Neanderthals

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Moontanman

This creationist stuff never goes away, they have no need to be accurate or up to date. I saw a show the other day "the view" where they were trying to discuss evolution and the pet Conservative started spouting all kinds of nonsense trying to make her point of if you have a watch then you have to have a watch maker. i could have refuted her with ease but no one else there could so i am sure she scored lots of points for the creationist scientists everywhere.

Let the record show that we challenged the creationist stuff with good reason.

I didn't see any mention in the listed links about the first find of a hyoid bone with a Neanderthal skeleton, so thought I'd broach it. It settled some arguments, i.e. Neanderthals couldn't speak because they didn't have a hyoid bone (a mistaken conclusion on the basis of not having found one before), but raised others as the soft tissues also involved in speech don't fossilize. Here we goes then.

Neandertals and Speech

You may not have thought about the answer to that question, but many anthropologists have. The discovery of a Neanderthal hyoid bone in Kebara Cave in Israel has made some anthropologists believe that Neanderthals were capable of complex speech like modern humans. Others believe that the debate over Neanderthals and speech will never end because the soft tissue of the vocal tract cannot fossilize. ...

[Moontanman]

Feel free to post as many links as you want, Neanderthals are a very interesting and debatable subject. I think the hyoid bone deal was interesting because it seemed to indicate Neanderthals would have high pitched voices. Not what most of us would think about when we imagine a Neanderthal!

[questor]

add linkMoon, I do not know why you care about the Neanderthal other than passing interest. Why is he more interesting than Cro Magnon for instance. What interests me is how all the hominids came to be. It's hard to believe we evolved from a lemur.
Here is the interesting topic to me --evolution itself. Since this is your thread you may want it discussed on a separate thread, or you give your denouement of this article.

According to the theory of evolution, every species has emerged from a predecessor. One species which existed previously turned into something else over time, and all species have come into being in this way. According to the theory, this transformation proceeds gradually over millions of years.

If this were the case, then innumerable intermediate species should have lived during the immense period of time when these transformations were supposedly occurring. For instance, there should have lived in the past some half-fish/half-reptile creatures which had acquired some reptilian traits in addition to the fish traits they already had. Or there should have existed some reptile/bird creatures, which had acquired some avian traits in addition to the reptilian traits they already possessed. Evolutionists refer to these imaginary creatures, which they believe to have lived in the past, as "transitional forms."

If such animals had really existed, there would have been millions, even billions, of them. More importantly, the remains of these creatures should be present in the fossil record. The number of these transitional forms should have been even greater than that of present animal species, and their remains should be found all over the world. In The Origin of Species, Darwin accepted this fact and explained:

If my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking most closely all of the species of the same group together must assuredly have existed... Consequently evidence of their former existence could be found only amongst fossil remains.39

Even Darwin himself was aware of the absence of such transitional forms. He hoped that they would be found in the future. Despite his optimism, he realized that these missing intermediate forms were the biggest stumbling-block for his theory. That is why he wrote the following in the chapter of the The Origin of Species entitled "Difficulties on Theory":

…''Why, if species have descended from other species by fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion, instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined?… But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?… But in the intermediate region, having intermediate conditions of life, why do we not now find closely-linking intermediate varieties? This difficulty for a long time quite confounded me.40''

http://www.darwinismrefuted.com/orig...pecies_03.html

[Moontanman]

[quote]

Originally Posted by questor

add linkMoon, I do not know why you care about the Neanderthal other than passing interest. Why is he more interesting than Cro Magnon for instance. What interests me is how all the hominids came to be. It's hard to believe we evolved from a lemur.
Here is the interesting topic to me --evolution itself. Since this is your thread you may want it discussed on a separate thread, or you give your denouement of this article.

Neanderthals fascinate me because of their humanity, they were as human as us, in some ways they were better than us. It's fascination to think of what happened to them, why they are no longer around and if we might have hybridized with them.

[quote]

According to the theory of evolution, every species has emerged from a predecessor. One species which existed previously turned into something else over time, and all species have come into being in this way. According to the theory, this transformation proceeds gradually over millions of years.

No, this is called gradualism, it is now known that evolution can and often does proceed in quick, almost overnight from a geological stand point, steps. While Darwin did indeed think that species were only changed gradually over huge time spans we know know this not the truth and that the process can be fast. thousands of years vs millions of years.

If this were the case, then innumerable intermediate species should have lived during the immense period of time when these transformations were supposedly occurring. For instance, there should have lived in the past some half-fish/half-reptile creatures which had acquired some reptilian traits in addition to the fish traits they already had. Or there should have existed some reptile/bird creatures, which had acquired some avian traits in addition to the reptilian traits they already possessed. Evolutionists refer to these imaginary creatures, which they believe to have lived in the past, as "transitional forms."

A great many of these transitional forms have been found, your source is misleading when it says they have not. The key here is to remember that the odds of an animal being fossilised is very low. I'm not sure about the odds but one in a million wouldn't be too far off the mark. To expect lots of trasitional forms to be fossilized when they don't exist for long periods of time is a little bit unreasonable, even so they do get fossilized.

If such animals had really existed, there would have been millions, even billions, of them. More importantly, the remains of these creatures should be present in the fossil record. The number of these transitional forms should have been even greater than that of present animal species, and their remains should be found all over the world. In The Origin of Species, Darwin accepted this fact and explained:

If my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking most closely all of the species of the same group together must assuredly have existed... Consequently evidence of their former existence could be found only amongst fossil remains.39

Even Darwin himself was aware of the absence of such transitional forms. He hoped that they would be found in the future. Despite his optimism, he realized that these missing intermediate forms were the biggest stumbling-block for his theory. That is why he wrote the following in the chapter of the The Origin of Species entitled "Difficulties on Theory":

No, gradualism has been refuted so to has your argument.

…''Why, if species have descended from other species by fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion, instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined?… But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?… But in the intermediate region, having intermediate conditions of life, why do we not now find closely-linking intermediate varieties? This difficulty for a long time quite confounded me.40''[>quote]
Darwinism Refuted.com

No, gradualism has been refuted so to has your argument.

[freeztar]

Originally Posted by questor

add linkMoon, I do not know why you care about the Neanderthal other than passing interest. Why is he more interesting than Cro Magnon for instance. What interests me is how all the hominids came to be. It's hard to believe we evolved from a lemur.
Here is the interesting topic to me --evolution itself. Since this is your thread you may want it discussed on a separate thread, or you give your denouement of this article.


Darwinism Refuted.com

Questor, the topic of this thread is "Neanderthals". If you would like to discuss evolutionary theory, then please do it in an appropriate thread.

That said, I fell obligated to refute the gross misconception in the quoted text.
Darwin's quote came before many transitional fossils were found. He would certainly change his tune if he could see the wealth of fossil record that we have today.

Have a look here:
List of transitional fossils - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Furthermore, a fossil of *every* creature that has ever lived is an impossibility when you consider geological processes over time. The probability of fossils forming is low and requires specific conditions. It's actually quite amazing that we have recovered so many fossils.

[Moontanman]

I think it's sad that so many people fall prey to these sites that purport to refute evolution. They are never real science, Always cherry pick their information often out of out dated theories and when that doesn't work they lie. It's really sad, it's despicable that otherwise intelligent people are fooled by this stuff. The very intent is to fool people, there is no intent to show any real data, just to win, the truth is irrelevant, convincing the masses is the goal and anything goes to meet that goal.

[modest]

Originally Posted by questor

It's hard to believe we evolved from a lemur.

We didn’t evolve from a lemur. We evolved from an animal that lived 65 million years ago similar to carpolestes simpsoniand which probably looked something like a modern lemur.

The material you quote is not worth the bandwidth.

For instance, there should have lived in the past some half-fish/half-reptile creatures which had acquired some reptilian traits in addition to the fish traits they already had.

Amphibians

The person who wrote this either didn't know there is a whole class of animal that has fish-like and reptile-like traits or they assumed the reader was so ignorant as to not know what an amphibian is.

Or there should have existed some reptile/bird creatures, which had acquired some avian traits in addition to the reptilian traits they already possessed.

And these are called dinosaurs. I believe we've found some in the fossil record since Darwin's time.

~modest

[Moontanman]

More on Neanderthals


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sciencean...verheated.html

[Galapagos]

2008: A good year for Neanderthals - life - 24 December 2008 - New Scientist

2008: A good year for Neanderthals

For a species that went extinct more than 25,000 years ago, 2008 has been a hell of a year for Neanderthals. The ancient humans got their first complete mitochondrial genome sequence, their stone tools turned out every bit as efficient as ours, and we even heard them speak.

[Moontanman]

Originally Posted by Galapagos

2008: A good year for Neanderthals - life - 24 December 2008 - New Scientist

Thanks for the post dude, Neanderthals fascinate me, it's interesting that Humans and Neanderthals first encountered each other in what is now known as Palestine. The old testament even mentions a rivalry between two different types of people (brothers) one hairy and one not, one was a hunter and the other was a farmer that occurred due to wanting the blessing of the patriarch of a family. Just a biblical point of view that occurred to me back in my youth......