Re: [asa] Humanity and the Fall: Questions and a Survey

On May 5, 2008, at 9:06 PM, Dick Fischer wrote:

> Hi Rich:
>
> If you study human behavior you can see there is a predictability
> factor which you seem to have overlooked. Down through the ages
> male war parties have dispatched their male foes and spared the
> females. One can only guess why! It is counter intuitive to
> believe that these particularHomo sapiens deviated from the norm.
> No evidence? We have thousands of years worth of evidence to
> suggest that when males have an opportunity to procreate they do
> it. What you are suggesting is that these males didn’t. Now you
> have no evidence whatsoever to support this aberration in human
> behavior.

I did say it was possible but if they did procreate then there would
be genetic evidence and there is none. Europeans are too genetically
close to other populations. Some possibilities are procreation was
impossible or that they didn't interact. At the end of the day,
Neanderthal is a separate, extinct species from modern humans.

>
> Also, I subscribe to the OOA theory. I don’t know why you keep
> beating that horse.

Because generally speaking admixture goes with multi-regionalism.
Terry apparently made the same mistake. I re-read your original
description and to be blunt it strikes me as quite bizarre. The time
frames simply do not work out. The measured divergence time between
Homo Sapiens and Neanderthal is between 500,000 and 800,000 years ago
(genetically measured) and 400,000 (measured by fossils). While
classical multi-regionalism with admixture is still possible, what you
propose is not. The measured exit out of Africa is 50,000 years ago
and Neanderthal fossils date well before that.

Fegundes et al put it this way:

> In conclusion, although our best supported model (AFREG) we show
> here that it is much better supported by a random set of neutral
> loci than any other models involving interbreeding with other Homo
> species. Although we cannot exclude that any interbreeding ever
> occurred between modern and archaic humans or that any favorably
> selected H. erectus genes could have spread into modern humans (see,
> e.g., ref. 18), our results suggest that this archaic contribution,
> if present, should be very small.
>

>
> No, “genetic distance” is what I meant. There are tribes in Africa
> who because of the greater amount of time since separation from
> common ancestors have a greater degree of genetic distance between
> them then there is between Russians and Chinese for example. Greeks
> have a lesser degree of genetic homogeneity than Chinese – I agree.

If you are going to prove out of Africa with African Replacement
variability is a better determinant. Again it is the *lack* of genetic
distance between Europeans and Africans that disallows admixture. As a
whole humans have less genetic variability than chimpanzees for example.

>
> However, you said “Dick's thesis simply does not match the data.”
> Okay, since you know the data better than I do what is your thesis?

The best match to both the genetic and archeological evidence is out
of Africa with African replacement. Genetic variability is due to
founder effect and not bottlenecks. There is little or no admixture
from other species of homo. The time frame for speciation is approx.
140,000 year ago with an ancient population of approx. 10,000. Time of
exit out of Africa is approx. 51,000 years ago with approximately 450
effective individuals (actual census population is larger than
effective population). Time for colonization of the Americas is approx
10,000-15,000 years ago with an effective population of 450.

Rich Blinne
Member ASA

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Tue May 6 00:47:50 2008