Abiogenesis -> Evolution -> Now

[Legion]

Perhaps see this as a challenge to the status quo.

 

I can't quite tell from your writing what is being proposed as the 'status quo' and what the challenge is.

[LivingLife]

yet are we to assume that from a singularity plants, fish, apes, reptiles all evolved?

 

It's not an assumption. This is what I've been clumsily trying to explain. We share a majority of the same genetic markers with every single living thing on the planet, which would be mathematically impossible were we not all related to something like a singularity.

 

I'm not sure why it doesn't make sense.

It is this singularity that I take issue with because as I said earlier, it really is just an alternative to the creation story just w/o god. Furthermore simply taking aquatic life, land based life and plants, how the hell does a single critter coming out of the primordial soup give birth to plants and at the same time a living mobile critter? The common ancestor in this case can only be the primordial soup.

 

Take the basics of what happens in water. Algae develops and can perhaps spawn what will become a plant. In the soup a critter evolves, feeds off the algae and eventually spawns a critter that crawls out of the ocean/water. Another critter evolves and stays in the water. Here are three branches starting out that caters for the basic differences I defined.

 

DNA developes at the abiogenesis stage and that event or freak of nature is universal. So if you are saying we are all related to pond scum, that I agree with. What I do not agree with is the idea that it happened later on.

Again the argument presented here looks like the the whole evolution is one of random chance and as you stated earlier akin to a lottery.

It's not random.

 

Here's another way to say it. There are roughly 8 million people in St Petersburg and a majority of them use the metro system. On a given day, I sit next to one particular person on the train. This is somewhat random, but not completely because I need to go somewhere on the train and so does this other person. The odds that I sit next to this particular person are extremely low, yet they are the same as the odds I would sit next to another person.

 

The odds that I would sit next to the same person the next day, however are even lower -- much more so. The odds that I would by chance sit next to that same person every day for the next 20 years are mathematically impossible unless we both seek on another out and make it happen.

 

Two separate evolutionary trees growing simultaneously, yet having the same exact genetic markers would require far, far, far lower odds than the scenario I just explained as there are more possible combinations.

We are still talking in terms of odds and the language is still akin to randomness. The idea of parallel threads each being affected in the same way by say a gamma burst or whatever would yield an identical mutation. The plant would be affected in its own way, the land critter and the sea critter. All my model does in multiplies these three to a large number of identical origins.

 

Event A = primordial soup (basic proteins and stuff)

Cosmic event 1 = mutation, happens to the entire soup

Event B = 3 critters evolve but is replicated n times globally

Event C = one of the critters crawls out the water - by now it can breed so it needs mates. This event happens n times an for arguments sake the same instant in evolutionary time.

 

The reason behind this is that we now know, a single pair of critters cannot spawn or sustain a species. Look at the genetic fuck ups in inbreeding and the levels of extinction; it is when there are less than 50 pairs IIRC, that seems to be the benchmark ABF. This is accepted genetics and as such whatever happened to spawn a new strain had to have happened to a large number of identical critters.

 

The explanations as I alluded to earlier are taught in a linear sense as the field is far too large to wrap your mind around. Perhaps this is why I am battling to get this over.

Moreover, as I pointed out already, there is no way the two genetic branches could ever possibly mix at any point in the journey, even in the early stages, as they would be too genetically divergent from one another.

If we mean a plant branch and a land based critter, yes. All life has to point back to the soup and as such whatever happened in it to evolve from say self replication/division to mating, had to have happened more than one instance. This would anyway be at a very basic level.

When you pass on your genetic code to your kids, there are literally billions of possible combinations that code can exhibit itself even within certain confines that cannot diverge without a mutation. Then, of course there are many mutations which take place. Imagine this same process taking place trillions and trillions of times across the millions of different life forms and gazillions of different individuals. Now imagine two separate branches and tell me how these two separate branches could possibly carry the same genetic markers as every living thing on the planet.

I know but now the human DNA is pretty well evolved from where my scenario is playing out. It is highly unlikely a human will now spawn a plant (or for that matter a plant a living critter) [this is not the crockoduck argument]

 

Perhaps it is the way we view DNA. DNA had to have developed over time. It did not magically appear as a single cell with all the code for every single species known or unknown. If all things were equal in the pond scum, a global event occurs what is there to stop the formation of multiplicities of basic DNA origins that would be identical?

 

Note:

Race and language came up as a question on another forum form a wavering theist and really the evo folk had no real answers and pretty much was in line with "have faith", "just believe"

 

Legion, I am not looking at race as mere skin tone, it is more than that. I also agree there is only a human race.

 

Can any of you explain WHY Africans and Chinese are so different if the origins of China is OoA?

 

Most of Africa is above the equator yet the origins of the OoA model suggests further south, the pink region IIRC from the migration OoA model. That would be the DRC and Tanzania and where the Serengeti is located.

[Legion]

LL, for what it's worth, I don't believe that abiogenesis was the emergence of just one organism on Earth. I strongly suspect that many organisms arose nearly simultaneously across the planet.

[Vigile]

It is this singularity that I take issue with because as I said earlier, it really is just an alternative to the creation story just w/o god.

 

Well, you may take issue with it, but you're going to have to take it up with the real biologists then, not my little ol' layman self. I've gone about as far as I can go with this.

[Legion]

It is this singularity that I take issue with because as I said earlier, it really is just an alternative to the creation story just w/o god.

 

Well, you may take issue with it, but you're going to have to take it up with the real biologists then, not my little ol' layman self. I've gone about as far as I can go with this.

 

You've done well in my opinion Vigile. I will carry on.

 

 

And though I'm no

credentialled

biologist

 

mmmmh hmmm

 

I've long lived and

I've studied with

the best of them.

[Kaiser01]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2441367/posts

 

Retro-Viruses disprove this idea living life. We share all the same number of retro-viruses and in the same places of the genome, as our ape ancestors. The chances of the retro viruses transfussing into the same place and the same number, in many different lineages is too improbable.

[Vigile]

http://www.freerepub...t/2441367/posts

 

Retro-Viruses disprove this idea living life. We share all the same number of retro-viruses and in the same places of the genome, as our ape ancestors. The chances of the retro viruses transfussing into the same place and the same number, in many different lineages is too improbable.

 

Thanks. This is exactly the type of thing I was thinking of when I was clumsily discussing the probabilities.

 

Interesting choice of website btw.

[Kaiser01]

http://www.freerepub...t/2441367/posts

 

Retro-Viruses disprove this idea living life. We share all the same number of retro-viruses and in the same places of the genome, as our ape ancestors. The chances of the retro viruses transfussing into the same place and the same number, in many different lineages is too improbable.

 

Thanks. This is exactly the type of thing I was thinking of when I was clumsily discussing the probabilities.

 

Interesting choice of website btw.

 

Lol i didnt realize that it was a conservative website. I was looking for 20 minutes trying to find a paper on human ape relations in retro viruses, i took the first thing that was actually relevant to the discussion.

[Vigile]

http://www.freerepub...t/2441367/posts

 

Retro-Viruses disprove this idea living life. We share all the same number of retro-viruses and in the same places of the genome, as our ape ancestors. The chances of the retro viruses transfussing into the same place and the same number, in many different lineages is too improbable.

 

Thanks. This is exactly the type of thing I was thinking of when I was clumsily discussing the probabilities.

 

Interesting choice of website btw.

 

Lol i didnt realize that it was a conservative website. I was looking for 20 minutes trying to find a paper on human ape relations in retro viruses, i took the first thing that was actually relevant to the discussion.

 

No big deal. I'd be willing to bet the majority of freepers are also evolution deniers though, which is why I thought it was funny.

[Kaiser01]

http://www.freerepub...t/2441367/posts

 

Retro-Viruses disprove this idea living life. We share all the same number of retro-viruses and in the same places of the genome, as our ape ancestors. The chances of the retro viruses transfussing into the same place and the same number, in many different lineages is too improbable.

 

Thanks. This is exactly the type of thing I was thinking of when I was clumsily discussing the probabilities.

 

Interesting choice of website btw.

 

Lol i didnt realize that it was a conservative website. I was looking for 20 minutes trying to find a paper on human ape relations in retro viruses, i took the first thing that was actually relevant to the discussion.

 

No big deal. I'd be willing to bet the majority of freepers are also evolution deniers though, which is why I thought it was funny.

 

I was wondering why there were so many comments about God in the section.

[VacuumFlux]

Disclaimer: I am not a biologist and I only took one class in this stuff. Everything else I learned off the internet. The opinions expressed may not reflect the most current research, nor have I thought through all this well enough to be concise.

 

It is this singularity that I take issue with because as I said earlier, it really is just an alternative to the creation story just w/o god. Furthermore simply taking aquatic life, land based life and plants, how the hell does a single critter coming out of the primordial soup give birth to plants and at the same time a living mobile critter? The common ancestor in this case can only be the primordial soup.

 

Take the basics of what happens in water. Algae develops and can perhaps spawn what will become a plant. In the soup a critter evolves, feeds off the algae and eventually spawns a critter that crawls out of the ocean/water. Another critter evolves and stays in the water. Here are three branches starting out that caters for the basic differences I defined.

 

I don't think that a "singularity" is a very accurate term once you get past single cellular organisms. Single celled things have insane levels of genetic freedom. But once they start living in groups, that entire group has to be compatible. There's a lot of those groupings that are somewhere in between single and multi-cellular organisms. That group is likely all clones with nearly identical DNA (other than transcription errors), and if you split them into two groups they'd just keep multiplying and sticking together. But all those cells are capable of sexual as well as asexual reproduction, so any one of them could go off and breed all by itself and make something with unique DNA.

 

Then when you get to plants and fungi, some cells with identical DNA will act differently depending on their environment, like forming roots or leaves. These are definitely multi-cellular organisms. But the individual cells are no longer able reproduce sexually and only do asexual reproduction. There's special organs built to do the sexual recombination. Now, plants are still crazy more promiscuous than animals and do all sorts of DNA swapping that we can't, but they're still less able to do that than single cellular organisms are. So to share DNA in those sort of organisms, you can't have just one plant. You have to a whole set of them that can share DNA with each other. So there's never a single individual that's the parent of a new species; if just one mutated that fast, it would loose its ability to reproduce. You need an entire set of them to gradually change together. This may happen over a wide geographic area, such as continents. Take grass, for example. You've got one species with some genetic variation over a wide swath of land. Something happens, like continental drift, and two clumps of that grass are no longer close enough to each other share DNA with. Eventually, due to random genetic drift plus different environment conditions (there's some interesting debates on how much random genetic drift accounts for changes vs environmental pressures) and you end up with different species. But being plants, there's a good chance that they can still share DNA later because plants are weird like that. Also note that plants can clone too, like splitting bulbs to make new plants, and seeds can stay dormant for a long time and do a lot of travel that way.

 

Then you get to animals. In some sense, we're a lot more genetically fragile than plants. You can never say that one animal evolved and ta-da, new species, particularly since they're even more limited in their DNA sharing than plants are and they can't clone. Reproduction is only sexual, and highly specialized. You must have a large population of common ancestors, a large period of time where they're still one species and interbreeding but there's some genetic variation across the species, then something happens - either a geographic separation or just some of them specializing at different things and thus not hanging around the others as often, and eventually the groups end up different enough that they are separate species. I don't see the OOA hypothesis as a singularity even or saying there was one initial pair of great apes that were the first humans; I see hominids of various types all over Africa with lots of genetic variation. Did you know there were human-like great apes that had giant, strong jaws and big muscles and could probably use their teeth as nutcrackers? They're all dead now. But they were probably breeding with the ancestors of modern humans, which means they were part of our ancestors. We used to have a lot more variety than we do now, with species (can't breed with others) and subspecies (can produce viable offspring with others in the species, but are different enough to have their own grouping); that's why we're homo sapiens-sapiens. There were other homo sapiens that aren't modern humans that we used to breed with before they all died out. Humans today are similar enough to each other that some geneticists think we may have been down to only 15,000 of us at one time. But that's still hardly a singularity and would be lots of tribes across a significant geographical area. Anything too much smaller and we'd all end up inbred and die off. Also, modern humans were probably not the first hominids to live in Europe and Asia; we're just the only survivors.

 

Wikipedia says, in the page on "Multiregional origin of modern humans" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiregional_hypothesis:

The primary competing scientific hypothesis is currently recent African origin of modern humans, which proposes that modern humans arose as a new species in Africa around 100–200,000 years ago, moving out of Africa around 50–60,000 years ago to replace existing human species such as Homo erectus and the Neanderthals without interbreeding. This differs from the multiregional hypothesis in that the multiregional model predicts interbreeding with local human populations in any such migration.

 

So the OOA hypothesis seems to me to be saying not that there was a singularity in the past, but rather that there was a whole lot more variety in the past than there is today. And evolution is about sufficiently large populations, not individuals.

[LivingLife]

http://www.freerepub...t/2441367/posts

 

Retro-Viruses disprove this idea living life. We share all the same number of retro-viruses and in the same places of the genome, as our ape ancestors. The chances of the retro viruses transfussing into the same place and the same number, in many different lineages is too improbable.

I hear what you say but we are talking again here in terms of probability and the language of chance. I do not deny that evidence as we can measure it.

 

Everyone says chimps and humans share a common ancestor and no one knows what the frig it is, it is just assumed it is there b/c we share so much in common.

 

Comparing my model of multiplicity with a split in the common ape ancestor to say a branch of humans and chimps for simplification, one mutation does not a species make. It needs to have a mate and it needs to occur more than once so that the offspring of the mutated critter has something to breed with, they cannot breed with themselves. Assume only females are spawned, does daddy do a Lot's daughters scenario? What if there were only males born.

 

The common ancestor also cannot be a singularity event as the chance of propagating the species w/o counterparts occurring at the same time, the branch off would not and could not survive. By this stage the critters are not having litters but one spawn at a time.

 

I am throwing in the odds from the other side of the coin if you will.

[Ouroboros]

Everyone says chimps and humans share a common ancestor and no one knows what the frig it is, it is just assumed it is there b/c we share so much in common.

Let's make a comparison. How would you notice and decide if someone had plagiarized a song or a story? You would be able to tell from that the story would be very similar, but not only that, the wording, phrasing, sequence of words, etc, would be very similar or even the same.

 

 

Let's make a comparison. How would you see and know if someone had plagiarized a story or a song? You would be able to tell from the story being very similar, but not only that, the wording, phrasing, sequence of words, and so on, would be very similar or even the same.

 

Could the two sentences above have the same inspiration, source, idea, or root? What is more plausible and statistically possible? Both being copies from the same idea, or those two paragraphs being completely randomly constructed individually? Statistically, it's more plausible that they share the same root, or one is a copy of the other.

 

Comparing my model of multiplicity with a split in the common ape ancestor to say a branch of humans and chimps for simplification, one mutation does not a species make. It needs to have a mate and it needs to occur more than once so that the offspring of the mutated critter has something to breed with, they cannot breed with themselves. Assume only females are spawned, does daddy do a Lot's daughters scenario? What if there were only males born.

There has been crossbreeding between "species". The term species is very vague actually. There's no real "species" in nature. It's a human classification of branches of beings. If certain beings can be grouped together under a unifying umbrella of category, then they belong to the same "species."

 

The common ancestor also cannot be a singularity event as the chance of propagating the species w/o counterparts occurring at the same time, the branch off would not and could not survive. By this stage the critters are not having litters but one spawn at a time.

Darwin's "Tree of Life" is actually misleading and wrong. Imagine a tree where the branches merge and span out and merge again. It's more like a mesh or network of strains that split and merge. So yes, it's not only singularities. However, it has been discovered that we must share one "Eve" about 200,000 years ago, and one "Adam" 70-100,00 years ago (IIRC), based on DNA evidence. All the other branches of human relatives died out. It also has been proven by DNA that some humans (basically Europeans) share a few genes with Neanderthals. It can be seen in the dental formula as well. How many cusps do you have on your molars? That will tell.

[BrotherJosh]

Video related to genetic markers in DNA:

 

 

[BrotherJosh]

Part III:

 

[stryper]

LL

 

First read Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.

 

He asks the question in the book why did the Spainards conquer the Inca and not the other way around.

 

The short answer is the middle east is where something like 75% - 90% of the foods we currently eat orginated from. All domesticated animals save like 2 wild ancestors came from the Mid-east. Africa has no large animal species that took to domestication. So it remained a hunter gatherer lifestyle.

 

Additionally, the Eurasian Temperate zone spans about half the planet. That means that any thing domesicated in one area will probably grow in another in the Temperate zone. Africa and the Americas are both very long we. Africa goes from Mediterranian to Tropical back to temperate in SA where you are. The condition in SA are more similar to Egypt then to the Congo. Therefore, grains and animals from SA would probably do very well in Egypt.

 

However, in a time when your feet are your only transport, you have to keep the grain and animals alive. The Tsetse fly has been a problem in Tropical Africa for millennia. The cows did not survive the trip though the Tropics. When a few were finally brought in by boat and they were beyond the Tsetse Fly range they prospered.

 

Americas have the same problem. Argentina and parts of Brazil are very similar to the Midwest USA and Canada in terms of climate. Argentine farmer rival American farmers in wheat production. However, There are several jungles, a desert, and multiple mountain ranges in between. Like Africa, the america only domesticated 2 animals. The Muscovy Duck and the Llama. All others were to hostile, large, or onery. Taming the american Bison would be like trying to tame a water buffalo. Frustrating to both and equally dangerous.

 

Contrast that with the very broad area of similar climate in the Mid-east. Something that grows in Iran could be spread to Pakistan and there to Iraq and there to Italy. The bonus in food production in those areas allowed for specialization. So fewer people were needed to farm more people could specialize in the priesthood, science, trade, mercantile, mining, war, etc.

 

Thus, Africans and Native American had to spend far more time in the thousands of years just trying to exist. While their Mideast cousins were developing technology.

[LivingLife]

TY for the replies. Just so you know, I am not a denialist. I ask these questions because they mull in my mind and it is nice not to have the the typical background noise of creationists we get on other forums. Usually some silly Kent Hovind crap that takes pages and pages of debunking.

 

Bring all the evidence. It is good to have it all in one thread. I'll watch the vids tomorrow.

 

I am puckered out so Hans, I will reply to you tomorrow if that is OK but your post is good.

 

My buddy said he would look at the thread and I hope he joins in as he is far better in this field than I am.

[Kaiser01]

LL

 

First read Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.

 

He asks the question in the book why did the Spainards conquer the Inca and not the other way around.

 

The short answer is the middle east is where something like 75% - 90% of the foods we currently eat orginated from. All domesticated animals save like 2 wild ancestors came from the Mid-east. Africa has no large animal species that took to domestication. So it remained a hunter gatherer lifestyle.

 

Additionally, the Eurasian Temperate zone spans about half the planet. That means that any thing domesicated in one area will probably grow in another in the Temperate zone. Africa and the Americas are both very long we. Africa goes from Mediterranian to Tropical back to temperate in SA where you are. The condition in SA are more similar to Egypt then to the Congo. Therefore, grains and animals from SA would probably do very well in Egypt.

 

However, in a time when your feet are your only transport, you have to keep the grain and animals alive. The Tsetse fly has been a problem in Tropical Africa for millennia. The cows did not survive the trip though the Tropics. When a few were finally brought in by boat and they were beyond the Tsetse Fly range they prospered.

 

Americas have the same problem. Argentina and parts of Brazil are very similar to the Midwest USA and Canada in terms of climate. Argentine farmer rival American farmers in wheat production. However, There are several jungles, a desert, and multiple mountain ranges in between. Like Africa, the america only domesticated 2 animals. The Muscovy Duck and the Llama. All others were to hostile, large, or onery. Taming the american Bison would be like trying to tame a water buffalo. Frustrating to both and equally dangerous.

 

Contrast that with the very broad area of similar climate in the Mid-east. Something that grows in Iran could be spread to Pakistan and there to Iraq and there to Italy. The bonus in food production in those areas allowed for specialization. So fewer people were needed to farm more people could specialize in the priesthood, science, trade, mercantile, mining, war, etc.

 

Thus, Africans and Native American had to spend far more time in the thousands of years just trying to exist. While their Mideast cousins were developing technology.

 

This book raised my consciousness about the how history worked, a classic for all time.

[Ouroboros]

I am puckered out so Hans, I will reply to you tomorrow if that is OK but your post is good.

No problem. The only problem I have is that I can't figure out how to explain it in a good way.

[LivingLife]

Contrast that with the very broad area of similar climate in the Mid-east. Something that grows in Iran could be spread to Pakistan and there to Iraq and there to Italy. The bonus in food production in those areas allowed for specialization. So fewer people were needed to farm more people could specialize in the priesthood, science, trade, mercantile, mining, war, etc.

 

Thus, Africans and Native American had to spend far more time in the thousands of years just trying to exist. While their Mideast cousins were developing technology.

I missed this post but wanted to share stuff from a personal perspective.

 

Growing up in Zambia and Zimbabwe the climate in Zambia was very close to equatorial and the natives as we called them in the 60's and 70's were still very primitive in their lifestyles. Remember the influence of the settler then was not that well established and they were used ess. as no more than paid slaves. I personally saw things most of you never did.

 

They were not a barbaric race and very kind and as a kid never felt threatened, I played with their kids and back then I spoke their language. Even in assimilation they never tried to do it the white man's way preferring to maintain the traditional African village cluster even though the men folk stayed on the property of the white man. Laws existed prohibiting cohabitation of the servants quarters with their wives.

 

There was no attempt to replace the stick huts with something more durable. Not that they needed to b/c Zambia is bloody humid and hot, most of it equatorial dense bush.

 

I have heard too often the claim the harsh African sun is why the folk are black and that is Bullshit. Yeah it is hot but bearable. Hell in Livingstone we did not even have a/c just some water cooler fan where you placed ice cold water in. In winter you still wore jumpers. Here is me, my brother in 1965 at the Victoria Waterfalls to prove the point.

 

These folk do not have the acumen to develop and or expand and after independence some 40 years later Livingstone still looks like it did back then. There is ZERO new development.

 

The same holds true for Zimbabwe which came to a grinding halt after the mid 90's.

 

When I did army guard duty in Bulawayo, I wore pantihose under my camo and a balaclava it was so cold on winter nights. North West Africa where I have been in all seasons, it is far hotter than what we had just south of the equator so I have a pretty good inkling of what it would be like in Equatorial Africa. It is not that unpleasant and I can assure you some places in SA get just as humid and hot.

 

That should hopefully put the myth of the "harsh African sun™" to bed. Really folk it is probably no different to many places in the US. It is not like an imaginary god is doing the fry the ants with a magnifying glass on Africa.

 

As for what they were doing as far as fruits and stuff, know dates. Well they grow wild in Zambia. As for domesticating animals, there are Nguni cattle indigenous to Southern Africa that are FUGLY critters so it is possible they had rudimentary herding capabilities.

 

 

As a white African having seen what is posited by Evo folk and what I have personally witnessed as far as these folk in over three countries, the two do not tie into reality.

 

This brings us back to the OoA model and I still call BS on that assertion. I have posed a number of questions that no one has directly answered, why would a migration north or east cause white Europeans or short white(ish) Chinese. There would be zero genetic advantage of losing skin pigment. In Africa we have black albinos and that is a genetic mutation not useful and is an anomaly. My son has that genetic disorder and My dad and some of his siblings had it too. My son cannot dare go in the sun w/o a factor 120+ sun block. Eventually he will get skin cancer. That is obviously NOT why white folk exist.

 

The second part to this question which you tried to answer as far as agriculture seems on the surface plausible. You know stuff like sweet potato? Well we have huge root plants that the folk used to use as a staple diet before maize came along. They still eat it in Ghana. IIRC it is called kufu in Ghana, probably something else in Zambia. The Zambezi river is rife with fish and they caught fish with nets and spears. They hollowed out tree trunks to form rudimentary canoes. Anyway, the question is, if all originated in Africa, having partially dismissed the agricultural aspect (a westernised POV) WHY did the white folk evolve technologically at a faster rate and why did black folk in Africa not transition also into white people with straight hair, different coloured eyes etc. If there was some cosmic event that initiated a genetic mutation, it would be universal.

 

It is these simple observations that make this aspect of the ascent of man bullshit. It is written wholly from a westernised white man's POV. Even I can see the white bias in those "theories" and then it still does not explain why we have dark skinned folk north of the Arctic circle, deep South America etc. Each of these "races" have distinct features.

 

At one time, the folk thought the black man was the fabled missing link till DNA mapping removed all doubt it is BS.

 

DNA is a relatively new discovery and to assume we have it all figured out is IMO presumptuous.

 

I obviously do not have 1st hand knowledge of fauna on other continents but the fact that there is so much in common as far as DNA goes, does not suggest common ancestry unless we go all the way back to the soup stage. We can only measure that which is measurable and draw conclusion from that. Needless to say, there are distinct different critters found only in certain continents.

 

IMO the ToE still has many unwritten chapters to be added.

[LivingLife]

Darwin's "Tree of Life" is actually misleading and wrong. Imagine a tree where the branches merge and span out and merge again. It's more like a mesh or network of strains that split and merge. So yes, it's not only singularities. However, it has been discovered that we must share one "Eve" about 200,000 years ago, and one "Adam" 70-100,00 years ago (IIRC), based on DNA evidence. All the other branches of human relatives died out. It also has been proven by DNA that some humans (basically Europeans) share a few genes with Neanderthals. It can be seen in the dental formula as well. How many cusps do you have on your molars? That will tell.

That split and re-merging can be a plausible explanation if we depart from a singularity.

 

The common ancestry you mention here I am aware of but that is established only b/c we have found no other evidence thus far and probably will not. The whole Mitochondrial Eve still showed or demonstrated linear thinking b/c so much of westernised civilisation grew up with the A&E myth.

 

But let us examine the Neanderthal aspect of Europeans (which I am one of).

 

As the story goes, man migrated from Africa, and possibly cross bred with Neanderthals. Where did they come from? Why no Neanderthals in Africa? The idea of mass migration and the propagation of the species even with the Neanderthals in the mix can also give plausibility to the multiple origins model I am positing. If a humanoid was able to cross breed with other similar erectus hominids, then the aspect of DNA being a be all and end all is kinda moot.

 

Anyway, the way I see the idea of multiple origins is based on the concept that evolution is not random at all, however DNA evolved, I do not think anyone has that cast in stone just yet. Assuming for humans say five successful lineages surviving to where we are today, these would have all undergone the same cosmic/earth events which caused various mutations but just arrived at slightly insignificant outcomes. DNA mapping would show for all intents and purposes we are identical.

 

Earlier I posted the global map which I always have a mental image of when discussing this topic. Looked up the wiki article on M-Eve and

 

Yup there it is Tanzania a really frigging cool place when it comes to the Serengeti and we have all seen the annual migration Nat Geo documentaries. Also a relatively stable country as far as the cold war era that took place here in Africa in the 50's to 70's. Who knows what we will find when we start digging in Zimbabwe once Mugaba finally dies?

 

Caves and paintings of the Matopos

 

 

 

 

Pretty odd that this OOA model exists yet more time and effort has been made deciphering Egyptology hieroglyphs and yet here is a story no one has yet deciphered yet. I am sure this is much much older than that of Egypt. These caves and paintings were all around Bulawayo where I grew up, these were the kind of places we went to on school field trips.

 

 

You have probably heard of Zimbabwe ruins. This is the lesser known Khami ruins (more pics) and this was a place a buddy an I cycled to to go explore as kids. What culture built these and what were they used for? No one knows. It does not follow what the white settlers found 150 years ago as far as the then natives inhabitants. Maybe digging here will yield other fossils and clues.

 

This is what they found them living in

Replica built from pioneer sketches at Lobengula's village Bulawayo.

 

Perhaps if you had grown up in Africa, you too would have these questions. I think a lot of natural history was lost to politicisation of the natives and their perceived origins as descendants from Cain, quite a bit of that permeated through subsequent generations of whites and the real story still has not been told or discovered yet.

 

Like evolution, the few pieces of the puzzle we have, there are bits and pieces in Zimbabwe that stand there as monuments to a time past. Not too much effort has been undertaken to get to the truth as it is still politicised.

[Kaiser01]

If evolution is not random and defined by the enviorment are you willing to say that the kind of DNA sequence is determined by the enviorment as well?

 

As in if you have two groups of humans evolving in different places from different lines, and they both were in cold enviorments would their genomes appear the same as they grow more hair and larger bodies?

 

If this is the case, it sounds kinda like the "Common design, Common designer" argument.

[Ouroboros]

The common ancestry you mention here I am aware of but that is established only b/c we have found no other evidence thus far and probably will not. The whole Mitochondrial Eve still showed or demonstrated linear thinking b/c so much of westernised civilisation grew up with the A&E myth.

No, I don't think so. The mDNA heritage is pretty clear, as is the Y-Chromosome heritage.

 

The mDNA changes extremely slow. The variations points to one common ancestral Eve about 200,000 years ago. It's not a guess because we don't have evidence, but it's a guess based on evidence.

 

As the story goes, man migrated from Africa, and possibly cross bred with Neanderthals. Where did they come from? Why no Neanderthals in Africa? The idea of mass migration and the propagation of the species even with the Neanderthals in the mix can also give plausibility to the multiple origins model I am positing. If a humanoid was able to cross breed with other similar erectus hominids, then the aspect of DNA being a be all and end all is kinda moot.

I suggest that you watch a video called "Journey of Man" by Spencer Wells:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV6A8oGtPc4

 

It explains several of these issues.

 

Anyway, the way I see the idea of multiple origins is based on the concept that evolution is not random at all, however DNA evolved, I do not think anyone has that cast in stone just yet. Assuming for humans say five successful lineages surviving to where we are today, these would have all undergone the same cosmic/earth events which caused various mutations but just arrived at slightly insignificant outcomes. DNA mapping would show for all intents and purposes we are identical.

The problem is that for the markers to be identical, the chances of that are astronomical. We're talking about one bit changed in one location in a sequence that is the size of Windows source code. The chances of it to change the exact same way in the same place by chance is very slim, even more when there are several of these markers.

 

I'm not sure you fully appreciate the immense size and length of the DNA code.

 

 

Yup there it is Tanzania a really frigging cool place when it comes to the Serengeti and we have all seen the annual migration Nat Geo documentaries. Also a relatively stable country as far as the cold war era that took place here in Africa in the 50's to 70's. Who knows what we will find when we start digging in Zimbabwe once Mugaba finally dies?

It's not just about digging and finding artifacts. Skulls and actual DNA they managed to extract from one neanderthal bone are other evidences.

 

Pretty odd that this OOA model exists yet more time and effort has been made deciphering Egyptology hieroglyphs and yet here is a story no one has yet deciphered yet. I am sure this is much much older than that of Egypt. These caves and paintings were all around Bulawayo where I grew up, these were the kind of places we went to on school field trips.

Yes? I'm not sure I follow your point.

 

You have probably heard of Zimbabwe ruins. This is the lesser known Khami ruins (more pics) and this was a place a buddy an I cycled to to go explore as kids. What culture built these and what were they used for? No one knows. It does not follow what the white settlers found 150 years ago as far as the then natives inhabitants. Maybe digging here will yield other fossils and clues.

Still not sure what you're getting at.

 

This is what they found them living in

 

Replica built from pioneer sketches at Lobengula's village Bulawayo.

 

Perhaps if you had grown up in Africa, you too would have these questions. I think a lot of natural history was lost to politicisation of the natives and their perceived origins as descendants from Cain, quite a bit of that permeated through subsequent generations of whites and the real story still has not been told or discovered yet.

You're saying that because Neanderthal were the first people migrating to Europe, and then a second migration from Africa went to Europe (sapiens) who replaced the Neanderthals (and had a better intelligence and symbolic system), and the latter one left evidence in Africa (which everyone agrees with), therefore the Neanderthals were what? Not there? I don't know what you're trying to infer from your last points.

 

Like evolution, the few pieces of the puzzle we have, there are bits and pieces in Zimbabwe that stand there as monuments to a time past. Not too much effort has been undertaken to get to the truth as it is still politicised.

You know that there were at least two major migrations from Africa, not one, right? We're all closer related to the modern Africans than to Neanderthal, but many Europeans have traces of a Neanderthal mix in their DNA, which points to some inter-breeding between sapiens and neanderthals.

 

I'm sorry if I sound like an asshole. It's not my intention. You have questions. I'm trying to understand what your question really is. And since I'm not a scientist in the field of anthropology, I can't say I'm an expert in any shape or form, but I did take a couple of classes and felt that most of my personal questions been answered over time. The biggest hurdle to overcome was really about how evolution works from it's smaller mechanics (micro) up to the higher levels (macro). But when that picture starts to become clear, it's not really a huge mystery anymore, but it's just very difficult to explain (for me it is at least).

[LivingLife]

If evolution is not random and defined by the enviorment are you willing to say that the kind of DNA sequence is determined by the enviorment as well?As in if you have two groups of humans evolving in different places from different lines, and they both were in cold enviorments would their genomes appear the same as they grow more hair and larger bodies?

Let me try and illustrate it (damn hard to do this w/o a white board)

 

___________^____________^__________^_______________^_________

 

The line is time and ^ an event that causes a mutation to occur. I am not showing any branches but for the argument let us take these as beneficial mutations of a lineage. The events themselves are for intents and purposes random and perhaps cosmological events of radiation, a meteor impact that altered the environment substantially etc. Repeated say 5 time around the globe, independent lineages would experience the exact same events and the results for simplification almost identical. I am allowing for slight variations for diet, disease, climate. If for example there were 100 pregnant mothers and a cosmic event occurred that affected the foetuses, this would perhaps constitute a branch albeit small. You then take this scenario and play it out millions of times as time progresses. We know radiation affects DNA also diseases like German measles which would cause (as we are today) foetus abnormalities and probably would not survive. You have to see DNA as evolving and not fixed as even in the pairs we have one less than chimps and the missing pair is fused. We accept this as proof of evolution; I am not positing anything much different.

If this is the case, it sounds kinda like the "Common design, Common designer" argument.

No it is not common design, merely common or like origins. The real common denominator has to go back to the soup stage. When I answer Hans' post, I may expand on this.

[LivingLife]

No, I don't think so. The mDNA heritage is pretty clear, as is the Y-Chromosome heritage.

 

The mDNA changes extremely slow. The variations points to one common ancestral Eve about 200,000 years ago. It's not a guess because we don't have evidence, but it's a guess based on evidence.

The evidence we have at present. We obviously have not dug up all the fossils there are to dig up. FWIW, I have claimed (without proof) the real GoE was in Africa and in particular the Serengeti just because it is awesome.

The problem is that for the markers to be identical, the chances of that are astronomical. We're talking about one bit changed in one location in a sequence that is the size of Windows source code. The chances of it to change the exact same way in the same place by chance is very slim, even more when there are several of these markers.

 

I'm not sure you fully appreciate the immense size and length of the DNA code.

Perhaps I view the DNA code as organised and not something that evolved randomly. Posing what may see as a ridiculous assertion here, if DNA mutation was random rather than deliberate, what is to stop our DNA from going nuts all on its own? The fact it progresses logically as we reproduce passing on genes from both parents puts this concept to bed. I doubt a "rape an ape" bestiality would result in offspring even though we share so much common DNA. That branch happened jonks ago and w/o genetic manipulation in the lab, it ain't gonna happen.

 

We know that external influences like radiation and disease can affect the DNA and give us horrible birth abnormalities. In the rule of survival of the fittest, these would not survive. We see the results of very abnormally high doses of radiation like Chernobyl which is probably not the types that may have caused mutations in the past like a gamma burst.

It's not just about digging and finding artifacts. Skulls and actual DNA they managed to extract from one neanderthal bone are other evidences.

 

Yes? I'm not sure I follow your point.

 

Still not sure what you're getting at.

The point I was trying to make is that they traced the "origins" to Central Africa just south of the equator. Not much archaeology or science has been conducted further south due to the instability of the region. It is not science research friendly.

 

The ruins, we were taught that the locals were not the originators of them and since the advent of Mugabe, two archaeologists refuted this and yet all that we see as a continuance was ZERO evidence of this masonry skill set. The political aspect was that the Mashona's built this, Mugabe's tribe, and yet Khami follows the same pattern and in an area where they did not come from, that area is descendants of the Zulus and called Matebeles. They too have no history of masonry skills.

 

The real truth is probably there was a civilisation that died out, an unsuccessful branch perhaps and the current natives are migrants to the area. Most of this is common knowledge here. IMO, we really do not know who built them but it was not the natives' forefathers. One does not discard the skill of masonry, hewing bricks out of stone and going back to living in straw huts. Cultures tend to build on the shoulders of their forefathers. Skills are handed down.

 

Some have suggested this was part of the slave trade from Egyptians but that is just tooo far south to work. Other's have posited it to be something to do with King Solomon, again too far south and ZERO evidence.

You're saying that because Neanderthal were the first people migrating to Europe, and then a second migration from Africa went to Europe (sapiens) who replaced the Neanderthals (and had a better intelligence and symbolic system), and the latter one left evidence in Africa (which everyone agrees with), therefore the Neanderthals were what? Not there? I don't know what you're trying to infer from your last points.

No, I am asking why Neanderthals were only to be found in Europe IF that is the prime reason for their whiteness. If they also came from Africa, what was stopping black folk with interbreeding? These assumptions of the DNA project are IMO still flawed but the best we have at present. Why are the Chinese shorter in stature and ess. white? Do they have Neanderthal genes too? Close by, we have the Indians and they are nothing like the Africans other than skin tone. The aborigines from Aus are dark skinned, similar to Indians but still not the same.

 

Following on from that, WHY did man not evolve in Europe, South America, etc? If the Pangea model is used, that happened a frigging long time before hominids came into existence. The moving of the continents "stopped" long before early man appeared on the scene.

 

With the OOA model, we are simple left with a parallel of "creation", just a tad further south.

You know that there were at least two major migrations from Africa, not one, right? We're all closer related to the modern Africans than to Neanderthal, but many Europeans have traces of a Neanderthal mix in their DNA, which points to some inter-breeding between sapiens and neanderthals.

Yes I am aware of that "supposition."

I'm sorry if I sound like an asshole. It's not my intention. You have questions. I'm trying to understand what your question really is. And since I'm not a scientist in the field of anthropology, I can't say I'm an expert in any shape or form, but I did take a couple of classes and felt that most of my personal questions been answered over time. The biggest hurdle to overcome was really about how evolution works from it's smaller mechanics (micro) up to the higher levels (macro). But when that picture starts to become clear, it's not really a huge mystery anymore, but it's just very difficult to explain (for me it is at least).

No I do not think you are an asshole at all. It really does not keep me awake at night trying to have to prove any of this as I said it is my pet theory. I lack the wherewithal to even enter this as a hypothesis and as you know, there is already a universal acceptance of the findings/conclusions, most of which I agree on. Going against this accepted theory, it would be an uphill battle of which I have no interest in proving, life is too short. I enjoy the discussion as it makes one think.

 

The only area I see as flawed is that this ToE has (for now) supposed a point of origin what I see primarily based on incomplete data just b/c we found Lucy and for reasons unknown decided to call that M-Eve.

 

Do any of you think we have in ±130 years since Darwin's departure from creationism have ToE done and dusted? That to me is pretty presumptuous.

 

The Lenski experiment spanning over 20 years has put to bed the objections of evolution. It happens.

 

The populations reached the milestone of 50,000 generations in February 2010. Since the experiment's inception, Lenski and his colleagues have reported a wide array of genetic changes; some evolutionary

adaptations

have occurred in all 12 populations, while others have only appeared in one or a few populations. One particularly striking adaption was the evolution of a strain of

E. coli

that was able to grow on

citric acid

in the growth media. (Wiki)

 

Even so, they still be bugs but 50k generations is not something to be sneezed at.

 

This field is so vast and we as humans are really only able to wrap our heads around small snippets of a focussed study. I seriously doubt science will determine origins other than what now exists. We can only hope to build on this as we repeatedly find more and more evidence to support it.