Lucy: Problems with determining the age of an older woman, the title of article 82, which discusses the challenges regarding the 3.6-million-year age assigned by Johanson to Lucy. Francis Brown, a geologist from the University of Utah, believes that this date should be reduced to three million years, based on the correlation of volcanic tuffs at Hadar with similar tuffs at Lake Turkana, which he believes are reliably around three million years old. Noel Boaz, an anthropologist from New York University, and his colleagues also believe that this age should be reduced to around three million years. Boaz bases his argument on animal fossils found at Hadar. Johanson and Tim White, while defending the older age, support that reducing the age of Hadar specimens to three million years would not affect their theory of the human ancestral line.
Disputes about the age of three million years that Richard Leakey assigned to his Lobanja 1470 and other specimens found at the same level came from various sources.
In his 1973 article, Leakey seemed confident in this age, based on potassium-argon dating of the KBS Tuff, under which the fossils were found. The age derived from that tuff was about 2.6 million years, which he declared as “securely dated.” Paleomagnetic studies, Leakey published, gave “a result that supports the 2.6 million years age.” In the same paper, Leakey states:
“All collections of vertebrate fossils found beneath the KBS Tuff in areas 105, 108, and 131 show the same degree of evolutionary development, and this evidence supports the indicated age for this deposition phase at East Rudolph.”
After mentioning that the evidence from pig fossils was cited as supporting a younger date for the KBS Tuff, Walker and Leakey argue that analyses of “the fission track zircon of KBS Tuff indicate that the older dates are correct.”85
Thus, with potassium-argon dating, supported by fission track dating, paleomagnetic dates, and vertebrate fossils, the KBS Tuff was published as firmly dated to 2.6 million years. Leakey added about 300 thousand more years for the deposition of sediments between the level where ER 1470 was found and the overlying KBS Tuff to come to an estimate of 2.9 million years for the age of this skull and other specimens found at this level.
The combination of Leakey’s claim that his Skull 1470 is “surprisingly advanced early human,” even much more advanced in some ways than Homo erectus, along with the suggested age of three million years, was too much for many evolutionists to accept. The age of three million years made Leakey’s suggested “early human” older than many of his presumed ape ancestors. Both the hominid status and the suggested age of three million years for this specimen, therefore, became the target of attacks. Cronin and others noted that the analysis of fauna, potassium-argon re-dating of the KBS Tuff, chemical analysis of the tuff, and fission track dating, establish an age of 1.8 million years for the KBS Tuff.86 They believe that the most likely age for Skull 1470, therefore, is two million years.
Regarding the relative status of Skull 1470, Cronin and his colleagues argue:
“Its relatively robustly constructed face, flattened nasal-alveolar clivus (which resembles the concave faces of australopithecines), small cranial width (at the temples), strong canine jugal and large molars (as shown by the remaining roots), all are relatively primitive features that link this specimen with members of the A. africanus taxon.”
However, they agree with placing Skull 1470 in Homo habilis.
When sufficient pressure is applied, so-called absolute radiometric dates appear to be anything but absolute, and so data gets distorted and dates adjusted to fit the prevailing conventional wisdom.
Regarding the accepted idea that these fossils are more than one or two million years old, it is interesting to note that Walker and Leakey state:
“Turkana hominid fossils are often so poorly mineralized that bone preservation must be applied during extraction, in order to prevent further decay. In fact, this protective fluid must be applied with exceptional care, as even the impact of a falling drop can cause cracking.”87
However, strong mineralization is generally expected from fossils of this suggested age.
Regarding KNM-ER 1510, which includes cranial and mandibular fragments, Richard Leakey states: “This specimen is poorly mineralized and further geological investigation at the site points more to the Holocene than to the early Pleistocene, as was previously thought.”88 The early Pleistocene is thought to be about 1.8 million years old, while the Holocene is taken to have begun about 10,000 years ago. Leakey thus reduced the estimated age of KNM-ER 1510 by almost 1.8 million years! The fact that these specimens were poorly mineralized, it seems Leakey wants to suggest, supports the smaller age. Why then does the fact that Turkana specimens are often poorly mineralized not concern Leakey? Another puzzling aspect of this story is that while Walker and Leakey argue that Turkana hominid fossils (which are generally believed to be older than a million years) are often poorly mineralized, Leakey in his 1973 paper on KNM-ER 1470, 1472, 1475, and 1781 claims that “All specimens are highly mineralized…”89 This seems to present a contradiction, unless it happened that all these specimens were accidentally highly mineralized.
Laetoli Footprints Laetoli is a site in Tanzania, about 40 km south of Olduvai Gorge. Mary Leakey, the widow of Louis Leakey (who died in 1972), started working with the team in 1974. Her team found many hominid fossils here.90 In 1976, some animal footprints were discovered, and the footprints found in 1977 are said to have been made by a creature that walked upright in a human-like manner.91 Interesting reports about the discovery and examination of these footprints can be found in the book by Richard Leakey,92 and especially in the book by Johanson and Edey.93 In the latest publication, White gives the following estimate:
“There is no doubt about it… they look like human footprints. If one of them were left in the sand of a Californian beach today, and we asked a four-year-old what it is, they would immediately say that someone walked there. They wouldn’t be able to distinguish it from hundreds of other footprints on the beach, nor would you.” (p. 250) In a professional paper published in Science, White says:
“These unweathered footprints show a total morphological pattern that is seen in modern humans… Preliminary observations and experiments suggest that the Laetolian hominid traces at site G are not significantly different from modern human tracks made on a similar substrate.”94
Others have similar views.93
Who made these footprints? This is a subject of ongoing controversy,57 but none of the participants in the discussion has a definitive answer. The debates revolve around whether the footprints were made by a creature similar to Johanson’s Lucy or by creatures of the genus Homo. Russell Tuttle thus says that Lucy, or a similar creature with its long, curved toes, could not have left such footprints, and regarding this, he says:
“A small barefoot Homo sapiens could have made them… In all the recognizable morphological traits, the feet of the individuals that made these tracks do not differ from those of modern humans.”57
Tuttle, of course, does not claim that a Homo sapiens actually made those tracks, because like all evolutionists, he believes they are about 3.7 million years old, about 3.5 million years before modern humans evolved. Tim White, Don Johanson, and others in Johanson’s camp argue that these footprints were left by creatures resembling Lucy, rather than by creatures of the genus Homo.
Footprints of antelopes, pigs, giraffes, elephants, rhinos, rabbits, ostriches, and other animals have been found at Laetoli. In artistic depictions of these scenes, we see images of giraffes for giraffe tracks, elephants for elephant tracks, ostriches for ostrich tracks, and so on. And humans – for human footprints? Oh no! For the one occupying these human footprints, we see a semi-human creature – half ape, half human. While evolutionists agree that the giraffe must have left giraffe tracks, the elephant elephant tracks, etc., their preconceived ideas about evolution and the age of these formations prevent them from agreeing that humans left human tracks. Creationists, accepting the clear facts as revealed by empirical scientific evidence, believe that these tracks were made by modern humans – Homo sapiens. Thus, the creationist is the empiricist, allowing the evidence to speak for itself, while the evolutionist is the one who models the facts to fit their preconceived notions.
- Literature
- I. Anderson, New Scientist 98:373 (1983).
- R. E. F. Leakey, Nature 242:447 (1973).
- W. Herbert, Science News 123:5 (1983).
- F. H. Brown, Nature 300:631 (1982).
- N. T. Boaz, F. C. Howell and M. L. McCrossin, Nature 300:633 (1982).
- Walker, Ref. 76, p. 57.
- J. E. Cronin, N. T. Boaz, C. B. Stringer and Y. Rak, Nature 292:113 (1981).
- Walker, Ref. 76, p. 58.
- Leakey, Ref. 65, p. 654.
- Leakey, Ref. 61, p. 448.
- M. D. Leakey, R. L. Hay, G. H. Curtis, R. E. Drake and M. K. Jackes, Nature 262:460 (1976).
- M. D. Leakey and R. L. Hay, Nature 278:317 (1979).
- Leakey, Ref. 50, p. 40-42.
- Johanson, Ref. 40, p. 245-252.
- T. D. White, Science 208:175 (1980).