From Atlantis to the Sphinx
“None whatsoever, if we can accept that Australopithecus afarensis could have developed into Homo sapiens in about three and a half million years.
For this is the problem: time scale.
Sir Arthur Keith wrote about the Taung skull that it ‘is much too late in the scale of time to have any part in man’s ancestry’. At that point, it was assumed that the Taung skull was about a million years old, and Keith felt that there was simply not time for such an ape-like creature to turn into Homo sap...iens in 900,000 years.
But even if we suppose that Lucy was a much earlier form of human being, the problem remains. In the two million or so years between Lucy and ‘Dart’s baby’, there has been very little change—both might well be apes. Homo erectus, half a million years old, still seems apelike. Then, in a mere 400,000 years—a blink of the eyelid in geological time—we have Homo sapiens, and Neanderthals with a brain far larger than modern man.MoreLess
For this is the problem: time scale.
Sir Arthur Keith wrote about the Taung skull that it ‘is much too late in the scale of time to have any part in man’s ancestry’. At that point, it was assumed that the Taung skull was about a million years old, and Keith felt that there was simply not time for such an ape-like creature to turn into Homo sap...iens in 900,000 years.
But even if we suppose that Lucy was a much earlier form of human being, the problem remains. In the two million or so years between Lucy and ‘Dart’s baby’, there has been very little change—both might well be apes. Homo erectus, half a million years old, still seems apelike. Then, in a mere 400,000 years—a blink of the eyelid in geological time—we have Homo sapiens, and Neanderthals with a brain far larger than modern man.MoreLess
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