, ChatGPT3.5:

The Xiongnu were a significant nomadic confederation that originated in Central Asia, particularly in the regions of modern-day Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and northern China. They played a crucial role in shaping the history and dynamics of the ancient Eurasian steppe region. Here are some key points about the Xiongnu:

Origin and Expansion: The Xiongnu are believed to have emerged around the 3rd century BCE and quickly established themselves as a dominant power in the steppe region. They were known for their skilled horsemanship and nomadic lifestyle, which allowed them to traverse vast distances and exert control over large areas.

Society and Culture: Xiongnu society was organized along tribal lines, with a hierarchical structure. They had a chieftain or "shanyu" at the top, followed by subordinate tribal leaders. Their culture was heavily influenced by steppe traditions, including horse riding, pastoralism, and archery. They were also known for their use of mounted warriors and chariots in warfare.

Conflict with China: One of the most significant aspects of Xiongnu history is their interaction with the Chinese dynasties, particularly the Han Dynasty. The Xiongnu frequently raided northern Chinese territories and established a tense relationship with the Han rulers. The Chinese even built the Great Wall as a defense against Xiongnu incursions.

Diplomacy and Alliances: Throughout their history, the Xiongnu engaged in both military conflicts and diplomatic negotiations with China. At times, they formed alliances or signed treaties with the Chinese in exchange for tribute or gifts. These interactions were often marked by a delicate balance of power and a mutual understanding of the benefits of maintaining stable relations.

Decline and Disintegration: By the 2nd century CE, the Xiongnu confederation began to weaken due to internal conflicts, external pressures, and changes in the geopolitical landscape. The rise of other nomadic groups, such as the Xianbei and the Huns, also contributed to their decline. Eventually, the Xiongnu fragmented into smaller groups, some of which merged with neighboring societies, while others faded into history.

Legacy: The Xiongnu left a lasting impact on the cultural and historical development of Central Asia and the surrounding regions. Their interactions with China influenced Chinese policies, military strategies, and diplomatic approaches. Additionally, the Xiongnu's nomadic lifestyle and military techniques contributed to the broader cultural and societal dynamics of the Eurasian steppe.

Historical Sources: Much of what is known about the Xiongnu comes from Chinese historical records and archaeological findings. Ancient Chinese texts, such as the "Records of the Grand Historian" by Sima Qian, provide valuable insights into the interactions between the Xiongnu and China.

Overall, the Xiongnu were a significant force in the ancient world, shaping the geopolitical landscape of Central Asia and leaving a lasting mark on the history of the region.

An interesting finding from the study is that genetic diversity was widest amongst the lower status individuals and much lower amongst the social elite, suggesting that a culture had developed where a narrow ethnic group had gained control of diverse populations.

And all this diversity in the two thousand years following the genocidal flood, is the Bible and its creationist advocates are to be believed. Clearly a preposterous proposition.

As with the genetic analysis of Ötzi the Iceman, the research into the origins of the per-Mongolian Xiongnu included scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany. As the Max Planck Institute’s newsletter explains:

A facial reconstruction of Ötzi the Iceman. New evidence suggests he had male-pattern balding and was brown-skinned.

Dark skin, bald head, Anatolian ancestry | Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

In about 3,300 BCE, some 700 years after Bible literalist creationists believe the human population was reduced to just 8 survivors of a genocidal flood inflicted on the world by their 'loving' God, a brown-skinned man, possibly being pursued over the Alps north of Italy, fell into a glacier. He may have died before he fell or he may have died of his injuries from the fall, but a fresh arrow wound in his shoulder may have contributed to his death.

The significance of his genome is that is shows how far the human population of Europe had diversified into distinct groups each with a characteristic DNA signature - something that would not have been possible if the entire human population of the world had evolved from such a narrow genetic bottleneck. Not only had they diversified but had developed distinct cultures and life-styles.

Another significance of this research is that it shows how science is never certain, but constantly reassesses the evidence and revises its collective opinion when the evidence demands it.

Ötzi the Iceman

Ötzi, also known as the Iceman, is a well-preserved mummy of a man who lived during the Copper Age, around 3300 BCE. He was discovered in the Ötztal Alps, hence the name "Ötzi," by German tourists on September 19, 1991, near the border between Austria and Italy. The mummy was found at an altitude of around 3,210 meters (10,530 feet) in the Schnalstal Glacier. Here are some key facts and details about Ötzi the Iceman:

Discovery and Preservation: Ötzi's mummy was preserved due to the unique conditions of the glacier, which acted as a natural freezer. His body was naturally mummified over the centuries, allowing researchers to gain insights into his life and the environment he lived in.

Age and Appearance: Ötzi was estimated to be around 45 years old at the time of his death. He stood about 1.6 meters (5 feet 3 inches) tall and had a stocky build. He had brown eyes, wore a beard, and had tattoos on various parts of his body, likely created by making small incisions and rubbing charcoal or other pigments into them.

Clothing and Equipment: Ötzi's clothing included a coat made of woven grass and leather, a loincloth, leggings, a belt, and a hat. He also wore shoes made of grass and leather. He carried a variety of tools and equipment, including a copper-bladed axe, a flint knife, a quiver with arrows, a backpack, a birch bark container, and a wooden bow.

Diet and Lifestyle: Examination of Ötzi's stomach contents and isotopic analysis of his teeth and bones provided insights into his diet. He primarily consumed a diet of meat (from ibex and red deer) and various grains and plants, including einkorn wheat. This indicates a diet typical of the time, as well as evidence of mobility in the alpine region.

Health and Injuries: Ötzi's body revealed evidence of several injuries and health conditions. He had a number of broken ribs, possibly indicating a fall or accident. He also had wear-and-tear on his joints, suggesting a physically demanding lifestyle. Additionally, Ötzi had an arrow wound on his left shoulder that likely contributed to his death, as well as signs of head trauma.

Copper Axe: One of Ötzi's most significant possessions was a copper-bladed axe, which is one of the earliest examples of metal use in human history. This suggests a level of sophistication in his society's technology and craftsmanship.

Genetic Analysis: Ötzi's DNA has been extensively studied, providing insights into his ancestry and genetic traits. This analysis revealed that he had a genetic predisposition for cardiovascular disease, lactose intolerance, and a higher risk of certain autoimmune disorders.

Cultural and Historical Significance: Ötzi's discovery has offered a unique window into the life of an individual from the distant past. Researchers have gained valuable information about ancient diets, clothing, tools, and health conditions. Ötzi has also helped to reconstruct aspects of Copper Age society, including trade routes and cultural practices.

Exhibition and Research: Ötzi's mummy is preserved and displayed at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy. Researchers continue to study his remains using various advanced techniques to uncover more information about his life, death, and the world he lived in.

Overall, Ötzi the Iceman is a remarkable archaeological discovery that has provided invaluable insights into the lives of our ancient ancestors and their interactions with the environment and technology of their time.

"Tell me all you know about the 'Iceman' known as Ötzi’s." [Response to user request]
Retrieved from https://chat.openai.com/

Creationism in Crisis - A Mass Extinction in Europe A Million Years Before Earth Existed - According to Creationists.

Extreme cooling ended the first human occupation of Europe | UCL News - UCL – University College London

A sudden cold snap, 1.1 million years ago, caused by changes in the Atlantic currents, could have made life impossible for archaic humans who had populated Western Europe, including what is now the British Isles. Their extinction cleared the way for later colonisation, first by Neanderthals about 250,000 years ago, followed by anatomically modern Homo sapiens, about 40,000 years ago.

Evidence of this extreme climate change and subsequent mass extinction was found by paleoclimate scientists from UCL, University of Cambridge and CSIC Barcelona who analysed the chemical composition of marine micro-organisms and examined the pollen content in a deep-sea sediment core recovered from off the coast of Portugal. This showed evidence of a sudden cooling with ocean surface temperatures falling to 6^oC off Lisbon and semi-desertification of the surrounding area. Parts of the Mediterranean coast would have resembled the Asian steppe.

During the cold snap 1.1 million years ago, the Mediterranean might have looked similar to the Asian steppe.

The research is published in the journal Nature. The press release from UCL explains its significance:

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