At https://phys.org/news/2025-09-volcanoes-untangle-evolution-humans.html … a rather hopeful headline. Volcanoes untangle evolution of humans. In reality, they do very little apart from allowing mainstream to construct some changes to their family trees. It is interesting in so far that mainstream opinion is convinced that it is this one region in Africa that has all the answers. Why not one region in Asia? However, they start off well by saying, ‘pinning down a timeline of early human evolution has long been diffcult’ – or is it the lack of fossils to bridge the evolutionary gaps. However, they add, old volcanic ash layers in Kenya may hold a clue. A lot of early human fossils have been dug out of the ground within the Rift Valley system, a highly tectonic region. This includes the Turkana Bsin.
The Rift Valley is thought to be a plate boundary – or one in the process of being created by tectonic events. Hence, there are a lot of volcanic eruptions over millions of years. They lay down layers of volcanic ash and debris – trapping some early humans, it is hoped. Fossil layers appear to be sandwiched between some of the layers. The idea now is that if the volcanic ash can be dated and then archaeologists will be able to produce a more relaible timeline. The layers are presented as geological time stops. Minerals such as feldspar contain crystals. These can be directly dated by radiometric means.
However, not all is as simple as first conceived as we are also told many of the eruptions are separated by just a few thousand years. In a catastrophist model this might be reduced to hundreds or decades of time. Ash laid down close to another eruption is barely distinguishable. Further, even ash layers have fingerprints – and some of them are similar to each other. How much confidence can be invested in them?
At https://phys.org/news/2025-09-oldest-mummies-world-hail-southeastern.html … mummies found in SE Asia date back 12,000 years it would seem. The bodies had been exposed to heat. We are told that probably means they were smoke dried over a fire. They were mummified amongst hunter gatherer communities as a similar practise is known from the relatively recent past. However, what gave them the idea of using heat to preserve the bodies? Even in the modern world, or the relatively recent past, the indigenous people of Australia and New Guiinea used heat and smoke to preserver their ancestors. Presumably, this is where the idea comes from that the same occurred in the deep past. It may well have done – but why?