Nature paper suggests humans inhabited North America 130,000 years ago

April 27, 2017 • 5:43 pm

by Greg Mayer

As Jerry noted yesterday, in a new paper in Nature, Steven R. Holen and colleagues report finding the remains of a butchered 130,000 year old mastodon in San Diego. (If you haven’t already done so, do go take a look at Jerry’s post, which includes a video press release, and illustrations from the paper.)

The key words in the first sentence are ‘butchered’* and ‘San Diego’. The first word indicates that people had taken the bones of the 130,000 year old mastodon apart– which in itself would be a “neat, but what’s the fuss” result. It’s ‘San Diego’ that’s the cause of the fuss. The peopling of the Americas has been a contentious topic for some time, but virtually all the debate has concerned a relatively slim time interval– 12-30 kya (see here for a previous discussion at WEIT, and this news piece in Science about two recent papers with contrasting conclusions). The San Diego find is thus 100,000 + years earlier!

So what evidence do they have for this early arrival? First, they have the mastodon, whose bones were fractured in ways which they find inconsistent with damage by carnivores or the environment, but which appear consistent only with being struck with implements. They did a lot of breaking of elephant bones in order to try to simulate the damage to the mastodon, and concluded that tools alone could do the trick. The mastodon’s remains were radiometrically dated at 130.7 ± 9.4 kya. In addition to the mastodon, they also found stone tools, which they interpret as hammerstones and anvils.

These results would have many important implications for human evolutionary history; but first we must ask, are the results correct?

I must admit I’m dubious. The anvil and hammerstones are not the sorts of objects which are unquestionably manufactured– they are not like finely fluted spear points, whose human origin cannot be doubted. The breakage patterns in the bones do indicate that the breaks occurred perimortem, but I’m not sure the breaks could not be due to non-human causes. The dating is directly on the mastodon, which is good– they’ve not dated some possibly extraneous item which could have been redeposited from earlier strata. But, nonetheless, dating is subject to various artifacts.

As Carl Sagan used to say, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” What makes the current claim extraordinary is that there’s no other evidence of human presence in the Americas for ca. 100+ K years after this find. And it’s not like the late Quaternary of America is an unstudied or poorly known stretch of time! I don’t regard fracture patterns and crude tools to be sufficiently extraordinary evidence to overcome, in a single go, the weight of that 100,000 year absence. It is much more reasonable to think that the new data can be reconciled with all the past data in a way that does not require us to discount the past data. And, thinking, “they must have made a mistake somewhere with the new data”, is a perfectly plausible way of reconciling the two. This conservatism in the face of anomalies is a key part of the method of science– it properly proportions belief to the evidence.

On the other hand, the new data do not threaten to overturn any fundamental principles, merely a seemingly well-attested fact of evolutionary history, and such facts have been overturned before. So, we must ask, but what if they’re right?

The most interesting implication, to me, is that if there were people here 130 kya, they went completely extinct.  It means that human habitation of an entire hemisphere is an iffy thing. The real first Americans got wiped out by something– disease, predators, climate, competitors, whatever. Who would these now extinct people have been? Well, if they got to America not too long before the radiometric date, they would probably be Neanderthaloid (by which I mean the varied archaic Eurasian subspecies of Homo sapiens with which anatomically modern humans interbred after their spread from Africa). If they came much earlier, they might have been Homo erectus (which would make Harry Turtledove’s A Different Flesh, in which the first European settlers of America encounter not Indians, but “sims“, prophetic!).

There would also be a possibility that these first Neanderthaloid Americans survived, and that the anatomically modern human colonizers of ca. 20 kya, interbred with them in the course of replacing them, just as their forebears did in Asia. However, because American Indians are not, as far as I know, enriched for Neanderthaloid alleles relative to other Eurasians (who are 1-4% Neanderthaloid; a bit higher in Melanesia), this seems unlikely. (There are claims out there that Indians are enriched for Neanderthaloid genes, but I don’t know how that got started; East Asians, from which, at least generally, American Indians descend, are Neanderthaloid enriched relative to Western Europeans, which seems to indicate more than one episode of interbreeding on the course of their migration from Africa.)

* I use “butchered” here in the sense of “processed for eating”, as the bones were presumed broken apart to get at the marrow. The paper uses “butcher” in the narrower sense of “cut with a knife or similar implement”. The paper does not say the mastodon was cut with a knife or other sharp tool.

Holen, S. R., T. A. Deméré, D. C. Fisher, R. Fullagar, J. B. Paces, G. T. Jefferson, J. M. Beeton, R. A. Cerutti, A. N. Rountrey, L. Vescera, and K. A. Holen. 2017. A 130,000-year-old archaeological site in southern California, USA. Nature 544:479-483.

“Copperline”

April 27, 2017 • 2:30 pm

Question: What pop song was written in part by a university professor?

The answer is the song in this post: “Copperline,” written by James Taylor and Reynolds Price, formerly James B. Duke Professor of English at Duke University. Songfacts gives the details:

  • Copperline is an area near Chapel Hill in North Carolina where James Taylor grew up, and the song is a nostalgic look back at his childhood, complete with a mention of his dog, Hercules. Taylor visited Copperline before he wrote the song, and discovered that pre-fabricated homes had popped up in the area, destroying it’s charm. He sings about this in the lyrics, “I tried to go back, as if I could, all spec houses and plywood, tore up and tore up good.”
  • Morgan Creek, which Taylor mentions in the song, is on Morgan Creek Road, where Taylor’s childhood home was located. In 2003, the Morgan Creek Bridge was renamed the “James Taylor Bridge” in a ceremony celebrating the singer.
  • Taylor wrote this song with Reynolds Price, who was a professor of English at Duke University, and also a playwright, author and lyricist. Taylor met Price when he worked on the score for a 1982 PBS production of a play Price wrote, and the two became friends. The two wrote “Copperline” when Price was visiting Taylor’s home in Connecticut. Price died on January 20, 2011 at age 77.
  • Speaking with Rolling Stone in 2015, Taylor said: “This is another song about home, about my father, about a childhood that was very peaceful, which is a rare thing today. I felt like I was part of a landscape in those days – the trees, the streams and the rivers, the animals that lived there.”

I didn’t used to like this song so much, but it’s grown on me. This version appears to be filmed live in Taylor’s home studio, a converted barn. (There’s another version here with just guitar and piano.)

The lyrics:

Even the old folks never knew
Why they call it like they do
I was wondering since the age of two
Down on Copperline.
Copper head, copper beech
Copper kettles sitting side by each
Copper coil, cup o’Georgia peach
Down on Copperline
Half a mile down to Morgan Creek
Leaning heavy on the end of the week
Hercules and a hog-nosed snake
Down on Copperline
Down on Copperline

One summer night on the Copperline
Slip away past supper time
Wood smoke and moonshine
Down on Copperline;
One time I saw my daddy dance
Watched him moving like a man in a trance
He brought it back from the war in France
Down onto Copperline.
Branch water and tomato wine
Creosote and turpentine
Sour mash and new moon shine
Down on Copperline
We were down on Copperline.

First kiss ever I took
Tore a page from a romance book
The sky opened and the earth shook
Down on Copperline
Down on Copperline.
Took a fall from a windy height
I only knew how to hold on tight
And pray for love enough to last all night
Down on Copperline.
Day breaks and the boys wakes up
And the dog barks and the birds sings
And the sap rises and the angels sigh, yeah.

I tried to go back, as if I could
All spec house and plywood
Tore up and tore up good
Down on Copperline.
It doesn’t come as a surprise to me
It doesn’t touch my memory
Man I’m lifting up and rising free
Down on over Copperline.
Half a mile down to Morgan Creek
I’m only living for the end of the week
Hercules and a hog-nosed snake
Down on Copperline, yeah
Take me down on Copperline
Oh, down on Copperline.

Taylor is one of those stars whose voice and talent don’t seem to have appreciatively diminished over the years. He will be recognized, if he isn’t already, as one of the greatest singer/songwriters of our time. And he makes it look so easy. It also kills me that he’s only a year and a half older than I. I was already a big fan when I was just a shaver in college.

Here’s Reynolds Price, accomplished writer, friend of W. H. Auden, and lover of Stephen Spender:

 

Saudi Arabia sentences man to death for apostasy

April 27, 2017 • 1:15 pm

Yes, this is the nation that the UN put on both it’s human rights and women’s rights councils. It’s a nation where, according to many sources (I quote the Independent), a man has been sentences to death not for blaphemy—for impugning Mohamed or Islam—but for apostasy: renouncing Islam. He’s going to die because he’s an atheist:

A  man in Saudi Arabia has reportedly been sentenced to death on charges of apostasy after losing two appeals.

Several local media reports identified the man as Ahmad Al Shamri, in his 20s, from the town of Hafar al-Batin, who first came to the authorities’ attention in 2014 after allegedly uploading videos to social media in which he renounced Islam and the Prophet Mohammed.

He was arrested on charges of atheism and blasphemy and held in prison before being convicted by a local court and sentenced to death in February 2015.

At the time Mr Shamri’s defence entered an insanity plea, adding that his client was under the influence of drugs and alcohol at the time of making the videos.

He reportedly lost an Appeals Court case, and a Supreme Court ruled against him earlier this week.

While news stories in the last few years consistently identify Mr Shamri, his identity or sentencing has not been verified by the Saudi authorities.

The Independent’s requests for comment from Saudi government representatives were not immediately answered.

That’s the whole story. So while Muslims in the U.S. are properly asserting their rights to exercise their religion and express their beliefs, they say nothing about their confrères in other lands who have no freedom to believe, who cannot renounce Islam lest they die.  Of course nobody can take on all causes, but can’t some Muslims living in democratic lands condemn the oppression of Muslim theocracies?

The reaction of some Muslims? Read on:

Had enough? See others here. (Of course, the Aslanians, Greenwaldians, and Armstrongians would say this is all from “culture”, not faith.)

h/t: Barry, Russel

Coultergate gets more confusing

April 27, 2017 • 11:30 am

When liberals don’t take up the cudgels for free speech, even for odious conservatives like Ann Coulter, we abandon one of our main principles. We also allow conservatives to criticize us as censors, and for them to take the First Amendment moral high ground.  And that’s exactly what’s happening at Berkeley, thanks to the Regressive and Censorious Left.

(Let me assert, though I shouldn’t even have to, that I despise Coulter’s views; see here for proof.)

Ann Coulter was invited to speak at the University of California by the College Republicans. The College canceled her talk because of fears of violence, and offered an alternative date–a date when no students would be in class. That’s unacceptable, and an attempt to stifle her, even if it is to avoid violence. If we cave to those who demand censorship because they fear violence not incited directly by a speaker, then we are allowing the “heckler’s veto”, and every opponent of a speaker’s views will learn to threaten violence. Regardless of how odious a speaker seems, we cannot allow that to happen. Free speech is a principle that cannot be overturned except in the most extreme circumstances, and that’s what the U.S. courts have ruled.

Yesterday the College Republicans rescinded Coulter’s invitation (not a great invitation to begin with) because of those fears of violence, and the Young America’s Foundation, which was defending her, pulled out for the same reason. And so Coulter was forced to cancel her talk.

Note that the Left is largely responsible for this, for they are the ones threatening violence, and the ones who caused that violence when Milo Yiannopoulos was supposed to speak at Berkeley. And the Left is largely responsible for all the de-platforming and rescinded invitations to speak at American Colleges in the last five years. We do ourselves no favors by being so censorious, by threatening violence, or, as two misguided professors just did, by defending the right to censor “hate speech.”

Saying that Coulter is vacuous and hateful is no justification for censorship, as many people are seen that way, and who is to decide which speech is allowable? Were I to criticize the tenets of Islam at London University, I would be censored by the Muslim students, yet I think my arguments are reasonable. The students would call my words hateful and vacuous, as they did when attacking the invitation to Britain’s Ambassador to Israel. Who gets to decide? Nobody, and that’s what the First Amendment is about.

Thus, as we see in two new pieces, the New York Time‘s “In Ann Coulter’s speech battle, signs that conservatives are emboldened“, and lawyer Marc Randazza’s CNN article, “Dear Berkeley: Even Ann Coulter deserves free speech” that a few enlightened liberals are defending Coulter’s right to speak, much as they despise her. Those include not only Randazza, but Bill Maher and Bernie Sanders. As Randazza says:

While all this was going on [the “shutting down” of speakers like Charles Murray, Ben Shapiro, and Milo Yiannopoulos], where was the traditionally-free-speech-friendly moderate Left? The prevailing view was, “If you didn’t say offensive things, you wouldn’t be attacked.” Shame on the Left for tacitly condoning this culture of violent suppression of views it disagrees with.

And praise to Maher and Sanders for standing up against it. I question whether Coulter would do the same for them, but that is not the yardstick by which we measure our commitment to freedom of speech. Standing up for the rights of those who would not do it for us demonstrates your commitment to liberty. We don’t need a First Amendment for speech that neither challenges, nor offends. We need it as a good in itself. And, sometimes that very challenging and offensive speech fosters growth.

. . . When anyone tries to shut down speech with violence, all decent Americans should band together against the violence, regardless of their political “tribe.” Does Berkeley stand for freedom of expression, or is it so captivated by its infectious one-party rule that it cannot possibly stand up for expression that challenges its liberal sensibilities?

Coulter has a right to her views. Just as important, we all have a right to hear her speak.

Those who disagree have a right to oppose her, but to use violence cuts against the principles that our entire Constitution rests upon. The First Amendment stands for principles like those articulated in the case, New York Times v. Sullivan: “Debate on public issues … [should be] … uninhibited, robust, and wide open.”

You may think Coulter’s speech is offensive. I certainly do. I think she is a mental midget and an intellectual snake oil salesman. I do wish she would shut up, dry up, and blow away. But even so, I am outraged that her political discussion must go through an on-again, off-again process because either violent thugs control the streets or effete and weak university presidents and the City of Berkeley lack the spine to defend the First Amendment.

The New York Times piece shows that conservatives, emboldened by how craven the Regressive Leftist opponents of free speech look, are deliberately inviting provocateurs to speak, and they’re even suing Berkeley. And the Left looks bad. Is this what we want? I don’t think so.

Just let the damn conservatives speak! What have you got to lose, really? And if you oppose them, use counterspeech, also a traditional tool of the Left.

If you don’t buy what I’ve said above, listen to this famous defense of free speech by the late and sorely missed Christopher Hitchens:

h/t: Grania

Templeton abandons pretense of rationality, awards Templeton Prize to Alvin Plantinga, intelligent-design advocate

April 27, 2017 • 9:30 am

Reader Mark called my attention to the fact that John Templeton Foundation (JTF) has bestowed its annual Templeton Prize on someone who’s not only a deeply misguided religious philosopher, but also has promoted intelligent design and criticized naturalism. Yes, it’s Alvin Plantinga, an 84-year-old emeritus professor of philosophy at Notre Dame and also a professor at Calvin College (he’s a Calvinist of sorts).  I’ve written about Plantinga and his claims a lot on this site (go here to see what I’ve said): his main schtick is to claim that it’s not irrational to believe in God; that therefore it’s rational to believe in God; that the existence of God is a “basic belief” that doesn’t require empirical justification; that such belief comes from a divinely installed sensus divinitatis that allows us to detect truth; that because the truth-detector has to come from God, what it finds, like scientific “truths”, is incompatible with pure naturalism; that evolution was guided by GOD AND SATAN; that the God who installed our sensus is none other than Plantinga’s Christian God (surprise!); and that the presence of atheists, Hindus, Jews, and the majority of people with “false beliefs” simply had broken sensuses, which were due to, yes, the actions of SATAN!

Indeed, Plantinga does believe in the Hornéd One. Here’s a quote from his 2011 book, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism, explaining why there is undeserved evil in the world (my emphasis):

But any world that contains atonement will contain sin and evil and consequent suffering and pain. Furthermore, if the remedy is to be proportionate to the sickness, such a world will contain a great deal of sin and a great deal of suffering and pain. Still further, it may very well contain sin and suffering, not just on the part of human beings but perhaps also on the part of other creatures as well. Indeed, some of these other creatures might be vastly more powerful than human beings, and some of them—Satan and his minions, for example—may have been permitted to play a role in the evolution of life on earth, steering it in the direction of predation, waste and pain. (Some may snort with disdain at this suggestion; it is none the worse for that.)

Yes it is the worse for that, for where’s the evidence for Satan? That’s some scholarly theodicy, no? And for such lucubrations, Plantinga got £1.1 million—more than a Nobel Prizewinner.

If you think I’m making up my claims about Plantinga’s views, read some of my posts on Plantinga’s claims or the section about his views in my book Faith Versus Fact (pp. 148-149 and 177-183. For a better refutation of the views that earned Plantinga his $1.4 million dollar prize, read pp. 22-73 of an underappreciated scholarly book attacking theism, The Non-Existence of God by Nicholas Everitt, who simply demolishes Plantinga’s piffle. (By the way, have theists read Everitt’s book? If not, then they’ve neglected some of The Best Arguments for Atheism.)

All of this casts doubts on Templeton’s claim to be increasingly down with science, for, after all, Plantinga is pretty much an intelligent design creationist. Although he’s waffled on this a bit in the past, he seems to have settled on ID creationism. I’ll quote Michael Ruse from The Chronicle of Higher Education in 2011, and, having read Plantinga’s book, I concur with Michael:

Now, Plantinga has given us a full-length treatment of his views on science and its relationship to religion. I can only say that either he has changed his mind in the last year [when said he didn’t dismiss Darwinism] or, shall we say, he was not being entirely forthcoming. There is a chapter of the book on Intelligent Design Theory and I challenge any independent person to read it and not conclude that Plantinga accepts this theory over modern evolutionary theory, especially the dominant modern Darwinian evolutionary theory. But read the chapter yourself if you have doubts about what I claim. Make your own judgment.

Remember, Ruse is usually soft on theists.

You can read Maarten Boudry’s review of Plantinga’s book here, a review that severely faults Plantinga for his “philosophical trickery” and his flawed arguments for God-guided evolution.

If you want to be charitable, you could argue that Plantinga adheres to a form of theistic evolution, in which God created and directed the process, but that’s still a form of theistic creationism, and of course there’s no scientific evidence for it (and there is evidence against it, like the randomness of mutation and the extinction of most species [or is that due to SATAN?]), so Templeton has put their imprimatur on an explicit denier of science. But even if you leave aside ID, Plantinga’s arguments that you can prove the existence of the Christian God through philosophy alone are wrong, an attempt that smacks of the Ontological Argument. You simply cannot establish the existence of a theistic entity through thought alone.

Here’s the announcement of Plantinga’s Big Prize from the National Catholic Reporter (click on screenshot to to go the piece), which parrots the JTF’s own announcement (right below it):

But it gets worse: here’s part of the JTF’s announcement (my emphasis):

WEST CONSHOHOCKEN, Pa. – Alvin Plantinga, an American scholar whose rigorous writings over a half century have made theism – the belief in a divine reality or god – a serious option within academic philosophy, was announced today as the 2017 Templeton Prize Laureate.

Plantinga’s pioneering work began in the late 1950s, a time when academic philosophers generally rejected religiously informed philosophy. In his early books, however, Plantinga considered a variety of arguments for the existence of God in ways that put theistic belief back on the philosophical agenda.

Plantinga’s 1984 paper, “Advice to Christian Philosophers,” challenged Christian philosophers to let their religious commitments shape their academic agenda and to pursue rigorous work based on a specifically Christian philosophical vision. At the same time, he was developing an account of knowledge, most fully expressed in the “Warrant Trilogy” published by Oxford University Press (1993 and 2000), making the case that religious beliefs are proper starting points for human reasoning and do not have to be defended or justified based on other beliefs. These arguments have now influenced three generations of professional philosophers.

Indeed, more than 50 years after this remarkable journey began, university philosophy departments around the world now include thousands of professors who bring their religious commitments to bear on their work, including Buddhist, Jewish, and Muslim philosophers.

“Sometimes ideas come along that revolutionize the way we think, and those who create such breakthrough discoveries are the people we honor with the Templeton Prize,” said Heather Templeton Dill, president of the John Templeton Foundation, which awards the Prize. “Alvin Plantinga recognized that not only did religious belief not conflict with serious philosophical work, but that it could make crucial contributions to addressing perennial problems in philosophy.”

Note the claim (mostly false) that Plantinga’s work has inspired serious philosophers to “bring their religious commitments to bear on their work”. That is, he’s given them a license to engage in confirmation bias: justifying post facto what they already believe and want to be true. That’s hardly a good way to do philosophy, but of course it’s the way philosophers of religion proceed.

Now if Plantinga were that influential, why are 62% of philosophers atheists—a frequency at least ten times higher than the general public as a whole? (Plantinga claims that the reason is that atheistic philosophers don’t want to believe in God rather than having good rational reasons for their nonbelief.)

Larry Moran at Sandwalk has written a number of critiques of Plantinga and his views on evolution, and you can see a list here. Here are two videos of Plantinga explaining his Prize-winning views. In the first, he emphasizes why, he thinks, you can’t believe in both naturalism and evolution. That’s because, as I said, Alvin can’t imagine how humans can have reliable mental faculties without God, and without those faculties you can neither accept science as a valid method of inquiry nor rely on its conclusions. Ergo, if you accept what science has found, you’re tacitly accepting the Christian God.

Plantinga, of course, neglects the possibility evolution could have given us the ability to draw rational conclusions from data, simply as a survival tool.

Here’s his argument for God as a “basic belief”, which boils down to this: “it seems to be right.” Now that’s powerful philosophy, philosophy based on his gut. I urge you to watch this to see what he thinks.

Below is a partial list of scholars—natural scientists, social scientists, and philosophers and historians of science—whose endeavors have been supported by the JTF. (You can see the full list here; there are hundreds of them.) I’ve listed names only of people I’ve heard of—and remember, I’m just a biologist.

These are good scientists and scholars, by and large, but they take money from an organization that promotes religion, natural theology, and antievolution. I ask them this with all due respect: do you really want to take money from a Foundation that’s devoted to watering down science with superstition?

I believe most or all of these people are holders or beneficiaries of current grants. There are many more who held JTF grants in the past.

Brian Greene and Tracy Day (World Science Festival)
David Sloan Wilson
Martin Nowak
David Albert
Max Tegmark
Kevin Laland
Alexander Vilenkin
Lee Smolin
Carlo Rovelli
Elaine Ecklund
Robert Pennock
Simon Conway Morris
Andrew Whiten
Niles Eldredge
Jon Entine
Paul Bloom
Marcus Feldman
Jennifer Wiseman (head of the AAAS DoSER project)
Scott Edwards
Robert Wright
Jeremy England
Gunter Wagner
Tanya Luhrmann

Apropos, here’s a tw**t from Dan Dennett:

h/t: John O.

Readers’ wildlife photos

April 27, 2017 • 7:30 am

Reader John Conoboy went to Africa and photographed some birds. Weird birds. Here are his photos, with his notes indented:

We saw a lot of birds. Here are a few pics of my favorites.

First is the Kori Bustard (Ardeotis kori struthiunculus). These were  pretty common and although they are the largest flying bird in Africa,  they were always on the ground. Males display by puffing up their necks  (gular pouches) creating a large white throat balloon. This guy seems to  be slightly puffed up, but he is not going to get the girls like this.

There was a tree near our camp in the Serengeti that was a roosting spot for Marabou Storks (Leptoptilos crumeniferus). Every night we were treated to this lovely view. Joe Dickinson had a nice shot of a Marabou in his Africa photos.  Folks can check out his photo and see why this bird is listed as one of ugly five you see on a safari. Personally, I did not find any of the animals we saw as ugly.

Next is a Grey Crowned Crane (Balearica regulorum). It is listed as endangered.

Finally, my favorite bird, the Secretary Bird (Sagittarius serpentarius). The Secretary Bird struts along and periodically stomps on its prey and after eating moves on to find something else. It is great fun to watch them. Like the bustard, they can fly but we always saw them on the ground.

Here’s one of them stomping a venomous snake to death. Be sure to watch the last half of the video, which shows how much force this bird can impart in its stomps: