An exciting new paper by Fan, Tishkoff, and others on African population demographic history was published last week. The big mystery here is the 'ghosts', also called 'archaic introgressions.' There must have been an unidentified ('ghost') population of archaic humans living someplace, that contributed genes (introgression) to some of the known African populations. As you read this article, each time you read 'ghost' or 'archaic introgression' simply think 'paleohuman arriving from Bioko'. 

Here are figures from this paper. Archaic introgressions are shown in grey text, grey dots, and grey boxes. My text additions are in pink. See the original figures here.













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What is the actual goal of professional paleoanthropologists? Do they want to answer our major questions about early humans? Not really. That would reduce our interest in their work and expertise, and stop the funding of their projects.

They want to increase our interest by telling fascinating stories and increasing the number and complexity of puzzles. They work on their own puzzles, and solve some of them, which allows them to compete and show their abilities.

What they don’t want is for an outsider to kill their good stories and solve the major puzzles without them. That’s what I think I’m doing at Paleohuman.com and Anthropogeny.net.

As long as they ignore my musings, I will be able to continue my projects without distractions.

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Have you wondered how and where Mother Africa gave birth to humans?

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Everyone agrees that humans have many characteristics that have never been described in any other primate. Where, when, and why did the human lineage evolve each of those unique characteristics? 
It seems that scientists are thinking there was a unique selection pressure or mutation for each human characteristic. Most paleoanthropologists have given up ever knowing the where-when-why's. Isn't it scientifically logical (parsimonious) that there was a single cause for most of them? (as I was trying to explain here).
Elaine Morgan could relate many physical characteristics to the aquatic ape theory, and Craig Hagstrom could relate many emotional and behavioral characteristics to that same theory. I think I found the place where it happened. There was one ring that ruled them all: the coastline of Bioko island. 

One ring ruled them all,
One ring confined them.
One ring made them tame,
And thoroughly mankind them.

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For over a hundred years (before DNA technology) science desperately wanted fossils to fight creationism. But there are no fossils of orangutans or gorillas or chimpanzees or early humans in the rainforests where great apes live. So science had to accept paleoanthropology, which simply ignores the scientific rules of reproducibility and testability. It is based on fossils that are discovered with no impartial witnesses, cannot be found again, and are not allowed to be properly tested.

We now have DNA to prove that humans did indeed split from apes (from chimpanzees, not from gorillas or orangutans, and not as far back as 15-25 million years ago) and we have chemical tests (such as carbon-14 and fluorine-absorption analysis) to debunk false fossils. We should demand to use those technologies, even though they may dethrone paleoanthropology. If they do, we can now replace it with anthropogeny.

So far, we are not willing to demand impartial scientific testing. Paleoanthropology has a huge number of leaders and followers — like a religious sect that is so powerful that scientists carry on without daring to challenge it.

Lucy (in the sky with diamonds)

Lucy (in wikipedia)


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My Bioko-version of Elaine Morgan's Aquatic Ape Theory was first published 5 years ago today. (Many thanks to Steinar!)


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'CARTA organizes free public symposia addressing particular aspects of human origins and uniqueness and features presentations by scientists, eminent in their respective fields.'

It seems that the aquatic ape theory has never been mentioned in any of the 46 CARTA symposia. Maybe a future symposium could address it? There may be no eminent scientists who support the aquatic ape theory, but there must be some who can explain why it has been ignored.  

Don't mind that elephant seal...

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CARTA will not comment on my models, but I will comment on theirs. Speciation of primates requires reproductive isolation (no gene flow) and different environmental conditions (selection pressures).

Referring to the red letters I have added to CARTA's evolutionary tree (phylogeny), this is where and how the taxa might have speciated:

A: Old World Monkeys lived in Africa and Asia
B: Some Monkeys rafted to South America and evolved into New World Monkeys.
C: Some Monkeys became isolated in Asia and evolved into Gibbons
D: Some Gibbons rafted to islands without large predators (Borneo, Sumatra?) They evolved into the large sluggish Orangutans
E: Some Orangutans rafted to Africa, and evolved into Gorillas. They are large because they eat large quantities of low quality foods.
F: Some Gorillas rafted down the Congo River and evolved into Chimpanzees. They are smaller because they search more for higher quality foods.
G: Some Chimpanzees became isolated on Bioko and evolved into Humans. They are unique because of their marine habitat and no predators.
H: Some Chimpanzees became isolated south of the Congo River and evolved into Bonobos. Their habitat and diet is similar to Chimpanzees.

https://carta.anthropogeny.org/resources/phylogeny

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Here is a list of possible frauds. It is uncomfortable, but the hypothesis of fraud must be mentioned in order to be tested.

Eugene Dubois, Dutch anatomist and fossil collector. By reading Ernst Haeckel, Dubois was convinced that humans evolved in southeast Asia, where orangutans and gibbons live. In 1888 Dubois moved there, telling others that he would return with proof of the missing link. In 1894 he returned to Amsterdam with Java Man fossils, the first specimens of Homo erectus. He became professor of geology. He prevented his fossil materials from being carefully inspected or chemically tested.

Robert Elliott, English amateur archeologist. For two years, he regularly visited a chalk quarry near Kent, asking workers to sell him any prehistoric stone tools they might find in ice-age gravels that overlie the chalk. In 1888, the workers showed him a human skeleton, which he excavated. In 1894 these bones were studied by a professional, and became known as the Galley Hill Man. The bones were subjected to fluorine testing 50 years later, and shown to be modern, not fossils. That testing was done by Kenneth Oakley. Soon after, Oakley debunked Piltdown Man and a skeleton from Olduvai gorge using fluorine analysis. Fluorine analysis and other chemical tests are no longer carried out on hominid fossils. 

Otto Schoetensack, German geologist. He studied ice-age deposits near Heidelberg. For twenty years, he kept asking the owner of the Mauer gravel pit to be on the lookout for bones of prehistoric man. In 1907 the owner found him a lower jaw. The following year, Schoetensack published a monograph establishing the new species Homo heidelbergensis. (Arthur Keith showed in 1915 that this jaw was remarkably like a female orangutan.)

Arthur Keith, English anatomist and paleoanthropologist. He wrote a book in 1915 The Antiquity of Man, which I think hints at many fossil hoaxes, including his own. From reading about Java Man, Galley Hill Man, and Homo heidelbergensis, I think that Keith realized how successful fossil falsification could be. He decided to carry out the Piltdown Man hoax. He carefully prepared broken orangutan jaw pieces and human cranium pieces, which he gave to Charles Dawson to fool paleontologist Arthur Smith Woodward. Keith, Woodward, and G. Elliot Smith then became famous for their study of Piltdown Man.

Charles Dawson, English solicitor and amateur fossil collector. Either alone or with Keith, he planted the Piltdown pieces and then led Woodward to discover them in 1912. This species, with ape-like jaw and human-like cranium, was named Eoanthropus dawsoni in his honor.

Davidson Black, Canadian physician and anatomist. He worked and studied in Arthur Keith’s laboratory in England in 1914. He then decided he would find human fossils himself. He moved to China in 1919 and obtained two human teeth and some chipped stones from a cave. He announced that these were from a missing link, and received funding to excavate more. Human-like bones were then found, and these became known as Peking Man (Homo erectus). All fossil originals later disappeared and were never recovered.

Unknown Nazi workmen. They dug up a jawbone with one tooth in the city of Athens in 1944. This fossil became known as Graecopithecus. (Racist Nazis were opposed to the model of humans having originated in Africa.)

Tom Gray, American Ph.D student. Together with his advisor, professor Donald C. Johanson, Gray stole a leg bone from a family tomb in Hadar, Ethiopia in 1973. The next year he led Johanson to the place where they discovered the "Lucy" bones (Australopithecus) lying loose on the ground.

Richard Hay, American geology professor. He interpreted geologic relationships in Olduvai Gorge and Serengeti Plain, concluding that bipedal Laetoli fossil footprints had been made in newly fallen volcanic ash. I think the footprints were not in ash, but in water-lain lake muds, and that they were made by Homo sapiens, not Australopithecus. Hay collected minerals to be dated, and arranged for the dating of the footprints. His claim that the layers are volcanic ash makes the footprints to be millions of years old, the same age as the minerals dated. 

Mary Leakey, professional paleoanthropologist. She described the Laetoli footprints together with geology professor Richard Hay in 1978. Then in 1979, they had the footprint layer covered by dirt and boulders. This prevented visiting geologists from reinterpreting the footprint layer as lake sediment.

Richard Leakey, professional paleoanthropologist, and American anatomist Alan Walker. They collected and announced the Turkana Boy (Nariokotome Homo erectus skeleton) in 1984. I claim that the bone fragments are not fossils at all. They are recent bones, first broken and buried in recent river gravels, and then discovered. Leakey and Walker saturated the bone fragments in vinyl acetate solution to strengthen them. This made them hard and heavy like fossils, and prevented carbon-14 dating or chemical analysis. The fragments were first collected in loose river sediments, and during the next few years, excavations were made in much older rock layers nearby, leading paleoanthropologists to believe that the fossils came from there.

 

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A few kids with big rocks could "hunt and gather" the meat of a 300-kg sea turtle. Paleohumans had no need for the sharp canine-teeth that non-human primates have. Instead, they needed friendly teeth, to smile with neighbors as they shared and ate their chewy food. No fire, no weapons, no big muscles. Just paleohuman blubber for floating in the water, where they could eat their turtle meat without getting sand in their mouths.


https://drexel.edu/~/media/Files/coas2/biology/drexel-bioko-island-viewbook.ashx?la=en

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A lot of F-words seem to be taboo in paleoanthropology: Fabricator, Faker, Falsifier, Forger, Fraud. Scientists know about the Piltdown Man hoax from 1912-1953. But most people seem to think that such a hoax would be impossible today. And they don't want to know that the famous Sir Arthur Keith was complicit.

The case of Professor Reiner Protsch (Fraud) has been kept well hidden. Read about it here, because you probably won't find it mentioned elsewhere:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/feb/19/science.sciencenews
https://archive.archaeology.org/0505/newsbriefs/insider.html
https://www.dw.com/en/professor-resigns-over-misconduct-scandal/a-1493421

Fossil Finders are important in paleoanthropology, and they are given special status. Scientists need hominid fossils, and there are almost none, because gorillas, chimpanzees, and probably humans evolved in hot humid areas where bones decay before fossils can be formed. 

To get more hominid fossils to study, 'surface-finds' are accepted. These are fragments lying loose on the ground, with no digging required. It is assumed, but never proven, that the loose fragments are the same age as the millions-years-old strata beneath. This was the case with Lucy. Lucy's bone fragments were found on a Sunday morning in 1974. They were scattered on the ground in such a way that “a single desert thunderstorm could have washed them off the plateau, over a cliff and into oblivion, forever." (page 7 in Johanson & Wong 2010: Lucy’s Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins) The fragments were gathered up quickly, with no photographic documentation. No chemical tests were made, to show that the fragments have the same chemistry and belong together. In 2015 it was realized that one of the bones is from a baboon, but still no chemical testing is being done. If there are other bones of this skeleton that don't belong, paleoanthropologists would rather not know about it. 

Fossil Finders are needed so that paleoanthropologists will have material to work with. A new find will bring the finder Fame and Fortune.

Fossil Fellows are scientists who are invited to work with the exclusive fossil materials, and co-author publications with the Finders. They are not inclined to doubt the material's authenticity, because if they do, they will be disinvited from the prestigious publications, and not be invited to study Future Finds.

Fossil Followers are scientists who work with secondary information that is made available, such as casts and photographs of the fossils. They are not given access to the original materials, which are too Fragile. If someone suspects there was a Falsification or Fabrication, they will not mention it, because such an accusation could not be proven and would abruptly end their career.

Fossil Fans are people who are interested in human evolution, and help the Finders, Fellows, and Followers to get the necessary Funding for their research. Fossil Fans are not gullible, but they are easily Fooled, primarily by the Finders.

It seems to me that the science of paleoanthropology is F-d up. It is more interested in helping itself, than helping us to understand the origin of humans.

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According to MSRP, scientists are working within so-called ‘research programmes’, which are somewhat similar to Kuhnian paradigms. A research programme consists of a static ‘hard core’ of fixed beliefs, and a dynamic ‘protective belt’ of auxiliary hypotheses and background knowledge (Figure 1).

Paleoanthropology is a Kuhnian paradigm or a Lakatosian research program. As such, it has a 'hard-core central idea' and a 'protective belt' of heuristics, theories, and hypotheses.

I think the hard-core central idea is this: Fossils accurately record human evolution.

Here is what I think are some of the heuristics, theories, and hypotheses: 

• Encourage fossil discoveries by giving finders inalienable rights (no hands-on study or chemical testing by outsiders)
• Encourage public interest in fossils (new species and good stories bring more funding)
• Fossils with a mix of human-and-ape traits reflect forward evolution (no hybrid throwbacks)
• Fossils indicate the main habitats of species and locations of speciation (fossil-free regions are uninteresting)
• 'Surface finds' are the same age as the underlying strata (no proof by digging is necessary)
• Fossil-finders are honest (planting of surface fossils and other deceptions are impossible in modern times)
• Never aid creationists by publicly questioning the authenticity of old or new fossil finds 
  

A major problem with paleoanthropology's hard-core central idea is this: There are no fossils of chimpanzees and gorillas. (They live in environments where bone fossils cannot be formed.) Since fossils do not record chimpanzee or gorilla evolution, it is unlikely that fossils accurately record human evolution.

I think that humans evolved on Bioko without leaving a single fossil. Paleohumans were bipedal and good swimmers, and many came over to mainland Africa. With no fire or weapons, most paleohumans were quickly taken by predators. Some mated with chimpanzees, and their progeny were better suited for mainland conditions. They left the fossils we now call hominids (Sahelanthropus, Ardipithecus, Paranthropus, Australopithecus, Homo naledi, and a host of others) in drier parts of Africa. I think hominids were hybrids, because they were bipedal with baffling mixes of human traits, ape traits, without logical time frames.

Paleoanthropology will uphold its cluttered hominid paradigm, but in anthropogeny we should look to other research programs—genetics, anatomy, and physiology of living primates—as we try to understand the origin of humans. 

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Watch Ronald Clarke's sleight-of-hand in his CARTA lecture about the Australopithecus 'Little-Foot'. He used the legs and thigh bones of one skeleton, but ignored the arm bone (radius) of what looks to be the same skeleton. For one arm and a hand, he used bones from another place in the cave. The skull and other arm came from another place. For the foot and ankle, he used bones from the collection of a medical school. He felt certain that all these bones were from the same individual. For more details, read my manuscript on 'fictional fossil evidence' and watch the lecture video.

This Australopithecus 'skeleton' was not a hybrid, as other Australopithecus fossils may be. This one is a composite of different bones taken mostly from a cave known for many monkey bones. 


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In the CARTA lecture by Berhane Asfaw, a physical model of Ardi's skull is shown, based on digital reconstruction of the fossil fragments. To me the skull looks very much like a chimpanzee, with a projecting face. But Asfaw argues that it is less projecting, and has other human-like characteristics. He thinks that the last common ancestor also had these characteristics.

In his conclusion he says: 

"So the information that we got from Ardipithecus is more information about what our ancestors, our common ancestors, might have looked like. And at least from this information we know that they don't look like chimpanzees."



On his Conclusion picture, Asfaw writes:
"This may suggest that the African apes (i.e. chimpanzee and gorilla) are very derived (i.e. much evolved) in their craniodental complex from the (human-chimpanzee-gorilla-)common ancestor."

Paleoanthropologists want to convince us that humans did not evolve from chimpanzees. They want us to think that chimpanzees have evolved as much as humans since the split. But that model is based on scanty fossil evidence and wishful thinking.

Since modern chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans are similar, it is more logical to think that their common ancestor was similar, and only humans have changed. That orthodox model of evolution—long periods without significant change—is called 'punctuated equilibrium'.

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In the CARTA lecture by Haile-Selassie, a model of Ardipithecus is shown with human-like traits (minute 17:02).
Haile-Selassie explains:
 

If Ardipithecus was a real creature, and not a misinterpretation, couldn't it have been a hybrid? Shouldn't paleoanthropologists be mentioning the hybrid-hypothesis, and that the last common ancestor may have simply been a chimpanzee?

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This CARTA poster shows pictures of three hominid skulls: Toumaï, Ardi, and Little-Foot. Watch the videos of this CARTA symposium, and read about these three hominids Sahelanthropus, Ardipithecus, and Australopithecus. They all have some traits that are human-like, and some traits that are chimpanzee-like. From this, paleoanthropologists like to think that the last common ancestor of chimps and humans had many human-like traits. I think the last common ancestor was like a chimp, gorilla, and orangutan, and had no human-like traits.

An obvious hypothesis should be that these extinct, dead-end species are hybrids of early humans and apes (or a mix of bones from two species, like Lucy or Piltdown Man). But the hypothesis that early hominids could be hybrids goes unmentioned in paleoanthropology. It would diminish funding and status for working with these fossils. Paleoanthropologists give us lots of species, and lots of fascinating speculation, but avoid the hypothesis that for any of their species, hominid = hybrid. 

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Read this excellent paper by Ruben N. Jorritsma (2022): How Well Does Evolution Explain Endogenous Retroviruses?—A Lakatosian Assessment. Here is the first part of the Introduction.

1. Introduction
1.1 The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes

Two 20th century philosophers of science have strongly shaped how scientists, to this day, view what science is and how it works. The first was Karl Popper, who advocated falsifiability as the defining characteristic demarcating scientific theories from non-scientific ones [1]. The other was Thomas Kuhn, who held that in actual practice scientists are not attempting to falsify their most important theories—or paradigms—but are rather trying to preserve them [2]. Less well known is that the seemingly opposing views of Popper and Kuhn have been synthesized by the Hungarian philosopher Imre Lakatos [3]. This synthesis is called the methodology of scientific research programmes (MSRP).

According to MSRP, scientists are working within so-called ‘research programmes’, which are somewhat similar to Kuhnian paradigms. A research programme consists of a static ‘hard core’ of fixed beliefs, and a dynamic ‘protective belt’ of auxiliary hypotheses and background knowledge (Figure 1). Whenever the programme is confronted with anomalous data, the hard core is shielded from refutation by changing something in the protective belt. There are innumerable ways in which the protective belt can be altered: this may involve the addition of a new parameter, different assumed starting conditions, the recognition of a new type of experimental error, or the proposal of a brand-new hypothesis—whatever is needed to account for the evidence without affecting the hard core.

In addition to a hard core and protective belt, a research programme also has a heuristic. This is a set of (mathematical or experimental) tools and principles that guides researchers as they develop the programme. The heuristic has a negative aspect (which simply says: preserve the hard core), but also a positive aspect. The positive heuristic tells researchers which questions to ask, where to look for interesting data, and how to sophisticate the protective belt in such a way that the programme as a whole can explain increasingly detailed data.

The Popperian element of MSRP surfaces in how Lakatos appraises research programmes. Programmes are assessed by how their protective belts evolve over time. When a research programme undergoes changes, whether it is in response to anomalies or by the forward momentum of the positive heuristic, Lakatos demands that these changes lead to the prediction of novel facts. If they do, the changes are ‘theoretically progressive’, and if the predictions are corroborated, they are ‘empirically progressive’, but if the changes merely accommodate already known facts in an ad hoc fashion, Lakatos calls them ‘degenerative’.

So rather than appraising theories in temporal isolation, under MSRP one must consider the progression of the research programme over an extensive period. If a research programme is characterized by progressive changes, scientists have good reason to continue scientific effort in that direction. If, on the other hand, a research programme generally features degenerative adjustments, scientists have a rational basis for switching to another, more promising research programme.

 

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I'm fascinated by paradigm shifts in science. I studied continental-drift theory for about 10 years and I've been working on aquatic-ape theory for the past 5 years.

In the old paradigm of fixed continents, scientists couldn't explain what forces pushed up mountain ranges. They'd heard about continental-drift theory, but leading fixists decided it was foolish, and kept the evidence for it hidden from students. Authors wanted their expertise in paleo-continents and paleo-oceans (such as Eria, Baltica, Gondwana, Amazonia, Poseidon, and Nereis) to stay relevant.

In the current paradigm of hominids, scientists can't explain what selection pressures caused human traits. They've heard about aquatic-ape theory, but leading paleoanthropologists have decided it's foolish, and keep the evidence for it hidden from students. Authors want their expertise in hominids (such as Ardipithecus, Praeanthropus, Paranthropus, and Australopithecus) to stay relevant.

I've learned a lot about leading geologists in the old paradigms of fixed continents / mobile continents. Now I'm learning about leading paleoanthropologists in the current paradigms of savanna apes / waterside apes.

Cover of my free pdf-book (2011) at Fixists.com
(This was the early version of my book Not Getting the Drift (2014).

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I think a paradigm shift will come to anthropogeny, the study of human origins. In the current paradigm, humans evolved from hominids. In the alternative paradigm, humans evolved from marine chimpanzees. The hominid experts must hold back that paradigm shift as long as possible, to keep their expertise in high demand. I think that is why my paper introducing this alternative paradigm is being kept off the CARTA list of 2800 publications. 

(Dec. 20, 2022 edit: CARTA has now added the Bioko paper to their list of publications.) 

https://carta.anthropogeny.org/events/early-hominids

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