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

Hi Rich:
 
To quote Wikipedia: "The first proto-Neanderthal traits appeared in
Europe as early as 350-500,000 years ago. By 130,000 years ago, complete
Neanderthal characteristics had appeared and by 50,000 years ago,
Neanderthals disappeared from Asia, although they did not reach
extinction in Europe until 30,000 years ago."
 
Again, abstracting DNA from fossilized bone is iffy at best and I doubt
you'll find a genuine smoking gun anytime soon. My rough time
calculations could be too conservative and the migration of
proto-Neanderthals appear to have happened at an earlier date than I
reckoned, but perhaps later than yours. I think I took the 130,000
figure for a branch point, but when speciation took place is anybody's
guess. If they reunuited and had offspring then there never was a
complete specitaion event. And that jibes with some authors who count
the Neandertals as a subspecies only. So, allowing for a larger time
scale and the possible reuniting of HS with Neanderthals is an open
question until conclusive genetic data becomes available - now what
makes my thesis "bizarre" in comparison with yours?
 
Let's take your 51K figure for the last migration of H sapiens out of
Africa. Black hair and brown eyes characterize black Africans, Asiatics
and native Americans. Only in the area where cross breeding is
therotically feasible, or dare I way likely, do we see human beings with
blond or red hair and blue eyes, and a bump at the base of the skull.
Since we do know Neanderthals had red hair and a clump at the base of
the skull, and keeping in mind the bone-jumping predisposition of our
forebears, why would we not suspect a Neanderthal genetic input? On
what basis would you think otherwise?
 
Dick Fischer, author, lecturer
Historical Genesis from Adam to Abraham
 <http://www.historicalgenesis.com> www.historicalgenesis.com
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of Rich Blinne
Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2008 12:46 AM
To: Dick Fischer
Cc: ASA
Subject: 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

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Received on Tue May 6 16:17:48 2008