JAVA MAN, THE MISSING LINK?
Science Magazine – “Fossil evidence reveals that members of Homo erectus on Java… may have persisted on the island until about 100,000 years ago”.
The main thing I want to address in this article is
what the so-called “fossil evidence reveals” about the previously named, “Java
Man”. The term is based on the location
of the discovery, Java Indonesia. The
term was later changed to Homo Erectus or “upright man”. One of Haeckel's students, Eugene Dubois,
became determined to find Pithecanthropus. Haeckel believed men might have separated from
apes somewhere in Southern Asia. So, in
1887, Dubois signed up as a doctor with the Dutch medical corps in the Dutch
East Indies (now Indonesia), intending to hunt for fossils during all his spare
time. Dubois, it should be noted, had no
formal training in geology or paleontology at the time, and his
"archaeological team" consisted of prison convicts with two army
corporals as supervisors. Years of excavation produced little of significance.
Then, in 1891, along Java's Solo River, the laborers dug up a skullcap that
appeared rather apelike, with a low forehead and large eyebrow ridges. Dubois initially considered it from a
chimpanzee, even though there is no evidence that this ape ever lived in Asia. However, the following year, the diggers
unearthed three human teeth and a thigh bone that was clearly human. Dubois, like Piltdown's discoverers, presumed
that an apelike bone somewhere near a human bone meant the two belonged to the
same creature, constituting Darwin's missing link.
In 1895,
Dubois returned to Europe and displayed his fossils. The response from experts
was mixed, however. Rudolph Virchow, who had once been Haeckel's professor and
is regarded as the father of modern pathology, said: "In my opinion, this
creature was an animal, a giant gibbon, in fact. The thigh bone has not the
slightest connection with the skull." The circumstances of Dubois' find
were unorthodox. He had apparently been absent when the convicts dug up his
fossils. Maps and diagrams of the site were not made until after the
excavation. Under such conditions, a modern dig would be disregarded.
In 1907, an
expedition of German scientists from various disciplines, led by Professor M.
Lenore Selenka, traveled to Java seeking more clues to man's ancestry in the
region of Dubois' discovery. However, no evidence for Pithecanthropus was
found. In the stratum of Dubois' find, the scientists found hearths and flora
and fauna that looked rather modern. The expedition's report also noted a
nearby volcano that caused periodic flooding in the area. Java Man had been
found in volcanic sediments. The report observed that the chemical nature of
those sediments, not ancient age, probably caused the fossilization of
Pithecanthropus. Nevertheless, the Selenka findings and various deficiencies of
Dubois' work were largely ignored, and Java Man became one of evolution's
undisputed "facts."
Fossil
evidence is used to determine age by means of radiometric dating. The practice involves determining the
quantity of C-14 (Carbon) remaining in the fossil itself. This method of radiometric dating is primarily
used to determine the age of previously living organic material.
When cosmic
radiation strikes the Earth’s atmosphere it converts N-14 (Nitrogen)
into C-14 which is consumed by the fauna by means of inhalation and
consumption. When an organism expires
the amount of C-14 begins to decay.
The half-life of C-14 is determined to be at 5,730 years, as
a result measurable amounts of C-14 are undetectable beyond 50,000
years. This article claims that Homo
erectus existed on Java “until about 100,000 years ago”. This number could not have been arrived at by
means of C-14 dating. So,
what method of radiometric dating was employed to determine an age of 100,000
years+? That information was not relayed
at any point in the article. All that is
stated in the article is that “the researchers applied five types of
radiometric dating” but they do not say what those “types” were. Furthermore, the article also stated that a
“new method” of dating was applied, but again it does not state what that “new
method” of radiometric dating was. Only
that it was applied “to those animal fossils and the sediments around
them” (emphasis added).
But what
method of radiometric dating was used for measuring those sediments? They could have applied any number of differing
dating techniques, Polonium/Lead, Potassium/Argon, Rubidium/Strontium or
something different. But all dating
methods are highly subjective as they are capable of yielding wide ranging discordant
results in the ages given. This process
is achieved by means of measuring the ratio of parent to daughter elements in a
given sample, for example, the parent element of Po-218 (Polonium) decays
into the daughter element Pb-214 (Lead) with an extremely short half-life
of just three minutes. As such, the
parent element Po-218 should be completely absent from any rock
formations, and yet they appear in the trillions inside granite, believed to be
the “basement” or “first formed” rock after the Earth had supposedly cooled for
millions of years. The existence of
these radio polonium halos, however, suggest that those granite rocks were
solid inside of three minutes, anything longer would indicate that those
polonium halos should not be there, but they are. Furthermore, if you melt granite, when it
solidifies it becomes rhyolite, not granite.
This suggests that granite was never in a molten state.
Potassium/Argon
dating is one of the most popular forms of radiometric dating as it is the
least labour intensive, and the most affordable form of dating used. K-40 is the parent element of Ar-40,
which is the daughter element that potassium decays into. This method of dating typically yields a half-life
of 1.25 billion years. Potassium/Argon
dating is primarily used to date igneous and fossil bearing rock strata. This is a possible dating method that may
have been employed to date the fossils at Java.
Remember though, in this method it is not the fossils themselves which are
dated, but the sediments surrounding the fossils. From there it is assumed the fossils are of
the same age as the sediments in which they are discovered, a tautology of
reasoning. It cannot be denied that from
a strictly philosophical standpoint geologists are here arguing in a circle.
The succession of organisms has been determined by a study of their remains
embedded in the rocks, and the relative ages of the rocks are determined by the
remains of organisms that they contain.[i] In the American Journal of Science J. E. O’
Rourke stated that, “Radiometric dating would not have been feasible if the
geologic column had not been erected first.”[ii] I’m not sure O’Rourke recognized the gravity
of the statement he made. The geologic
column was first proposed by Scottish lawyer and geologist Charles Lyell in the
early part of the 19th century.
Charles
Lyell viewed the rock strata and divided those strata into three broad eras,
Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic. “Paleo”
means “old” or “ancient”. “Zoe” is the
word for “life” therefore “Paleozoic” means “old” or “Ancient Life”. “Meso” means “middle” so “Mesozoic” means
“Middle Life”. “Ceno” means “new” or
“recent” therefore “Cenozoic” means “Recent Life”. In order to determine the age of each of the
rock layers he could not rely on any form of radiometric dating such as
uranium-lead, potassium-argon or rubidium-strontium dating method as they had
not yet been discovered. Instead, he
determined the age of the layers based on the fossils. If the layers contained fossils of organisms
currently living then those layers were determined to be younger, if the layers
contained fossils of organisms no longer living then those layers were
determined to be older. Lyell borrowed
the ideas of Scottish scientist James Hutton who advanced the notion of
uniformitarianism contrary to the more prominent catastrophism to explain the
various sedimentary layers observed. The
mantra of uniformitarianism was that “the present is the key to the past”. In other words, present gradual geological
processes of erosion and vulcanism, for example, have always remained the same. From this observation, Lyell determined what
the dates of the geologic column should be.
The parent
element of Rb-87 (Rubidium) decays into the daughter element Sr-87
(Strontium) with a widely varying half-life of 48.8 billion to 120 billion
years. A variation of 146%. This method of dating is often employed to date
Igneous rock and Metamorphic rock. This
method of radioactive dating was the first extensively used dating method which
employed the isochron method. The term
“isochron” means, “equal time”; it is a graph which is utilized to address some
of the radiometric dating issues. The
first attempts to answer the question of whether or not any daughter elements
were present in the sample when it first solidified. If there were, then this will affect the
final results leaving a misleading age for the sample. The second attempts to determine if the sample
has remained in a closed system throughout its history. If not, mineral atoms can migrate into or out
of the sample invalidating any test results for age.
Regardless
of whether or not this article provides the method of dating used or not, all
dating methods are subjected to a number of assumptions which invalidate the
results. It is due to those built-in assumptions
which invalidates the aforementioned isochron method for dating rock samples. In the hourglass analogy we have a closed
system, nothing gets in or out. The
upper half of the hourglass represents the parent element, the bottom half
represents what the parent element decays into, referred to as the daughter element.
But if I could remove one end of the hourglass and add more sand to it, or
remove some of the sand from it, that would affect the time it takes to fall to
the bottom. Furthermore, if I were to
excuse a group of students from the class before turning it over. When I brought them back in, would they be
able to determine how long the sand in the hourglass had been falling? If it was a two-minute hourglass and I
brought them back in after a minute, there should be an equal amount top and
bottom. But what if I did not bother
turning the hourglass over until 45 seconds into the first minute of that two-minute
timer? There are too many variables and
assumptions in the dating of rock samples that make determining their
respective ages virtually impossible.
Finally,
terms like “probably”, “could have” and “may have” that appear in
the article indicate a level of subjectivity and conditional possibility, in
contrast to terms like “is” and “are” which are a present indicative. As such, there appears to be a lot of conjecture
regarding what the findings actually indicate.
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