Renewable Revolution

Ashvin,
Man, was THAT weak. - AND LONG! And then you don't want to take even 5 or ten minutes, never mind and HOUR, to watch some video or a portion of it I post here?    You want me to wade through all this? I did. Talk about using a pack of claims (see the fallacious debating technique you accused me of using to "try to snow you  ) to derail the central issue...   

THE PARACAS SKULLS: ALIENS, AN UNKNOWN HOMINID SPECIES OR CRANIAL DEFORMATION?

Sources of dubious (and not-so-dubious) news on the internet have been getting very excited for the past week or so about some skulls from Paracas in south-western Perú. According to these sites, the skulls have been shown to have DNA that proves them not to be modern Homo sapiens but something else. Depending on the slant of the site, they are the remains of either an unknown but earthly species or aliens. Some sites make comparisons with the Starchild Skull, which has been touted as a human/alien hybrid. So just how reliable is the news? *

* Agelbert NOTE: Leading question used to set up DOUBT in the mind of the reader. An intelligent person stops reading right there. But I'm not too bright so I went on to see what they claim to have DISPROVING THE CLAIMS - Yeah, it's CLEAR right HERE that the aim of the article is to do a HIT PIECE on the Paracas skulls.


Some significant admissions about the skulls by the article at the start to convince the reader that the writer is OBJECTIVE:  

Background

... best South American textiles ever found.

... quality of their grave gifts suggests that they were of high status

Comparisons have also been made between the later Paracas textiles and those of the Nasca Culture, suggesting another relationship.

It is generally accepted that the Nasca culture derives from the Paracas Necropolis Culture.

... cotton nets may be evidence for fishing.

So far, so good.   
Many of the high status burials of the Paracas Necropolis Culture have deformed skulls, which are usually believed to be deliberately induced using boards and weights. These result, in extreme cases, in skulls that are elongated into tall conical shapes. No two are alike and all are believed to have denoted high status in Paracas Necropolis Culture society.

Agelbert NOTE: The word "many" is a red herring to fool you into believing a little further down that ALL the cone heads are the result of cranial deformation.

And "BELIEF" has nothing to do with it. Science has two designations for Homo sapiens cone head skulls, cranial deformation and cranial malformation; the former is forced and the latter is genetic. BOTH have the same brain pan size. HERE is where this article gets into perfidy territory.   


SEE TYPICAL HIT PIECE RHETORIC:

Brien Foerster (described as a “Canadian-Peruvian anthropologist” by Amazon, although it would be more accurate to describe him as a tour operator), Childress suggests that the phenomenon is not one of cranial deformation.

.. the presence of a large wormian bone at the parietal/occipital interface is said to demonstrate 
the primitive nature of this people

...Because of the high incidence of such bones among the indigenous peoples of the Andes, they are sometimes known as Inca bones.

Get it? You don't? You call the above "science"!!!? Inca=indigenous=primitive=cone heads= nothing to see here, move along.     Hey, the Spaniards were doing the, "Injuns are stupid savages" thing LONG before Darwin wanted to make monkeys of the "lesser races", pal!

Childress, Foerster and  Pye are all attacked with such "scientific" terms as "It appears that Childress and Foerster cannot adduce any recent ..." and "... ignorance of archeological dating techniques" and so on.

I am not going to waste time with these unprovable bits of defamation and character assassination. It is an established fact that carbon dating is ONE thing and DNA is another, MUCH HARDER, thing (getting usable DNA from a 2000 year old molar is quite difficult - getting the C-14 ratio is much easier). And even if it's just a modern DNA test to determine paternity. electrophoresis of fresh DNA is EASY compared with ancient DNA.  The author DELIBERATELY conflates the two in order to cast aspersions on Brien Foerster. Then he throws in lots of big words to show the readers that "knows what he is talking about".

Well, he DOES know how to do a hit piece. However, science deals with FACTS, not "it appears", "it is generally accepted" and so on. He does NOT know what he is talking about, chiefly evidenced by the FACT that he NEVER mentions cranial MALFORMATION! 

It's clear he is out to "get" Childress et al. His "This is a non-story" says it ALL. A true scientist would objectively request a thorough DNA study of hundreds of skulls based on the immense importance of finding evidence of a separate homind species that was honored so much that our branch tried to imitate it by forcing baby skulls into that shape. A true scientist would want to put all the claims to rest with evidence, no innuendo. This article is TRASH.

Some "interesting", but clever  , phrase usages:

ENTER Lloyd Pye.

Brien Foerster managed to persuade...

...Lloyd Pye (1946-2013), a crank who believed in ancient astronauts, the extraterrestrial origins of humanity and, worst of all, the “Starchild Skull” as an alien/human hybrid

OF COURSE! ANYONE who "believes" (otherwise know as formulating a hypothesis that ancient peoples were contacted by ETs and proceeding to test it) ET "stuff" HAS to be a CRANK!. How scientific of the writer to help the reader KNOW which way the wind is blowng in this article.

"This suggests that, ..." ,

That phrase is as unscientific as you can get in wanting to disprove a claim. The fact is that it is posted, not to DISPROVE the claim (because it has NOT been disproved), but to discredit the claimant. But the reader is left with the, very deftly placed, impression that Foerster and Pyle are con artists, whackos or both.

Yes, the author LOVES to SUGGEST. Such a scientific fellow...

Here's an EXCELLENT example of world class hit piece pseudo scientific doubletalk:

A Paracas skull: note the dimple toward the top of the head, which is a product of head-binding, depressing the suture between the parietal plates that Brien Foerster claims does not exist.

The above statement is TRUE! But the referenced skull is a head boarded or rope tied cranial DEFORMATION skull with what might be some trepanation! Whether Brien Foerster's claim applies to THIS skull (I seriously DOUBT IT!)  is not mentioned. How convenient.    At the start of the article, the author said "many". Yup, that is one of the "many". BUT IT"S NOT ONE OF THE FEW 20% larger brain pans sized NOT deformed  OR MAL formed cone heads!

It gets worse

IT SURE DOES. At this point he goes for the jugular to make sure the reader is left with a VERY bad taste in his mouth for the researchers. And it's all based on focusing almost exclusively on the Homo sapiens cone head deformation (with some "star child" fun thrown in to help the ridicule along   ).

I am surprised that a geneticist would make this statement

 

MORE innuendo. 

Now, this statement troubles me.

Well, our anonymous geneticist goes on to classify Sample 3A as “a new human-like creature”.

NOW the geneticist is taking the reader for a ride too? Never fear, our bold author will straighten it all out for you and then humbly claim he finds the conduct and announcements of the geneticist to be "curious"...

WHO THE **** IS THIS GUY WRITING THIS CRAP?

The OBVIOUS mocking, stuffed shirt tone in this next paragraph is something that, along with all those nice big words, Ashvin swallowed hook, line and sinker.   

So it''s not actually unrelated to the rest of the animal kingdom. That''s a relief.     However, it’s “very distant from Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans”, whatever that is supposed to mean. Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) and Denisovans (exact species not yet determined, although members of the genus Homo) are extinct homininds whose distribution was restricted to Europe and western Asia: one would not expect to find them in South America. If the mtDNA of Sample 3A really is “very distant from Homo sapiens”, the only hominind so far known from the New World, does this mean that the geneticist considers it to be another species within the genus Homo or a member of an entirely separate genus. This is something I would expect them to give an opinion on and I find it curious that they apparently  :icon_scratch: have not.

What is even more curious is the statement that “I am not sure it will even fit into the known evolutionary tree”. This is  worryingly ambiguous and can be taken in two ways. It might mean that Sample 3A derives from a species whose position in the hominindin lineage cannot yet be determined, but which might one day. I suspect that this is not the intended meaning though. Given the thrust of the rest of the statement, I suspect that it is meant to imply that the mtDNA belongs to a species entirely outside the hominind  lineage.

In other words, it's leaving open the possibility that we should regard the sample as deriving from an alien. There does not appear to be any consideration given to the likelihood that the odd features of the mtDNA recovered are not “mutations unknown in any human, primate or animal” but a result of contamination (after all, the skulls were excavated in the 1920s and we do not know the conditions under which they have been stored, how much they have been handled, whether any procedures have been used to stabilize them and so on) or errors in the laboratory

Get it? Question Darwin and you are whacko! The FACT that it is unrelated to a common sample of DNA MEANS more research is required, NOT that it is ALIEN, like the author tries to assume is the ONLY intent of the geneticist. And the old "contamination" TRICK is par for the course when a new finding contradicts the consensus (see Mary Shweitzer). 

The author does NOT ask for more testing but, in fact, continues to state, with his constant fecal flow of words like "curious, worrying, and so on" that science is being corrupted and this is all carnival Ripley's Believe it or Not baloney. 

At the end, and quite conveniently, he IGNORES the FACT that widely dispersed human ancient primitive cultures practiced head boarding to distinguish their LEADERS.

He TOTALLY **** canned the "so far, so good" part of this article that DOVETAILS with the high status of cone heads in their societies, NOT just in Paracas. WHY? Because that was put there to adopt a guise of objectivity that the author lacks.

... best South American textiles ever found.

... quality of their grave gifts suggests that they were of high status

Comparisons have also been made between the later Paracas textiles and those of the Nasca Culture, suggesting another relationship.

It is generally accepted that the Nasca culture derives from the Paracas Necropolis Culture.

The stuff about what is "known" and what is not "known" about the Paracas cultures is irrelevant filler thrown in to confuse the issue.

 The issue is the skulls.

Altering the shape of the skull also alters its volume  , despite Foerster’s claim that it does not [edited 19.2.2014 by KJF-M]. 

Although small variations away from normal volume can be produced, they are not significant; however, while Foerster claims that the capacity of the skulls is too great for Homo sapiens, this is not the case: the Paracas skulls have an average capacity of 1600 cm3 and the human range is up to 1800 cm3 and they therefore fall well within the normal distribution range.

The above is the MOTHER LODE of duplicity. WHY?

Because MOST of the Paracas skulls are cranial deformations of Homo sapiens! (see any discussion of AVERAGE wealth in the USA!). "Well within capacity of 1600 cm³" is true of them on the AVERAGE.

But the ones that are NOT cranially deformed, and have what he claims is a "primitive" bone structure, have a  20% larger brain pan AND denser bone RIGHT NEXT to Homo sapiens cranially deformed cone heads that DO fit the normal brain pan range. This is typical doubletalk. He flat REFUSES to separate the "primitive" LOL! skulls from the others. He will NOT GO TO THE "it's another species" route, PERIOD!. How **** convenient!

He even threw BIGFOOT in at the end, LOL!

The finishing touches of "Nobody believes this guy. He's hurting for cash" and so on are really low class.   

In summary, this is a non-story.    

There is nothing at all unusual  about the population of the Paracas Necropolis Culture, apart from the extreme nature of the head-binding they practiced.

 DNA or no DNA, they are fully human:  every aspect of their skulls can be explained in terms of genetics (such as the large wormian bone)   and culture (such as the cranial deformation).  Any statements to the contrary contain a mixture of deliberate deception, ignorance of anthropology, lack of archaeological knowledge and jumping to wild conclusions using “sketchy” data. They are not evidence for aliens  or an otherwise unknown hominin species.    

Who taught this guy to spell hominid with an "N" at the end?  :icon_mrgreen: I know, I'm being picky but, hey ,we ARE talking about human skulls and this guy claims to know is anthropology science, does he not?

Ashvin,
I already discussed the difference between cranial DEformation (rope or board cranial plate growth forcing)and cranial MALformation (genetic but still Homo sapiens) as well as the NON-rope or board cranial formation unrelated to MAL (genetic) formation. The artcle ignores the third, and most significant evidence.

Often in the Deformed cone head skulls (but not always), trepanation (making a small hole in the skull) was done because of pain from the cranial plates forced to grow in this fashion.

It has already been CLEARLY evidenced that MOST of the Paracas skulls are cranial DEformations with IDENTICAL sized brain pans to Homo Sapiens. MALformations are not evidenced there. Genetic MALformations of the cranium, according to dysmorphologist M.D.s that study cranial formation, always produce asymmetric skull plates (one side is shaped noticably different hat the other side). However, a small percentage (No Ashvin, not just ONE of them - there are several) have 20% GREATER brain pan size that Homo sapiens.

DEformed or MALformed skulls DO NOT have any appreciable increase in brain pan size OR skull weight. Your article pulls the old "average" skull capacity BULLSHIT to bypass the unique, un-Deformed craniums.

I do my homework. I consult medical science and mainstream archeology BEFORE I present the possible speciation evidenced by these other skulls. Whether they are or aren't ET is NOT the issue in regard to the skulls themselves. The ISSUE is whether they are a different hominid species.

IF they are a different hominid species, then, and only then, can we ask further questions about the FACTS, as established by our credentialed historians and archeologists, that:

1) Widely diverse "primitive" cultures (separated by oceans before transatlantic travel) practiced cranial deformation for tribal leaders. NO other practice like neck expanding, ear lobe enlarging, teeth sharpening, and so on, was practiced in widely diverse cultures. So please spare me the "primitives do weird things to distinguish their leaders" business. Yes, they do. BUT not on a worldwide basis UNLESS it was cranial deformation.

2) Wherever they were, they were leaders in the community as evidenced by funeral garb.

We CANNOT logically proceed to the next question until, or if, it is confirmed that the 20% greater brain pan sized (and higher bone density as well) cone heads (NOT DEformed and NOT genetically Malformed - they are symmetrical and show no signs of trepanation or cranial plate forcing distortions) is the product of hominid speciation.

THIS IS THE NEXT QUESTION THAT IS MOOT until all the above is confirmed:
Is their any evidence that they were ETs such as, but not limited to, written records, ancient schematics, knowledge of astronomy, a recovered flying saucer or part of one in a dig or high tech artifacts such as machines?

These articles with "enter this guy and enter that guy (liar for money!  ) are not germain when we HAVE skulls to test. **** the claims, pal! Let's get the DNA evidence for or against speciation. The rest is "he said, she said" propaganda used for the purpose of increasing the credibility of mainstream archeologists poo pooing a claim that calls their methodology and scientific integrity in to question while simultaneously casting aspersions on a non-credential individual investigating the cone heads.

YOU should NOT CARE, Ashvin, about what people SAY when you have skull evidence to analyze. The fact that the overwhelming majority of the skulls are BOTH deformed and show evidence of trepanation only means that MOST of those people where probably Homo Sapiens. Even that must be corroborated by DNA analysis.

A long article on deforming a skull 101 does not do **** to address the 20% larger brain pan size. Citing "average size does even less! And when that article starts attacking some non-credentialed researcher that might or might not be making a pile of money on the admittedly wild eyed idea that some of the cone heads were ET's, it's CLEAR that the article is a hit piece lacking objectivity and should be given circular file treatment.

I keep trying to get you to focus on the ANOMALOUS evidence. You keep trying to point at the portion that is run of the mill to establish the case that pecuniary motives of unscrupulous researchers "proves" the anomalous evidence is a fabrication. No it does not! Only DNA evidence does that. And the author of your article is allergic to DNA evidence.

So, let's stick to, "Are the GENUINE cone heads evidence of speciation or not?". Pointing at the money grubbers is a really tired tactic. But you give it an amazing amount of importance in formulating your conclusions so I will continue to emphasize the vacuity of using that possibility as a premise spring board to disbelieve all claims.

ARE THE CONE HEADS THAT ARE NEITHER Deformed or Malformed with 20% greater brain pan size and higher bone density evidence of a NON-Homo sapienshominid?

ONLY DNA analysis will answer THAT! The author of your article does not believe there is any evidence of hominid speciation.

Genetics is how real scientists address the issue of hominid speciation:

Gorillas are humans' closest living relatives after chimpanzees, and are of comparable importance for the study of human origins and evolution. Here we present the assembly and analysis of a genome sequence for the western lowland gorilla, and compare the whole genomes of all extant great ape genera. We propose a synthesis of genetic and fossil evidence consistent with placing the human-chimpanzee and human-chimpanzee-gorilla speciation events at approximately 6 and 10 million years ago. In 30% of the genome, gorilla is closer to human or chimpanzee than the latter are to each other; this is rarer around coding genes, indicating pervasive selection throughout great ape evolution, and has functional consequences in gene expression.  We also compare the western and eastern gorilla species, estimating an average sequence divergence time 1.75 million years ago, but with evidence for more recent genetic exchange and a population bottleneck in the eastern species.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22398555

In other words, speciation evidence is found ONLY in the DNA. But the author of your article says, QUOTE  "DNA or no DNA, they are fully human:..." UNQUOTE

And you believe him.   

The video below is very nuts and bolts.    It's only 21 minutes and covers all the bases NOT covered in the article Ashvin posted.

Outside of his hair style  (which is not conducive to the awarding of Nobel Prizes  :icon_mrgreen:), I feel the speaker is credible, honest and forthcoming about what he can prove and what he cannot prove. The interviewer asks the right questions. enjoy. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3jXqzp716A&feature=player_embedded