Posted on 08/28/2022 5:13:37 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
A blackened, broken leg bone from Earth’s prehistoric past may hold the answer to when early humans diverged from apes and started their own evolutionary path.
The fossilized find, first uncovered two decades ago, suggests that early humans regularly walked on two feet some seven million years ago... Since many consider bipedalism the major milestone that put our own lineage on a different evolutionary path than the apes, Sahelanthropus could be the very oldest known hominin—the group consisting of modern humans, extinct human species and all of our immediate ancestors.
The species could even be our oldest non-ape ancestor, if its lineage led to Homo sapiens instead of dying out. But while the fossil femur appears to have supported the demands of habitual upright walking, Sahelanthropus’s chimp-like forearms show that it still spent plenty of time in the trees. Two surviving arm bones reveal that the species used a grasping climbing technique to support a type of hybrid lifestyle that could have persisted among early hominins for some three million years...
Boisserie and colleagues, some of whom originally described Sahelanthropus in 2002, compared more than 20 traits of the femur and forearm bones with a large sample of living chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans, fossil Miocene apes, early hominin bipeds like Orrorin tugenensis and Ardipithecus Ramidus, and remains of prehistoric Homo and Homo sapiens. They compared external shapes, curves, internal structures and thicknesses to learn if the bone had the same characteristics as those known to be well-suited to the demands of force, balance and other requirements of upright walking. The femur of S. tchadensis showed many similarities with other hominin species, while no traits of the femur were also found exclusively in apes.
(Excerpt) Read more at smithsonianmag.com ...
I don't know about faith, but evidence suggests it took around 3 billion years for amoeba to evolve, then another billion for us.
That's a long time.
And if it still seems unlikely, then I'm certain God's will can make the seemingly impossible inevitable.
“evidence suggests it took around 3 billion years for amoeba to evolve, then another billion for us.”
What evidence?
Seriously? You're going to play the "deny the evidence" game with me?
Literal mountains of evidence staring you in the face, but you refuse, under all circumstances, to see it, right?
I don't think I can help you with that...
Apparently you have bought into the BS and are incapable of answering a straight forward question -
What is your evidence that single celled creatures over time added eyes, ears, brains, other organs, consciousness and became humans.
Defend your assertion or get lost.
We didn’t evolve from apes. That is frequently offered as a dispute against evolution. Apes and men descended from a common ancestor, which is a completely different thing.
Evolution is a gift. It is not God-less. It enables us to understand many important things, like animal husbandry, as well as the most important thing, which is how we got this way.
We got this way, at least in part, by a specialized present-day form of “survival of the fittest” called warfare. To understand that is to understand almost everything.
This is in a sense correct. It was disobedience that formed our nature. Think about it. The obedient didn’t have a chance.
It’s Free Republic Talk. Let it be. We’ll work it out someday.
A matter of vocabulary.
Humans—or prehumans if you prefer—were like clay before Adam and Eve, compared to what we are now. They had no knowledge of good and evil. God gave them the choice, and of course they made the wrong choice, and the rest is history.
A clearer explanation of our social history could not have been written, even if some would prefer to call it “metaphorical.”
The scary thing is that God knew they would make that choice. It is how he formed us, to make choices, and to someday regret them and evolve even further.
And he had to wait for the Greeks and their ships, for that stage of civilization, to send his Messiah.
By the way, every time someone tells me they have a back problem, I am tempted to say “See? We were never meant to walk upright.” Of course I think we were meant to walk upright. If they laugh I am tempted to remind them of how everyone rushes for the seats on the subway. But they don’t rush rudely!
God told us exactly how we evolved. He created us. Completely and wholly and not from some one celled amoeba (which is impossible regardless of time frame). There is no method by which genetic material would add to itself to create an elephant from this one celled amoeba.
Put another way, if we traveled to a distant planet and found on the surface a working computer, fully powered up and a working operating system complete with applications, would the first thing that would pop up in your mind is Look! all of the elements in this computer are found on this planet. They must have assembled themselves over billions of years to make this working computer. Because that's what you're proposing.
The evidence is all around you, anyone who wants to can see it, and you know what & where it is, but you refuse to see it.
So nothing I say can force you to see it, your eyes are shut tight.
There's scientific evidence to be found in:
Your evidence is what … life itself? You raised the assertion. I had a reasonable request to defend your assertion of macro evolution. You can’t do it because there is no evidence single cell creatures evolved into humans.
The Bible says nothing at all about HOW God created us, except to mention dust in the beginning and His breath of spirit at the end.
This seems to me to correspond exactly with what science tells us.
Of course, if you don't see it, I can't force you to, but to me it's obvious.
BipolarBob: "There is no method by which genetic material would add to itself to create an elephant from this one celled amoeba."
Of course there are lots of ways, the fact that you refuse to see them doesn't mean they're not there.
BipolarBob: "They must have assembled themselves over billions of years to make this working computer. Because that's what you're proposing."
Obviously, no creation of man can yet self replicate.
God's creations are not so restricted.
A lot of the things about evolution haven’t been “proven” yet, in the sense of scientific proof. They can be seen by those who are willing to see them. And there IS proof of many of the steps.
In 1954 a change occurred in elementary and high school education when integration became law. Private religious schools were established to fill in the gap where the public schools had become unacceptable to many. And as a side result, evolution was taught to be false to many religious people.
I am not trying to start an argument here, or add to one. Just saying. I believe in evolution and I respect the views of those who don’t.
Oh? So NOW you are naming a specific term you want me to defend? "Macro evolution"?
That term has your panties all twisted up?
And so you are certain I can't defend the term, right?
What if I said, "there's no such thing as 'macro-evolution' "?
There isn't really, you know, it's all just micro-evolution repeated over and over and over, ad infinitum.
After millions of repetitions of micro-evolution, the accumulated changes can add up.
That's what the physical evidence suggests.
P T, we are wasting our electrons on this one. He is not worth the time to waste on.
I am giving you a chance to stop making a fool out of yourself and enlighten us lowly ones. I know it’s hard for you to have to actually defend this nonsense since you apparently surround yourselves with brainwashed people who all accept the macro evolution group think. Just like the climate change zealots. Only here we don’t suffer fools.
Provide just one example of physical evidence - that a single celled creature evolved into a human. It is a reasonable request since you made the assertion.
Just making an example out of this lightweight. When one makes assertions at this site they should be prepared to defend them with facts. Especially a significant assertion that single celled life evolved into humans.
Whether one is religious or not that is an incredible assertion. If one can’t defend it then they don’t understand the assertion and cannot explain it. They have just been brainwashed. No different than the climate change zealots.
You understand, I hope, that in strict scientific language, no theory is ever "proved", right?
Instead, a falsifiable hypothesis can be confirmed by tests which are intended to falsify it.
If tests intended to falsify a hypothesis fail to do so -- in other words, if the hypothesis correctly predicted the test results, then scientists may accept the hypothesis as a confirmed theory -- at least until some future test successfully falsifies it.
That's how science is supposed to work -- nothing is ever "proved", nobody "believes" in a theory or has "faith" it's correct.
At very best, a long confirmed theory -- i.e., the Earth is globe-shaped -- may someday be observed and confirmed as a fact.
But still, in scientific language, the theory is not "proved" and nobody "believes" or has "faith" in it.
Rather it is simply accepted as a confirmed theory or observed as fact.
Such fine points of definition are important, I think, when in discourse with science deniers.
firebrand: "I am not trying to start an argument here, or add to one. Just saying. I believe in evolution and I respect the views of those who don’t."
Right, agreed, and I believe science deniers should be shown exactly the same degree of respect as they show to science itself and to scientists they disagree with.
You agree?
If you're referring to natural selection, then it's humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor.
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