New Proof of Recent Human Evolution

Yes I agree this is proof of evolution....

However we have found footprints in rock strata that date all the way back to the dinosaurs some 25 million years ago. We have also found an iron axe head embedded in the same rock strata. Furthermore, there are rock carvings in Peru that date back 13 million years depicting such things as brain surgery, cesarean section and people riding on the backs of dinosaurs.
3000 years ago we evolved; I don't think so and I don't think that any scientist or anyone with half a brain that has done any research could agree…. but nice try.
I personally believe this is another one of those church run BS campaigns that does nothing but confuse people and #%&# off serious researchers and scientists.

P.S What book of facts are you talking about,because I hope it's not the Bible or you my friend have been seriously misled.

untouchable

there were no dinos 25 million years ago...

the mass extinction event happened about 65 million years ago

and you talk about all these things
you need to show evidence when you make a claim of a 10 million year old carving depicting advanced medical procedures

evidence suggests.

Evidence and Suggest. Words that seem to be diametrically opposed. Proof vs insinuation. Or in this case proof + insinuation. Only question is: is the proof really proof or just insinuation? Where's the proof?

Originally posted by HimWhoHathAnEar
Evidence and Suggest. Words that seem to be diametrically opposed. Proof vs insinuation. Or in this case proof + insinuation. Only question is: is the proof really proof or just insinuation? Where's the proof?

HWAHAE, that's a stupid point
we can never be 100% sure about anything with evidence
unless it's some piece of earth shattering evidence that completely proves a point beyond any shadow of a doubt

evidence is up to reasonable interpretation

the point is deductive reasoning has it's limitation
the only way to be 100% sure of a deduction is to have an infinite amount of observations...

that's why we have the world REASONABLE attached to interpretation

and the word SUGGESTS
because an absolute statement on anything is kind of arrogant

madnessinmysoul,

Thanks for making my point. My reasonable interpretation suggests that maybe this is more of a 'switched off' situation, than a 'switched on' situation.

Almost all Dutch people and 99 percent of Swedes are lactose-tolerant, but the mutation becomes progressively less common in Europeans who live at increasing distance from the ancient Funnel Beaker region.

It seems to me that the people who no longer required adult milk drinking, switched 'off' the gene. Just a reasonable interpretation.

Even Ernst Mayr, the dean of living evolutionists, longtime professor of biology at Harvard, who has alleged that evolution is a "simple fact," nevertheless agrees that it is an "historical science" for which "laws and experiments are inappropriate techniques"2 by which to explain it. One can never actually see evolution in action.

Evolutionists commonly answer the above criticism by claiming that evolution goes too slowly for us to see it happening today. They used to claim that the real evidence for evolution was in the fossil record of the past, but the fact is that the billions of known fossils do not include a single unequivocal transitional form with transitional structures in the process of evolving.

www.icr.org...

[edit on 5-1-2007 by HimWhoHathAnEar]

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
untouchable

there were no dinos 25 million years ago...

the mass extinction event happened about 65 million years ago

and you talk about all these things
you need to show evidence when you make a claim of a 10 million year old carving depicting advanced medical procedures

www.xenophilia.com... ICA Stones
www.guardian.co.uk... AXE
www.answersingenesis.org... Footprints

Sorry I meant to type 65 my bad......
and here a very very very small amount of "proof" if you require more do your own research. I already have! unlike you!

Originally posted by HimWhoHathAnEar

evidence suggests.

Evidence and Suggest. Words that seem to be diametrically opposed. Proof vs insinuation. Or in this case proof + insinuation. Only question is: is the proof really proof or just insinuation? Where's the proof?

In science you let the evidence speak for itself.

If you are interested, I will present the evidence that suggests the presence of a common ancestor. I know it is a thankless task...

I was hoping that people would use legitimate scientific sources when discussing Evolution in this thread. Alas, it has not always been the case.

The "iron axe" mentioned earlier is in fact an axe made out of stone found alongside Homo heidelbergensis and not Homo Sapiens. It is well known that Homo heidelbergensis existed long before even the Neanderthals but in no way is this a miraculous find. You can read more about the original find and their skepticism here and even see the "axe" that they found:
Stone handaxe
Further research failed to find any other tools in on the site and it was eventually determined that the Axe was a later deposit.

The Ica Stones mentioned above are a well known and documented hoax.
"The Ica stone craze began in 1996 with Dr. Javier Cabrera Darquea, a Peruvian physician who allegedly abandoned a career in medicine in Lima to open up the Museo de Piedras Grabadas  (Engraved Stones Museum) in Ica. There he displays his collection of several thousand stones. Dr. Cabrera claims that a farmer found the stones in a cave. The farmer was arrested for selling the stones to tourists. He told the police that he didn't really find them in a cave, but that he made them himself. Other modern Ica artists, however, continue to carve stones and sell forgeries of the farmer's forgeries. In 1975, Basilio Uchuya and Irma Gutierrez de Aparcana claimed that they sold Cabrera stones they'd graved themselves and that they'd chosen their subject matter by copying from "comic books, school books, and magazines" (Polidoro 2002).
The cave where the stones were allegedly discovered has never been identified, much less examined by scientists.
There is no additional evidence to suggest that the stones are ancient and in fact the web site that was used in an earlier post never offered evidence of the stones age.

As for the Human tracks alongside dinosaurs, again there is no evidence. The web site used above is from a Creationist organization that is well known for fabricating evidence to support their claims. They use a report from Russia which once controlled the area in question. The Scientist who wrote the original report, Russian geophysicist Sergei Golovin, NEVER even saw the site. There are numerous dinosaurs foot prints in that area of what is now Turkmenistan, but no where are there any human foot prints along side them, never mind multiple tracks. This area was searched extensively by numerous teams including a team sent by National Geographic and thus far the only scientist to make a claim of human foot prints alongside dinosaurs is a man who never even went to the area. You can read more here:
Walking with Dinosaurs?

While I think it is great that this topic has stirred up a varied discussion, it is important to stick to the facts and not go off on unsupported ideas and fantasy. Remember to Deny Ignorance.

[edit on 6-1-2007 by Terapin]

by melatonin
If you are interested, I will present the evidence that suggests the presence of a common ancestor.

Please do.

I know it is a thankless task...

Ah, such is the nature of an anonymous board. It's really just about the information.

So, in science we can present evidence that humans and chimpanzees and other primates have a common ancestor. The strongest form of evidence is from molecular biology studies of the genomes of each species. If we assume a common designer, we would maybe expect similar attributes as the body plans of chimps and humans are similar but there are also major differences. If you were easily swayed, this could account for the ca. 96% similarity in DNA.

Game over?

Not exactly.

In evolutionary biology we see changes in DNA over time (real observed laboratory evidence) that we use to show common relationships between species. I will present 4 major lines of evidence that indicate the relationship between humans and chimps that cannot be readily explained by a common designer.

1. Cytochrome C
2. Endogenous retroviruses.
3. Redundant Pseudogenes.
4. Chromosome 2.

1. Cytochrome C

Cytochrome C is the protein that is present in all bacteria and eukaryotes and is contained in the mitochondria of cells where it is involved in electron transport and the conversion of oxygen to energy. The cytochrome C gene shows high functional redundency, that is, different basic structures can still perform the same role, but we may find minor differences in their efficiency. It is well-established that many amino-acid mutations can act on proteins and only have minor effects on the function or structure of proteins. Thus in bacteria, we can see many cytochrome C genes having almost completely different protein sequences but still being able to perform the required biological function. We can even substitute the cytochrome C gene from humans into yeast and find no major effect on the yeast.

Thus if there was no relationship between chimps and humans we would expect no similarities between the protein sequences, it could well be completely random. Whereas evolution predicts that the cytochrome c sequences between species will be more similar between closely related species than more distantly related species.

Experimental Finding - the cytochrome C protein sequence of humans and chimps is identical. We find differences of around 10 amino-acids between these two species and other mammals. Yeast cytochrome c differs by 40% of its protein sequence from human and chimps.



2. Endogenous retroviruses

These are the remnants of past viral infections, on rare occassions the genome of the retrovirus will be present in the genome of the species infected. This occurs if the retrovirus becomes embedded into the DNA of sperm or egg cells, it will be passed on to the descendents of these individuals. As mentioned, this is rare and random.

If we assume no common ancestry, we would expect to find random relationships between endogenous retroviruses. If common ancestry is true, we expect to see a phylogenetic relationship, that is, closely related species will have retrogenes in exactly the same places in the chromosome.

Experimental finding - 1% of the human genome contains retroviruses. This is around 30,000 retroviruses in your DNA. Analysis finds 7 common endogenous retroviral insertions in the currently sequenced DNA of humans and chimps. Comparison across primate species shows the expected phylogenetic relationship.

Why would a creator be infecting genomes like this?


3. Redundant Pseudogenes

Pseudogenes are genes that are largely non-functional but are related to functional genes. Redundent psuedogenes are genes that are predominately non-functional but are closely related to a functional gene (those that are transcribed into mRNA).

One example of a pseudogene (which is non-redundant) is the vitamin C gene. Most animals and plants synthesise their own vitamin C, however, as you probably know, humans don't. Neither do apes and guinea pigs. In fact, humans and other apes have a vitamin C pseudogene broken in exactly the same way. Hmmm, what a coincidence. But not the focus here.

Redundant pseudogenes have a related functional gene that is involved in biological processes, the redundent pseudogene is essentially non-functional (they may have some yet unknown function but many studies show their absence has no obvious deleterious effects). As these pseudogenes have no major function, they undergo mutations at almost the fastest rate possible (the random background rate, as delterious mutations are not an issue). We have observed the formation of pseudogenes in the lab and they are due to gene duplication and subsequent mutations on these copied sequences. Gene duplications are a rare event. Thus if common ancestry we not true we would not expect to find the same pseudogenes in identical areas of the chromosome, with the same mutations that removed their original function between closely related species. If common ancestry were a fact we would see these rare events being expressed in the same locations of chromosomes.

Experimental finding - Numerous pseudogenes are found common to humans and chimps. Hemoglobin pseudogene is common to all primates. The Steroid 21-hydroxlase pseudogene is common to chimps and humans and we have the identical 8 base pair deletion.


4. Chromosomal Evidence.

It was known quite a while back that humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes, whilst all the great apes have 24. Why is this? If we did have a common ancestor wouldn't we have the same number?

Maybe, maybe not.

It is possible that a pair of chromosomes fused since humans and chimps diverged in their evolutionary history. If a fusion did occur we would expect to see particular characteristics, this was predicted well before human DNA was analysed. If common ancestry were not true we would not expect to see any relationship between the fused chromosome and the original chromosome pair in chimps.

Experimental finding -

1) The analogous chromosomes (2p and 2q) in the non-human great apes can be shown, when laid end to end, to create an identical banding structure to the human chromosome 2. (1)

2) The remains of the sequence that the chromosome has on its ends (the telomere) is found in the middle of human chromosome 2 where the ancestral chromosomes fused. (2)

3) the detail of this region (pre-telomeric sequence, telomeric sequence, reversed telomeric sequence, pre-telomeric sequence) is exactly what we would expect from a fusion. (3)

4) this telomeric region is exactly where one would expect to find it if a fusion had occurred in the middle of human chromosome 2.

5) the centromere of human chromosome 2 lines up with the chimp chromosome 2p chromosomal centromere.

6) At the place where we would expect it on the human chromosome we find the remnants of the chimp 2q centromere (4).

www.evolutionpages.com...

This is enough evidence for me and most of the scientific world. It is not the only evidence, just what I could be bothered presenting. I'm sure you can find creationistas who question this evidence, however, there is a reason that most people who actually understand the biology accept the evidence as a valid claim for common ancestry whether they be theist or not. The basis of these processes are observed in the lab.

Additional references: www.talkorigins.org...

And just to consolidate that this is also accpeted by theists...

www.scienceandchristianbelief.org...


and this henry morris quote is BS...

Evolutionists commonly answer the above criticism by claiming that evolution goes too slowly for us to see it happening today. They used to claim that the real evidence for evolution was in the fossil record of the past, but the fact is that the billions of known fossils do not include a single unequivocal transitional form with transitional structures in the process of evolving.

We do see evolution happening today. From the finches on Galapogas to new species being formed in the field and in the lab.

Any article that states evolutionary theory is a religion and violates the 2nd law is a joke and a waste of internet bandwidth.

[edit on 6-1-2007 by melatonin]

by melatonin
I'm sure you can find creationistas who question this evidence

I'm sure many of the 'creationistas' went to the same schools as all the other scientists. The fact that there are 'questions' leave it open for scientific debate.

I'm wondering how humans would 'evolve' after a Gamma Ray burst from a nearby star. Or any life for that matter.

Anyway, 'Thank You' for the presentation.

Originally posted by HimWhoHathAnEar
I'm sure many of the 'creationistas' went to the same schools as all the other scientists. The fact that there are 'questions' leave it open for scientific debate.

Anyway, 'Thank You' for the presentation.

You're welcome.

However, only the creationistas ignore evidence, misrepresent arguments, practice quote-mining and other dishonest approaches. They are not practicing scientists and contribute nothing to science. In summary, they have no scientific credibility.

[edit on 6-1-2007 by melatonin]

I'm sorry, but when you label people in an attempt to degrade them. 'Creatistas'. It says something to me about where you're coming from. Creationism is in the Title of the forum, so I don't see where it became a derogatory term. Just takes away from the debate IMO.

Originally posted by HimWhoHathAnEar
I'm sorry, but when you label people in an attempt to degrade them. 'Creatistas'. It says something to me about where you're coming from. Creationism is in the Title of the forum, so I don't see where it became a derogatory term. Just takes away from the debate IMO.

Maybe it does and I apologise if you thought it was derogatory to you.

It is an attempt to label them for what they are. It does not apply to you, you are a consumer of their attempts to mislead people.

There is a reason why people like Gish, Hovind, Morris et al contribute nothing, that is because they do not publish scientific work or even provide honest arguments. They are armchair 'scientists' who mislead and spread propoganda, they degrade themselves and the debate. Hence, 'creationista' to separate from run of the mill creationists. In one quote I could see blinding misleading claims that you have taken on trust, yet it is I, and not Morris, that seems to be the issue.

It's an easy get-out clause I suppose...

[edit on 6-1-2007 by melatonin]

Creationists love to claim that there are no transitional fossil records. Yet many have been found.

"Fossil of fish to amphibian transition discovered
An excellent set of fossils that cover the transition of water dwelling fish to modern tetrapods already exist, but a new find, Tiktaalik roseae, shows some remarkable transitional features such as robust front limbs fringed by fin rays instead of digits.

One particular gap has been between the Middle Devonian Eusthenopteron, a fish with some transitional features and the earliest known tetrapods, Acanthostega and Icthyostega. Tiktaalik, dated at 382 million years ago, falls into this gap, and shows many more transitional features, including robust fins that are capable of supporting the body, transitional patterning of the bones of the pectoral fin, a spine and ribcage capable of supporting the weight of the animal and significant features in the skull such as loss of the gill cover and a longer snout."

Daeschler et al, Nature 440, 757–763 (2006).
Shubin et al, Nature 440, 764–771 (2006).

There are also living transitional species:
A Different Kind of Transitional

Originally posted by Terapin
Tiktaalik roseae, shows some remarkable transitional features such as robust front limbs fringed by fin rays instead of digits.

And to show another misleading claim of Morris, that evolutionary biology is not science, the finding of this fossil was predicted using already existing scientific observation gained from the evolutionary persepective.

They knew exactly where to look for this fossil, the exact strata and conditons. Scientific theories make predictions.

A long time ago, in a lab far far away, biblical creation science made predictions, they were found to be untrue. Now it is not science, just pseudoscience and wishful-thinking.

All very interesting. But where are the transitional forms between species today. I mean like macro, something all of us can point to and know for sure that one species is turning into another.

And on another line of thought. How does Love and Laws play into Evolution. They seem diametrically opposed to Survival of the Fittest. I mean, if I can get you in your sleep and take all your stuff, then that should be all good from an evolutionary stand point. I was smarter and/or stronger, so my genes go on, yours do not. Protecting the weak doesn't play into Evolution. So why have prisons?

Originally posted by HimWhoHathAnEar
All very interesting. But where are the transitional forms between species today. I mean like macro, something all of us can point to and know for sure that one species is turning into another.

All species are undergoing evolution at this time.

A major misinterpretation of evolutionary theory is that it predicts a 'hopeful monster', an animal that is half-dog/half-cat or some such thing or a cat with half a wing.

It doesn't. It is a continuous process, it is gradual, it may have differing rates over time, but essentially it is always happening. What we see in fossils are snap-shots over the geological timescale. All species are complete and differences in individuals and genomes allow natural selection to take place. Changes take place all the time - beaks in Darwin's finches change size and shape depending on environment and Lizards have been shown to adjust in similar ways. Novel mutations creating new functions do occur, it is not just adaptation of pre-existing alleles.

And on another line of thought. How does Love and Laws play into Evolution. They seem diametrically opposed to Survival of the Fittest. I mean, if I can get you in your sleep and take all your stuff, then that should be all good from an evolutionary stand point. I was smarter and/or stronger, so my genes go on, yours do not. Protecting the weak doesn't play into Evolution. So why have prisons?

Morals and empathy/altruism are inextricably linked in my opinion (and many others). Love is just a complex emotion, it involves attachment to another individual.

Mammals do protect the weak, many also live in social groups which have social rules. Considering evolution involves the heredity of DNA it would be silly if evolution didn't provide mechnisms for protecting weaker member of a social group with a chance of possessing a high proportion of your DNA.

Empathy (the ability to feel/represent the emotion of another) is found in species other than humans. Altruism (helping another individual with no direct benefit) is also common to many species, it is well-explained in evolutionary theory - "help those with DNA similar to yours" - kin altrusim; "I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine" - reciprocal altruism

I have outlined some of the major ideas on this here. The OP of that thread also presents some of the recent findings in neuroscience and psychology.

[edit on 6-1-2007 by melatonin]

I must reply to comment about the Ica stones being hoax.

First of all, did you do any research besides reading the one article I posted for you?

If you were to actually do research on this topic you would find that almost 85% of the articles written by doctors, scientists and archaeologists alike validate the authenticity of the Ica stones. The only reason it was labeled as a hoax is because the government of Peru did not want grave robbers and other treasure hunters coming to their country and stealing their antiquities. The BBC in fact did a documentary when the Ica stones were discovered and interviewed numerous scientists about their authenticity and confirmed that the stones could not have been made by one man. (which is the claim of the Peruvian government) They also did carbon dating on the stones and found that they could date back as far as 13 million years. Sorry, I meant NASA did carbon dating on the stones and proved their age and authenticity.

I don't mean to nit-pick but I've read some of your other posts and it seems a person as intelligent as you would not dismiss information without getting all of the facts first.

And as far as the axe goes......... Same as above, read more,then comment.

As far as creationism being a pseudoscience. I would say to this even is a very gross overstatement. Even using the word science to describe creationism is probably the biggest contradiction in terms I've ever heard.
It is the same as "military intelligence"...lol

However I do agree with your almost all of your analogies about this particular topic.

If I'm wrong about your research methods; could you please provide me with links to sites where you got your information? So I can cross-reference it myself. I hate being wrong or ignorant and I would read anything you would like me to read about the subjects as you obviously have a strong opinion about these particular topics.

I would also like to say that I don't mean to criticize you, just the method you used to gather the information that you based your opinion on.