Evolution Persisted In Agricultural Era

Science News ^ | 3-18-2006 | Bruce Bower

[blam]

GGG Ping.

[LiteKeeper]

YEC INTREP

[tomzz]

Evolution Persisted In Agricultural Era

You should probably be a bit more specific and say that MICROevolution continued into the last 15000 years or thereabouts.

[wyattearp]

MICROevolution

That made-up word has no scientific value. Therefore, its use does not lead to being "more specific".

[tomzz]

You're totally wrong on that and the definitions are simple enough and easy enough to comprehend. MACROevolution means the development of new kinds of organs and new basic plans and designs for existence. MICROevolution means anything less than that in the way of genetic change.

[blowfish]

So the appearance of ... say the spleen ... represents macroevolution? And the slow continuous development of early hominids into Homo Sapiens represents microevolution?
I can live with that approach; we certainly see those kinds of slow evolutionary development throughtout the fossil record.

[tomzz]

Hominids never developed into modern humans. The Neanderthal has been ruled out as a human ancestor for being too far genetically removed and every other hominid was further removed. You can look at the skeletons and see the problem. The neanderthal's body is basically roundish like that of an ape while ours is elongated. The neanderthal was basically some sort of a glorified ape.

Neanderthals a separate species.

[wyattearp]

MACROevolution means the development of new kinds of organs and new basic plans and designs for existence. MICROevolution means anything less than that in the way of genetic change.

And you'll find that definition in exactly which scientific journal?

[tomzz]

Wikipedia for one.

[wyattearp]

LOL. Wikipedia is NOT a scientific journal. Thanks for the laugh, though.

[Coyoteman]

Hominids never developed into modern humans.

This chart suggests that you could be wrong.

Source: http://wwwrses.anu.edu.au/environment/eePages/eeDating/HumanEvol_info.html

[tomzz]

Sorry if that took a second look. I'm not used to checking words I use with science journals or the people who run them. If I can find a word in dictionaries and encyclopedias, I feel pretty good about using it.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

FWIW, I searched for "micro evolution" on Google Scholar and got 321,000 hits. (Google Scholar searches for academic papers only.)

(I'm not trying to enter this debate, of which I make no claims of expertise -- I was just curious what Google Scholar would turn up.)

[tomzz]

The basic logic of that chart is defective. Heidelbergensis and erectus were both more primitive than the neanderthal and the neanderthal has been ruled out as a human ancestor for being too primitive. We still use the western logical system in which A > B and B > C implies A > C.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

I have to correct my previous posting -- the complete term "micro evolution" yields 883 hits. Fewer than 321,000, but still more than zero.

[SunkenCiv]

The Neanderthal has been ruled out as a human ancestor for being too far genetically removed and every other hominid was further removed... The neanderthal was basically some sort of a glorified ape."

Welcome, newbie. None of that is true. Neandertal man wasn't "a glorified ape", any more than Neandertal man was a 18th century Cossack with rickets. There have been claims, based on fewer than 400 base pairs of mtDNA, that Neandertal was too far removed, but those claims are rubbish.

[From many - one.]

I don't think you understand how that chart works.

[wyattearp]

Yes, it gets a lot of hits. That does not mean that the terminology is correct. The line between so-called "micro-evolution" and "macro-evolution" is an imaginary one, and the people that use those terms keep moving the line.

Inability to interbreed was once a "line", and once that was crossed, the line was moved by the proponents of "micro" and "macro" evolution in a vain effort to keep them separate. "Irreducible complexity" was once proposed as a "line" in regards to the flagella (and still is, on many creationist websites). That was proven false, and the line was once again moved by the proponents (at least the ones who did not ignore it completely). There are many other examples.

These terms are defined and redefined seemingly at the whim of the individual users, and with such frequency as to be irrelevant. They are not scientific terms.

[bobdsmith]

Neandertal has not been ruled out as a human ancestor for being too primitive. I am not expert but I understand Neandertal lived alongside cro-magnon man for thousands of years. That much has been known for a while. So Neandertal are considered cousins of humans - the question is where they went. Did they merge into cro-magnon populations or were they driven to extinction? The mDNA comparisons suggest the latter. The page you linked to says nothing about "primitiveness".