Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
they appeared to be extremely primitive compared with the remains
of contemporary people. The skulls, for example, had combinations of
features that had never before been seen, such as the huge brow ridges,
thickened bones, and oddly shaped faces of Neanderthals. Ever since
the first fossil hominins were recognized, paleoanthropologists have
tended to pride themselves that humans are the pinnacle of evolution.
Such bizarre-looking potential “missing links” may simply have been
too unsavory for scientists to swallow, especially if they were already
convinced that the skeletons in the human evolutionary closet should
have been more refined-looking. “Surely,” they may have thought, “
my
ancestor didn't look like that!”
Paleoanthropologists have traditionally dismissed radical new dis-
coveries by casting aspersions on their physical appearances in ways that
appeal to prejudices rather than making reasoned inferences about them
of fossils may, thus, be viewed as a kind of ad hominem (“against the
man”) attack that has focused on prehistoric rather than contemporary
humans. The inclination for paleoanthropologists to view contemporary
humans as an evolutionary tour de force has rested on a firm appre-
ciation (some might say overappreciation) of our species' intellectual
achievements and the associated conviction that human brains must be
better than those of all other animals, including prehistoric hominins.
Such ad hominem attacks, therefore, have focused on the presumed
mentality of breakthrough fossil hominins, which have been character-
ized as “brutes,” “hermits,” “idiots,” and, in the case of
Pithecanthropus,
as a “microcephalic idiot.” The last characterization is related to the
association of the brain with intelligence and creativity, thus emphasiz-
ing a special interest in cranial capacity in the discussions about newly
discovered hominin species.
Today, little seems to have changed when it comes to the tensions and
controversies surrounding the discovery of early hominins. Soon after
Homo floresiensis
was announced in
Nature,
a small, vocal group of scientists
declared that its type specimen, LB1, represented a pathological
Homo
