• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Evolution answers

ApolloGnomon said:
the Bible clearly does not mention Neandertals.
Click to expand...
Maybe, maybe not. The Bible does mention an ancient race (Nephilim) that on occasion took human daughters and impregnated them. The resultant offspring having "heroic" powers.

Knowing what I do about breeding and hybrid vigor, the first thing that came to my mind was Neanderthals and early humans. That was many many years before anyone actually proved Neanderthal genes in modern human populations. I was resoundingly ridiculed by followers of both creationism and accepted science for years if I ever even dared mention this. Yet........ Doesn't seem nearly so far fetched as it once did, now that we know Neanderthals and early humans did interbreed. I can see how events like this, exaggerated in the retelling over the ages could morph into a sort of "watch out for the bogeyman" type of thing. So part of culture that the origins were forgotten, but the story remained. It's not even clear if the Nephilim were the ancient race, or the hybrid offspring. But I would contend that what we now call Neanderthals probably are what those passages are referring to. Another candidate of course could be EEMH. Hard to tell if EEMH would have been sufficiently different to produce hybrid vigor though.

I am not saying I have "proof" or anything like that for a skeptic. But it is plausible.
 
Last edited:
Garrette said:
You're right of course. You need look no further for proof than white Europeans kicking Mongolian ass.
Click to expand...

At its height, the Mongol Empire was the largest contiguous empire in history, stretching from the Sea of Japan to the Carpathian Mountains.

They did some ass kicking too.

Evolution is when an empire like the British Empire is reduced to an island nation living under austerity proving the natives of a country have the advantage and will eventually drive out the migrant forces. Rome,Greece another example of an Empire shrunk and reduced to living in austerity for similar reasons.
 
justintime said:
At its height, the Mongol Empire was the largest contiguous empire in history, stretching from the Sea of Japan to the Carpathian Mountains.

They did some ass kicking too.

Evolution is when an empire like the British Empire is reduced to an island nation living under austerity proving the natives of a country have the advantage and will eventually drive out the migrant forces. Rome,Greece another example of an Empire shrunk and reduced to living in austerity for similar reasons.
Click to expand...

WTAF?

Nobody is forcing out the Saxons from England, nor the Celts from Scotland.
 
Red Baron Farms said:
Maybe, maybe not. The Bible does mention an ancient race (Nephilim) that on occasion took human daughters and impregnated them. The resultant offspring having "heroic" powers.

Knowing what I do about breeding and hybrid vigor, the first thing that came to my mind was Neanderthals and early humans. That was many many years before anyone actually proved Neanderthal genes in modern human populations. I was resoundingly ridiculed by followers of both creationism and accepted science for years if I ever even dared mention this. Yet........ Doesn't seem nearly so far fetched as it once did, now that we know Neanderthals and early humans did interbreed. I can see how events like this, exaggerated in the retelling over the ages could morph into a sort of "watch out for the bogeyman" type of thing. So part of culture that the origins were forgotten, but the story remained. It's not even clear if the Nephilim were the ancient race, or the hybrid offspring. But I would contend that what we now call Neanderthals probably are what those passages are referring to. Another candidate of course could be EEMH. Hard to tell if EEMH would have been sufficiently different to produce hybrid vigor though.

I am not saying I have "proof" or anything like that for a skeptic. But it is plausible.
Click to expand...

Similarly the Celtic myth cycle suggests they chased another population across Europe before landing in Ireland and having to kick out actual gods. The stories get a bit tangled.
 
justintime said:
Evolution is when an empire like the British Empire is reduced to an island nation living under austerity proving the natives of a country have the advantage and will eventually drive out the migrant forces. Rome,Greece another example of an Empire shrunk and reduced to living in austerity for similar reasons.
Click to expand...

No.

Evolution is when the allele frequency in a gene pool shifts sufficiently that the remaining population is genetically incompatible with the previous gene pool.
 
ApolloGnomon said:
"Cool story, bro!"

Seriously, your comment above does not jive with the actual archaeological record. I've studied it.

Also, the natives in North America were not "absorbed." They were variably exterminated, subject to death by diseases brought from Europe and conquered militarily. The movement of various tribes and Native nations across the US in advance of the European migration also reflects this same pattern of warfare, disease and displacement. The Navajo and Apache, for example were displaced by the Sioux when the Sioux were displaced from the Great Lakes area.

In other words, your very examples disprove you.
Click to expand...
But you are looking at a short period in human, evolutionary history. When viewed against long term demographic changes the extent of European influence is drastically shrinking. They will once again become a minority absorbed by the natives of countries they once occupied.
 
justintime said:
But you are looking at a short period in human, evolutionary history. When viewed against long term demographic changes the extent of European influence is drastically shrinking. They will once again become a minority absorbed by the natives of countries they once occupied.
Click to expand...

But we're still all the same species.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
Sheez. That's not a fact, that's a lie. In fact they were classified as human as soon as someone first looked at them. And within 100 years of their initial discovery further fossils associated with sophisticated tools had been found.
Click to expand...

Apparently the first folks to find a Neanderthal bone thought it was a bear bone. Not a surprising error--they were not paleontologists or anthropologists, did not do a careful morphological analysis, and submitted the bones to paleontologists. I've heard of people today confusing dire wolf bones as human bones and calling the coroner's office. When you don't know what you're looking at, and the remains are fragmentary, and you've got a limited time to examine them, it's easy to misidentify something. The paleo folks immediately identified them as remains of the genus Homo.

justintime said:
Scientists are in a habit always trying to prove things with things that do not exist or are missing.
Click to expand...
You have confused "scientists" with "Creationists" in the above quote. Only Creationists assume missing data is useful in proving something. Scientists see missing data as a new research opportunity and look for it. I know what such searches require, and it is deeply insulting that you belittle that effort in this manner. People have DIED looking for new data--I myself have nearly been killed, multiple times, looking for missing data to support hypotheses. And that's not the worst of it, believe it or not! At least nearly being killed is a good story, and it's generally over, one way or another, pretty quickly. Scientists are willing to endure hunger, scoarching heat, deadly cold, every type of weather this planet has to offer and more, being hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of miles from everyone they know, to spend years looking down microscopes and counting grains of sand and measuring organisms and looking through telescopes--all that and more, just to find data we don't currently have. To dismiss all of that effort as not even irrelevant, but nonexistent, is simply beyond intollerable.

My wife was nearly killed gathering data, justintime. As I said, so have I, on multiple occasions. The implication that we simply accept gaps in data is yet another naked insult, one that I consider directed at me and my family.
 
ApolloGnomon said:
No.

Evolution is when the allele frequency in a gene pool shifts sufficiently that the remaining population is genetically incompatible with the previous gene pool.
Click to expand...

We are soon approaching that point. The disease prone Europeans gene pool has shifted sufficiently that the remaining population is genetically incompatible with the previous gene pool. Demographics is social evolution.
 
justintime said:
But you are looking at a short period in human, evolutionary history. When viewed against long term demographic changes the extent of European influence is drastically shrinking. They will once again become a minority absorbed by the natives of countries they once occupied.
Click to expand...

Native American populations on the reservations are largely endogamous, impoverished and disempowered. Your statement above is not based on any facts whatever.
 
justintime said:
We are soon approaching that point. The disease prone Europeans gene pool has shifted sufficiently that the remaining population is genetically incompatible with the previous gene pool. Demographics is social evolution.
Click to expand...

Nonsense. Unsupported gibberish. I see no indication you actually understand what the words above actually mean.
 
ApolloGnomon said:
Native American populations on the reservations are largely endogamous, impoverished and disempowered. Your statement above is not based on any facts whatever.
Click to expand...

But it is not just the Native American population that accounts for the demographic shift.

Please read my post again:
They will once again become a minority absorbed by the natives of countries they once occupied.
Click to expand...
 
justintime said:
At its height, the Mongol Empire was the largest contiguous empire in history, stretching from the Sea of Japan to the Carpathian Mountains.

They did some ass kicking too.

Evolution is when an empire like the British Empire is reduced to an island nation living under austerity proving the natives of a country have the advantage and will eventually drive out the migrant forces. Rome,Greece another example of an Empire shrunk and reduced to living in austerity for similar reasons.
Click to expand...
You're right, of course. You need look no further for proof than the Byzantians preventing the creation of the Emirate of Crete.
 
justintime said:
Evolution is when an empire like the British Empire is reduced to an island nation living under austerity proving the natives of a country have the advantage and will eventually drive out the migrant forces
Click to expand...
Species invasion is actually extremely complex. Anyone in the South can tell you about kudzu, and how prolific it is--it likes the physical environment (temperature, weather, soil types) and has no natural predators, so it's taken over large areas. On the other side of the coin, coffee doesn't grow very well in Canada. There are an enormous number of factors the come into play in each species invasion; comparisons with human invasion are beyond simplistic. For one thing, humans invading areas with natuve human populations by definition are moving into areas that humans can live in.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom