Anthropologists Declare Order to be Intelligently Caused

With an amazing capacity for absorbing their own cognitive contradictions, certain regular features found on shells have been declared the work of pre-sapiens:

Zigzag design on shell called landmark feat for early humans

"It's a simple zigzag design scratched onto the surface of a freshwater mussel shell on the Indonesian island of Java about half a million years ago.

But scientists are calling it a milestone achievement for early humans and an indication that the species Homo erectus, which preceded our own species Homo sapiens, possessed more advanced cognitive abilities than previously thought.

In a study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, the scientists describe a collection of shells from the Trinil site in Java, a treasure trove of Homo erectus skeletal remains and artifacts.

One shell was fashioned into a tool with a smooth and polished edge, probably used as a knife or scraper. Another has the zigzag pattern, most likely produced by scratching the shell's surface with a shark's tooth, that the scientists say represents the earliest geometric engraving known to exist.

Prior to this, the oldest similar artifacts were about 110,000 and 100,000 years old, found at sites in South Africa and made by Homo sapiens long after Homo erectus had disappeared, said biologist Josephine Joordens of Leiden University in the Netherlands.

"This changes our view of the degree of cultural complexity characteristic of this fossil species and indicates that stone tools are a pale and incomplete reflection of the total complexity of techniques used at the time," Joordens said.

The researchers determined the age of the Trinil shell artifacts to be between about 400,000 and 500,000 years old."

How many logic defects can be found in this text?

Let's start with the evolutionary mantra that order can and does arise physically and without direction; no need to invoke intelligence. Yet when order is actually found, it is immediately attributed to "possession of advanced cognitive abilities". DNA, must be naturally caused by undirected forces; marks on a seashell are intelligently designed.

Next let's take the age determination process. The shell is said to be 500k years old; therefore those possessed of advanced cognitive abilities were there, 500k years ago, too. It's not considered that if the shells were found today, they could have been found at ANY TIME after they were created, and zigzag marks placed by whatever force of nature pushed them around.

But the most interesting part is the Leap To Intelligence As Causal. In some sciences, that's OK, even expected. In other "sciences" it is forbidden and legally restricted from consideration. Neither science seems to notice any contradiction or paradox.

This brings to mind the Youtube video I recently watched of an Indian Elephant painting a picture of... an elephant. The picture was remarkably anatomically and dimensionally accurate down to the placement of the eye. The handler just stood there and held the paint can, while the elephant repeated dipped the brush and continued painting.

OK, here's one similar to the one I saw, but with a humorous narrative:



In this one, Suda signs her name:



And a different perspective, using Bob Ross technique for trees...



OK, I'll stop after this one, which might be the best yet:



Scratches on a seashell - pfut.