http://www.boston.com/dailynews/193/nation/Scientists_find_fossils_that_m:.shtml

Scientists find fossils that may be oldest link to humans; old evolutionary theory challenged

By Mark Evans, Associated Press, 7/12/2001 01:06

Scientists working in Ethiopia have found what may be the oldest known traces of human-like life teeth and bones from up to 5.8 million years ago in a discovery that challenges the long-held belief that man's earliest ancestors first emerged on the grassy plains.

The remains are believed to be those of forest-dwelling creatures that walked upright. They are about 1 million years older than any other known fossils definitively identified as those of hominids, the group that includes humans, the researchers said.

The fossils come from a point in time tantalizingly close to the evolutionary split between the lineage leading to humans and the one that produced chimpanzees. Scientists believe that split took place between 5 million and 8 million years ago.

''This evidence appears to be on the human line one of the earliest human ancestors. Not only is the dating very solid, but what the report tells us about the environments of the time is really critical,'' said Brian Richmond, an anthropologist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, who was not connected to the study. ''This is a windfall of information compared to what we've had.''

The bones were found in a remote Ethiopian desert that was wet and forested and rattled by volcanic eruptions when the creatures lived there, the researchers reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

That discovery clashes with the widely held theory that the drying up of forests millions of years ago was critical to human evolution. This theory holds that early human ancestors learned to walk upright, and diverged forever from their apelike cousins, because their forests were gone and they had to survive on the treeless plains.

Bernard Wood, a human origins professor at George Washington University, said it is not entirely proven that the creatures were hominids or that their habitat was really a forest. ''But that doesn't diminish the importance of what they've found,'' he said.

The research team, led by Yohannes Haile-Selassie of the University of California at Berkeley, made the discovery 140 miles northeast of Addis Ababa, and about 50 miles south of where the fossil ''Lucy'' was found about three decades ago. Lucy is some 3.2 million years old and is believed to be a member of the species from which all modern humans are descended.

Haile-Selassie and his colleagues found 11 specimens, including a jawbone with teeth, hand and foot bones, fragmentary arm bones and a piece of collarbone. They represent at least five individuals, Haile-Selassie said.

Dating was done by measuring trapped argon gas in volcanic ash that had been mixed in with the bones. It found the fossils to be between 5.2 million and 5.8 million years old.

Haile-Selassie said the specimens revealed a primitive version of Ardipithecus ramidus, an early hominid species whose oldest known fossils were previously found in 4.4-million-year-old sediment in Ethiopia.

He said with further research, the bones might turn out be a new species altogether.

The researchers said it is impossible to get much of an idea of what the creatures looked like because no skull or intact limb was found. The lower jaw is roughly the same size as a chimpanzee's, but the back teeth are bigger and the front teeth narrower, indicating they ate less fruit and leaves and more fibrous food.

One of the fossils, a 5.2-million-year-old toe joint, suggests the creature walked upright, Haile-Selassie said. Upright walking is considered a hallmark trait of the human lineage.

The discovery is sure to fuel the debate over early human evolution. In recent months, two other research teams have challenged long-held assumptions about what ancient creatures were truly human ancestors.

In February, a French team led by researcher Brigitte Senut described remains of a new species, Orrorin tugeneniss, found in Kenya. The fossils are 6 million years old, or older than Haile-Selassie's. Senut said they represented a hominid species.

But Haile-Selassie questioned whether the French team had enough evidence to classify their fossils as those of a hominid. Other scientists have split over the issue.

In March, a team led by Meave Leakey, a member of the fossil-hunting Leakey family, announced the discovery of a 3.5 million-year-old skull in Kenya. Leakey said it is about the same age as Lucy but appeared to be a completely different species with a more human-like face. Leakey said it may be this species and not that of Lucy that was an early direct ancestor of humans.

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2001

Answers

All my life I have watched scientists struggle with finding a direct line from humanoids to humans. The so-called missing link. Why couldn't they come up with something convincing, I wondered? After all, they can trace horses from little dog-like creatures right up to the present variety, or at least the present wild variety.

Then, along came Zecharia Sitchin about 25 years ago, with his stated translations of old Sumerian tablets. According to Sitchin, the Sumerians were saying that ETs had made humans by genetically altering a pre-existing humanoid type. That would answer the question about missing links. There never was a link. And it would answer the question about some strange humanoid type fossils constantly being uncovered, since the ETs are said to have been stopping by here for a few million years, in general, and have been very active here for the last 300,000 years, in particular.

What the heck, since science has never had a viable public answer to most of the OOPARTS (out of place artifacts) why not just take the Sumerian story as plausible and go from there? Lots of pieces then fall into place like a tumbler opening a lock. After all, we do have scores of credible people, from astronauts to common cops, even Monsignor Balducci (from the Vatican), who say that UFOs/ETs are real, and here, and have been for quite a few years.

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2001

Gordon, the only Sitchin I have read so far (because I wanted to start with an overview) is Genesis Revisited. Which one gives his best arguments for the genetic alterations? This was the Sitchin theory I was most willing to dismiss, but you make some good points.

There was a fair amount of discussion a few months back, on Timebomb I believe, lead by iona, that there was unaccounted for code in the human genome. Or something like that. I think she was trying to tie it into Sitchin's theory, or maybe it was a theory he had expressed himself. Do you remember, and did you have a reaction?

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2001

Brooks,

Let me start like this, which is to say that I haven't found *any* credible "scientific" explanation for how humans suddenly came to be upon this planet. Lots of theories, sure, but no supporting facts. And that's from the same scientists who can't stand to consider these alternative explanations, but have nothing better to offer in rebuttal.

Then there is the religious faction, in the Christian world, who have been taught by their priests and ministers to interpret the Bible stories in a particular way. We know, if we spend any serious time on it, that there are countless ways to portray every single Bible story, according to which branch of Christianity one belongs to, and according to which minister within that branch one listens to. Which is why there has been so much fighting among the various branches for so many years. But I won't go further than that about religion.

So when Sitchin wrote his first book, The 12th Planet, he explained clearly that he was offering his own hypothesis and theories. He even stated that some of the "facts" he would be offering were his own interpretations of what the Sumerian tablets were saying, since other experts in reading the Sumerian had put other meanings on the symbols. He further stated that the same applied to his translations of the Old Testament and other Hebrew scholars could, and did, disagree with him on various meanings of what was written there.

However, even if you found the human engineering aspect difficult to swallow, done by ETs who were being worshiped as Gods (actually as Lords, to be more correct) I'm sure you found the mathematics and science outlined there to be amazing. Explaining how our counting system came about, and how the 360 degrees of a circle came from Sumeria, among many other extraordinary things. Such as how they used a mathematics based on 6 and 10, rather than just 10 alone as we now do here, and how that allowed for much better mathematical predictions of cosmic movements.

His book, Genesis Revisited, is a good book to play catch-up, if there is only one of his books you read. It updates his first book and sets the stage for others. If you haven't read it recently, perhaps you should go through it again. Sometimes we are not ready for a shocking new theory/outlook/discovery/explanation when we first stumble upon it, (a "shattering" takes place) but later on it begins to make actual sense.

We sometimes have to clear a lot of old rubble off the building site to put up something new. When the rubble is deeply rooted in our own folkways, including religious teachings of any sort, there can be a great reluctance to move it aside. The first time I did such a thing in my late teens I felt I was guilty of heresy. That's how strong the teachings of the priests had attached to my psyche.

As to the DNA issue, it has been said by both Sitchin (Sumerian) and currently channeled messages, that there was more active DNA originally, but it was disabled by the ETs in order to better control the finished product. Sort of like a lobotomy of your basic coding. Also that DNA can be manipulated by concentrated light waves that are laser-like but not lasers as we usually think of them. We have already mentioned moving stones with sound waves, tonal vibration it's called. All these things take a very open mind to imagine, and to then incorporate into a new way of understanding.

Science offers new theories every year about how everything came about. One of the latest is the string theory, which you can read about in various books such as, The Elegant Universe, by Brian Greene. If you wish to, you can make a case that these "scientific" theories are as much hogwash as the Sitchin writings since they explain nothing, really. Simple speculation. The difference is that a lot of the material presented by Sitchin (an others like him) do seem to make sense of things that have been puzzles for us all our life. Black holes, for instance. What are they and why do they exist? Various answers are offered, some of which make a lot of sense (at least to me) but I won't get into that here and now, except to say that the most compelling explanation did not come from the science field.

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2001