Posted on 11/09/2006 7:13:31 AM PST by indcons
Scientists have found new genetic evidence that they say may answer the longstanding question of whether modern humans and Neanderthals interbred when they co-existed thousands of years ago. The answer is: probably yes, though not often.
In research being published online this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists reported that matings between Neanderthals and modern humans presumably accounted for the presence of a variant of the gene that regulates brain size.
Bruce T. Lahn of the University of Chicago, the report’s senior author, said the findings demonstrated that such interbreeding with relative species, those on the brink of extinction, contributed to the evolutionary success of modern humans.
Other researchers in evolutionary biology said the new study offered strong support for the long-disputed idea that archaic species like Neanderthals contributed to the modern human gene pool.
Two other reports of DNA studies of possible mixing of human and related genes are expected to be published in the next few weeks.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Even if you were to accept the most simpleminded account possible of the Haldane dilemma, and the account which favors evolution most heavily, it would still take trillions if not quadrillions of years to get (via evolution) from something like a neanderthal to something like us, and you've only got a few thousand.
Oh I see....ID and/or Creationism..
Never mind.
Just modern mathematics. Evolution is incompatable with it.
Imagine a simplest possible case in which a population of 100,000 individual "ape-like ancestors(TM)" are living in Africa or anywhere else about 10 million years ago which is longer than anybody claims anything remotely like humans have been around, and two of the individuals get a "beneficial mutation(TM)" again assuming such a thing ever happens which is highly doubtful. Suppose also that this beneficial mutation is so good that all 99,998 other individuals immediately fall over dead from jealousy and that the two with the beneficial mutation immediately somehow produce 100,000 kids to entirely replace the herd.
Suppose also that this same thing happens again 20 years later and again 40 years later i.e. that every generation some new "beneficial mutation" gets entirely substituted into the population, which is immensely and wildly in excess of any real-world substitution rate which is possible.
20 Goes into ten million about 500,000 times so that at the end of the 10 million years the most extreme case imaginable would give you 500,000 point mutations, which is like about a half or third of one percent of the genetic difference between us and a neanderthal or a chimpanzee. You'd never get there in the whole history of the Earth.
Trying to claim that multiple "beneficial mutations" spread around at all times won't work since the vast overwhelming bulk of mutations, if not all of them, are harmful or fatal; try to spread more than one mutation completely through a population of animals at one time and the species will die out.
Likewise you'd need a certain population level to ever see a "beneficial mutation" even in theory so that the Gould/Eldridge idea of solving the problem by claiming that all evolutionary change occurs amongst tiny groups of individuals which get walled off somehow or other can't be made to work either.
ah the diabo-logic of the creationist.....its the clever ones that are the most dangerous. your math might add up but your basic premises are flawed.
Have a great life. I wont answer you anymore.
It would be VERY interesting to boil DNA down to the distinctly human elements, and see what resulted - most of our DNA is composed of inserted code.
Not that I propose to try it. But some idiot will, eventually.
Wow, I read the article, and I get the gist of it. But is there an easier read on this? No wonder the Haldane dilemma is not widely understood or discussed. This article never seems to get to the point of the dilema and to reduce that point to numbers in a clear fashion.
Along these lines. Perhaps you can provide me with an easy link or Answer as to why we have 23 pairs while the chimp has 24.
Also,
Does the chimpanzee's genome run afoul of the Haldane dilemma?
That to me is as far as I need to read. Haldane worked out the math for real world scenarios and figured a species like ours could substitute one point mutation totally through the population in about 300 generations for a total of about 1700 since Alley Oop. That's there the "quadrillions of years" phraseology you see comes from. Being an evolutionite himself he also stated that somebody would likely come along and prove him wrong sooner or later, but nobody has.
Evolution is basically FUBAR.
Vaquero you fail to fairly engage the points made by tomzz.
You improperly discount his position.
What's more is that one does not need to be a mathmatical genius to understand the principal being espoused by tomzz which as been phrased as a "dilema".
tomzz's math may or may not be sound as it may or may not properly account for and reflect the variables in play. However, his premise however is quite sound:
Man decended from creature y, x years ago. The genome of man has z number of differences from y's. Given a mutatin rate of m per generation consisting of g years can we account for the number z.
Forget the math and dilema referred to by tomzz if you will. That said a mathmatical model representing mutations/time more than suggests itself. Surely someone has such a model. Surely someone has accounted for the evolutionary variables at play in such a model. Surely someone has quantified these and other matters pertinent to the line of argument advanced by tomzz.
So do me the favor, and not coincidentally tomzz the courtesy, of a better mathmatical model, or a competing mathmatical model, as such a model must exist either now or as a mathmatical/statistical given (i.e. it exists as it necessarily follows form basic principles of mathmatics, statistics and evolution).
reference
It's a new age. Freeper math replaces million man math.
Exactly, my point.
Vaquero, please provide me or tomzz with some alternative freeper mathmagics.
Wonder if any Diebold biggies were there?
A group of scientists is going to try to map the DNA of Neanderthals.
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg19225772.000-blueprint-for-a-neanderthal.html
I imagine when they are finished, they will find that we are extremely closely related, but we shared the last common ancestor about 200,000 years ago.
Neanderthals were pretty cool. But so was Homo Erectus and Archaic Homo Sapien sub-types.
LOL! Instantly--America now loves the Dickie Chicks
Well, the first results from the Neanderthal DNA study are already in.
Looks like there are sufficient differences that the common ancestor was about 600,000 years ago. This would mean that Neanderthals are more distant cousins that we thought.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10581-neanderthals-have-genome-chunk-sequenced.html
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