Posted on 05/08/2006 2:59:09 PM PDT by SirLinksalot
Interesting. But would the ice age also affect African populations? And if so, as much as in Europe?
This is not new. The skin pigmentation changes during the European ice age has been well known since the 1960s.
They must have been burning fossil fuels back then. And just think, the population must have been at least twice as many as there are now since they had a severe case of global warming then.
The real question - "Where are the fossilized SUV's?"
I'm not buying it.
Since there is no such thing as concurrent "group" evolution, the necessary predicate for this theory is that all human life descended from a common ancestor 15,000 years ago. Everyone else had to have lost the evolutionary race and died out. With humans allegedly scattered widely over the face of the earth long before that, this theory is specious.
Ice ages don't just impact the areas under or near the ice sheets. Major climate pattern changes happen everywhere. For instance the Sahara region and the Levant were relatively lush well watered areas. Change from a wet to a dry climate and you change the food sources. That change can lead to various selections.
Interestingly, while the Scandinavians are fair complexioned, the Eskimos are dark skinned.
And are relatively recent arrivals to the Arctic (probably about 6,000 years ago, I believe).
Thanks...makes sense. And, I guess, it's a question of degree of change.
Probably because the Eskimos arrived from Asia fairly recently.
What? ToE shows how natural selection acts on individuals, but its evolutionary effect is on the population's gene pool, not the individual.
But, consider, 6,000 years and no evolutionary change toward fair complexion? THeir complexion is as dark as residents of South China.
How, then, can we confidently deduce that light-complexioned scandinavians "evolved" in 10,000 or 15,000 years? Where's the evolutionary advantage in that if Eskimos aren't visibly evolving in the same basic climate?
This is quite interesting and parallels some ideas I have had for awhile, which have only recently been confirmed.
I have always shied away from margarine and all the pseudo good for ya crap that goes on, and I appreciate and use moderate amounts of butter and animal fats, even though they are the saturated kind.
My belief always was that hey, we've been eating this stuff for the last hundred thousand years or so, etc.
Turns out your body DOES know how to digest stuff like that. But trans fats, and hydrogenated vegetable oils, that they've been telling us for years and years and years is "Good for ya" are only about four hydrogen atoms away from being legally and chemically classified as PLASTICS.
We are making great strides in genetics and molecular biology. Within 15 years we WILL KNOW HOW TO HELP A PERSON LIVE TO 200 YEARS OLD.
But geezer that I am, I probably won't make it myself!
But evolution MUST start with a random, non-directed mutation in an individual, won't you agree? And then that individual's progeny must out-compete the other individuals, right?
Don't run away from the "ToE" as you call it.
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Huh? Of course there is. It's called gene flow and it's one of the four basic evolutionary mechanisms.
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