• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Michael A. Day (1978, p. 315) said about the Kanapoi humerus: “it is hard to point to a single anatomical feature or group of features that is not well known in modern man. Functionally it must be nearly identical with the modern human condition.”

A dissenting view may be found in a study by Marc R. Feldesman, of Portland State University in Oregon. From his own multivariate analysis of 15 fossil humeri and humeri of 22 species of monkey and apes, Feldesman (1982a, p. 73) concluded: “The Kanapoi distal humerus (KP 271), far from being more ‘human-like’ than Australopithecus, clearly associates with the hyperrobust Australopithecines from Lake Turkana.” The Lake Turkana specimen closest to KP 271, according to Feldesman, was ER 739, now thought to represent Australopithecus boisei. This is exactly the reverse of McHenry’s conclusion. McHenry found that KP 271 was close to Homo sapiens and distant from ER 739. Because Feldesman did not supply his raw data in his report, we could not evaluate his results.

In our discussion of fossil discoveries in China (Section 9.2.1), we made extensive use of the concept of possible date ranges. That is to say, when confronted with reports giving different ages for certain fossils, we established a range of possibilities that included all likely ages. Here we want to introduce a similar concept—that of possible morphology ranges. Concerning the Kanapoi humerus, we can say, on the basis of the reports we have cited, that its morphology range extends to the modern human end of the spectrum.

11.5.2 The Gombore Humerus

In 1977, French researchers (Chavaillon et al. 1977) reported finding a humanlike humerus at the Gombore site in Ethiopia, about 55 kilometers south of the capital, Addis Ababa.

The Gombore humerus was, however, more recent than the Kanapoi humerus. Noting that stone tools were found near the Gombore humerus, Brigitte Senut (1979, pp. 112 –113) stated: “The stone industry of Gombore IB is like that of the upper part of Bed I and the base of Bed II at Olduvai (Tanzania), which have been dated at 1.7 million years by the potassium-argon method. The same radiometric method applied to basalt at the Ethiopian site gives the layers in which the Oldowan tools were found a date older than 1.5 million years.” The first excavators (Chavaillon et al. 1977, p. 961) also noted: “The site is an Oldowan encampment, with a shelter and organized zones containing different types of tools.”

Senut (1979, p. 111) said, in an English summary of one of her French papers, that the Gombore humerus could, along with the Kanapoi humerus, “be attributed to the genus Homo.” Concerning the Kanapoi humerus, Senut was in agreement with B. Patterson and Howells (1967), McHenry and Corruccini (1975), McHenry (1972, 1973), Oxnard (1975a), and Day (1978), who all thought the Kanapoi humerus to be unlike that of Australopithecus. Senut differed from Feldesman (1982a), who thought the Kanapoi humerus to be like that of Australopithecus boisei (ER 739).

Like Senut (1979), the original discoverers of the Gombore humerus hesitated to designate it as anything more than Homo (Chavaillon et al. 1977). Similarly, Feldesman (1982a, p. 92), who thought the Kanapoi humerus to be like those of australopithecines, said: “The Gombore specimen appears to be closer to Homo than to anything else.” But Chavaillon and his coworkers (1977, p. 962) noted: “in the lateral view, the bone very much resembles Homo sapiens sapiens.” Senut later found other features that were humanlike. “Gombore IB 7594,

which was primitively [first] attributed to the genus Homo (Chavaillon et al. 1977, Senut 1979), cannot be differentiated from a typical modern human,” she wrote (Senut 1981b, p. 91).

So now we seem to have two very ancient and humanlike humeri to add to our list of evidence challenging the currently accepted scenario of human evolution. These are the Kanapoi humerus at 4.0–4.5 million years in Kenya and the Gombore humerus at more than 1.5 million years in Ethiopia.