From: gpalo@digi.lonestar.org (Gerry Palo)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: Where does Adam and Eve Fit In?  Attn:  Jeff West
Date: 26 Jan 93 22:14:18 GMT
Organization: DSC Communications Corp, Plano, TX

In article <1993Jan25.113326.6860@walter.cray.com> jwest@wisc (Jeff West) writes:
>brian@lpl.arizona.edu (Brian Ceccarelli 602/621-9615) writes:
>: Jeff West writes:
>: 
>: > Ok, as I understand it you take the creation of Adam and Eve as
>: > described in Genesis literally, correct?  Meaning that we all have
>: > decended from 2 people.
>: 
>: Before a number of people start taking your statement out of 
>: context and begin flaming me, let me restate what I mean by
>: "literally".  :-)
>: 
>: What I mean by literally, is that I try to interpret the passages
>: in the Bible based on their content and the passages' literary form.
>: 
>: Brian Ceccarelli
>
>Apparently Brian, you and I look at the word literal in two very
>different ways.
>
>Later in your post you say that A&E were possibly created while
>Stone Age man exhisted.  Do you not believe that we are decended
>from these people?  It's been shown for instance that the Stone
>Age people of Europe are the forfathers of today's Europeans.
>
>Are there two lines of people out there.  Ones who evolved and
>the ones who were "created?"
>
>Jeff West
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------
>It's not denial.  I'm just very selective about the reality I accept.
>
>    - Calvin & Hobbs

I don't think that any of the examples of fossil man have been identified
as true ancestors of modern man.  At least there is not scientific con-
sensus (excluding creation scientists, of course, who naturally don't
agree).  All the actual examples found so far are arguably dead ends 
that for one morphological reason or another could not have developed 
into homo sapiens.

Some of the more primitive Stone Age men are now thought to have been
contemporary with homo sapiens.  There is an interesting article in
the latest issue of Smithsonian that suggests that Neanderthal, definitely
not an ancestor of homo sapiens, may have not only been contemporary
but also somewhat cultured, at least much more so than previously thought.

I don't follow this actively, but over the years I have noticed that from
time to time another fossil man is found and held up hopefully as a real
example of a true ancestor of modern man.  It invariably is reported as
such in the popular media, but after a while it fades away. And if you 
keep an eye out on the scientific literature, you find that there are
problems with it, though there are always a number of scientists at any
given time who defend it. But even Leaky's what's-her-name is disputed. 
The first undisputed skeleton of a pre-human ancestor of modern man 
(which used to be called "the missing link") has yet to be found.  
Then, of course, there is the problem of _its_ pre-pre-human ancestry.

One possibility that you rarely hear about is that the ancestry is
the other way around.  As I understand it, morphologically, the known 
Stone Age men are evolutionary dead ends.  They could not have evolved 
into man. However, they could have evolved _from_ man.  I.e., a 
deteriorating offshoot. The problem is, of course, that there are no
fossil remains of homo sapiens going that far back. But now, in the 
case of Neanderthal there may be.  We should also remember that the
fossil record is very sparse indeed, and that of the vast majority of 
human and animal remains not a trace remains.

None of this proves that evolution is false, but only that the fossil
record as we know it is still wanting. What will turn up tomorrow? 
Who knows?

In my mind, if Adam and Eve existed they were far far earlier than the
fossil men (homo sapiens and not) of whom they were the ancestors, and 
there will be no fossil record of them at all. But that is another tale.

Gerry Palo (73237.2006@compuserve.com)