So what is the conclusion you can arrive at from all this? The conclusion is do not read too much. Just listen and believe without thinking. That would make your life less complicated.
NO HOLDS BARRED
Raja Petra Kamarudin
The AFP report below is very interesting. It points to the possibility that there may have been threehuman species, not one, and that humans have roamed the earth as long as 3-3.5 million years ago. Earth itself is about 4.5 billion years old so humans are probably the last creatures to come into being.
Scientists also say that around 2.4 million years ago, around 1 million years after humans first walked the earth, the Ice Age came and it last until just about 11,500 years ago when earth began to get warm enough to support life.
Of course, if you read the Book of Genesis literally then either religion is wrong or the scientists are wrong. Both cannot be correct. So those who want both to be correct argue that you cannot read Genesis literally but must read it metaphorically. Only then would both religion and science agree.
Hence the six days of Genesis have to be interpreted in ‘God days’ and not earth days of 24-hour cycles. So one ‘God day’ could, for example, be 500 million or 1 billion years.
In that case each ‘God day’ would not be of equal length. If each ‘God day’ is 500 million or 1 billion years then this would explain the age of earth: 4.5 billion years. But then how do you explain the age of humans, which is only 3-3.5 million years old, when the day humans were supposed to have been created was 500 million or 1 billion years ago?
As you can see the maths just do not add up if we go by the Genesis account of the Creation. The ‘God days’ have to be of unequal length and the final ‘God day’ the shortest day of all.
Okay, assuming that the ‘God days’ are not the same as earth days, how then can we explain the day and night, light and darkness, that Genesis talks about when the day and night that Genesis refers to is the same day and night that we get because of the earth’s rotation, which is 24 hours?
The story of the Creation from Genesis is very crucial to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. If that Book were debunked then the very foundation that these three religions rest on would shatter. It all starts from the beginning. And if the beginning were flawed then everything that comes thereafter would not have a leg to stand on.
Anyway, the Great Flood was supposed to have occurred around 4,400 years ago. The Ice Age ended around 11,500 years ago. Around 10,000 years ago there was already a very advanced civilisation in India. There is also evidence that Hinduism already existed around 9,000 years ago.
But everything was supposed to have been wiped out 4,400 years ago and only Noah and his family existed. The evidence, however, shows that this is not so.
So what is the conclusion you can arrive at from all this? The conclusion is do not read too much. Just listen and believe without thinking. That would make your life less complicated.
End of my Friday sermon!
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(AFP) – In 1974, anthropologists in Ethiopia found the astonishing fossilised remains of a human-like creature who last walked the planet some 3.2 million years ago.
Was “Lucy,” as the hominid was called, the direct ancestor of Homo sapiens? Was she “The Mother of Mankind,” as some headlines claimed?
Over the years, the dramatic assertion has come under attack by doubters, who point to ancient yet inconclusive finds in Kenya and Chad.
But a new fossil, reported on Wednesday, may have dealt Lucy’s claimed status an irreversible blow.
Another species of hominid lived at the same time and in the same Afar region of Ethiopia, according to the paper, published in the journal Nature.
Named Australopithecus deyiremeda, the hominid and Lucy are probably only part of a wider group of candidates for being our direct forerunners, the finders said.
“The new species is yet another confirmation that Lucy’s species, Australopithecus afarensis, was not the only potential human ancestor species that roamed in what is now the Afar,” said Yohannes Haile-Selassie of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.
“Current fossil evidence… clearly shows that there were at least two, if not three, early human species living at the same time and in close geographic proximity.”
The find, in the Woranso-Mille area of the Afar region, comprises fossilised remains of an upper and lower jaw, dated to a range of 3.3-3.5 million years ago.
This overlaps with the range given to Lucy, of 2.9-3.8 million years ago.
The bones are clearly different from Lucy’s, with teeth of different size, shape and enamel thickness and a more robust lower jaw, said the study.
They were found in March 2011 on top of silty clay in the Burtele area, about 500 kilometres (325 miles) northeast of Addis Ababa and 35 km north of Hadar, where Lucy was found.
The estimated age is derived from radioactive dating of the soil and “paleomagnetic” data, which traces changes in Earth’s magnetic field, recorded in iron-bearing sediment, as a calendar.
The name “deyiremeda” means “close relative” in the language of the Afar people.
Heated debate
Understanding the human odyssey has always been a fraught business, complicated by the rarity of fossil finds and sometimes fierce squabbles about where — or even if — they should be placed in the family tree.
The same team had previously found the 3.4-million-year remains of a foot in the same region, but were unable to assign the fossil to a particular hominid species.
“Some of our colleagues are going to be skeptical about this new species, which is not unusual,” Haile-Selassie admitted.
“However, I think it is time that we look into the earlier phases of our evolution with an open mind and carefully examine the currently available fossil evidence rather than immediately dismissing the fossils that do not fit our long-held hypotheses.”
Only a week earlier, anthropologists shook the coveted position held by Homo habilis, the hominid deemed to have come before Homo sapiens.
Habilis — “handy man” in Latin — has traditionally been enshrined as a benchmark of hominid smartness, endowed with a bigger brain and greater dexterity than his predecessors.
But earlier hominids may have had some of his skills, if the May 20 study is right.
It reported finding the world’s oldest stone tools in northwestern Kenya.
The implements date back to around 3.3 million years ago, which is some 500,000 years before Habilis emerged and 700,000 years before the first known Habilis tools.
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