Observation, biology, and evolution [Thread Split]

fliptw · Post by **fliptw** » Fri Apr 08, 2011 11:58 am

We are not children, however.

flip · Post by **flip** » Fri Apr 08, 2011 11:59 am

Never said you were, but, even a child could still recognize that that is the truth. He might get mad and vent a little but eventually he will have to concede.

fliptw · Post by **fliptw** » Fri Apr 08, 2011 12:13 pm

flip wrote:Never said you were, but, even a child could still recognize that that is the truth. He might get mad and vent a little but eventually he will have to concede.

Its also a Wikipedia article that is badly written, even for Simple English article.

Lets move on from this reductio ad absurdum.

CUDA · Post by **CUDA** » Fri Apr 08, 2011 12:14 pm

WOW I had to do a double take flip and fliptw I didn't catch the tw and thought you were ragging on yourself

flip · Post by **flip** » Fri Apr 08, 2011 12:30 pm

Well actually, from out of nowhere you have jumped into the conversation. That's fine, but up till now it's been a discussion of facts,void of emotion. I'm willing to accept what you can prove, but no way can we move forward when all is provided is myths and fables. How can we move on if we can't even concur on a simple truth?

Lol Cuda, hell I might as well too.

fliptw · Post by **fliptw** » Fri Apr 08, 2011 12:44 pm

No its not true, the English article is full of citations that prove the Simple English article is in error.

Regardless the Simple English article no longer has any bearing to this discussion.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Fri Apr 08, 2011 12:48 pm

The population bottleneck definitely happened; but what caused it is unknown. A global catastrophe is one potential source of such a bottleneck but such an event would surely cause a much more obvious mass extinction than what the geological/fossil record displays.

There is another cause of a population bottleneck that doesn't require a global extinction scale catastrophe in order to happen: a small population becoming isolated on an island can do it. The evidence supporting this hypothesis is everywhere: Compared to our ancestors, modern Humans have an incredibly pronounced trend towards becoming marine mammals. Unlike most primates we can swim, hold our breath, have fat deposits like most marine mammals and are frequently born with webbed feet/fingers.

Of course that begs the question of "So what happened to the ancestors that weren't locked away on an island?". If they weren't wiped out by a natural catastrophe, then they were probably wiped out by the first man-made one: they could have been driven to extinction by the island dwellers once they escaped the island. The island dwellers likely had some significant evolutionary advantage over the ancestor race that made it impossible to compete with them for territory/resources. Humans are still causing extinctions even today for this very reason, other species are unable to compete with us for territory and they die out as a result.

flip · Post by **flip** » Fri Apr 08, 2011 1:18 pm

Regardless the Simple English article no longer has any bearing to this discussion.

At least the simple one is more honest about the subject. No where does your version explain that it's nothing more than imagining what could have happened 1000's of years ago. In your version, many wild claims are made without any external evidence. It's whole purpose being to try explain the numbers discrepancy. I could walk all the way through those links and and find nothing but absurdity and unfounded opinion. It's hypocritical of you or any other not to hold yourself to the same scrutiny as you expect me to of my beliefs. And my beliefs, as has been pointed out ad nauseum, at least has some.

EDIT: A 6 inch think layer of ash of such magnitude should be real easy to find. Especially if you even know the general area of where the eruption occurred. No way you can make such an adamant claim about truth and not even be able to produce that.

dissent · Post by **dissent** » Fri Apr 08, 2011 3:51 pm

Behemoth wrote:What i'm saying is i haven't seen any conclusive evidence, Just skulls.

Then you should look into the information available from DNA and genetic analysis. Great apes have 24 pairs of chromosomes. Humans have 23. So how can humans be so closely related to chimps? Have a look at the evidence for the fusion of chromosome 2. The human Chromosome 2 looks just like what you would expect to see from the fusion of two chimp chromsomes.

I guess i can't explain it how i should, but i believe there should be much more evidence if at one time we had a whole species of these types of humans, evidence like that should be scattered all over the planet.
That's just a general assumption, and i'm not saying it necessarily fact.

Why should there be much more evidence? Fossilization is relatively rare. Additional recent genetic evidence has led to hypotheses that the population of humans has experienced severe reductions at various times within the last hundred thousand years or so. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocen ... _in_Africa
If true, then human populations have not been growing at a steady pace since modern humans evolved, and so one would expect the evidence to be harder to find, and probably not of world-wide extentr.

Tunnelcat · Post by **Tunnelcat** » Fri Apr 08, 2011 4:12 pm

And if Evolution isn't still some myth, we now have proof of our own design. Since bacteria reproduce their numbers so rapidly, they can evolve far faster than slower growing humans.

http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/c ... 51664.html

They've even found bedbugs to be resistant to DDT, the pesticide of choice.

http://www.panna.org/blog/DDT-for-bedbugs

Life alters itself and evolves to survive.

Top Gun · Post by **Top Gun** » Fri Apr 08, 2011 7:07 pm

Okay, wow...this discussion seems to have run off the rails somewhat. Let me try to take a step back here. I'll just ignore the whole thing about Simple Wikipedia, since that seems to have been tossed back-and-forth enough.

flip wrote:Again, this seems more like religion to me than truth. It's in essence exactly as the religious do. They have a set idea in their heads and instead of constantly challenging it, they start coming up with ideas of how this could be true. I find it disingenuous. Would have been nice if there was at least ONE external piece of evidence other than a "it could be this too" argument. Like a 6 inch layer of ash in one of these core samples they keep taking, from that area. When I see that, I'll put that over in the proven and solid box and try to build something on it.

Flip, I think you're misunderstanding something about the point I was making about that eruption. The discussion over causes and such has nothing to do with either the genetic bottleneck or the eruption by itself, but instead the two of them combined together. We know for a fact that there was some sort of bottleneck process in humanity's past, because we can see the evidence for it in the DNA of disparate cultures today. (Mitochondrial DNA is especially useful for examining relations; I can get into that if you want.) We also know for a fact that this supervolcano on the island of Sumatra erupted about 70,000 years ago; we can see the remnant caldera, and we've found that layer of ash in the rock strata around the area that you keep mentioning. Based on the estimated timing of these two events, along with some other data, some scientists have hypothesized that this eruption was the cause of the genetic bottleneck. Others disagree, pointing out some of the seemingly-contradictory points that you've mentioned. Scientists on both sides will continue to keep searching for more evidence, to see if their position continues to hold up or not.

In a broader sense, this is exactly how the scientific process works. Science, or at least good science, doesn't just make up evidence in order to support an idea, or somehow force-fit data into an existing concept. The scientific method involves making observations of some sort of natural process, and then forming a hypothesis about what the cause of that process might be. Scientists gather data, whether via direct experiments or observations, to see whether the hypothesis holds up in reality or not. If it seems to hold up, then they can move forward...if not, that hypothesis is discarded, and the scientists needs to look for a new possible cause. Over time, if several different hypotheses related to the same subject hold up, they can be treated as a scientific theory, essentially a broad hypothesis that's supported by large amounts of data and provides a model for a certain process. A scientific theory can never be definitively proven, even if it holds up over a long period of time, but it can be revised or even replaced as new discoveries are made. A somewhat-related concept is a scientific law, which is a specific mathematical relationship that describes an observed behavior; the law of gravitational attraction and Einstein's energy-mass relationship are famous examples.

So to sum up, there's a pretty big difference between a religious belief in the sense of, "It says so in the Bible, so it must be true!" and a scientific hypothesis, which says something like, "The data I have seem to suggest this is true, so let's look for more evidence and see if it holds up." The concept of that specific volcanic eruption causing a bottleneck in the human population at the time is a hypothesis, which has its supporters and detractors. Even if it doesn't hold up as time passes, the two events in question are still definitely true.

flip · Post by **flip** » Fri Apr 08, 2011 10:07 pm

Ok let's say your right. Let's say that for around 130000 years man existed in our present state, then 70.000 years ago, a huge catastrophe occurs that cuts the population back to only around 1000 breeding pair. These are humans correct or are they basically still hominids. When are humans supposed to have developed speech and using tools?

Top Gun · Post by **Top Gun** » Fri Apr 08, 2011 11:32 pm

According to a bit of quick searching, hominids may have started using definable tools some 2.6 million years ago (which is where the term "Stone Age" comes from), so it was a looooong time before modern humans hit the scene. There's a lot more debate on the origin of definable language, since there isn't exactly a record of what happened in prehistoric times (hence the name), and it's hard to distinguish between a more animal-esque communication system and true formalized languages. It looks like the most common thought is that true language showed up around 100,000 years ago, although earlier hominids would have had some sort of more primitive communication systems.

Heretic · Post by **Heretic** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 12:43 am

Let see what animals use tools. Chimpanzees, Crows, Orangutans, Elephants, Dolphins, Sea Otters, Gorillas, Macaques, and even Rodents can be taught to use tools.

Chimpanzees use sticks to get termites out of their hive and have been know to make spears to hunt with.

Crows have prune twigs to poke in holes to get at food.

Orangutans make whistles to ward off predators.

Elephants

Dolphins

Point being Humans can not be defined by the use of tools seeing how more and more animals have been seen using tools.

Top Gun · Post by **Top Gun** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 12:48 am

...when did I deny that other species used tools, or state that humans were defined solely by tool use? I was just providing information about the first evidence we have of hominid tool use.

Heretic · Post by **Heretic** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 3:18 am

Why so defensive?

dissent · Post by **dissent** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 6:41 am

flip wrote:These are humans correct or are they basically still hominids.

The term is anatomically modern humans. Looks like somewhere around 200,000 years ago. The Wiki article on the Paleolithic has some context.

flip · Post by **flip** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 7:13 am

So, around 200,000 years ago we were still more ape or human? I can't find a clear answer. Did we still possess fur? I would also ask if Foil could make a good estimate on population increase over a period of 130,000 years based on what we have actually experienced. He's a mathematician so I feel his estimate would be honest.

EDIT: No actually, based on 1000 breeding pairs 70,000 years ago to present, or whatever you feel is most fair.

dissent · Post by **dissent** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 9:56 am

flip wrote:So, around 200,000 years ago we were still more ape or human? I can't find a clear answer.

Here's a list of human ancestors. Follow through there to see where you think the ape-human transition is. On this list archaic Homo sapiens is said to appear about 500,000 years ago.

oh, and btw; you possess fur now, don't you?

... if Foil could make a good estimate on population increase over a period of 130,000 years ...

http://science.jrank.org/pages/48706/Po ... rends.html ... won't be an easy kind of calculation.

flip · Post by **flip** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 10:09 am

Yes I guess your right. To be more specific, I am wondering when we decided to clothe ourselves.

CUDA · Post by **CUDA** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 10:23 am

flip wrote:Yes I guess your right. To be more specific, I am wondering when we decided to clothe ourselves.

right after they ate of the fruit of the tree of Knowledge

callmeslick · Post by **callmeslick** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 10:28 am

flip wrote:Yes I guess your right. To be more specific, I am wondering when we decided to clothe ourselves.

personally, I chose to do so after a particularly nasty sunburn. Your mileage may vary.

flip · Post by **flip** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 11:25 am

All I know is there had to have been a bunch of them

I'm just testing the theory myself to see how it stands up to common sense. I mean a 1000 breeding pairs multiplying for 70,000 years, I'm pretty sure they would have left their mark, especially if they had enough sense to make clothe, and sew, then they had enough sense to build shelter too. That's alot of people to house, feed, and clothe yet hardly a trace. So, now you have to explain the lack of numbers from just 70,000 years ago until now.

null0010 · Post by **null0010** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 12:13 pm

Common sense is far from logic; neither is it scientific, flip.

flip · Post by **flip** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 12:48 pm

LOL I couldn't agree with you more buddy.

SilverFJ · Post by **SilverFJ** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 12:51 pm

My common sense says that "Evolution" is a religon, and that most speculative "Science" is just human pretentiousness at work. Example? The study of Jupiter. scientists make so many claims about it that are taught in schools, but nobody's...ever...been...there. To pretend we know anything about it is stupidity. Sure, we have sattelite photos and such, but that's the same as fossils. We know something was here, but we don't know how or when.

Ferno · Post by **Ferno** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 12:53 pm

SilverFJ wrote:My common sense says that "Evolution" is a religon, and that most speculative "Science" is just human pretentiousness at work. Example? The study of Jupiter. scientists make so many claims about it that are taught in schools, but nobody's...ever...been...there. To pretend we know anything about it is stupidity. Sure, we have sattelite photos and such, but that's the same as fossils. We know something was here, but we don't know how or when.

I gotta say, that's one of the best troll posts i've seen here.

SilverFJ · Post by **SilverFJ** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 12:56 pm

It's trollish to share my opinion on a thread that was split because of something I said to begin with?
Go fetch or something.

callmeslick · Post by **callmeslick** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 1:01 pm

SilverFJ wrote:My common sense says that "Evolution" is a religon

ok, I've read this enough times.......sorry, but evolution is a proven fact. It occurs, and does so in every single species which has been observed and measured. To suppose that it would not, or did not occur within the hominids is ludicrous.

and that most speculative "Science" is just human pretentiousness at work. Example? The study of Jupiter. scientists make so many claims about it that are taught in schools, but nobody's...ever...been...there.

you're joking, right? I mean, you have to be aware that we have observed it from afar for centuries, have sent spacecraft there with real-time data collection and all.......

To pretend we know anything about it is stupidity. Sure, we have sattelite photos and such, but that's the same as fossils. We know something was here, but we don't know how or when.

well, I have to concede, you do have a leg up on knowing about stupidity.......yeesh!

SilverFJ · Post by **SilverFJ** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 1:03 pm

But nobody's ever been there. Like I said, there are methods of collection, but we don't even know if it's Jupiter gas or some crazy aliens messing with us.
For somebody who talks about doing a ★■◆● - ton of drugs recreationally, you sure haven't opened your mind to radical possibilities.

And there's a difference between micro- and macro-evolution.

And as for conceding, thanks. Continue to do so.

callmeslick · Post by **callmeslick** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 1:15 pm

SilverFJ wrote:But nobody's ever been there.

so what? Is human knowledge supposed to be limited to our physical presence. By that logic, the moon didn't exist until the late 1960's, as far as we knew, right?

Like I said, there are methods of collection, but we don't even know if it's Jupiter gas or some crazy aliens messing with us.
For somebody who talks about doing a **** - ton of drugs recreationally, you sure haven't opened your mind to radical possibilities.

radical possibilites, I'm all for. I still like to approach reality logically.

And there's a difference between micro- and macro-evolution.

please explain. I'll go make popcorn and wait. By the way, what credentials are you bringing to the table, so I can tailor my reply? I'm coming from two degrees in Biology, for the sake of disclosure.

And as for conceding, thanks. Continue to do so.

I'll concede that I feel you really don't understand science, from what I've read so far, as well.

SilverFJ · Post by **SilverFJ** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 1:21 pm

Since you seem to be such a Biology virtuoso, here's something you should understand.
http://www.exchangedlife.com/Creation/macro-evol.shtml

Other than that, I'm not going to let you pick apart my posts like a lab experiment and answer for my opinions at your whim.
Flippin insulting. You clearly don't understand what concede means

But, since you asked, I supposed I'll tell you I'm educated along the lines of animal husbandry and natural horsemanship.

callmeslick · Post by **callmeslick** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 1:29 pm

decent writeup on evolution. Wrong in several conclusions, but a functional definition of micro v. macro.
The key issue I have is for anyone to suggest that we have no proof of macro-evolution. It can clearly be demonstrated in unicellular organisms(down to change to a new species), and many functional examples exist in higher organisms(both amphibians and insects come to mind, but I'd have to dig up linkage).

Don't get all defensive on me, by the way. I'm questioning your assertions. If you wish to merely concede that you were wrong and/or just making stuff up, feel free. Just don't take it personally......

SilverFJ · Post by **SilverFJ** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 1:32 pm

No, screw you dude, you come on here for a couple days and you're already throwing around smarmy insults at people. I'm not undereducated at all, I could very well regurgitate all the things I have been taught but I think for myself and take everything with a grain of salt. Go away.

callmeslick · Post by **callmeslick** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 1:38 pm

SilverFJ wrote:No, screw you dude, you come on here for a couple days and you're already throwing around smarmy insults at people. I'm not undereducated at all, I could very well regurgitate all the things I have been taught but I think for myself and take everything with a grain of salt. Go away.

simmer down, Admiral. Oh, and for the record, I've been reading here for 3 weeks.

SilverFJ · Post by **SilverFJ** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 1:40 pm

Took me a second to get the "Admiral" crack.

I'm not saying being here longer gives you a right to be a dick to people, but at least get to know people before you sling your stuff around. Me and Ferno could bicker all day, cuz it's happened for at least 10 years, and I'll still like the dude.

callmeslick · Post by **callmeslick** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 1:49 pm

SilverFJ wrote:Took me a second to get the "Admiral" crack. I'm not saying being here longer gives you a right to be a dick to people, but at least get to know people before you sling your stuff around. Me and Ferno could bicker all day, cuz it's happened for at least 10 years, and I'll still like the dude.

as I wrote you privately, I'm opinionated, and a tad sarcastic. But, as CUDA noted elsewhere, I DO try and think before firing the missles. If you like me after 10 years of these sort of exchanges, I'll be flattered.
Well, that, and truly amazed that we still have functional electric power and Internet service in the US.

Top Gun · Post by **Top Gun** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 2:45 pm

Heretic wrote:Why so defensive?

I tend to do that when someone comes galumphing into a thread and responds to one of my posts with a tangent that has nothing at all to do with the topic at hand.

SilverFJ wrote:My common sense says that "Evolution" is a religon, and that most speculative "Science" is just human pretentiousness at work. Example? The study of Jupiter. scientists make so many claims about it that are taught in schools, but nobody's...ever...been...there. To pretend we know anything about it is stupidity. Sure, we have sattelite photos and such, but that's the same as fossils. We know something was here, but we don't know how or when.

If humanity as a whole held this attitude, we'd probably still be banging rocks together and wondering how the magic day god dragged that big shiny warm thing across the sky. And yet there you sit, submitting text into an interconnected network of computers that's all made possible by...*GASP*...science! And science based on sub-atomic quantum interactions that we're physically incapable of directly "seeing," no less. Makes you think.

Now, onto a much more on-topic point:

flip wrote:All I know is there had to have been a bunch of them I'm just testing the theory myself to see how it stands up to common sense. I mean a 1000 breeding pairs multiplying for 70,000 years, I'm pretty sure they would have left their mark, especially if they had enough sense to make clothe, and sew, then they had enough sense to build shelter too. That's alot of people to house, feed, and clothe yet hardly a trace. So, now you have to explain the lack of numbers from just 70,000 years ago until now.

Flip, if people living 70,000 years ago really had left any "marks," they would have long since been lost to the ravages of time. But the fact of the matter is that people living at that time wouldn't have left many significant traces anyway, other than the few stone tools that we've found. People living at that time were pretty much all hunter-gatherers; they wandered around following food sources and didn't establish any permanent settlements. The only clothes they were wearing at that time probably would have been rough animal hides, maybe crudely sewn together. The development of true permanent human civilizations, the type that would leave lasting impressions, depended on the rise of agriculture; that happened in the Mediterranean region around 10,000 BC. The first large settlements appear to have sprung up in the region of Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) around 7000 BC; other civilizations arose independently in parts of India, China, and Central/South America some time after. So in the overall history of "modern" humans, it's only fairly recently that we've settled down enough to start leaving widespread historical evidence of our presence.

flip · Post by **flip** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 2:52 pm

Well I'm talking strictly biologically. Where's the new sarcastic ★■◆● at?

. If you had 1000 breeding pairs 70,000 years ago, at what rate would they multiply biologically?

. Again I'm not talking about a specific point in time, I'm talking about the SPAN of 70,000 years.

EDIT: Can we just be a bunch of simpletons and say "exponential?"

dissent · Post by **dissent** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 2:57 pm

SilverFJ wrote:And there's a difference between micro- and macro-evolution.

The major difference between micro- and macro-evolution is the amount of time involved. It's the same mechanisms operating (mutation, natural selection, genetic drift, etc.) but on different time scales. This is discussed very nicely in Kenneth Miller's "Finding Darwin's God".