Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Recalling that Dart received scathing you're-going-to-burn-in-hell
letters from religious conservatives, I asked Morwood if he had had the
same experience. To my surprise, he had not. Apparently, fundamental-
ists are more sophisticated and better organized today than they were in
the 1920s (the Scopes trial aside). Nevertheless, the essence of their under-
lying philosophy remains the same—namely, an adamant rejection of the
theory that humans evolved from apelike stock by natural selection.
The extreme passion evident in the religious and scientific contro-
versies surrounding the discovery of
Homo floresiensis
begs explanation.
Although pre-Darwinian zoologists studied and classified the diver-
scholars added a dynamic aspect to earlier classification systems by
viewing evolution as progressing from simple to complex forms of life
that eventually culminated with humans. Although contemporary evo-
lutionists warn against such linear thinking, it maintained a foothold in
paleoanthropology in the classic idea that the human lineage evolved in
a linear sequence, with one species replacing another through time—
ultimately ending with
Homo sapiens.
Until
Homo floresiensis
was discov-
ered, it was thought that
Homo sapiens
was the only species of hominin
who lived on this planet 18,000 years ago. The fossil record strongly
suggests, however, that
Homo erectus,
Neanderthals,
Homo floresiensis,
and
Homo sapiens
overlapped fairly recently, albeit in different locations.
As the science writer and
Nature
editor Henry Gee has pointed out,
raises the fascinating, if science-fictionish, possibility that hobbitlike
species might still exist in remote parts of the world: “If it turns out that
the diversity of human beings was always high, remained high until
very recently and might not be entirely extinguished, we are entitled
to question the security of some of our deepest beliefs. Will the real
image of God please stand up?”
74
On the heels of the unveiling of
Homo floresiensis,
journalist Christo-
pher Howse chimed a similar note in his article “Do Little People Go
to Heaven?”: “Far more interesting this week . . . is what we should make
