Question about the "neanderthals"

Karl - Liberal Backslider said:

What I'm amazed about with Cuozzo's version of events is how it is that even the skeletons of Neanderthal children show the same features he puts down to advanced age.

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Karl, what specifically are you referring to? Having those specifics down will help us when we encounter Cuozzo again.

I believe the shape of the skull, i.e., the jawline and browline being so far advanced.

lucaspa said:

Karl, what specifically are you referring to? Having those specifics down will help us when we encounter Cuozzo again.

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The specifics escape me. In a nutshell, Cuozzo is claiming that the features which distinguish Neanderthal skeletons are just features of extremely advanced age - i.e. hundreds of years old - in humans

Were this so, immature Neanderthals should not show these features, but they do.

I'll try to dig up the details (if you'll excuse the pun).

Karl - Liberal Backslider said:

The specifics escape me. In a nutshell, Cuozzo is claiming that the features which distinguish Neanderthal skeletons are just features of extremely advanced age - i.e. hundreds of years old - in humans

Were this so, immature Neanderthals should not show these features, but they do.

I'll try to dig up the details (if you'll excuse the pun).

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Thanks. Because Cuozzo is claiming that the juvenile Neandertals do not have the features. So we do need the details. I'll check Tattersall.

All animals evolve. It is a fact that we have Cro-Magnon DNA in our cells now. We have evolved since the early days of man, we have evolved since early civilization.BUT, our evolution is not fast, it never was. Milliions upon millions of years are usually required for a full mutation and evolutionary change to become permanent. AND, mankind has not been under the same environmental stresses as our distant ancestors. Even the poorest countries have shelter ... usually. Look, though, how we adapt to our environment. In harsh Africa, darker skin to protect from the sun. In the almost sunless north Atlantic, fair skin to absorb as much sunlight as possible. Our environment changed massively over time. Species either evolved, or died. The Neanderthals were perfect for their ice age environment, but could not cut it when the ice began to recede. Species who developed in the most stable regions survived.

If a group of predominately red-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned people live on an island, almost entirely cut off from any other kind for many generations, before long, the most pervasive traits will be red hair, blue eyes, and fair skin ... can you think of an island where this might have happened?

Ireland.

Inspired said:

All animals evolve. It is a fact that we have Cro-Magnon DNA in our cells now.

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Cro-Magnon, yes. They are the same species we are.

Milliions upon millions of years are usually required for a full mutation and evolutionary change to become permanent.

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That's not true. If it were, we could not have evolved thru several species from the common ancestor of humans and chimps in just 7 million years. H. sapiens is no more than 200,000 years old tops. Evolution happens faster than this.

The Neanderthals were perfect for their ice age environment, but could not cut it when the ice began to recede. Species who developed in the most stable regions survived.

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This is too simplistic. Neandertals went extinct before the last Ice Age even started. After all, Neandertals went extinct 30,000 years ago and the last Ice Age ended only 12,000 years ago. No, it appears that H. sapiens drove Neandertals to extinction because they were better adapted to the niche of sentient tool maker than Neandertals were.

If a group of predominately red-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned people live on an island, almost entirely cut off from any other kind for many generations, before long, the most pervasive traits will be red hair, blue eyes, and fair skin ... can you think of an island where this might have happened?

Ireland.

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So? Is this evolution? Has this population changed thru time?

It's a change in the frequency of alleles.

Just for the record, the Neanderthal characteristics which Ark Guy outlines (and indicates that Dr. Cuozzo saw as trends in aged people) are those of "Classic Neanderthals" who lived in Europe and adjacent Asia (e.g., western Kazakhstan) during the last (Würm or Wisconsin) glaciation. Other Neanderthals, with less emphatic characteristics, lived in the Middle East prior to this time, and are often referred to as "Levantine Neanderthals" to make the distinction between them and the later Classic, European ones.

Paleoanthropologists are strongly divided between deeming them a subspecies of Homo sapiens and a separate species, Homo neanderthalensis, quite closely related to us; the latter view seems to be gaining acceptance over the past decade or so. Standing against this is a find in Spain containing skeletons with both Neanderthal and "true human" (i.e., biologically Homo sapiens) characters, suggesting that they were the products of intergroup mating.

And, not to contradict Bushido's first post, but only "Old Man Neanderthal," the arthritic type specimen that everybody brings up, was emphatically a hunched posture. The majority of skeletons, if found articulated or when re-articulated, indicate a slightly slouched posture as compared to modern man but not truly hunched over.

It's also worth noting that at least some Neanderthals had funeral customs -- excavations of Neanderthal graves in Eastern Europe have found them with the brittle, dried remnants of flowers placed on the corpse. To me there is something singularly poignant in this.

I can definitely be cited as having over-exaggerated, but the fact that neanderthals young and old were hunched over, alot or a little, is the point that should be taken.

As far as the rest of your post, I've come to the general consensus that when there are two theory's strongly in conflict (that have evidence for them), it's possible that the answer lies in the middle. Perhaps H. neanderthal broke off from the "main" branch, so to speak, and then re-integrated back?

Polycarp1 said:

Just for the record, the Neanderthal characteristics which Ark Guy outlines (and indicates that Dr. Cuozzo saw as trends in aged people) are those of "Classic Neanderthals" who lived in Europe and adjacent Asia (e.g., western Kazakhstan) during the last (Würm or Wisconsin) glaciation. Other Neanderthals, with less emphatic characteristics, lived in the Middle East prior to this time, and are often referred to as "Levantine Neanderthals" to make the distinction between them and the later Classic, European ones.

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Right. Notice that, as time goes on, the neanderals become more neandertal. That is, they exhibit more specialized traits that distinguish them from H. sapiens. If there were gene flow between sapiens and neandertal, this would not be happening.

Paleoanthropologists are strongly divided between deeming them a subspecies of Homo sapiens and a separate species, Homo neanderthalensis, quite closely related to us; the latter view seems to be gaining acceptance over the past decade or so. Standing against this is a find in Spain containing skeletons with both Neanderthal and "true human" (i.e., biologically Homo sapiens) characters, suggesting that they were the products of intergroup mating.

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It's one fossil. Not plural skeletons. One individual, and a kid. The characters also fall within the variability of stocky humans.
6. Ian Tattersall*, and Jeffrey H. Schwartz, Commentary Hominids and hybrids: the place of Neanderthals in human evolution PNAS 96, Issue 13, 7117-7119, June 22, 1999
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/96/13/7117

The DNA data is pretty much clinching it. There are simply no old DNA sequences in the sapiens genome, and those would be there if there had been significant interbreeding with neandertals that produced fertile hybrids. There may still have been the occasional rape or marriage and the production of the occasional hybrid, but it appears that, if this is so, the F1 hybrid was either sterile or less fit and did not breed back into the sapiens population.
11. A Gibbons, Modern men trace ancestry to African migrants. Science 292:1051-1052, May 11, 2001. Y chromosome of EVERY person in the study could be traced to forefathers who lived in Africa 35,000 to 89,000 years ago. "one self-described 'dedicated multiregionalist,' Vince Sarich of the University of California, Berkeley, admitted: 'I have undergone a conversion -- a sort of epiphany. There are no old Y chromosomes lineages. There are no old mtDNA lineages. Period. It was a total replacement.' " In another study, Peter Underhill and colleagues analyzed 218 markers in 1062 men from 21 populations.Primary paper is Y Ke, B Su, D Lu, L Chen, H Li, C Qi, S Marzuki, R Deka, P Underhill, C Xiao, M Shriver, J Lell, D Wallace, RS Wells, M Selestad, P Oefner, D Zhu, W Huang, R Chakraborty, Z Chen, L Jin, African Origin of modern humans in east Asia: a tale of 12,000 Y chromosomes. Science 292: 1151-1153, May 11, 2001.

It's also worth noting that at least some Neanderthals had funeral customs -- excavations of Neanderthal graves in Eastern Europe have found them with the brittle, dried remnants of flowers placed on the corpse. To me there is something singularly poignant in this.

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And very troubling for creationists. It indicates that neandertals had an idea of an afterlife. That makes them just like humans theologically but not humans.

Chi_Cygni said:

But people lived to lesser ages in the past.

No one has ever found a skeleton with evidence of great ages.

There are scholars who claim the ages in the Bible are mistranslations.

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Not necessarily. The are noting how long that familial name continued. Bear in mind how names and familial lines were applied and traced. As long as an eldest son was born to carry on the fathers name it would be continued in the lineage. Technically, a man named "Bob" could live for several generations. Not the original but his successor eldest son. The use of surnames and numerical qualifiers (jr. II, III, etc) are a very recent western concept.

CZE

Inspired said:

Milliions upon millions of years are usually required for a full mutation and evolutionary change to become permanent.

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Rapid speciation of the Faeroe Island house mouse, which occurred in less than 250 years after man brought the creature to the island. Stanley, S., 1979. Macroevolution: Pattern and Process, San Francisco, W.H. Freeman and Company. p. 41

Formation of five new species of cichlid fishes which formed since they were isolated less than 4000 years ago from the parent stock, Lake Nagubago. Mayr, E., 1970. Populations, Species, and Evolution, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press. p. 348

It takes far lest than millions of years.

CZE

Inspired said:

.If a group of predominately red-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned people live on an island, almost entirely cut off from any other kind for many generations, before long, the most pervasive traits will be red hair, blue eyes, and fair skin ... can you think of an island where this might have happened?

Ireland.

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This is Genetic Drift. Mongols are another example, as are the various polynesian groups. In more contemporary terms, Amish also exhibit Genetic drift. It is part of evolution.

CZE

lucaspa said:

Chi_Cygni, while the problem of ages in your post is fascinating, and does refute the interpretation of the vast ages, the text still has some problems.

1. I have never heard of an independent source for Noah outside Genesis. This is saying Noah was a king, which is not mentioned in the Bible. Now, is the discussion of the clay tablets for real -- do we have the clay tablets -- or is it speculation on the author's part and presented as fact?

2. The article fails to mention that there is an earlier Flood story in the Gilgamesh epic -- the story of Unt-napushtim. The Noah story seems to be plagiarized from that, but this article fails to mention it and acts as tho the story were original in the Bible.

3. The article fails to mention that there are two Flood stories -- the J and P -- that were woven together by the Redactor of Genesis but which can still be easily separated.

4. "The Sumerian King List mentions the flood after the reigns of SU.KUR.LAM and his son Ziusudra. The Genesis 5 list ends with the flood after the genealogy of Lamech and and his son Noah. Lamech was SU.KUR.LAM and Noah was Ziusudra. "

This seems a real stretch. Just because there is a king's list doesn't mean that Lamech and Noah were the kings. There were lots of other people living at the time other than the kings! This is speculation presented as fact and causes me think that the age numbers are also speculation presented as fact.

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In the creation mythology of peoples of the mideast and mediterranean regions I believe all have a flood aspect. The Greek, Roman, Etruscan, Cretian, Egyption. Pretty substantial circumstantial evidenced for a flood. From their frame of reference, such a flood would have been global. But the "world" to them was relatively small.

CZE

cze_026 said:

Rapid speciation of the Faeroe Island house mouse, which occurred in less than 250 years after man brought the creature to the island. Stanley, S., 1979. Macroevolution: Pattern and Process, San Francisco, W.H. Freeman and Company. p. 41

Formation of five new species of cichlid fishes which formed since they were isolated less than 4000 years ago from the parent stock, Lake Nagubago. Mayr, E., 1970. Populations, Species, and Evolution, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press. p. 348

It takes far lest than millions of years.

CZE

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I think Inspired means the resultant difference between populations, such as chimp and human.

Perhaps those fish were speciated but not so far separate that they bore the differences of the chimps and humans?

Bushido216 said:

It's a change in the frequency of alleles.

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Bushido, that's too simplistic. For starters, it doesn't give speciation. Or rather, it gives anagenesis but not cladogenesis. That is, it transforms one population to another over time but does not give new species. Ernst Mayr hated this definition, and I agree with him.

"No Darwinian I know questions the fact that the processes of organic evolution are consistent with the laws of the physical sciences, but it makes no sense to say that biological evolution has been "reduced" to physical laws. Biological evolution is the result of specific processes that impinge on specific systems, the explanation of which is meaningful only at the level of complexity of those processes and those systems. And the classical theory of evolution has not been reduced to a "molecular theory of evolution," an assertion based on such reductionist definitions of evolution as "a change in gene frequencies in natural populations." This reductionist definition omits the crucial aspects of evolution: changes in diversity and adaptation. (Once I gave a lump of sugar to a racoon in a zoo. He ran with it to his water basin and washed it vigorously until there was nothing left of it. No complex system should be taken apart to the extent that nothing of significance is left.)" Ernst Mayr, Evolution, Scientific American 239: 47-55, Sept. 1978.

I really suggest that you don't use this one.

I don't mean to say that all evolution is a change in the frequency of alleles. My only intent was to show that adaptation was the change in the frequency of alleles, the very base iteration of the process, before mutations are even added into the equation.

Buck72 said:

Oh brother, we can have a FIELD DAY with this sort of disqualification!!

Charles Lyell was a lawyer

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Someone else already dealt with Darwin, so I'll take Lyell. Lyell originally entered college for law, but he ended up taking a geology course and became quite fascinated on the subject. He continued his education over the next several years. He learned from people on both sides of the debate - both Huttonian gradualists and supporters of George Cuvier (Biblical literalism). Lyell studied under Louis Prevost for a while, during which time his Huttonian attitude became predominate. Afterwards, he traveled through France and Italy, collecting information for his Principles of Geology.

cze_026 said:

In the creation mythology of peoples of the mideast and mediterranean regions I believe all have a flood aspect. The Greek, Roman, Etruscan, Cretian, Egyption. Pretty substantial circumstantial evidenced for a flood. From their frame of reference, such a flood would have been global. But the "world" to them was relatively small.

CZE

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However, most of these derived from the Babylonian; they weren't independent.

Richard Andre did a comprehensive collection of myths about the floods. It was Die Flutsagen: Ehnthographisch Btrachtet, 1891. Andre had nearly 90 deluge traditions. Of these, 26 arose from the Babylonian story and 43 were independent. He noted a lack of deluge traditions in Arabia, Japan, northern and central Asia, Africa, and much of Europe. He concluded that not everyone had descended from survivors of a single deluge, otherwise the traditions would all have been much more identical and there would be deluge traditions in every society instead of a minority.

Bushido216 said:

As far as the rest of your post, I've come to the general consensus that when there are two theory's strongly in conflict (that have evidence for them), it's possible that the answer lies in the middle. Perhaps H. neanderthal broke off from the "main" branch, so to speak, and then re-integrated back?

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Both neandertals and sapiens descended from H. erectus. The early neandertals and sapiens both show indications of erectus features. However, once they speciated, both the preponderance of the fossil evidence and all the DNA evidence says sapiens and neandertals stayed separate.

Erectus to neandertalis:
Stenheim and Swanscombe, 250 Kya: called H. heidelbergensis but have characteristics of both erectus and neandertalis. Large brows and small cranium ( ~1200cc) but otherwise looks like neandertalis
Petroloma skull (complete): brow ridges and low forehead like erectus but not quite as primitive but not as derived as sapiens or neandertalis. Back of head resembles sapiens. 250 Kya
Ehrendorf in Germany and Saccopestore in Italy: mixture erectus and early neandertals, classed as archaic H. sapiens or H. heidelbergensis.