When Did Adam Live? Part 2: Does a
Small Brain Make You Dumb?
By Glenn R. Morton
Note: If you haven't read Days ofProclamation: Historical Reading of Genesis 1, you should, it is the
prerequisite for what I am doing in this series of posts. Part 1 of this series
is below and covers religion. Also, as you will see below references to the
consciousness/soul being immaterial, and not subject to matter. The best
scientific evidence for that position can be found in the post by me and Gordon
Simons, called Quantum Soul. Don't be afraid of that article, there is no math in it, but there is a link to some math if someone wants it.
The Image of God
In this post we will examine brain
size as a delimiter of who can and can't carry the image of God. As we know, God said " Let us make man
in our image, after our likeness:...". What does that mean? To whom does it apply? When did Adam Live?
People are all over the place on all
three of those questions. What is the
image of God? Malcolm Jeeves says,
" We are people who relate to
each other as beings created in the image of God. This image is not a separate
thing. It is not the possession of an immaterial soul. It is not the capacity
to reason. It is not the capacity for moral behavior. It is not the possession
of a “God spot” in our brains. It is acknowledging “our human vocation, given
and enabled by God, to relate to God as God’s partner in covenant "1
Mark Strand defined it as personhood:
" The Bible uniquely describes
humans as created beings who bear the image of God. All humans (and therefore
all persons) bear this image, which serves as the foundation of
personhood"2
I once defined it as the ability to
make moral choices.3, but would probably define it now as the ability to
commune with God, i.e., engage in religion which encompasses moral choices,
personhood. and the ability to engage in a covenant with God. But unlike
Jeeves, it must also entail language, and symbolic thought, or we could not
engage in a covenant, have a religion, or have personhood.
To Whom Does the Image Apply?
This is another reason we need to know
when Adam lived. Probably the majority
of commentators place Adam within the past 10,000 years.. Dick Fischer
places Adam at 7000 years ago (personal communication Wed, 01 Mar 2000
21:07:59 -0500 Dick Fischer).and says that Adam is only the father of the
Semitic people. This would make my wife
and kids the descendants of Adam but not me. Such views that differentiate
people along this kind of line, are dangerous to me, but dangerous or not, none
of the late Adam people can pinpoint any event that happened to one man in the
last 20,000 years that would warrant calling him Adam.
Gregg Davidson considers both 200,000
and 20,000 as the time of Adam, and settles on 20,000 because of the activities
listed in Genesis 4 seem to indicate a Neolithic age.4
John McIntyre puts Adam around 9,000
BC again because of the farming and herding and Cain's city.5
A Late Adam makes it impossible for
him to be the father of everyone on earth.
By doing this, we break theology of Christianity presented by Paul in
several places. With Adam as father of
all, and the original sinner, there is a
symmetry in Romas 5: 12-19
Wherefore, as by one man sin entered
into the world, and death by sin; ...For if through the offence of one many be
dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man,
Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. And not as it was by one that sinned, so
is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is
of many offences unto justification. For
if by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive
abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one,
Jesus Christ.) ... For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so
by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.
I once read that from 50,000 years to
the present there have been 150 billion people who have lived on earth Thus,
with the Johnny-come-lately Adam, 1 Cor 15:47, which says, "The first man
was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven." should read,
"The 98,356,236,694th man was of a dusty town of the earth; the
101,747,231,267th man is of heaven." Kind of has a ring to it, doesn't it?
Others, who move Adam back to 75,000
or even 200,000 years ago destroy the theology in Romans 5. Most of these
people believe Adam was a population not an individual. One is used as a
parallel with Jesus who is also one man.
Making Adam a tribe or people means Romans 5 should read: "For if
by many men's offences death reigned by many; much more they which receive
abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one,
Jesus Christ." Kind of a strange
way to look at this parallel in Rom 5. George Murphy says,
"But it does seem unlikely that
the present human race can be traced to a single male-female pair. As one
example of the difficulty this idea faces, development of the present diversity
of alleles of human histocompatibility genes from such a pair would require
between five and ten million years.37 Unless we want to consider “Adam and Eve”
the biological ancestors of all hominids, and perhaps even pongids, we must
rule this out."6
It is interesting to me at least,
Murphy's reference 37 says in part, "Glenn R. Morton does date the
biblical Adam over five million years ago. See, e.g., his Adam, Apes and
Anthropology (Dallas, TX: DMD Publishing,1997)." Thus he acknowledges at
least one person who has followed the data where it goes. And only in this way
can we match the genetic data and still believe in a single pair.
Brain size in the Hominids
The obvious objection to moving Adam
back that far is that as one goes back in time, brain size generally gets
smaller. I think this is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to the acceptance
of my views. The picture below shows the range of brain sizes (cranial
capacity) of various groups of fossil men. The data is taken from
a variety of sources and the numbers vary from place to place about the range,
and about the volume of individual specimens.
That is to be expected from different methods of measuring these volumes
and from different cut off values for what is normal.
So, as we look ahead we need to frame
this issue correctly. Does brain size
impact whether or not a being has the image of God? Where is the Bible verse that backs up this
"Las Casas had a good deal of
influence on the powers back home, as did another cleric, the Dominican
Bernardino de Minaya. Minaya deserted Pizarro in disgust and went to Rome to
persuade Pope Paul III to issue a papal bull in 1537 that rejected the idea of
Indians as mere brutes and declared them capable and desirous of embracing the
Catholic faith. Not only that, the bull proclaimed, even those Native Americans
who chose not to follow Christ were not to be enslaved or have their property
taken. This was too much. Bristling with secular outrage, Emperor Charles
ordered all copies of the bull confiscated and prevailed on the pope to rescind
the bull altogether. For his efforts Minaya was thrown into jail by the head of
his order."7
So, as we go through the data below,
we want to be sure that we are not saying that those with smaller brains but
normal intelligence are not capable of carrying the image of God. Why?
Because if we view them that way, for the purpose of maintaining that early hominids couldn't have carried the
image of God, then it affects how we treat them. If small brained early hominids can't carry
the image of God because they have small brains, then can small brained H.
sapiens carry the image? Such a view would be appalling. All modern humans can
carry the image of God regardless of their brain size, and if we accept that as
a given, then upon what basis do we reject the earlier hominids with the same
brain sizes? I will discuss the issue of
their technology vs ours below, but technology and invention are not the
mark of a carrier of the image of God. How many patent applications does the average person submit?
The other thing we need to think about
as we learn about the brains below is the issue of what is consciousness/soul,
and does it arise from the material object of the brain. If we were to remove half the heart from
someone, they would die. If you remove half the liver, they won't die because filtering the blood is simple compared to what the brain would have to do to create consciousness. So why when
some brains are severely damaged does the consciousness seem whole? If
consciousness/soul were a product of our entire brain then removing half of it
should remove half the functionality of consciousness, yet as you will see, it
doesn't. The way I interpret this data,, along with information from quantum mechanics, is that soul/consciousness is not material.
Dumb and Dumber
Over and over I have been told that
hominids with small brains are incapable of carrying the image of God, because
they have small brains. Well, some
modern humans have small brains as well.
But I want to preface what comes next.
Yes, if you have a small brain today, as a modern H. sapiens, you are
increasingly likely to be less and less intelligent the smaller your brain
gets, BUT, there are small brained H. sapiens today who have normal
intelligence, which says, it isn't the size that matters but the connectivity or some other factor. One further BUT, the small brained hominids
in the record were never designed to have big brains like ours and they had to
be pretty smart to avoid being eaten by lions, tigers, and bears. The average human with a hominid size brain
today couldn't make stone tools, indeed, most big brained people can't make
stone tools, not even the simplest Oldowan tools. But these small brained people were making
stone tools with ease. Small brained
humans are defective, but small brained hominids of the past were NOT
defective, meaning, the comparison is one of apples to oranges and is
invalid. With that lets play the limbo
game: How low can you go?
Daniel Lyons
Years ago, I bought a copy of Guinness
Book of World Records to obtain one fact, what was the smallest normal brain?
It said that Daniel Lyons brain was the smallest one on record. Since I have been researching this topic
again, I decided to further chase down information on Mr. Lyon. I found Newspaper articles on him from early
1908, but a scientific article wasn't published until 1910, after further lab
work. This second article on Mr. Lyons tells about his life,
"According to Dr. Larkin's
records Daniel Lyon died on the tenth of October, 1907, from asphyxia due to
edema of the glottis. He was Irish, 46 years old, five and one-half feet high,
and weighed 145 pounds. No relatives have been discovered and it is not known
that any survive. At the time of his death he lived at 409 E 17th St., New York
City, and was a watchman for the New York Contracting Company at the
Pennsylvania Terminal, 34th St. The legal representative of that company says
that 'from all reports there was nothing defective or peculiar about him,
either mentally or physically.' No photography or hat measurement has been
obtained. No information has been gained by inquiries addressed to his alleged
fellow-workmen or former places of residence, but Dr. Larkin was informed that
he could read and write; that we was regarded as competent and in full
possession of his faculties; and that as a laborer he had worked in one
position for twenty years. There seems to be no reason why he should not be
regarded as of ordinary intelligence; "8
His death at age 46 meant he barely
passed the life expectancy for a manual laborer of that time, which was 45.6
years for the average male.9 Everything about this man says average, yet his
brain was half the size of the normal human brain!
"Shortly after death the brain
was removed in the presence of Dr. Larkin and the coroner's physician, Dr.
Philip O'Hanlon. No head-measurements were made, but it did not appear to be
unusual in either size or shape. the brain filled the cranium; there was no
excess liquid, and no evidence of compression. Upon accurate scales the brain
was found to weigh exactly 24 ounces, or 680 grams, about one-half the average
for male Caucasians. It was placed
immediately in ten per cent. formalin, and there remained until sent to me more
than two years later."10
It isn't like these two doctors were
country bumpkins in Yahoosville. This
was New York City and they had to autopsy people who died without a medical
person in attendance. According to the
Newspapers,(this account probably came from the NY City papers and was
reprinted in Colorado) O'Hanlon had performed thousands of autopies,
"It is one of the most remarkable
brains I have ever seen , said Dr , O'Hanlon , who has made thousands of
autopsies , and it shows that the size of the brain does not necessarily : measure the intellect of man
."11
Wilder concludes his 1910 article with
this,
"This brain is not ape-like. Even
were it still smaller it is distinctly human....
…
"Upon the present occasion
attention is particularly directed to this exemplification of the possibility
that ordinary human intelligence may apparently coexist with a brain of only
one-half the ordinary size, exceeding that of certain apes by only 180 grams
(about six ounces), and not quite double the size of the brain of a congenital
idiot."12
Using a brain density of 1.045 g/cc we
find that the volume of his brain is 650 cc. So, let's see where Mr. Lyons lies
on the chart of brain size.
Mr. Lyon's brain is at the lower range
of Homo habilis!!! Surely we can't deny
that Mr. Lyon's carried the image of God in 1907 just because he had a small
brain, but normal intelligence, could read and write, and hold down a job for
20 years. This shows very clearly that intelligent consciousness is not tied to
brain size. It is tied to the connections it makes, or it is something above
and apart from the material world.
My brother died a horrible death by
brain cancer. The cancer ate one
hemisphere of his brain--it had been turned to liquid. Yet, he was lucid until
a few days before his death--with half a brain.
Intelligence, the image of God are not related to size, at least not
straightforwardly, and indeed as we will point out below, maybe not tied to the
material world.
At this point I am going to ask a
question, in light of Mr. Lyon's brain, should we extend the range of normal
brain size down, like in the chart below, making Mr. Lyons at the bottom end of
human normal brain? After doing this, empirically, looking at this human range
brains of normal intelligence we see that it covers the entire span of our
evolutionary fore-fathers, with the exception of the Australipithecines.
But we are not through,
Microcephaly with normal intelligence
Before we get into the medical
literature, I was criticized recently for citing a medical journal where the
patient was not identified. Mr. Lyons
was identified in the 1910 article, but today, that would be against medical
ethics to identify the patient. As a
cancer patient I am in about 40 different studies and each of them assures me
in writing that my name will never show up in a journal's pages. This is medical ethics 101 today. Secondly, I
was asked where I got this nonsense, and my answer was that I dig more deeply
than others. How many of you non-doctors
have gone off looking at medical literature so you can do something with a
Scripture verse? With those caveats, let us proceed.
John Travis wrote:
“In microcephaly, the cerebral cortex
grows unusually slowly and reaches a size no bigger than that of early
hominids.”13
Microcephaly is a very sad disease in
which the brain of the human ceases growth, either in utero or shortly after
birth.
ScienceDaily says this:
"The microcephaly genes have been
hot candidates for a role in the evolutionary expansion of the human brain because
mutations in these genes can reduce brain size by about two-thirds, to a size
roughly comparable to our early hominid ancestors" Microcephaly genes
associated with human brain size"14
According to Rushton, the average
human brain is about 1265 cc.15 Two
thirds of that is 421 cc. So, one must
wonder when one reads the medical literature (yes, my quest for information has
even gone there), and one sees these papers saying microcephalic patients can
have normal intelligence:
"We describe nine patients with
an apparently new genetic disorder characterized by: 1 (microcephaly with
normal intelligence; 2) “bird”‐like
facial appearance; 3( cellular and humoral immune defects; and 4) increased
risk for lymphoreticular malignancies.." 16
"The authors describe a family
with two children with microcephaly and normal intelligence, in which acute
lymphoblastic leukemia developed in one of the siblings.."17
They performed intelligence tests on
these children and concluded:
"In the two siblings in the
family reported, average or low average intelligence was confirmed on
performance testing, and they therefore fit the description of familial
microcephaly with normal intelligence"18
Ok, so maybe they won't be physicists
or surgeons, but there are plenty of big-brained people who perform average or
low average too. Are we to deny these
normally intelligent people the image of God merely because their brains are
small and abnormal?
"We report on 3 sibs (2 boys and
a girl) with a previously apparently unrecognized combination of anonychia
congenita and microcephaly with normal intelligence." 19
Yes, I had to look up anonychia
congenita, it means no finger nails. But to the point, all these people have
small brains, but normal intelligence.
But we are not through. So now, our table is filling up with small
brained humans of normal intelligence. Our picture now looks like:
Hemispheridectomy Patients
Some people as children have epilepsy
so badly that the only solution is to remove one hemisphere of the brain. Isn't life just a bowl of cherries when
parents have to face that decision; remove half your child's brain or watch him
die as the epilepsy kills off the other half of his brain? These patients,
unlike Mr. Lyons, have an abnormal brain after the surgery. Daniel Lyons had a small but normally
configured brain. Can non-normal
configuration carry normal intelligence, normal consciousness/soul?
The answer is surprisingly yes.
These patients are located on the chart above in the area of Mr. Lyon's
brain but the structure is quite different. I wrote in Adam, Apes and
Anthropology, Dallas: DMD Publishing, 1997, p. 159-160 (reference numbers changed to
match this paper's references:
----
"Other
people with other types of brain damage also can have normal intelligence. The
two halves of the brain are called hemispheres. These hemispheres are connected
by a cable of neurons called the corpus callosum. Occasionally people will develop severe
epilepsy in which the epilepsy starts in one brain hemisphere and spreads to
the other hemisphere. The resulting
electrical storm can threaten to destroy the healthy hemisphere. In severe cases, the only solution is to
remove the diseased half of the brain.
This procedure is done only as a last resort to save the life of the
individual. It is called a
hemispherectomy.
"Effectively
this procedure results in a human being with a brain size of around 600-650
cubic centimeters. This is smaller than the brain size of a gorilla, and is
within the range of the australopithecines. Yet the effect of this drastic reduction in brain
size does not result in a corresponding decline in intelligence. Most patients
with hemispherectomy end up with IQs averaging one standard deviation below
normal.20 It is not what we would
consider an advantage, but it is certainly great enough to be human.
"Another
type of procedure, called a hemidecortication severs the frontal cortex from
the rest of the brain. Even this
procedure when performed early in life does not totally destroy intelligence. Patients with this procedure have
post-operative IQs averaging 70.21 However, one of these patients has been
reported to have an IQ of 103.
"Smith
performed a long-term study of infants who had hemispherectomies. He wrote:
"At a 25-year follow-up; each had
obtained a college degree and had enjoyed a successful career as an executive,
following a right hemispherectomy in one case and a left hemispherectomy in the
other. Thus, as Smith noted, the
findings demonstrate that at birth each of the two cerebral hemispheres
contains the neuroanatomical and substrate necessary for the development of
normal or even superior adult language and verbal and nonverbal cognitive
functions."22
-----The bolding I did above shows that cutting out half the cortex doesn't stop someone from functioning. Remember, these brains are damaged brains, but the brains of habilis and erectus are not damaged, but normal evolved organs that give their owner enough intelligence to survive in a tough setting. It gives them enough intelligence to make stone tools, control fire, make clothing, and shelter etc. I think that is the mistake everyone makes, comparing damaged people with low intelligence and thinking somehow, that applies to fossil man. it doesn't. it is a category mistake.
Consider this, even speech can be
recovered even if the speech center is removed. A question I will discuss below
is, "Is it that the brain has spare capacity or is it that the
soul/consciousness doesn't arise from the material brain?"
"Instances of extensive recovery
from brain damage suggest that the brain has spare capacity. In a follow-up of
50 infantile hemiplegics who sustained surgical removal of all neocortex of one
hemisphere for intractable seizures or other injuries, Wilson (1970) reported
that all but one developed normal speech or recovered it completely irrespective
of which hemisphere had been removed (Wilson, 1970, p. 166). Smith and Sugar
(1975) carried out a comprehensive neuropsychological follow-up on a patient at
ages 21 and 26 who had had left hemispherectomy for seizures as a 5
1/2-year-old boy. He demonstrated superior language and intellect, including
WAIS verbal IQ of 126 and performance IQ of 102, had graduated from a
university, and was working as a traffic controller. Normal psychological
function also was observed in 279 cases of hydrocephalus with onset before the
end of the first year of life (Berker et al., 1983). Most remarkable is one
young man in whom a CAT scan shows ventricular dilatation occupying over 95% of
the intracranial space. When tested on the Michigan Neuropsychological Battery
at age 25, he had graduated from Sheffield University with honors in
mathematics, had a verbal IQ of 140 and performance IQ of 130, and had been
successfully employed for several years.23
The bolding in the quotes above
it showed that having half a brain didn't stop one from living his life and by
the way, carrying the image of God.
The Hobbit
Finally, we come to the most enigmatic
fossils anthropology has found, Homo floresiensis, the 'Hobbit'. This
population will challenge everyone's view of who has the image of God. This
being is believed to be the descendant of H. erectus, or H habilis who had
undergone severe island dwarfism. Often
on isolated islands, evolution shrinks the size of large animals so that they
match the available calories on the island. Karen Baab says:
"Two main evolutionary scenarios
have been proposed to explain the presence of the small bodied and
small-brained Homo floresiensis species on the remote Indonesian island of
Flores in the Late Pleistocene. According to these two scenarios, H.
floresiensis was a dwarfed descendent of H. erectus or a late-surviving remnant
of a older lineage, perhaps descended from H. habilis. Each scenario has
interesting and important implications for hominin biogeography, body size
evolution, brain evolution and morphological convergences. Careful evaluation
reveals that only a small number of characters support each of these scenarios
uniquely. H. floresiensis exhibits a cranial shape and many cranial characters
that appear to be shared derived traits with H. erectus, but postcranial traits
are more primitive and resemble those of early Homo or even
australopiths."24
One of the interesting things about
this creature, with his small brain, he was still able to manufacture stone
tools with the same methodology as used by H. erectus 700,000 years
earlier. Brumm states:
"In the Soa Basin of central
Flores, eastern Indonesia, stratified archaeological sites, including Mata
Menge, Boa Lesa and Kobatuwa (Fig. 1), contain stone artefacts associated with
the fossilized remains of Stegodon florensis, Komodo dragon, rat and various
other taxa.These sites have been dated to 840–700 kyr BP (thousand years before
present)1. The authenticity of the Soa Basin artefacts and their provenance
have been demonstrated by previous work, but to quell lingering doubts,
here we describe the context, attributes and production modes of 507 artefacts
excavated at Mata Menge. We also note specific similarities, and apparent
technological continuity, between the Mata Menge stone artefacts and those
excavated from Late Pleistocene levels at Liang Bua cave, 50 km to the west. The
latter artefacts, dated to between 95–74 and 12kyr ago, are associated with
the remains of a dwarfed descendant of S. florensis, Komodo dragon, rat and a
small-bodied hominin species, Homo floresiensis, which had a brain size of about
400 cubic centimetres"25
In the article they note:
"Despite being separated by 50 km
and at least 700,000 yr, there are remarkable similarities between the stone
artefact assemblage from Mata Menge and that found with H. floresiensis at Liang
Bua "26
While this is still a very
controversial hominid, one thing does seem certain. this small brained being
was able to not only make stone tools but pass that information on to its
offspring. H. floresiensis has the smallest of the small brains among the hominids.
He is not a human ancestor, but with this tiny brain, he was able to
manufacture stone tools. This should put to rest the concept that Adam couldn't
have a small brain. No I don't think
Adam had a brain as small as the floresiensis, but however much bigger his was, it could have carried a fairly
intelligent soul.
The Makapansgat Pebble
Desmond Morris, describes this
Jasperite pebble found in a limestone cave and dated to 3 million years ago.:
"As
it so happened, my first book The Biology of Art, published many years earlier,
had been an attempt to trace the origins of the most ancient of all forms of
adult play and to see how, from biological roots, the great tree of human art
could blossom. The earliest evidence we have of this activity is a staggering
three million years old. In 1925 a
strange object was found in a rock shelter at a site known as the Limeworks
Quarry in the Transvaal in southern Africa.
It was a water-worn, reddish pebble that seemed curiously out of
place. Investigations revealed that it
could not have come from the cave where it was found and must have been carried
from a location about three miles away.
What made it special was that it had the shape of a human skull, on one
side of which were small cavities that looked like a pair of sunken eye-sockets
above a simple mouth. There is no
suggestion that this 'face' had been artificially manufactured but its
accidental resemblance is so striking that it seems certain the object was
collected and brought back to a favoured dwelling place as a 'treasured
possession'.
"Known
as the Makapansgat Pebble, after the site where it was found, it is thought to
be the most ancient art object in the world.
What makes it so extraordinary is that the cave where it was discovered
was not occupied by prehistoric man but by the early man-apes known as the
Australopithecines. they may not have
been capable of fashioning a model head themselves but they were at least able
to see one in the natural surface-weathering on a pebble and to be so impressed
by the image that they were moved to carry it home with them, over a long
distance.
In
performing this seemingly simple action of collecting an unusual pebble, those
primeval man-apes were in reality taking a giant step. They were seeing a face that was not a
face. They were reacting to something
that stood for something else. By
responding to the image on the pebble they were indulging in a primitive form
of symbolism. They were struck by a resemblance, by an accidental echo, and
were so fascinated by it that they carried it for three miles. This long journey, carefully transporting the
pebble, reveals that their interest in the pebble-face was not a fleeting
reaction but a serious preoccupation.
"Fashioning
an image, as distinct from collecting one, appears to have been beyond these
man-apes, and was still a long way off in the future. Until recently, it was thought to be a
creative act that occurred only in the last fifty thousand years of the human
story. A recent discovery in the Middle
East has now pushed that date back to three hundred thousand years, but even
this is still quite young compared with the Makapansgat Pebble".27
What is interesting about this pebble,
is that the human who found it in 1925 saw a human face on it, and then
realized the stone was foreign to the limestone cave and had to be carried
their by Australopithecus. But what was not
known for years was that if you turn the pebble upside down, it has an
Australopithecine face. Above it is showing the Australopithecine face. Raymond Dart describes this,
"A complete perceptual
transformation had taken place. The two
little rounded 'eyes' retained their visual status though their contours looked
more square and adult. The huge 'brain'
and ridiculously pinched infantile 'mouth' that had involuntarily prevented us
sapient observers from orientating it otherwise, were now replaced by a
dwarfed, flattened, and indented 'skull-cap', above a broadly-grinning, robust
and typical australopithecine 'face'.
Its broad 'cheeks' and gaping 'mouth' have become so wide that even the
total absence of nostril openings would
have been incapable of preventing any perceptive Australopithecus from
recognizing it as anything other than a caricature of one or another of his
extremely flat-faced male or female relatives in a positively hilarious mood.
"The 'facial proportions' from
this new aspect are thus in excellent general agreement with those that
reconstructional efforts have caused each modern artist, with minor variations,
to produce for Australopithecus. This
concordance of itself is sufficient justification of the inference that
conceptual processes of a similar nature caused an australopithecine to
transport the pebble to the cave at Makapansgat. In addition, the curious and to some extent
corroborative fact is that once one admits the possibility that an
Australopithecus had the intellectual ability to detect the presence of a face
on this alien natural stone, then the social responses that capacity evoked,
follow. The pebble would have had no
point without an ability on his associate's part to comprehend and share the
emotional reactions, the puzzlement and amusement, that the discoverer had
had. And from this it may also be deduced
that he and his fellows at the australopithecine phase of human evolution had
already reached a humanoid level of self-realisation and
self-awareness."28
I raise this pebble because clearly
the Australopithecine had the intellect to recognize a symbol of himself. This is far beyond the abilities of
chimpanzees. Chimps can be taught to use
symbols but only after lots of training, which one can interpret as being
conditioning rather than the chimp actually knowing what a symbol is. Chimps
never use symbolism in the wild. But
here we have a 3 million year old small brained hominid who was able to engage
in symbolism. Symbolism is the very
basis of language, where a word is a symbol for something else. Our ability to use and understand symbols is
the very basis of our technological culture, our religion, our art, everything.
And the small brained Australopith proved that he recognized a symbol of
himself, picked up the pebble and carried it 3 miles home as a prize. We don't know much about what Australopithecines
could do, but this is a significant thing they could do.
Does the Level of Technology mean
anything?
I must discuss this here because many
will object that human inventiveness, human technology is a sign of the image
of God. There is no greater
falsehood. Rana and Ross contend that
technology differentiates man with the image of God from those earlier
primates:
“Stone tools became smaller in size
and were made with more precision man those recovered from Middle Stone Age and
other comparable ancient sites. Often these later stone implements were
intentionally dulled at one end and attached to wooden handles and shafts.
Other tools were cut from bone and ivory, then carefully carved and polished.
The first humans made projectile points, awls, punches, fishhooks, harpoons,
and needles with eyes. They lived in solidly built dwellings and made
fireplaces and hearths bordered with stones for heat retention. Compared to the
earlier hominids, the first humans behaved in sophisticated ways that reflected
superior cognitive abilities and technical inventiveness.”
“Closing In for the Kill”
“The hunting practices of the first
humans also showed greater sophistication than those of Middle Stone Age
hominids (as seen at sites in southern Africa). First, the animal remains from
these Late Stone Age sites are much more diverse than those collected from
Middle Stone Age locales. Late Stone Age sites contain many more fish and fowl
skeletons. Fish gorges and net sinkers also have been found in Late Stone Age digs.
The design, manufacture, and use of these implements required sophisticated
cognitive capacity..”29
Many believe this view, but are we
really going to suggest that fishing is the sign of the mark of God on us? Or 'solidly built dwellings' marks the image
of God? Really? Material possessions as
a sign of spirituality? I find this view risable at best.
The thing people forget in all this is
that there were some Homo sapiens who were so isolated that their technology
was comparable to the technology of chimpanzees. Let me tell you about the Tasmanians. I
referred to them above as enduring the longest isolation of any group in
human history. Josephine Flood observes that the Tasmanians were gradually cut
off from Australia between 12,000 and 8,000 years ago,
"No other surviving human society
has ever been isolated so long or so completely as were Tasmanian Aborigines
over the last 8000 years. (the land bridge was gradually inundated between
12000 and 8000 BP-....)"30
There were only about 4,000 Tasmanians
on the island, and 4,000 people is not sufficiently large to maintain even the
technology of the Australian aborigines, which the original Tasmanians started
with. Old archaeological sites show the loss of technology over time.
"Bone tools were also present at
Rocky cape. Seven thousand years ago
people here were using a considerable number and variety of bone artefacts:
large, rounded tipped points or awls made from macropod shin bones, small,
sharp needle-like points (without an eye), broad spatulae, and an assortment of
split slivers of bone fashioned ot a point at one end. The people were using one bone tool to every
two or three stone ones.
"A remarkable change took place
over the next four thousand years: bone tools dropped out of use. By 4000 years ago only one bone tool was
being used for every fifteen stone ones, and by 3500 years ago they had
disappeared from the Tasmanian toolkit altogether. This disappearance of bone tools in Tasmania
about 3000 years ago has been confirmed by the evidence of several other sites
in both the north-west and east of the island." 31
Then, with fish all around them, the
Tasmanians stopped fishing--a real no-no for Rana and Ross, did the Tasmanians lose the mark of the image of God?
"Even
more surprising is the incontrovertible evidence that after eating fish for
many thousands of years the Tasmanians dropped fish from the diet about 3500
years ago. Early explorers were amazed
that the Tasmanians did not eat scale fish and did not even seem to regard it
as human food. Those who could bring
themselves to believe this astonishing fact ascribed it to the extreme
primitiveness of Tasmanian culture.
Certainly the Tasmanians had no nets or fish-hooks, so it seemed logical
to some scholars, steeped in Darwinian evolutionary theory, that these most
primitive representatives of the human race should be unable even to catch
fish, one of the basic foods of mankind.
"This
concept of a people too far down on the evolutionary ladder to have learnt how
to catch fish was not seriously challenged until fish bones were found in the
middens of Rocky Cape. Yet fish bones
were not at the top, but at the base, of the middens. The Tasmanians had once eaten fish but later
gave up this excellent source of food."In Rocky Cape South Cave there were 3196 fish bones in the lower half of the midden, dated to between 3800 and 8000 years ago, and only one fish bone in the younger, upper half."32
It is not surprising that fishing stopped because bones were often used to carve fish hooks.
"That the simplest material
culture should be found among the people who experienced the longest isolation
in the world is significant. Rhys Jones
sees analogies with the reduction in the number of faunal species on islands
that become separated from their parent continents. He considers the 4000 people isolated on
Tasmania and divided into several different language groups were too few to
maintain indefinitely their Pleistocene culture, and that they were therefore,
doomed--'doomed to a slow strangulation of the mind.'"33
Technology requires a sufficient population size.
Jared Diamond agrees
“Remember that Tasmania used to be
joined to the southern Australian mainland at Pleistocene times of low sea
level, until the land bridge was severed by rising sea level 12,000 years ago.
People walked out to Tasmania tens of thousands of years ago, when it was still
part of Australia. Once that land bridge was severed, though, there was
absolutely no further contact of Tasmanians with mainland Australians or with
any other people until the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman arrived in 1642, because
both Tasmanians and mainland Australians lacked watercraft capable of crossing
those 130-mile straits between Tasmania and Australia. Tasmanian history is
thus a study of human isolation unprecedented except in science fiction—namely,
complete isolation from all other humans for 12,000 years.
“If
all those technologies that I mentioned, absent from Tasmania but present on
the opposite Australian mainland, were invented by Australians within the last
12,000 years, we can surely conclude that the Tasmanians did not invent them
independently. Astonishingly, the archaeological record demonstrates something
further: Tasmanians actually abandoned some technologies that they brought with
them from Australia and that persisted on the Australian mainland. For example,
bone tools and the practice of fishing were both present in Tasmania at the
time that the land bridge was severed, and both disappeared from Tasmania
around 1500 B.C. That represents the loss of valuable technologies: fish could
have been smoked to provide a winter food supply, and bone needles could have
been used to sew warm clothes. What sense can we make of these cultural losses?
“The only interpretation that makes sense to me goes as follows. All human societies go through fads in which they temporarily either adopt practices of little use or else abandon practices of considerable use. For example, there are several instances of people on Pacific islands suddenly deciding to taboo and kill off all of their pigs, even though pigs are their only big edible land mammal! Eventually, those Pacific islanders realize that pigs are useful after all, and they import a new breeding stock from another island.”34
Of course the Tasmanians couldn’t
import technology like the Polynesians because they didn't have the boats capable of crossing 130
mile strait.
William McGrew compared the Tasmanian technology with that of
chimpanzees and the Tasmanians barely won.
"Bill
McGrew, author of the most comprehensive study of chimpanzee material culture,
firmly believes that chimpanzee tool use is of considerable complexity. Indeed, in an (in)famous article written in
1987, he directly compared the toolkits of chimpanzees to those of Tasmanian
Aborigines and concluded that they were at an equivalent level of complexity.
For this comparison McGrew chose to measure complexity by counting
'technounits', which is simply an individual component of a tool, whatever
material that component is made from and however it is used. So a hoe used by,
say, a peasant farmer, comprising a shaft, a blade and a binding, has three
technounits, while the suite of computerized robots operated by a modern car
worker has perhaps three million technounits.
"When
McGrew measured the technounits in the tools
of the Tasmanian Aborigines and those of the Tanzanian chimpanzees he
found that the mean number of technounits per tool was not substantially
different. All chimpanzee tools and most
of the Aboriginal tools were made from a single component. The most complex
Aboriginal tool, a baited hide, had only four technounits."35
Now, if we are to consider abject
poverty and lack of technology as a sign that these people don't have the image
of God, then we can stop all attempts at evangelizing Tasmanian descendants. But can we realistically use this 'lack of
technology' argument as a way to say early hominids lacked the image of God?
Consider if you and 7 others were the sole survivors of some earthly catastrophe. How much of today's technology would you be able to save? Coal and natural gas generate electricity and electricity moves the natural gas to the power plant. Do you know how to get coal or natural gas to your local power plant when electricity doesn't work? Do you know where the nearest coal mine is? If it is far, how are you going to eat for the days of travel? You can't get gasoline for your cars without electricity pumping it out of underground tanks. Do you know where iron ore is to be found? Do you know what it looks like? Do you know how to smelt it? Do you know what invention is required to make the rock give up its iron? How about farming? Could you and your friends farm without tractors and all the equipment that goes with it? How are you going to eat while the crop grows? While you are out hunting for today's food, the wildlife is feasting on your crops. I have seen that with my own eyes, squirrels can clean a peach tree bare of fruit in about 3 hours. Technology requires a large population and a surplus of food to feed the specialists. So, the long periods of technological stasis mean only one thing, they didn't have extra food so that someone could experiment.
I am under no illusions that people
will change their mind in the face of these facts, that modern men with the
image of God could be so lacking in technology, but technology requires
specialists, time, and a larger population. So, when we look at the
Australopithecines, who showed an ability to recognize a symbol for themselves,
we need to think hard about whether or not we think they could have had the
image of God. As I have said, I would
believe Adam was an erectine or something close to it, but how are we to
interpret the Makapansgat pebble with relationship to modern human qualities?
With all the evidence above, showing that
small brains can carry a complete soul,
I would contend that brain size is not of paramount importance. Brain
organization is ASSUMING....
Is the Soul Immaterial?
....assuming consciousness arises from
the brain, and I don't think it does.
The data above supports the view
Gordon Simons and I advanced in our Quantum Soul article. All interpretations of quantum mechanics
require that the observer is apart from matter, and not subject to the laws of
quantum itself.. We show in that paper
that no matter what interpretation of quantum one chooses, it unavoidably ends
up running into consciousness and consciousness is required to solve a problem
within the theory.
Physicist Stephen Barr says that the
observer in quantum lies outside the material world:
"But this was only one of the
remarkable reversals produced by the
quantum revolution. In the opinion of many physicists-including
such great figures in twentieth-century physics
as Eugene Wigner and Rudolf Peierls-the
fundamental principles of quantum theory are
inconsistent with the materialist view of the human mind. Quantum theory, in its traditional, or
"standard," or "orthodox" formulation, treats "observers" as being on a
different plane from the physical
systems that they observe. A careful analysis of the logical structure of quantum theory suggests that for
quantum theory to make sense it has to
posit the existence of observers who lie, at least in part, outside of the description provided by
physics. This claim is controversial.
There have been various attempts made to avoid this conclusion, either by radical
reinterpretations of quantum theory
(such as the so-called "many-worlds interpretation") or by
changing quantum theory in some way. But
the argument against materialism based
on quantum theory is a strong one, and has certainly not been refuted. The line" of argument is rather
subtle. It is also not well- known, even among most practicing physicists. But,
if it is correct, it would be the most
important philosophical implication to come from any scientific discovery."36
Now, here is the rub, if consciousness
arises from matter, as materialists claim, then every single one of the above
broken brains should be unable to have a normal consciousness associated with
it. Break a few piano strings on a
piano, and it won't play worth a tinker's darn.
Rip out a few resistors and capacitors or chips from a computer and its
ability is invariably lessened. But
amazingly, one can't say that about a brain.
Rip out half of it and it is still possible for the person to have a
completely normal personality. This, it
seems to me can only happen if consciousness, our soul, doesn't arise from
matter.
It used to be that Christians believed
in an immortal, immaterial soul. I fear
among Christians in science these days we have accepted by default the
materialist view that a material brain creates consciousness. If that is the fact, then I think we have
walked away from the best arguments we have for our world view--evidence that
the soul isn't material.
Conclusion
Not only can a small brain host a
perfectly normal Homo sapiens, our study here takes an interesting turn in that
it creates much evidence that the soul isn't material. God is spirit; He isn't material. We are made
in His image, and that requires, in my opinion that our soul/consciousness be
spirit as well.
We have shown here that brain size
should not be barrier to believing that Adam was way back in time. My view is that Adam was likely an H.
erectus, but he could have been habilis.
I know some will note that fossilized H. erectus isn't found before 2
million years ago. That is true, but do you really think that the first fossil
erectus was the very first erectus on earth?
Fossilization is a statistical thing. Species get fossilized AFTER they
are numerous and widespread, so that there is plenty of chance for a rare
fossilization event to take place and preserve them. When a species is few, and limited to a small
locale, it is unlikely that a fossilization event would happen. That will be
discussed when we talk about the fossil record.
For now, just know, that brain size is not the obstacle for an ancient
Adam that everyone thinks it is--it is just a new concept, not an
impossibility.
Next article: When did Adam Live Pt 3: Genetics
Next article: When did Adam Live Pt 3: Genetics
References
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27-28
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