Posted on 12/08/2005 3:58:46 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Out of Africa, Ping!
Is it possibly to truly "change history" as the headline states?
I guess we can't blame this on global warming or Bush. Never mind, the dems will think of something around that.
I guess this is why you see so many Wildebeast in American, they all migrated out of Africa because if this drought, right? Changing history isn't possible unless you are a Democrat or a communist. History is what it is, the drought happened therefore it is the history of that time.
What about all those time travelers with their Mr. Fusion-equipped SUVs that will be going back there to cause Global Warming®? I guess you aren't aware that Bushco (with KKKarl Rove as the CEO) is developing time travel technology. It's true, I will see it on the Internet as soon as I hit the "Post" button.
If history only goes back about 5000 years, what history was there to change?
It should have been "natural history," not human history.
You can "revise" history.
Rather than "changing" history, this looks more like it "rerouted" it.
This was covered pretty well in a PBS documentary (Nova, I think) that focussed on the back-tracking of human history via the Y chromosome. However, IIRC, they felt the drought, due to an Ice Age, was comewhat more recent than 70,000 years.
Evolution in Your FaceLake Victoria, Africa's largest lake, is home to more than 300 species of cichlids. These fish, which are popular in aquariums, are deep-bodied and have one nostril, rather than the usual two, on each side of the head. Seismic profiles and cores of the lake taken by a team headed by Thomas C. Johnson of the University of Minnesota, reveal that the lake dried up completely about 12,400 years ago. This means that the rate of speciation of cichlid fishes has been extremely rapid: something on average of one new species every 40 years!
by Patrick Huyghe
Omni
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bfl!
Bump
Alternatively, it could mean there was a residual reservoir of cichlid fishes, of which the researches are currrently unaware.
Especialy so, since that would help explain where the fish came from in the first place, if the lake actually "completely" dried up. 300 species don't come from no ancestral population, but could easily come for a remnant pool of 300 ancestral species.
In Texas a species of snail darter (minnow) located in the San Marcos went on the endangered species list and caused about 5 Billion dollars in changes to the Texas water plans.
Strangely enough, these springs went completely dry during the lenghty drought of the 50s--and no one has successfully explained how these snail darters survived to become a listed species in the 80s.
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