The Missing Link

[icebear]

Basic reality seems to be that apes, monkeys, and hominids including the neanderthal are onbe family of creatures, and that we are another, and that your choices as to how we got here are:

• We were created here separately.
• We were brought here from somewhere else.
• We were derived from hominids via genetic-re-engineering or some such deterministic process, and not by "evolution".

The idea that we evolved from apes or hominids is not tenable for numerous reasons, the thing about neanderthal DNA being one of many.

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Basic reality seems to be that apes, monkeys, and hominids including the neanderthal are onbe family of creatures, and that we are another, and that your choices as to how we got here are:

• We were created here separately.
• We were brought here from somewhere else.
• We were derived from hominids via genetic-re-engineering or some such deterministic process, and not by "evolution".

The idea that we evolved from apes or hominids is not tenable for numerous reasons, the thing about neanderthal DNA being one of many.

This is wrong on so many levels. It is nice that you have given us three totally incorrect conclusions to choose from

There is a very good article that SaRuMaN posted on the front page today that shows just how far off the mark on what is actually understood about our relationship to the Neanderthals. Link: Study reveals human/neanderthal split

[contactismade]

Just like any other mammal in the world our path through history was dictated by survival of the fittest. Over the history of man I'm sure there were many genetic variances walking around, but, just like other mammals only the most successful of these would have survived. Its common to everything, adapt to survive or die on the vine. Our genetic ancestors were just the most successful of all the varieties. And just like the lesser developed cousins we eliminated all competition for resources. Its pretty standard. And given the size of Earth and the likelihood that we aren't dealing with huge populations, it is well within the range of belief that evidence would be scarce. Just a thought.

[IamsSon]

Just like any other mammal in the world our path through history was dictated by survival of the fittest. Over the history of man I'm sure there were many genetic variances walking around, but, just like other mammals only the most successful of these would have survived. Its common to everything, adapt to survive or die on the vine. Our genetic ancestors were just the most successful of all the varieties. And just like the lesser developed cousins we eliminated all competition for resources. Its pretty standard. And given the size of Earth and the likelihood that we aren't dealing with huge populations, it is well within the range of belief that evidence would be scarce. Just a thought.

Unfortunately, for those of us who do not believe in evolution as the answer to the origin of life, this also seems very convenient. "We can't show you a large population of transtitive skeletons, because there were probably very few to begin with and skeletal remains are very rare."

Do you see how that just makes it unnecessary fo me to change my mind and almost impossible for you to have any kind of proof that would make it undeniable?

[Shaftsbury]

The "missing link" was supposed to be the neanderthal.

It may have been suggested at one time that modern humans could have descended from them, but even if this was proven to be false, all it means is that the assumption was incorrect, it dosen't invalidate evolution.

The problem is that all other hominids are much further removed from us THAN the neanderthal. To honoestly go on trying to claim that modern man evolved, you'd have to produce some new hominid, closer to us in both time and morphology THAN the neanderthal, and the works and remains of that closer hominid would be all over the map and very easy to find if he had ever existed. In real life of course, nothing of the sort has ever been found.

Next time you watch TV and see a scene from the Africa showing large herds of animals roaming the landscape just think to yourself "gee after thousands of years shouldn't the ground be littered with animal remains?". The fact is that fossilized remains are rare, predation and the elements do a good job of cleaning up any such material, looking for fossils is like looking for that proverbial "needle in a haystack".

And There have been finds made that show the evolution of modern humans.

Even in those 100,000 years, anatomical trends toward smaller molars and decreased bone mass can be seen in the Homo sapiens fossil record. For example, contemporary humans in Europe and Asia have bones that are 20 to 30 percent thinner and lighter than those of upper Paleolithic humans dating from about 30,000 years ago.

Source: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/humans/humankind/o.html

Moreover, the present claims of the evolutionites, i.e. that both we AND the neanderthal must be descended from some more remote third party 500,000 years back, are plainly idiotic. That's like claiming that dogs could not be descended from wolves, and must therefore have evolved directly from fish.

As far as I know modern humans came on the scene roughly 100,000 years ago so why would looking back for a common ancestor be idiotic?

Your theory of dogs from fish is indeed far fetched, but may not be as far from the truth as you think:

The fossils, scientists argued, show how the fish’s pectoral fins—those behind the head—evolved into the limbs of tetrapods, or four-limbed animals.

The fins contain bones that correspond to the upper arm, forearm and primitive parts of the hand of land-living animals, they explained.

The skeleton “indicates that it could support its body under the force of gravity whether in very shallow water or on land,” said Farish Jenkins of Harvard University and a co-author of the papers describing the research. “This represents a critical early phase in the evolution of all limbed animals.”

Source: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/060...iktaalikfrm.htm

Sorry for the long posts, but I wanted to cover all the points in one.

[icebear]

Aside from every other problem with evolutionism, there is the problem of population genetics and, particularly, the Haldane Dilemma. Even if macroevolution were possible, which it isn't, merely arriving at humans after starting off with an "apelike creature" would take quadrillions of years.

http://designeduniverse.com/webthink/haldane.ppt

In the ten million years which supposedly intervenes betwen Alley Oop and us, the best you could do would be to produce an ape with a slightly shorter tail. Probably about a quarter of an inch shorter.

[Shaftsbury]

J. B. S. Haldane calculated that new genes become fixed only after 300 generations due to the cost of natural selection (Haldane 1957). Since humans and apes differ in 4.8 × 107 genes, there has not been enough time for difference to accumulate. Only 1,667 nucleotide substitutions in genes could have occurred if their divergence was ten million years ago.

That is only if Haldane was correct in the first place.

Haldane's "cost of natural selection" stemmed from an invalid simplifying assumption in his calculations. He divided by a fitness constant in a way that invalidated his assumption of constant population size, and his cost of selection is an artifact of the changed population size. He also assumed that two mutations would take twice as long to reach fixation as one, but because of sexual recombination, the two can be selected simultaneously and both reach fixation sooner. With corrected calculations, the cost disappears (Wallace 1991; Williams n.d.).

Haldane's paper was published in 1957, and Haldane himself said, "I am quite aware that my conclusions will probably need drastic revision" (Haldane 1957, 523). It is irresponsible not to consider the revision that has occurred in the forty years since his paper was published.

Source: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB121.html

[JeremyGTS]

well Apes didnt/dont have tails anyway... sorry bud the correct answer there is monkeys..

[icebear]

This is wrong on so many levels. It is nice that you have given us three totally incorrect conclusions to choose from

There is a very good article that SaRuMaN posted on the front page today that shows just how far off the mark on what is actually understood about our relationship to the Neanderthals. Link: Study reveals human/neanderthal split

Try bothering to read what I have to say in the future before replying. I'll say it again:

The neanderthal, despite being the closest hominid to us, has been ruled out as a plausible human ancestor because the genetic gap is simply too large, e.g.

http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv?r...al.pbio.0020057

http://www.anomalous-images.com/news/news087.html

...Comparisons with the DNA of modern humans and of apes showed the Neanderthal was about halfway between a modern human and a chimpanzee.

Now, and this is what I said originally which you did not bother to read, GIVEN the above, it is clearly idiotic to claim that both we and the neanderthal are descended from some common ancestor 400,000 years ago which is MORE remote from us than the neanderthal, when the neanderthal is too remote for us to be related. And it basically doesn't matter how many website articles you can find which make such claims.

Think about it.

[icebear]

That is only if Haldane was correct in the first place.

Source: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB121.html

Haldane was an evolutionist and was not happy with his own discovery. His statements to the effect that a solution might someday be found thus are seen as wishful thinking.

Nobody has ever resolved the Haldane dilemma and the talk.origins crowd had their shot at Walter Remine in the late 90s and got slaughtered. The standard rebuttal to the standard rebuttal lives here:

http://www.evolutionfairytale.com/articles...ne_rebuttal.htm

The real problem there's ever been explaining the dilemma to people is the question of "genetic death" and the dilemma itself being originally described in terms of genetic death. Walter Remine has new papers which describe the dilemma entirely in terms of birth rates and eliminate the problem.

The basic simpleminded statement of the problem which Remine uses to introduce it is all a normal person should need to see. It goes like this:

Imagine a population of 100,000 apes or “proto-humans” ten million years ago which are all genetically alike other than for two with a “beneficial mutation”. Imagine also that this population has the human or proto-human generation cycle time of roughly 20 years.

Imagine that the beneficial mutation in question is so good, that all 99,998 other die out immediately (from jealousy), and that the pair with the beneficial mutation has 100,000 kids and thus replenishes the herd.

Imagine that this process goes on like that for ten million years, which is more than anybody claims is involved in “human evolution”. The max number of such “beneficial mutations” which could thus be substituted into the herd would be ten million divided by twenty, or 500,000 point mutations which, Remine notes, is about 1/100 of one percent of the human genome, and a miniscule fraction of the 2 to 3 percent that separates us from chimpanzees, or the half of that which separates us from neanderthals.

That, i.e. replacing an entire population of animals every generation, would be a rate of gene substitution vastly beyond anything achievable in nature. Haldane's math showed that even in theory it would take at least 300 generations to accomplish one genetic substitution, i.e. that there would be a max of about 1700 such substitutions in the ten million years between Alley Oop and us.

Trying to claim that genes were substituted in mass is nonsensical since the overwhelming bulk of mutations are harmful or fatal; nothing would survive such a process.

Likewise claiming that such development always occurred in small groups of animals has its own set of problems, not the least being the one Remine mentions of needing a sizeable population before you'd ever see a "beneficial mutation". That is if such a thing as a "beneficial mutation" exists.

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Think about it.

icebear, please do not get so aggressive in future.

I did read your posts and I find your conclusions to be illogical and nonsensical. How do you make the leap from "Neanderthal can not be our ancestor" to "we can not have had a common ancestor?" One is not proof of the other. Then you the even bigger jump to the conclusion that one of the following must be correct

* We were created here separately.

* We were brought here from somewhere else.

* We were derived from hominids via genetic-re-engineering or some such deterministic process, and not by "evolution".

Where is the evidence for any of these conclusion?

Edited October 27, 2006 by Waspie_Dwarf

[Leonardo]

icebear,

Now, and this is what I said originally which you did not bother to read, GIVEN the above, it is clearly idiotic to claim that both we and the neanderthal are descended from some common ancestor 400,000 years ago which is MORE remote from us than the neanderthal, when the neanderthal is too remote for us to be related. And it basically doesn't matter how many website articles you can find which make such claims.

Your reasoning here doesn't take into account the divergence aspect of speciation in evolutionary theory. As a simple example you have species B. Some pressure (resource or habitat based) causes a mutation in species B to assume a favourable survival aspect and you now have species C. Species B is not extinct however and further pressure causes another mutation to assert itself and you have species A. Species B becomes extinct and you are left with species C and A. Both are closer to species B than they are each other.

In the case of homo sapiens (species A) and homo neandertalensis (species C) we simply haven't found homo common ancestor (species B.) yet, or if we have then haven't recognised it as such.

[icebear]

I did read your posts and I find your conclusions to be illogical and nonsensical. How do you make the leap from "Neanderthal can not be our ancestor" to "we can not have had a common ancestor?"

That strikes me as rather obvious. The neanderthal is ruled out as a plausible ancestor because he's too different from us, and so the claim is that we must therefore have a more remote ancestor which is even more different from us.

What's hard to see about the logical fallacy involved in that?

[Waspie_Dwarf]

What's hard to see about the logical fallacy involved in that?

I think Leonardo has explained it rather more eloquently than I could.

And once again where is the evidence for any of the three conclusions you posted.

[icebear]

icebear,

Your reasoning here doesn't take into account the divergence aspect of speciation in evolutionary theory. As a simple example you have species B. Some pressure (resource or habitat based) causes a mutation in species B to assume a favourable survival aspect and you now have species C. Species B is not extinct however and further pressure causes another mutation to assert itself and you have species A. Species B becomes extinct and you are left with species C and A. Both are closer to species B than they are each other.

That doesn't address the problem. In the case to hand, species B is less sophisticated than either A or C. It we couldn't be derived from C because C is to far removed, how in hell are we going to be derived from B which is even further removed?

You could put a white shirt and a tie on a neanderthal and people in NY City wouldn't run from him, at least in daylight. The same is not true of Heidelbergensis or "archaic homo sapiens" i.e. the thing both we and the neanderthal are now supposed to derive from. EVERYBODY would run.

[Waspie_Dwarf]

You could put a white shirt and a tie on a neanderthal and people in NY City wouldn't run from him, at least in daylight. The same is not true of Heidelbergensis or "archaic homo sapiens" i.e. the thing both we and the neanderthal are now supposed to derive from. EVERYBODY would run.

So? I don't see the problem. You seem to be saying that the more primative ancestor presents a problem because it is more primative than either of the species that evolved from it.

We both evolve from a more primitive ancestor. We both evolve along similar lines. What you are claiming as a problem is exactly what I would expect to see.

[Leonardo]

icebear,

You don't have to think of species C as being 'more advanced' than species B, it is simply adapted to occupy a different ecological niche. In the case of homo neanderthalensis this was (probably) a cold-weather or high altitude niche. Not all evolution is straightforward advancement of species from point to point. There can be many branches off the family tree to fit different roles in the ecology.

If you wish to view evolution as straightforward then think of the missing species (the common ancestor) as the number 2; homo neanderthalensis then is the number 3 and homo sapiens is the number 1.

You can see there is only 1 between 1 and 2 and similarly 1 between 2 and 3, however there is 2 between 1 and 3.

[SwampGator]

Leonardo...............

[icebear]

Guys.....

I'll take one more shot at this one and then I'm dropping it since to my thinking it's about like arguing over whether water is wet or whether wild bears go to the bathroom in the woods. I mean, this is really simple stuff.

This is basically the same thing you get in basic algebra, i.e. if A > B and B > C, then A > C. If memory serves, they call that "transitivity" or some such.

I mean, it might be different if somebody were positing an advanced civilization 400,000 years ago and a creature closer to us than to the neanderthal back that far, but nobody is proposing anything like that. The claim is, that we and the neanderthal had a common ancestor, at least as far removed from us as the neanderthal and in fact more primitive than the neanderthal and further from us than the neanderthal.

That claim is incompatible with current DNA knowledge which indicates that the neanderthal was genetically halfway between us and a chimpanzee, that we and neanderthals could not interbreed, and that the neanderthal is therefore ruled out as a plausible ancestor for modern man.

[Waspie_Dwarf]

The claim is, that we and the neanderthal had a common ancestor, at least as far removed from us as the neanderthal and in fact more primitive than the neanderthal and further from us than the neanderthal.

Not sure about the further from us than Neanderthal but otherwise I agree.

That claim is incompatible with current DNA knowledge which indicates that the Neanderthal was genetically halfway between us and a chimpanzee, that we and Neanderthals could not interbreed, and that the Neanderthal is therefore ruled out as a plausible ancestor for modern man.

that we and neanderthals could not interbreed, and that the neanderthal is therefore ruled out as a plausible ancestor for modern man.

This is not the claim. The claim is that there is a little or no evidence that modern man DID interbreed. Not the same thing. In the natural world lions and tigers do not interbreed but the lion/tiger hybrids in zoos around the world prove that such things are possible.

You are arguing apples and oranges. Showing that we are not descended from Neanderthal is NOT incompatible with us having a common ancestor. Both descend from common ancestor, neither descend from the other, it's simple. We also share a common ancestor with the chimpanzee.

Edited October 28, 2006 by Waspie_Dwarf

[IamsSon]

Not sure about the further from us than Neanderthal but otherwise I agree.

You are arguing apples and oranges. Showing that we are not descended from Neanderthal is NOT incompatible with us having a common ancestor. Both descend from common ancestor, neither descend from the other, it's simple. We also share a common ancestor with the chimpanzee.

Wouldn't that mean that even if Neanderthal man was not our genetic ancestor, that there still needs to be another ancestor out there.

If A0 = the genetic ancestor of man, chimpanzee, and neanderthal

Then Ax3 = man (x being whatever number or generations separate man from this common ancestor, x could = 10, 150, 15, 000, ...)

Ax1 = chimpanzee

Ax2 = neanderthal

we know that Ax2 is not in the genetic line between A0 and Ax3, we also know that Ax3 <> Ax2 (they are not equal) since they were not able to mate.

However, there must still be some creature/creatures A(x3 - 1), and even A(x3 - 2), and who knows how many more until we get back to A0. I think that describes what both Waspie and icebear agree to. And I also understood that there must be some species A(x3 - #)<>A0, because A0 is significantly different from Ax3. So my question is where are all the A(x3 - #) species? And if there are no skeletal remains of these specia, how come there are skeletal remains of A0? And if there are no skeletal remains of these specia doesn't that support at least a hypothesis that there may not be an actual ancestral link between A0 and Ax3?

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Firstly IamsSon why would you expect every single species to have been preserved in the fossil record? Secondly, even if they were why would you have expected scientists to have discovered them all?

My memory of Genesis is that it doesn't mention hominids at all, does that mean the entire Bible is null and void and we can forget creationism once and for all?

I'm rather expecting you to say no to my last question. You see the absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence. In any case their are earlier fossils of homonid species stretching back to way befor either we are the Neanderthal came on the scene.

Edited October 28, 2006 by Waspie_Dwarf

[icebear]

However, there must still be some creature/creatures A(x3 - 1), and even A(x3 - 2), and who knows how many more until we get back to A0. I think that describes what both Waspie and icebear agree to. And I also understood that there must be some species A(x3 - #)<>A0, because A0 is significantly different from Ax3. So my question is where are all the A(x3 - #) species? And if there are no skeletal remains of these specia, how come there are skeletal remains of A0? And if there are no skeletal remains of these specia doesn't that support at least a hypothesis that there may not be an actual ancestral link between A0 and Ax3?

To go on thinking that modern man evolved, you'd need to produce something we could have evolved FROM, i.e. a plausible evolutionary antecedent. Such a creature would positively have to be closer to us morphologically than the neanderthal, ruling out the "missing links" which are now being proposed since they are in fact more primitive than the neanderthal, and he would almost certainly have to stand closer to us in time than the neanderthal. The works and remains of such a creature would be terribly easy to find had he ever existed; the works and remains of neanderthals are easy to find and the neanderthal died out further back in time.

Trying to move this plausible antecedant back to 400,000 years ago is the old evolutionite game of trying to use time as a magic wand. Same thing as the two rednecks who were buying watermelons for $2 in Fla and trucking them to NY and Chicago and selling them for $2 and, noticing they weren't making any money, determined they needed a bigger truck.

[contactismade]

I've alaways thought that there was a chance that there is no common ancestor, rather we were descendant from a previous civilization wiped out by one of the many natural disasters in our past.

[icebear]

Then again, aside from the question of fossils, there is the thing which I'd call the evolutionite time sandwich. You have the Haldane dilemma which says that it would take quadrillions of years to evolve from anything close to an ape to modern man (even if that was possible which it isn't):

http://www1.minn.net/~science/Haldane.htm

and then you have a more realistic assessment of the timeframes involving neanderthals, which indicates that only a few thousand years can actually be shown to separate us from them.

Gunnar Heinsohn, of the University of Bremen, is one of Germany's top scholars and a key player in the revision of Med basin chronologies which is presently going on in European academia.

He notes regarding neanderthals:

Mueller-Karpe, the first name in continental paleoanthropology, wrote thirty years ago on the two strata of homo erectus at Swanscombe/England: "A difference between the tools in the upper and in the lower stratum is not recognizable. (From a geological point of view it is uncertain if between the two strata there passed decades, centuries or millennia.)" (Handbuch der Vorgeschichte, Vol I, Munich 1966, p. 293).

The outstanding scholar never returned to this hint that in reality there may have passed ten years where the textbooks enlist one thousand years. Yet, I tried to follow this thread. I went to the stratigraphies of the Old Stone Age which usually look as follows

• modern man (homo sapiens sapiens)
• Neanderthal man (homo sapiens neanderthalensis)
• Homo erectus (invents fire and is considered the first intelligent man).

In my book "Wie alt ist das Menschengeschlecht?" [How Ancient is Man?], 1996, 2nd edition, I focused for Neanderthal man on his best preserved stratigraphy: Combe Grenal in France. Within 4 m of debris it exhibited 55 strata dated conventionally between -90,000 and -30,000.

Roughly one millennium was thus assigned to some 7 cm of debris per stratum. Close scrutiny had revealed that most strata were only used in the summer. Thus, ca. one thousand summers were assigned to each stratum. If, however, the site lay idle in winter and spring one would have expected substratification. Ideally, one would look for one thousand substrata for the one thousand summers. Yet, not even two substrata were discovered in any of the strata. They themselves were the substrata in the 4 m stratigraphy. They, thus, were not good for 60,000 but only for 55 years.

I tested this assumption with the tool count. According to the Binfords' research--done on North American Indians--each tribal adult has at least five tool kits with some eight tools in each of them. At every time 800 tools existed in a band of 20 adults. Assuming that each tool lasted an entire generation (15 female years), Combe Grenals 4,000 generations in 60,000 years should have produced some 3.2 million tools. By going closer to the actual life time of flint tools tens of millions of tools would have to be expected for Combe Grenal. Ony 19,000 (nineteen thousand) remains of tools, however, were found by the excavators.

There seems to be no way out but to cut down the age of Neanderthal man at Combe Grenal from some 60,000 to some 60 years.

I applied the stratigraphical approach to the best caves in Europe for the entire time from Erectus to the Iron Age and reached at the following tentative chronology for intelligent man:

• -600 onwards Iron Age
• -900 onwards Bronze Age
• -1400 beginning of modern man (homo sapiens sapiens)
• -1500 beginning of Neanderthal man
• between -2000 and -1600 beginning of Erectus.

Since Erectus only left the two poor strata like at Swanscombe or El-Castillo/Spain, he should actually not have lasted longer than Neanderthal-may be one average life expectancy. I will now not go into the mechanism of mutation. All I want to remind you of is the undisputed sequence of interstratification and monostratification in the master stratigraphies. This allows for one solution only: Parents of the former developmental stage of man lived together with their own offspring in the same cave stratum until they died out. They were not massacred as textbooks have it:

• monostrat.: only modern man's tools
• interstrat.: Neanderthal man's and modern man's tools side by side
• monostrat.: only Neanderthal man's tools
• interstrat.: Neanderthal man's and Erectus' tools side by side
• monotstrat.: only Erectus tools (deepest stratum for intelligent man)

The year figures certainly sound bewildering. Yet, so far nobody came up with any stratigraphy justifiably demanding more time than I tentatively assigned to the age of intelligent man. I always remind my critics that one millennium is an enormous time span--more than from William the Conqueror to today's Anglo-World. To add a millenium to human history should always go together with sufficient material remains to show for it. I will not even mention the easiness with which scholars add a million years to the history of man until they made Lucy 4 million years old. The time-span-madness is the last residue of Darwinism.

Note that Heinsohn is essentially providing maximal age figures which stratigraphic evidence could actually support. That is not exactly the same thing as claiming that neanderthals arose a couple of thousand years before Christ.