Exhibition 9th July to 1st August.
Figure-stones of Fontmaure.
Watford Museum,
194 High Street,
Watford
Hertfordshire
WD17 2DT
Opening times: Thursday-Saturday 10:00-17:00
Free Admission
Friday, 27 March 2015
Friday, 6 March 2015
#FlintFriday
Exhibition 9th July to 1st August.
Figure-stones of Fontmaure.
Watford Museum,
194 High Street,
Watford
Hertfordshire
WD17 2DT
Opening times: Thursday-Saturday 10:00-17:00
Free Admission
Friday, 27 February 2015
#FlintFriday
Figure-stones of Fontmaure.
Watford Museum,
194 High Street,
Watford
Hertfordshire
WD17 2DT
Opening times: Thursday-Saturday 10:00-17:00
Free Admission
Monday, 23 February 2015
Oxford University - right behind the mainstream narrative
Stone tool assemblages and models for the dispersal of Homo sapiens out of Africa, 2015, Quaternary International (in press), by Groucutt et al purports to test models for the dispersal of Homo sapiens out of Africa.
https://www.academia.edu/10985350/Stone_tool_assemblages_and_models_for_the_dispersal_of_Homo_sapiens_out_of_Africa
Consider this for a moment. The mostly Oxford based researchers contend that analysis of stone tools can yield information relating to biological or cultural dispersion.
Even if the authors of the paper were able to reliably identify the culture or "species" of human responsible from a given assemblage of stone tools, any analysis concerning the distribution or "pattern of dispersal" would relate only to preservation conditions and chance detection. The idea that a species could be tracked by simply referring to a set of etically described stones is critically flawed and therefore the results are untestable and unscientific.
Any (subjectively) perceived similarities between so called East African lithic assemblages and those from elsewhere is moot in the face of the continuity of in-situ technological development evident from the Middle Palaeolithic into the Upper Palaeolithic at sites throughout Europe.
The assertion that "Most researchers accept that Homo Sapiens evolved in Africa during the late Middle Pleistocene" is argumentum ad populum and ignores the mounting genetic, fossil, stone tool and cultural evidence which refutes it.
https://www.academia.edu/10985350/Stone_tool_assemblages_and_models_for_the_dispersal_of_Homo_sapiens_out_of_Africa
Consider this for a moment. The mostly Oxford based researchers contend that analysis of stone tools can yield information relating to biological or cultural dispersion.
Even if the authors of the paper were able to reliably identify the culture or "species" of human responsible from a given assemblage of stone tools, any analysis concerning the distribution or "pattern of dispersal" would relate only to preservation conditions and chance detection. The idea that a species could be tracked by simply referring to a set of etically described stones is critically flawed and therefore the results are untestable and unscientific.
Any (subjectively) perceived similarities between so called East African lithic assemblages and those from elsewhere is moot in the face of the continuity of in-situ technological development evident from the Middle Palaeolithic into the Upper Palaeolithic at sites throughout Europe.
The assertion that "Most researchers accept that Homo Sapiens evolved in Africa during the late Middle Pleistocene" is argumentum ad populum and ignores the mounting genetic, fossil, stone tool and cultural evidence which refutes it.
Friday, 20 February 2015
Saturday, 7 February 2015
Right or wrong?
Published recently by the authors (Holliday, Gautney and Friedl) and Jean-Jaques Hublin (one of the commentators) on Academia.edu is Right for the Wrong Reasons: Reflections on Modern Human Origins in the Post-Neanderthal, 2014, Current Anthropology: 55(6), pp. 696-724.
Genome Era.
https://www.academia.edu/9697813/Right_for_the_Wrong_Reasons_Reflections_on_Modern_Human_Origins_in_the_Post-Neanderthal_Genome_Era
The authors contend that the persistence of Neanderthal genes is more readily explained by the Assimilation (AM) model than the Replacement with Hybridization (RWH) model and reject Multiregional Evolution (MRE).
The Assimilation theory (AM) concedes the occurrence of genetic exchange between so-called "Neanderthals" and "Modern Humans", i.e. it accepts that they are conspecific - able to produce fertile offspring (Bednarik 2011). AM merely claims an in-flow of African genes. All models of reticular gene flow are in fundamental agreement with the original "trellis" diagram of Weidenreich and AM is no exception however positioned. Wrong isn't right.
What the authors attempt to do is show that these population estimates, which more often than not are simply circular references to the dominant and false Pleistocene archaeological narrative, support the idea that cladogenesis may have occurred - resulting in "modern humans". The duration of time required for reproductive isolation to have occurred is suggested to be in the region of 1 million years and therefore the conclusion of the authors' is at odds with their own estimate as Wolpoff notes in his commentary. They are right and wrong for the right reasons.
"We argue this because we reject one of the major tenets of MRE: global gene flow that prevents cladogenesis from occurring. First, using reconstructions of Pleistocene hominin census size, we maintain that populations were neither large nor dense enough to result in such high levels of gene flow across the Old World."All scenarios suggested for population sizes are at best untestable and at worse entirely fictitious (Bednarik 2013). The failure of many Pleistocene archaeologists to comprehend the implications of taphonomic logic are readily illustrated by the tendency to base these population estimates on the archaeological record. Of course this record is not a record of human population sizes and/or distribution but rather is representative of where the best preservation conditions occur and where researchers have looked. For instance, some estimates assume that there were large unpopulated regions. However, as Bednarik (2013) suggests, a sensible null hypothesis would be to assume that by 45,000 years ago all environments of four continents were as densely occupied as their carrying capacities allowed for. In other words, that there was a contiguous population from Africa to Asia. In such a scenario, following thousands of years of regionalisation reticulate introgression, genetic drift and episodic genetic isolation may all have occurred as suggested by Franz Weidenreich's in 1946. Note that the multiregional model of polycentric human evolution has diagonal lines (Figure 1) which accommodate these conditions.
The Assimilation theory (AM) concedes the occurrence of genetic exchange between so-called "Neanderthals" and "Modern Humans", i.e. it accepts that they are conspecific - able to produce fertile offspring (Bednarik 2011). AM merely claims an in-flow of African genes. All models of reticular gene flow are in fundamental agreement with the original "trellis" diagram of Weidenreich and AM is no exception however positioned. Wrong isn't right.
Figure 1. Franz Weidenreich's trellis diagram 1946.
Tuesday, 7 October 2014
Human Universe with Professor Brian Cox
Apeman to Spaceman in 250,000 years
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/proginfo/2014/40/human-universe-1
Professor Brian Cox opened his new BBC Two series by doing a great injustice to our ancestors.
His statement that human development was an "ascent" from our ape roots is both anthropocentric and Euro-centric inferring as it does that humans were somehow "chosen" for this adventure, perhaps by god? Furthermore, it fails to recognise that from a biological perspective the evolution of humans is a process of fetalization or more precisely neoteny in chordates (DeBeer, cited in Bednarik 2011). It implicitly perpetuates the idea that evolution is teleological when it is dysteleological. The biological trajectory of the human species, a process marked most recently by a transition from strong to weak, can more accurately be described as a "descent" from our ape ancestry.
As the BBC web site reveals, Professor Brian Cox presents a new theory, which I shall refer to here as the "Large Brain Hypothesis (LBH)". According to the LBH model, the earth's 400,000 year orbital wobble in combination with the precession and rapidly changing environmental conditions in the African rift valley precipitated punctuated increases in brain volume resulting in the present human condition. The examples the professor provided to illustrate his case were the brain cases of Australopithecus, Homo Erectus, Homo Heidelbergensis and Omo II perhaps unaware that Omo II was a surface find and is certainly not representative of a "modern human" skull having some very robust features. His suggestion of an accelerated development in brain volume coinciding with the events and scenario outlined are simply not supported by the meagre hominin fossil record. Further it fails to account for the average 13% decrease in brain volume from 50,000 years ago to the present day, following a steady course of expansion over a much longer period . If such investment in brain size was so central to our evolution what conditions occurred to cause natural selection to be halted and for the rapid decrease in brain size and 50% reduction in robusticity which followed? Unfortunately LBH provides no answers to this basic question, no surprises.
Instead, Professor Cox parrots the usual Pleistocene archaeological narrative that in just "10,000 generations" we can all trace our ancestry back to one point. That we are "all related to Africans from the Rift Valley". BS. His and my genealogy, as white Europeans, is very unlikely to be traceable to an African ancestry. The genetic data, both Y chromosome and mtDNA suggest that the haplogroups of African and Non-Africans split from a common ancestor of around 160,000 years ago. The origin of this common ancestor is unknown at present (Klyosov 2014).
He pinpoints the "road to civilisation" (from Africa - of course!) beginning at 60,000 years ago although why this date was chosen on this occasion by this professor is unclear citing the forging of Bedouin routes as evidence. No material evidence (for example the obsidian "spearpoints" he makes much ado of) supports this assertion. More critically, cultural evidence which is at odds with the suggestion that these 250,000 year old spear-points are a manifestation of a uniquely African/modern human trait was not presented. For instance, the finely crafted wooden spear from Clacton dated to around 400,000 years old or the javelin-like spears from Schoningen to name two of many more which contradict this mythical narrative.
But more to the point, implying that the human journey to space occurred in a matter of 250,000 years is simply incorrect. The most comparable journey is of course seafaring which probably began over a million years ago but certainly by 840,000 years ago as attested to by the evidence of hominin occupation at the island of Flores amongst others. These journeys, which by all accounts were a much more dangerous and therefore greater step for humankind, occurred without the global resources and expert scientific support that the first journey to the moon benefitted from. The journey to the moon was a precisely calculated exercise that by comparison with the first journeys across the sea was relatively safe (Bednarik 2011). These early journeys may have had failure rates in excess of 50%.
So, as Professor Brian Cox dismisses several million or so years of archaeological evidence of developing culture as irrelevant, he arrives at writing which he proposes was the next "big step" to the moon following spear-points. He suggests that it is at this moment that humans really came into their own. Whilst he may have support in indicating that "writing freed the acquisition of knowledge", contrary to his case, I would counter that the production of exograms (the externalisation of memory traces) was fundamentally more important than writing since it underpins our construction of a "shared" reality and a frame of reference from which volition arises. What he appears to be doing is conflating the culturally accumulated knowledge which allowed for space travel with the conceptual idea of a "modern mind" which empirically does not exist.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/proginfo/2014/40/human-universe-1
Professor Brian Cox opened his new BBC Two series by doing a great injustice to our ancestors.
His statement that human development was an "ascent" from our ape roots is both anthropocentric and Euro-centric inferring as it does that humans were somehow "chosen" for this adventure, perhaps by god? Furthermore, it fails to recognise that from a biological perspective the evolution of humans is a process of fetalization or more precisely neoteny in chordates (DeBeer, cited in Bednarik 2011). It implicitly perpetuates the idea that evolution is teleological when it is dysteleological. The biological trajectory of the human species, a process marked most recently by a transition from strong to weak, can more accurately be described as a "descent" from our ape ancestry.
As the BBC web site reveals, Professor Brian Cox presents a new theory, which I shall refer to here as the "Large Brain Hypothesis (LBH)". According to the LBH model, the earth's 400,000 year orbital wobble in combination with the precession and rapidly changing environmental conditions in the African rift valley precipitated punctuated increases in brain volume resulting in the present human condition. The examples the professor provided to illustrate his case were the brain cases of Australopithecus, Homo Erectus, Homo Heidelbergensis and Omo II perhaps unaware that Omo II was a surface find and is certainly not representative of a "modern human" skull having some very robust features. His suggestion of an accelerated development in brain volume coinciding with the events and scenario outlined are simply not supported by the meagre hominin fossil record. Further it fails to account for the average 13% decrease in brain volume from 50,000 years ago to the present day, following a steady course of expansion over a much longer period . If such investment in brain size was so central to our evolution what conditions occurred to cause natural selection to be halted and for the rapid decrease in brain size and 50% reduction in robusticity which followed? Unfortunately LBH provides no answers to this basic question, no surprises.
Instead, Professor Cox parrots the usual Pleistocene archaeological narrative that in just "10,000 generations" we can all trace our ancestry back to one point. That we are "all related to Africans from the Rift Valley". BS. His and my genealogy, as white Europeans, is very unlikely to be traceable to an African ancestry. The genetic data, both Y chromosome and mtDNA suggest that the haplogroups of African and Non-Africans split from a common ancestor of around 160,000 years ago. The origin of this common ancestor is unknown at present (Klyosov 2014).
He pinpoints the "road to civilisation" (from Africa - of course!) beginning at 60,000 years ago although why this date was chosen on this occasion by this professor is unclear citing the forging of Bedouin routes as evidence. No material evidence (for example the obsidian "spearpoints" he makes much ado of) supports this assertion. More critically, cultural evidence which is at odds with the suggestion that these 250,000 year old spear-points are a manifestation of a uniquely African/modern human trait was not presented. For instance, the finely crafted wooden spear from Clacton dated to around 400,000 years old or the javelin-like spears from Schoningen to name two of many more which contradict this mythical narrative.
But more to the point, implying that the human journey to space occurred in a matter of 250,000 years is simply incorrect. The most comparable journey is of course seafaring which probably began over a million years ago but certainly by 840,000 years ago as attested to by the evidence of hominin occupation at the island of Flores amongst others. These journeys, which by all accounts were a much more dangerous and therefore greater step for humankind, occurred without the global resources and expert scientific support that the first journey to the moon benefitted from. The journey to the moon was a precisely calculated exercise that by comparison with the first journeys across the sea was relatively safe (Bednarik 2011). These early journeys may have had failure rates in excess of 50%.
So, as Professor Brian Cox dismisses several million or so years of archaeological evidence of developing culture as irrelevant, he arrives at writing which he proposes was the next "big step" to the moon following spear-points. He suggests that it is at this moment that humans really came into their own. Whilst he may have support in indicating that "writing freed the acquisition of knowledge", contrary to his case, I would counter that the production of exograms (the externalisation of memory traces) was fundamentally more important than writing since it underpins our construction of a "shared" reality and a frame of reference from which volition arises. What he appears to be doing is conflating the culturally accumulated knowledge which allowed for space travel with the conceptual idea of a "modern mind" which empirically does not exist.
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