[Mechanicos]

What I find funny is the logical fallacy the General Theory believers use to make their argument for Macro evolution here.

A logical fallacy is a collapse in logic often used in debate to mislead or distract people from the real issue.

Here we see both “Begging the Question: logical fallacy in action (also called Petitio Principii, this term is sometimes used interchangeably with Circular Reasoning): If writers assume as evidence for their argument the very conclusion they are attempting to prove, they engage in the fallacy of begging the question. The most common form of this fallacy is when the first claim is initially loaded with the very conclusion one has yet to prove.

And the “False Cause” Logical fallacy : This fallacy establishes a cause/effect relationship that does not exist. There are various Latin names for various analyses of the fallacy. The two most common include these types:

(1) Non Causa Pro Causa (Literally, “Not the cause for a cause”): A general, catch-all category for mistaking a false cause of an event for the real cause.

(2) Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc (Literally: “After this, therefore because of this”): This type of false cause occurs when the writer mistakenly assumes that, because the first event preceded the second event, it must mean the first event caused the later one.

There is zero actual archaeological evidence on the planet of humans cross-breeding with Neanderthal, e.g.
http://discovermagazine.com/1995/sep/theneanderthalpe558/

“Humans love to mate. They mate all the time, by night and by day, through all the phases of the female’s reproductive cycle. Given the opportunity, humans throughout the world will mate with any other human. The barriers between races and cultures, so cruelly evident in other respects, melt away when sex is at stake. Cortés began the systematic annihilation of the Aztec people—but that did not stop him from taking an Aztec princess for his wife. Blacks have been treated with contempt by whites in America since they were first forced into slavery, but some 20 percent of the genes in a typical African American are white. Consider James Cook’s voyages in the Pacific in the eighteenth century. Cook’s men would come to some distant land, and lining the shore were all these very bizarre-looking human beings with spears, long jaws, browridges, archeologist Clive Gamble of Southampton University in England told me. God, how odd it must have seemed to them. But that didn’t stop the Cook crew from making a lot of little Cooklets.

Project this universal human behavior back into the Middle Paleolithic. When Neanderthals and modern humans came into contact in the Levant, they would have interbred, no matter how strange they might initially have seemed to each other. If their cohabitation stretched over tens of thousands of years, the fossils should show a convergence through time toward a single morphological pattern, or at least some swapping of traits back and forth.

But the evidence just isn’t there, not if the TL and ESR dates are correct. Instead the Neanderthals stay staunchly themselves. In fact, according to some recent ESR dates, the least Neanderthalish among them is also the oldest. The full Neanderthal pattern is carved deep at the Kebara cave, around 60,000 years ago. The moderns, meanwhile, arrive very early at Qafzeh and Skhul and never lose their modern aspect. Certainly, it is possible that at any moment new fossils will be revealed that conclusively demonstrate the emergence of a Neandermod lineage. From the evidence in hand, however, the most likely conclusion is that Neanderthals and modern humans were not interbreeding in the Levant.”

Shreve mentions that humans and Neanderthals may have occupied the Levant at different time periods (thus dealing with the lack of evidence of cross-breeding) but I believe that Vendramini’s more recent study eliminates that possibility pretty thoroughly.

Next is the fact of the first modern humans appearing suddenly in the archaeological record:

Vendramini (”Them and us”) notes:
“The speed of the Upper Palaeolithic revolution in the Levant was also breathtaking. Anthropologists Ofer Bar-Yosef and Bernard Vandermeersch:

Between 40,000 and 45,000 years ago the material culture of western Eurasia changed more than it had during the previous million years. This efflorescence of technological and artistic creativity signifies the emergence of the first culture that observers today would recognise as distinctly human, marked as it was by unceasing invention and variety. During that brief period of 5,000 or so years, the stone tool kit, unchanged in its essential form for ages, suddenly began to differentiate wildly from century to century and from region to region. Why it happened and why it happened when it did constitute two of the greatest outstanding problems in paleoanthropology.”

Likewise Dwardu Cardona (”Flare Star”):
“Where and how the Cro Magnons first arose remains unknown. Their appearance, however, coincided with the most bitter phase of the ice age. There is, however, no doubt that they were more advanced, more sophisticated, than the Neanderthals with whom they shared the land. Living in larger and more organized groups than had earlier humans, Cro Magnon peoples spread out until they populated most of the world. Their tools, made of bone, stone, and even wood, were carved into harpoons, awls, and fish hooks. They were presumably able hunters although, as with the Neanderthals, they would also have foraged to gather edible plants, roots, and wild vegetables. The only problem here is that, as far as can be told, the Cro Magnons seem to have arrived on the scene without leaving a single trace of their evolutionary ancestors. ‘When the first Cro Magnons arrived in Europe some 40,000 years ago’, Ian Tattersall observed, ‘they evidently brought with them more or less the entire panoply of behaviors that distinguishes modern humans from every other species that has ever existed.’”

We read a claim that we and the Neanderthal have a “common ancestor(TM)”. The Neanderthal has been abandoned as a plausible evolutionary antecedent for modern man precisely because the genetic gap is too large (DNA halfway between ours and that of a chimpanzee). Anything 300K - 500K years back which anybody could try to claim was a “common ancestor(TM)” to both us and the Neanderthal (Usually given as homo Heidelbergensis)”, would be much more remote from us THAN the Neanderthal. Too-genetically-remote-to-be-ancestral-to is a transitive relationship and the nature of such relationships doesn’t require graduate level math; you’d think the people making this particular claim would figure the problem out sooner or later but they don’t seem to.

There is a new claim (Paabo and the Max Planck Institute) of 1 - 4% Neanderthal genes in everybody other than Africans. That one is at odds with the undisputed knowledge of a recent severe population bottleneck (probably < 100 individuals on the planet) amongst modern humans. As Vendramini’s reconstructions show, the Neanderthal was a glorified ape. Any crossbreeding with a glorified ape PRIOR to the bottleneck and Africans would not get left out. Any crossing AFTER the bottleneck and not involving Africans as claimed, and the genetic gap between Africans and everyody else would be gigantic, rather than minuscule as it actually is. Paabo and others making this claim need to go back to school for some sort of a basic logic course.

Not that the genetic evidence Paabo cites is fictitious mind you, just that it does not indicate actual cross breeding. What it does indicate is the existence of a few low-level genetic components in different creatures. Similarly, you’d find a few of the same low-level C language math functions in both banking software and rocket telemetry programs. That does not mean that rocket control software is hacked from banking software.

Further, it does not help the General Theory adherents here either when the Human DNA mutation rate is as slow as it is. http://www.nature.com/news/studies-slow-the-human-dna-clock-1.11431

“Geneticists have previously estimated mutation rates by comparing the human genome with the sequences of other primates. On the basis of species-divergence dates gleaned — ironically — from fossil evidence, they concluded that in human DNA, each letter mutates once every billion years.”

Sorry, but the argument Humans bred with Neanderthals is based on unsupported logical fallacies.

[gleeaikin]

The population bottleneck you refer to was probably 5,000 to 10,000, not 100.

[gleeaikin]

I don’t think that Malinche was an Aztec princess. If I remember correctly she was from a victimized tribe, probably the Tlaxcallans who marched at least 100,000 strong with Cortez and his less than 200 men to conquer Tenochtitlan. They were tired of being eaten by the Aztecs.

[BroJoeK]

Mechanicos: "What I find funny is the logical fallacy the General Theory believers use to make their argument for Macro evolution here."

If you do a simple word search on this thread (cntrl F, type the word "macro"), you'll see that the only poster using the term "Macro evolution" is you.
That term, "Macro evolution" is only an issue for anti-evolutionists.

Mechanicos: "A logical fallacy is a collapse in logic often used in debate to mislead or distract people from the real issue."

I also remember basics from my Philosophy 101 (logic) class.
But if I ever feel the need to brush-up on the subject, I'll know how to contact you, FRiend.

Mechanicos: "There is zero actual archaeological evidence on the planet of humans cross-breeding with Neanderthal, e.g."

That is incorrect, and your Discovery Magazine source article is now 17 years out of date -- 17 years in science these days is a long time.

Today there is both physical evidence -- for another example of which I again refer to SunkenCiv's post #78 -- and DNA analysis:

Physical evidence:

"The most vocal proponent of the hybridization hypothesis is Erik Trinkaus of Washington University.[84]
Trinkaus claims various fossils as hybrid individuals, including the "child of Lagar Velho", a skeleton found at Lagar Velho in Portugal dated to about 24,000 years ago.[85]
In a 2006 publication co-authored by Trinkaus, the fossils found in 1952 in the cave of Peștera Muierii, Romania, are likewise claimed as hybrids.[86]

Genetic analysis:

"Genetic research has confirmed that some admixture took place.[87]
The genomes of all non-Africans include portions that are of Neanderthal origin,[88][89] due to interbreeding between Neanderthals and the ancestors of Eurasians in Northern Africa or the Middle East prior to their spread.
Rather than absorption of the Neanderthal population, this gene flow appears to have been of limited duration and limited extent.
An estimated 1 to 4 percent of the DNA in Europeans and Asians (French, Chinese and Papua probands) is non-modern, and shared with ancient Neanderthal DNA rather than with Sub-Saharan Africans (Yoruba and San probands).[90]
Nonetheless, more recent genetic studies seem to suggest that modern humans may have mated with "at least two groups" of ancient humans: Neanderthals and Denisovans.[91"

Genetic analysis:

"Genetic evidence published in 2010 suggests they contributed DNA to anatomically modern humans, probably through interbreeding between Neanderthals and the earliest Humans that dispersed out of Africa.
This is thought to have occurred between 80,000 and 50,000 years ago, shortly after (or perhaps before) the proto-Eurasians emigrated from Africa, while they were still one population.

"According to the study as much as 1–4% of the genome of the population that populated Eurasia was contributed by Neanderthals."

But a 2012 study suggests an alternative hypothesis:

"Humans and Neanderthals have a common ancestor who lived in Africa about 500,000 years ago.
Some of these guys clearly went off and evolved into Neanderthals.

"But of the rest that evolved into modern humans, some must have been more closely related to Neanderthals than others...
When modern humans finally left Africa and moved to Europe, it was the group more closely related to Neanderthals that made the journey.
By contrast, the modern humans less strongly related to Neanderthals stayed behind, hence the genetic difference we see today. "

Mechanicos quoting 1995 article: "When Neanderthals and modern humans came into contact in the Levant, they would have interbred, no matter how strange they might initially have seemed to each other.
If their cohabitation stretched over tens of thousands of years, the fossils should show a convergence through time toward a single morphological pattern, or at least some swapping of traits back and forth."

In fact, there are some "Neanderthal traits" found in some modern humans -- and not only in us "knuckle dragging males". ;-)
I refer you again to SunkenCiv's post #78.

Mechanicos quoting 1995 article: "From the evidence in hand, however, the most likely conclusion is that Neanderthals and modern humans were not interbreeding in the Levant."

There is physical, paleontological and DNA evidence suggesting interbreeding and/or common ancestors between some Neanderthals and some humans.

Mechanicos quoting Dwardu Cardona:"Where and how the Cro Magnons first arose remains unknown...
There is, however, no doubt that they were more advanced, more sophisticated, than the Neanderthals with whom they shared the land."

When did Early Modern Humans first arise?

"Anatomically modern humans first emerged in East Africa, some 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.
An exodus from Africa over the Arabian Peninsula around 60,000 years ago brought modern humans to Eurasia..."

"Current scientific literature prefers the term European Early Modern Humans (EEMH), to the term 'Cro-Magnon' which has no formal taxonomic status, as it refers neither to a species or subspecies nor to an archaeological phase or culture.[1]
The earliest known remains of Cro-Magnon-like humans are radiocarbon dated to 43,000 years before present.[2]"

Nechanicos quoting Dwardu Cardona: "...Cro Magnons seem to have arrived on the scene without leaving a single trace of their evolutionary ancestors."

Not true. There is physical evidence of early modern humans going back nearly 200,000 years.
The earliest of these was no more advanced technologically than Neanderthals.

Mechanicos quoting Dwardu Cardona: "The Neanderthal has been abandoned as a plausible evolutionary antecedent for modern man precisely because the genetic gap is too large (DNA halfway between ours and that of a chimpanzee)."

Complete rubbish.
On a scale of one to 20, where modern humans are one and chimpanzees 20, Neanderthals are around 2 (.3% alleles versus 6% for chimpanzees).

Mechanicos quoting Dwardu Cardona: "Anything 300K - 500K years back which anybody could try to claim was a “common ancestor(TM)” to both us and the Neanderthal (Usually given as homo Heidelbergensis)”, would be much more remote from us THAN the Neanderthal.
Too-genetically-remote-to-be-ancestral-to is a transitive relationship..."

And Mechanicos preaches about "logical fallacies"??
In the overall scheme of Life-on-Earth -- circa one billion years -- ancestries of merely 500,000 years ago are very close relationships indeed -- not necessarily long enough even to define a new scientific "species".
This is reflected in recent DNA studies suggesting modern humans and Neanderthals are separated by only .3% (not 3%) of base-pair alleles.
And that is actually fewer than the number of DNA mutations separating some modern humans (.4%) from others!

So the fact of human/Neanderthal close relationship is indisputable -- the question is how did it happen, through common ancestry, or more recent interbreeding or both?

Mechanicos quoting Dwardu Cardona: "There is a new claim (Paabo and the Max Planck Institute) of 1 - 4% Neanderthal genes in everybody other than Africans.
That one is at odds with the undisputed knowledge of a recent severe population bottleneck (probably < 100 individuals on the planet) amongst modern humans."

Utter nonsense. Here is the reality:

"The Toba catastrophe theory suggests that a bottleneck of the human population occurred c. 70,000 years ago, proposing that the human population was reduced to perhaps 15,000 individuals[3] when the Toba supervolcano in Indonesia erupted and triggered a major environmental change...

"Research on many genes finds different coalescence points from 2 million years ago to 60,000 years ago when different genes are considered, thus disproving the existence of more recent extreme bottlenecks (i.e., a single breeding pair).[3][6]

"On the other hand, in 2000, a Molecular Biology and Evolution paper suggested a transplanting model or a 'long bottleneck' to account for the limited genetic variation, rather than a catastrophic environmental change.[7]

"This would be consistent with suggestions that in sub-Saharan Africa numbers could have dropped at times as low as 2,000, for perhaps as long as 100,000 years, before numbers began to expand again in the Late Stone Age.[8]"

Mechanicos quoting Dwardu Cardona: "As Vendramini’s reconstructions show, the Neanderthal was a glorified ape."

Vendramini is obviously a blithering froth-at-the-mouth knuckle-dragging pre-human ape.

Mechanicos quoting Nature article: "On the basis of species-divergence dates gleaned — ironically — from fossil evidence, they concluded that in human DNA, each letter mutates once every billion years."

Nothing "ironic" about it.
The issues here include exactly which mutations do they count, how do they count them, and how variable are natural mutation rates?
For example: might some species -- small in numbers, reproducing rapidly and under great environmental stresses (i.e. predators, climate change, etc.) -- experience more rapid rates of DNA mutation than others larger, more slowly reproducing in friendlier environments?

Indeed, your linked article itself points out that more recent DNA mutation rate estimates do help solve some mysteries, while also raising new questions.

Seems to me that's just what real science is all about, and makes it interesting for the rest of us to follow.

Mechanicos: "Sorry, but the argument Humans bred with Neanderthals is based on unsupported logical fallacies."

Sorry, but your arguments above are based first on outdated, debunked "science" and second on some strange ideological agenda.
As such, they represents the very definition of "logical fallacies".

By the way, to prove my case that Vendramini is a knuckle-dragging ape, here is a recent self portrait of him:

;-)