I recommend a can of...
as a base for the experiment.
Posted on 08/21/2004 7:25:32 PM PDT by blam
Neanderthal Man 'never walked in northern Europe'
By Tony Paterson in Berlin
(Filed: 22/08/2004)
Historians of the Stone Age fear that they will have to rip up their theories about Neanderthal Man after doubt has been cast on the carbon dating of skeletons by a leading German anthropologist.
Work by the flamboyant Professor Reiner Protsch von Zieten showed that Neanderthal Man existed in northern Europe. Calculations on skeletal remains found at Hahnofersand, near Hamburg, stated they were 36,000 years old.
Yet recent research at Oxford University's carbon-dating laboratory has suggested that they date back a mere 7,500 years. By that time, Homo sapiens was already well-established and the Neanderthals were extinct.
Chris Stringer, a Stone Age specialist and head of human origins at London's Natural History Museum, said: "What was considered a major piece of evidence showing that the Neanderthals once lived in northern Europe has fallen by the wayside. We are having to rewrite prehistory."
But Prof von Zieten, 65, the descendant of a famous 18th-century Prussian general, rejected the evidence from Oxford University last week.
"The new data from Oxford is all wrong," he told Germany's Der Spiegel. He said that the university's scientists had failed to remove shellac preservative from the specimens. As a result, the remains appeared to be much younger.
"Unfortunately, archaeologists and most anthropologists do not study physics or chemistry and therefore they cannot make judgments on carbon dating," he said. "Wrong measurements are made in all laboratories."
Prof von Zieten, who has a penchant for large Havana cigars and Porsche cars, has been considered an expert in carbon-dating techniques since the 1970s. He has tested hundreds of prehistoric bone finds from Europe and Africa over the past 30 years.
Now, however, important remains that Oxford scientists no longer believe are prehistoric include the female "Bischof-Speyer" skeleton, found near the south-west German town of Speyer with unusually good teeth. Their evidence suggests that she is 3,300 years old, not 21,300.
Another apparent misdating involved an allegedly prehistoric skull discovered near Paderborn in 1976 and considered the oldest human remain ever found in the region. Prof von Zieten dated the skull at 27,400 years old. The latest research, however, indicates that it belonged to an elderly man who died around 1750.
Germany's Herne anthropological museum, which owns the Paderborn skull, was so disturbed by the findings that it did its own tests. "We had the skull cut open and it still smelt," the museum's director, Barbara Ruschoff-Thale, said last week. "We are naturally very disappointed."
Concern about Prof von Zieten's carbon-dating estimates arose last year following a routine investigation of German prehistoric remains by the German and British anthropologists Thomas Terberger and Martin Street.
"We had decided to subject many of these finds to modern techniques to check their authenticity so we sent them to Oxford for testing," Mr Street told The Sunday Telegraph. "It was a routine examination and in no way an attempt to discredit Prof von Zieten."
In their report, though, both anthropologists described this as a "dating disaster".
The scandal engulfing Prof von Zieten goes further. Police are investigating allegations that he tried to sell 280 chimpanzee skulls from his university to buyers in America for $70,000 (£38,000).
Prof von Zieten denies the claims, saying that he legitimately obtained the skulls from a Heidelberg ethnologist in 1975. Frankfurt university last month suspended the professor from his post in the anthropology department while it runs its own inquiry.
Conservatives should be held to a higher standard than Liberals (and the rest of the population for that matter.)
"You don't even think highly enough of your own posts to write them in English; why should your arguments be judged as having more thought put into them than your writing does?"
if you value style over substance, so beit. judge as you will, i am who i am.
"Your posting style is a caricature of the "Illiterate Conservative Southern Republican" and will be seen as such by those just visiting this site."
except for the being literate part... oh no i dont capitalize words, i spell them correctly for the most part, but lacking capital letters is sure sign im an idiot on a web forum! heck, even then i realize one doesnt have to spell completely accurately to get the point across, and isnt that the point of instant communication via electronic devices?
i do what is easiet to type because it is most efficient for me. you understand my words, so i could care less what others think of that... if i REALLY tried.
A statement unsupported by the evidence. Cite your sources, please.
dont believe me? get the compounds involved in making an algae, or any living thing. get the exact compounds to the sixteenth place for all i care.
strike it with lightning or any other energy form you feel it would have com into contact with on a pre-life planet.
bingo, the same chemical reactions they say made life. (excluding my claim for design)
repeat all you want.
call me when you make life that way.
I recommend a can of...
as a base for the experiment.
Placemarker.
And don't bother replying to me with a challenge to come up with some other explanation - I'm not the one making the claim, you are. You will, of course, have to clarify what "it's all chemicals" means.
"it's all chemicals" means just that. the secularists believe that life is a random occurance of a chemical reaction that HAPPENS to replicate itself.
i contest that since we cannot observe this in nature, or in labs (without the previous existance of life), it is not the case.
the case involved is that the chemicals all "know" their rolls and functions. this is evidence that they were placed there in a particular fashion, and with the ability to tell future generations how to do it. its an uber-complex programming that we have not been able to replicate, and random events would overwhelmingly most likely result in errors.
this is where some people come in and claim to be scientific and state "abigenesis is the only logical way."
they at this point forget about the mathematical principles they so love, and ignore probability in favor of saying "religion is wrong, and i can prove it"
who/what "intellegent design" is is up for debate, as who can tell the Face of God?
the Bible states we are made in His Image. His Image could simply imply "living."
my opinion was an idea that came first, so im sorry, the burden of proof rests on the "there is no god" crowd. Dude.
LOL, post it again with a "does not include lightning bolts/RNA" disclaimer.
I know it's wrong. See post 97 above. But ask 10 people on the street and see how many of them think he is the missing link.
And for the record (when you read 97) I did make an error in labelling 'macroeconomic' evolution. Perhaps I did evolve from the apes after all. ;-)
"Previously Banned Tractionless Trolls" memorial placemarker
New Evidence of Early Humans Unearthed in Russia's NorthStone tools, animal bones and an incised mammoth tusk found in Russia's frigid far north have provided what archaeologists say is the first evidence that modern humans or Neanderthals lived in the Arctic more than 30,000 years ago, at least 15,000 years earlier than previously thought... The tusk was carbon-dated at about 36,600 years old. Plant remains found among the artifacts were dated at 30,000 to 31,000 years... The discoverers said they could not determine from the few stone artifacts whether the site was occupied by Neanderthals, hominids who by then had a long history as hunters in Europe and western Asia, or some of the first anatomically modern humans to reach Europe... If these toolmakers were Neanderthals, the findings suggested that these human relatives, who became extinct after 30,000 years ago, were more capable and adaptable than they are generally given credit for. Living in the Arctic climate presumably required higher levels of technology and social organization... If they were modern humans, then the surprise is that they had penetrated so far north in such a short time. There has been no firm evidence for modern humans in Europe before about 35,000 years ago. It had generally been thought that the northernmost part of Eurasia was not occupied by humans until the final stage of the last ice age, some 13,000 to 14,000 years ago, when the world's climate began to moderate.
by John Noble Wilford
September 6, 2001
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Sunkenciv, thanks for the ping.
Michael, you were slow to pull the trigger.
All, it does not appear to be just a dating problem. If I read things correctly, it is also an identification problem.
Work by the flamboyant Professor Reiner Protsch von Zieten showed that Neanderthal Man existed in northern Europe. Calculations on skeletal remains found at Hahnofersand, near Hamburg, stated they were 36,000 years old.
Pull the other one. I take it the skeleton looked like Elmer Fudd.
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