Posted on 05/11/2011 7:41:02 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The first humans to reach Europe may have found it a ghost world. Carbon-dated Neanderthal remains from the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains suggest that the archaic species had died out before modern humans arrived.
The remains are almost 10,000 years older than expected. They come from just one cave in western Russia, called Mezmaiskaya, but bones at other Neanderthal sites farther west could also turn out to be more ancient than previously thought, thanks to a precise carbon-dating technique, says Thomas Higham, a palaeoanthropologist at the University of Oxford, UK, and a co-author of a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1.
The implication, says Higham's team, is that Neanderthals and humans might never have met in Europe. However, the Neanderthal genome, decoded last year2, hints that the ancestors of all humans, except those from Africa, interbred with Neanderthals somewhere. Perhaps humans departing Africa encountered resident Neanderthals in the Middle East.
"DNA results show that there was admixture probably at some stage in our human ancestry, but it more than likely happened quite a long time before humans arrived in Europe," says Ron Pinhasi, an archaeologist at University College Cork in Ireland, who is lead author of the latest study. "I don't believe there were regions where Neanderthals were living next to modern humans. I just don't find it very feasible," he adds.
Time horizon
Carbon dating of stone tools characteristic to humans and Neanderthals, as well as their physical remains, has previously given the impression that the first humans to reach Europe, between about 40,000 and 30,000 years ago, shared the continent with Neanderthals long established there.
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
Someone once said we share something like 30% DNA or a carrot.
That IS evolution by the plain meaning of the word.It may not be Darwinian Evolution)(notice the caps) or Punctuated Equilibrium Evolution, but it is evolution all the same. Evolution is change, temporary, contingent, or permanent, or slight, by implication not sudden or catastrophic. I do not surrender the language to the Left or to some clique of professors.
So while you might say that Asians moving to America and raising their children on a Western diet is an “evolution” (change) in how tall Asian Americans are - it would be absolutely incorrect to say that this was a result of biological evolution (change in the DNA of a population).
All authorities agree the Neanderthal is roughly halfway. If the human-chimp difference is 2%, the human-Neanderthal difference is 1% and not .5%. For that matter, even a quarter of the difference between humans and chimpanzees is a gigantic genetic difference and caucasions being in any way descended from such a thing would produce huge differences between whites and other races, which is definitely not the case.
Who would have thought?????
Recent findings show the difference between humans and chimps to be orders of magnitude larger than was thought up until a year or two ago. Chimps and gorillas (and hominids for that matter) are/were intelligent enough, but they are unrelated to us other than possibly via similar design parameters. Dolphins and whales are bright enough for that matter, but are clearly not related to us.
Either way, a 1-4% admixture of something 99% (or 99.5%) the same is not going to lead to a huge genetic difference.
And how do you explain the existence of a creature that is (supposedly) halfway between humans and chimps?
God playing a joke? An experiment? Giants in the Earth?
You have an explanation? Considering just how whackadoo loony your other ‘explanations’ are (for the Big Bang and suchlike) this should be a doozy!!!!
:)
For example, the difference between human and chimp genetic DNA is around 2%.
A SINGLE order of magnitude larger would be 20%.
ORDERS of magnitude larger would be 200% at least. An impossibility.
Also, you are wrong either through lies or confusion. When the genome was sequenced the difference over the entire genome (only some 3% of the genome is genetic DNA) is some 6-10%.
That is, for one thing, not even a single order of magnitude larger, and also - absolutely expected.
Genetic DNA is more highly conserved between species and doesn't change much within a species over time - while non-Genetic DNA is less conserved between species and changes much more rapidly within a species over time.
As such it is entirely expected (unless you are an idiot hoping to score futile points in a game you barely understand) that the difference between humans and chimps, being 2% in genetic DNA, would be at least three times as different over the entire genome.
Obviously not.
A single order of magnitude change of a 2% genetic difference would be 20% - can you show me a single source that says humans and chimps genetic DNA is 20% different?
ORDERS of magnitude different would be 200% different as a minimum in genetic DNA. You do realize that 100% difference is the max, right?
Absolute idiocy. First of all the MSY is the male specific region of the Y chromosome and a mixture of both genetic and genomic DNA. Secondly it has long been known that the Y chromosome changes much more rapidly than other chromosomes. Thirdly - nothing in that showed what you claimed.
“Recent findings show the difference between humans and chimps to be orders of magnitude larger than was thought up until a year or two ago.”
More like....
Recent findings show the difference between humans and chimps (in the MSY region of the Y chromome) to be (significantly larger) than (other chromosomal DNA, but it was expected to be).
The difference between your average human gene and its chimp counterpart is still only 2%. The genes have been sequenced. You can go on pubmed and “blast” the sequences and see for yourself, if you cared to not take my word (or the word of a thousand other scientists) for it.
Wrong. “Gravity” used that way is just fine. It is an expansion of the word by analogy and comparison. Your restrictive use of the common word “evolution” is an attempt to claim exclusive use of it for a particular subset of meanings, an attempt to jargonize a common word. If you want the word to be allowed only a particular portion of its former meaning then you must add qualifiers. Evolution, without qualifiers, is any gradual change or series of changes that leads from one state or situation to another.
Also I guess it depends upon if you are describing the change itself as evolution - or if you were ascribing the change to being the RESULT of evolution.
If you said that Chinese Americans are taller than Chinese BECAUSE OF evolution - you would be wrong.
If you were saying the change itself was ‘evolution’ you might make a biologist want to correct you - but you would be semantically correct.
So how did the conversation go....
“Of course there is a constant evolution, as man has changed noticeably just since our arrival on this continent. Men of the Revolutionary War and Great War of Northern Aggression were much smaller and shorter lived than are we, so we can see evolution in our own families.” Concho
“The increased size of 20th century Americans seems to be from improved nutrition and health care and not from evolution.” Lucius Cornelius Sulla (obviously speaking of evolution as the MECHANISM of change)
“Increased nutrition and health are evolution every bit as much as genetic change. Evolution just means change.” ThanhPhero
NOT in the context of biological evolution - which was what was being discussed. Why are modern men taller than those during the Civil War? The change itself may be semantically described as ‘evolution’ i.e. gradual change - but the MECHANISM of change was better nutrition and medicine.
‘Sounds 100% like intelligent design.’
There is intelligent design and there is guided evolution. What is the difference I do not have a clue.
WOW, Stalin was into the same nutty experiments that Hitler was. Go figure.
‘The Bible clearly states we were created by God.’
I agree. His tool was evolution.
Arnold Schwarzeneggar definitely has some Neanderthal in him.
Very clear explanation of terminology there. Good work.
:) Thanks!
I’ve never heard of guided evolution.
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