On Human Evolution (page 3)

clarity

I think #1 is truly human.

'Cause I know an elderette who looks just like this!

c ...

curtains: They do, in a sence, the chimpanzee has pointed canine teeth, but the earliest homonoids do not. It is believed (i believe!) that they evolved in the chimpanzee along with larger sexual diffomorphism sometimes after the split.

Also the teeth and jaw size did not evolve in a linear fashion amongst the homonoids, possibly indicating multiple changes in food.

it is very unfortunate we do not have early chimpanze fossils though :-(.

A side point: If you look at "life, how did it get here", there is a drawing which attempt to make the H.Afri. fully chimpanzee. ofcourse it leave out the canines in the (supposedly) chimpanzee drawing.

Curtains

thank you bohm. yes, I see that no 1 has a more prominent canine. The jaw is also more forward thrusting, and the forehead seems to be less prominent

Curtains

very funny clarity but it reminds me of my visit to the dentist recently - he wanted to sell me a tooth whitening smile product that would have set me back £400. You ony need to have your front teeth done" he said "because your back teeth don't show when you smile".

smile he said to me and I'll show you.

"uh oh" he said "you show all your teeth when you smile - you need to have them all done".

moshe

Nikolay Valunev, the Russian boxer looks primitive to me- appearances are deceiving-

-

Steve Balmer of Microsoft has brow ridges and the large mouth/nose spacing seem in primitive skulls.

-

Here is L Ron Hubbard who gave us Dianetics-

Deputy Dog

JonathanH

But taxonomy while having a function in biology, is from a pragmatic standpoint just a human invention to catagorize things we see a relationship in. If you travelled back in time five thousand years and showed somebody a french bulldog, do you really think they would make the connection that this thing is in fact of the same "kind" (whatever that means) as the vicious pack hunters that they were gradually bred from? Or would they think that this snorting, short, stocky, boxy shaped animal is just another wierd creature that they've never seen before? There is no such thing as "kind", there is no "dog gene" that makes a dog a dog, and not some other animal that is part of a different "kind". We mistake taxanomy which is simply catagorizing things that are similar (and today they are catagorized by evolutionary and genetic lineages, and not simple morphological similarity as ancient people would've done), as concrete lines seperating one thing from another. They are not. Life is just blending shades of grey.

I think you nailed it (even though we have probably reached different conclusions), but isn't that a two edged sword? Using bones/fossils alone to solve this problem (or answer the question) leaves way to much room for speculation and controversy.

Of course the answer to that is obvious to those that took any courses in biology or genetics. There isn't one. A species diverges (or rather a speciation event occurs) not because some essential part of their gene changes, but because a large enough portion of their genes have changed that they can't succesffully produce offspring anymore, and due to sexual selection, they probably wouldn't try to anyway.

Oh... really? Well... if that's the real definition of species, why are we even looking at bones and fossils at all?

Using dogs for example, look at the huge variety in one single species, compared to the few in the photos above (which is supposed to represent two). I wish I had a picture of all the different breeds side by side, yet they are all one species.

TD

BTW Good topic.

bohm

DD, I think one should apply Feynmanns 3 steps:

Come up with an idea
Derive consequences
Test consequences with observations

Now, if the idea is "Evolution is true, man & chimp share common ancestor", the consequences derived in step 2 will be something like: "We expect to find fossils with intermediary characteristics and no HS fossils which are very old", as well as other stuff which align well with observations.

On the other hand, "God made man and chimpanzee as seperate kinds of animals"... well what are the consequences of that? how does it align with observations?

To return to the species-problem, which of the two ideas, evolution or creation, is our inability to properly define species and/or fit them with fossils a consequence of?.

Abaddon

Dagothur

Hey, we should ask a specialist in the field of anthropology! I know, let's ask Perry!

I thought Perry was the left-most skull...

tec

From 3 to 4, and then 4 to 5. Those couple seem to be the oddest changes. Something seems missing between them. The first three, I can easily see the advancing. But those ones seem more... clumsy... I guess best describes it.

Tammy

bohm

Tammy, I honestly want to commend you for replying to this thread.

On Human Evolution

Share this