Claim CC040:
Anthropologists disagree about what the human family tree looks like.
Every new discovery seems to give reason to redraw the tree, whereas we
would expect the tree to become clearer as discoveries accumulate.
Source:
Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, 1985. Life--How Did It Get Here?
Brooklyn, NY, p. 88.
Response:
- Pointing to the disagreements is a ruse to distract from the areas
where there is agreement. There is no significant disagreement among
professionals that modern humans evolved from an African
australopithecine or that other hominids sometimes coexisted with the
lineage that led to humans.
- Much of the disagreement is hype. When someone discovers yet another
Homo erectus fossil from the same region and era as other Homo
erectus fossils, newspapers do not trumpet the headline, "Another
Fossil Supports Hominid Lineage." Such fossils are not news except to
the paleoanthropologists who work on them. The headlines go to the
truly novel finds.
Disagreement is also hyped because it makes a better emotional story.
Anthropologists would be glad to make a discovery that overturns
conventional understanding, and news reporters favor such stories as
well, so the significance of small disagreements tends to get
magnified.
- Disagreement and uncertainty are routine in areas opened by new
scientific discoveries. Paleoanthropology is a field in which new
discoveries are not uncommon, so there will be uncertainty at first
around those discoveries. However, paleoanthropology is also a mature
science at its core; the uncertainty and disagreement there is at a
minimum.
- Disagreements get resolved. This is an important feature of science
never found in creationism. As more data are discovered, the data
answer the questions we have. For example, it was once unknown whether
Neanderthals and modern humans were separate species. Molecular
evidence now strongly indicates that they were (Krings et al. 2000).
The record may be insufficient to answer some of our questions, such as
when language began, but by and large, our questions can and do get
answered.
References:
- Krings, M. et al., 2000. A view of Neandertal genetic diversity.
Nature Genetics 26: 144-146.
created 2003-6-18, modified 2003-9-17