Yes, I agree, much of the argument was semantics. I'm not a geneticist and can't say the first peron with gene xy778, offset 3 was the first human, but there was a first woman to wear a fig leaf or first human that couldn't interbreed with other primate such and such, , and other SIGNIFICANT LEAPS OF CHANGE.
There Was No First Human
by cofty 266 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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atrapado
Viviane like I said we need to need to find out if you can mate with your neighbor in order to answer that question. (j/k)
On a serious note we couldn't just go by one test we would need to make more of those tests. If your entire neighbord hood could mate with a hominid from 30K but you couldn't then yes I would say you are differet(maybe something wrong with you). However I would consider that 30k hominid human if he could mate with any human of today.
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OnTheWayOut
Even saying there was a point when a "human" could not mate with their ancestor (or anyone genetically just like that ancestor), that doesn't narrow down what being human really is. If you could not mate with ancestor number 17,000 but could mate with ancestor number 16,000, suppose ancestor number 16,000 COULD mate successfully with ancestor number 17,000.
You have now defined "human" as someone that someone that another human could mate with. Then ancestor number 16,000 is "human" and can mate with ancestor number 17,000, making that one "human" also. It just goes back to the main point of the opening video again.
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Viviane
You're missing the point. What there was a hominid 30K years ago half of the worlds (population A) could mate with and the other half (population B) couldn't. Now, suppose there is another distinct hominid from another part of the world that population A couldn't mate with and population B could.
What would that tell you?
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ballistic
I think there is also a slight error in the premise of the argument, in that it is geneticlly proven that we all came from one mother.
Had we all evolved along different lines, as one race from monkeys to humans, the debate would more interesting. All you need to really ask, is, was "Eve" the first human?
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JustHuman14
Great point ballistic!
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Viviane
I think there is also a slight error in the premise of the argument, in that it is geneticlly proven that we all came from one mother.
Had we all evolved along different lines, as one race from monkeys to humans, the debate would more interesting. All you need to really ask, is, was "Eve" the first human?
Denisovans, Neanderthals and Flores Man come to mind off the top of my head. I'm not sure what you are saying.
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atrapado
OnTheWayOut the timeline might not be linear so 17,000 might be the oldest but you might not be able to mate with 16,999. So 17,000 would be human and 16,999 would not. But if you could test for that why not test for any other characteristic.
Even if 16,000 could mate with 17,000 in your example and we cannot mate wit 17,000 it doesn't mean 17,000 is human. We never said all humans are equal that was I originally suggested a set of parameters with ranges that would include all current humans and from the last 10,000.
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cofty
Ballistic - There is one female from whom all modern humans descended.
She is nicknamed "mitochondrial Eve" and lived about 200 000 years ago. When you think about it, it is inevitable. Descendants are plentiful, ancestors are few.
The study's lead author, Rebecca Cann, called her colleagues' and her choice to use Eve as the name "a playful misnomer," and pointed out that the study wasn't implying that the Mitochondrial Eve wasn't the first -- or only -- woman on Earth during the time she lived [source: Cann]. Instead, this woman is simply the most recent person to whom all people can trace their genealogy. In other words, there were many women who came before her and many women who came after, but her life is the point from which all modern branches on humanity's family tree grew.
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Viviane
We never said all humans are equal that was I originally suggested a set of parameters with ranges that would include all current humans and from the last 10,000.
Why 10000 years ago and up? That seems arbitrary.