Introducing Ardi...

Ardi (short for Ardipithecus ramidus) is supposed to be 4.4-million-year-old upright primitive female which stood about four feet tall and weighed about 110 pounds; and might I add with a small forehead - meaning it had a small brain. Occasionally she would come down from the tree which she spent most of her time. And her discovery has caused ripples of excitement among the paleontologists and evolutionists. The anthropologists will also be sharing this excitement, I guess. There are lots of deductions to be made out of this discovery.... the latest (newest? oldest?) addition to the family of the hominids. But this classification is not foolproof...

Many years ago, as a history student and an archeologist wannabe (thanks to the then dashingly handsome archeologist cum maverick, Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones), one of my interests was Lucy, a 3.2-million-year-old, also female Australopithecus afarensis. Funny how they only keep digging up the female species and not much of the male ones. No daya tahan even for the male bones? LOL! I think I still have this edition of National Geography magazine on evolution somewhere in one of my boxes. It was my sentimental copy cos it helped spark my interests in archeology (paleontology) and anthropology. Anyway, if you do a Google for Lucy... you are more likely to get Lucy Liu (of the famed Charlie's Angels) than Lucy the primitive creature close to man.

Well, archeology dropped out of my course work after my second year at uni as I couldn't imagine myself 'digging' with a 'spoon' for some fossil or artifact for the rest of my life. And I realized that I was never going to be famous like the Leakeys. LOL! Neither did I had the patience to wait for years for a major discovery.... if I ever get that 'lucky'.

But I have great respect for the archeologists. They are a rare breed of people. People who can live under extremely lacking environments and possess a huge amount of patience. Lots of good digs are found in Africa... it's a continent that is dry and hot. Ardi is located in Ethiopia. Lucy was found in Olduvai Gorge, Kenya.... I can still remember the names! 8)

So what is the discovery of Ardi going to have on us? I guess nothing much. Man has been trying to disprove the Theory of Creation for centuries. Somehow the bridges that connects those primitive creatures like Lucy and Ardi to humans still seem to be floundering in its construction. Lucy remains a gorilla-like creature whom some anthropologists and scientists now postulate could have spent quite a bit of time living on the tree. Anyway, much of the information was inferred from its skeletal structure which is about 40% complete. And some scientists say the parts may have actually come from different creatures. Incomplete data.

So, Ardi being an older creature would probably display more of those characteristics, assuming the paleontologists are able to find more than that 40%. There found the skeletal remains of her hands and legs though. Darwin's theory that we are descendants of monkeys still don't quite stand. Unless we want to say that we are; going by the monkeying behaviour among humans that is so prevalent now. 8) Point is there is still very little evidence supporting this macro-evolution thing.

Anyway carbon dating which was once touted as rather accurate is no longer so because of some issues which has cropped up like the rate of decay which may not be that constant and also man-induced decay; as what the counterfeiters are doing to age fake artifacts in China. During my time, our reading pointed to carbon dating being infallible... goes to prove a point that man's comprehension of this world is still rather finite.

So yeah... another millions-of- years-old fossil made it to the surface (or parts of it). But it does nothing to disprove the Theory of Creation.