Real Science Radio: The Most Informative Neanderthal Show Ever Pt. 2

[Jukia]

Funnily enough, I have read the paper, and it gives divergence times for the populations studied as 133 000 years and 339 000 years ago (plus or minus 10 000 years to 95% confidence). The paper seems to rule out the literalist interpretation of the Biblical dates.

Oh no, how can that be??? You don't mean that 6days did a little quote mining of the abstract, do you? So the time frame suggested in the paper does not fit with 6's Biblical requirements, does it? But that smacks of dishonesty, think Jesus is happy with that, 6?

 

[6days]

Funnily enough, I have read the paper, and it gives divergence times for the populations studied as 133 000 years and 339 000 years ago (plus or minus 10 000 years to 95% confidence). The paper seems to rule out the literalist interpretation of the Biblical dates.

Perhaps back up your horses and read what the conversation has been about. We can discuss the dates later, but the point is that we seem to be descendants of Neandertals. That does fit the Biblical account.
(Evolutionists have been wrong about EVERYTHING when it comes to Neandertals so don't go tying your horses to a date which jumps around based on false beliefs)

 

[gcthomas]

Perhaps back up your horses and read what the conversation has been about. We can discuss the dates later, but the point is that we seem to be descendants of Neandertals. That does fit the Biblical account.
(Evolutionists have been wrong about EVERYTHING when it comes to Neandertals so don't go tying your horses to a date which jumps around based on false beliefs)

You are misunderstanding the nature of the research you are relying on.

It used statistical modelling to find a best match model for the shared Neanderthal genes: it turned out that the researchers decided that the divergence with some limited admixture was a better fit than the other hypotheses. Other researchers disagree, so it is as yet undecided. The divergence date was a fundamental finding although I know you'd rather cherry pick some parts of the model without the other less convenient parts.

The admixture seems to be, if it indeed happened, to not include female Neanderthals successfully breeding with male modern humans. Why was that do you think? It seems that there was a hybridisation infertility problem, which is one of the indicators of distinct species within a genus.

So, you have found research whose fitted model you want to partially accept thoroughly refuted the 6 ky population genetic bottleneck that you prefer for prosaic reasons.

Well done you.

 

[Daedalean's_Sun]

Another DS strawman. WHAT I REALLY SAID... "You and I are also similar to each other, just as we are also similar to Asians, Australian Aborigines, and Pygmies."

You were comparing the difference between us and Asians to the difference between neanderthals and us. There is no comparison, and you know it. There is a much greater difference between us and Neanderthals. This is why it is a nonsense comparison.

Now you are using the fallacy of moving the goalposts.....
WHAT I REALLY SAID..."evolutionists used to believe Neandertals were stooped over hairy dimwitted beasts. But science has proven the evolutionists wrong on those points and many others"
I have given sources showing some of the false beliefs evolutionists had...Want more?

You were making grossly inaccurate allegations as to what "evolutionists believed", so yes I want credible sources from scientific publications.

Surely you don't believe that evolutionists have no problem admitting the creationists were correct all along??

What a pseudoscientific fringe believes has little to no impact on how researchers conduct their work. Creationism isn't even an afterthought.

Nope.... Evolutionists always tried to deny the humanity of Neandertals. Initially Neandertals were called a missing link and labelled as Homo neanderthalensis. (Now Homo sapiens neanderthalensis).

The genus homo, is human. They are simply different species of human. Or perhaps even a subspecies.

Evolutionists said this dimwitted creature was incapable of speech and did not bury their dead.

No, this is a gross mischaracterization. Here is an excerpt from a paper published on Neanderthal speech:

"...that Neanderthals could not have produced the full range of human speech sounds follows from re-constructions of their supralaryngeal airways. Neanderthal airways appear to be closer to the nonhuman configuration, in which the tongue is largely contained within the oral cavity (Lieberman and Crelin 1971, George 1976, Grosmangin 1979; see also the Keith Negus reconstruction in Negus 1949). This would have prevented Neanderthals from accomplishing the abrupt changes in airway shape that are necessary for producing the vowels I, U, and A and from sealing off the nasal cavity from the rest of the supralaryngeal airway."

The argument was that they were incapable of producing certain vowels. You rendered this as "incapable of speech".

Furthermore, that Neanderthals could not produce the abrupt changes in airway shape that are necessary for producing certain vowels, did not go unchallenged.

The paper continues...

"Arensburg and his associates (I989, I 990) dispute these reconstructions; they claim that ( I )the Kebara Neanderthal fossil hyoid resembles that of modern humans in shape and (2)therefore the Kebara Neanderthal had a modern supralaryngeal airway. Both of these claims can be disputed."

source

As I said before you are basing your assertions on cartoonish stereotypes, which are not consistent with what the scientific literature shows or ever did show. Continue to make these ridiculous assertions and I will continue to deconstruct them. :thumb:

The myths have been dispelled. Neandertals were grain farmers although evolutionists once said they were carnivores.

There is no evidence of them "farming" much of anything, but microscopic analysis of neanderthal teeth reveal micro-fossils of starches and other vegetative matter being consumed, whereas before they were associated with a primarily carnivorous diet. This was based on previous studies:

"chemical studies of their bones which suggest they ate more protein than cave bears from the same sites. In addition, the majority of animal bones found in and around Neanderthal sites have tended to be from large prey, like horses and reindeer."

and through further examination...

"Using a novel technique in Neanderthal research, Henry removed fossilized tartar, called dental calculus, from Neanderthal teeth. This calculus, like the plaque and tartar on our teeth, contains remnants of the food we have recently eaten. She used multiple teeth from three different Neanderthal individuals, one found in Shanidar Cave in Iraq and two from Spy Cave in Belgium. Scraping the calculus from Neanderthal teeth, Henry could virtually see what these three Neanderthals had been eating.

Technically, what the researchers could see with a microscope were microfossils of plant starches and phytoliths that had been preserved in the calculus as it fossilized."

Source

These findings dispute the Big-Game hypothesis as to why neanderthals went extinct, which as you may find was hardly the only proposed explanation, and to characterize this as something all "evolutionists" believed is highly disingenuous.

The article says.....
"While humans and Neanderthals had children, only female humans and male Neanderthals produced a lineage that survived until today"

Lineage that survived until today...that would be descendants.

Were you then not arguing that neanderthals were collectively the ancestors of all modern humans? Because there's a big difference between:

"We are descendants of Neandertals" and "female humans and male Neanderthals produced a lineage that survived until today"

If you mean "we" as in the human race collectively, then no we are not the descendants of Neanderthals, if you mean some humans alive today may have a neanderthal somewhere in their family tree, then I would concede that it is possible.

You really shouldn't just believe a news report is correct because it says what you already believe

I hope you appreciate the irony of this statement.

...Sometimes they can be correct...Sometimes not.

And you will determine this on a whim.

Somebody I know once said "Why are you ignoring the more recent findings? I know why" :devil:

I'm not. I think I've been fairly consistent in acknowledging the possibility that humans and Neanderthals may have interbred. So I must rebuke your allegation that I've accepted or ignored either. I am open to either possibility, I am merely pointing out that the issue is far from settled.

In any case I replied to that article with one from April 2014 that says
"Our analysis allows us to conclusively reject a model of ancestral structure in Africa and instead reveals strong support for Neandertal admixture in Eurasia at a higher rate (3.4−7.3%) than suggested previously. Using analysis and simulations we show that our inference is more powerful than previous summary statistics and robust to realistic levels of recombination.
http://www.genetics.org/content/196/4/1241.abstract

"In the last two years, a number of studies have suggested that modern humans and Neanderthals had at some point interbred. Genetic evidence shows that on average Eurasians and Neanderthals share between 1-4 per cent of their DNA. In contrast, Africans have almost none of the Neanderthal genome. The previous studies concluded that these differences could be explained by hybridisation which occurred as modern humans exited Africa and bred with the Neanderthals who already inhabited Europe.

However, a new study funded by the BBSRC and the Leverhulme Trust has provided an alternative explanation for the genetic similarities. The scientists found that common ancestry, without any hybridisation, explains the genetic similarities between Neanderthals and modern humans. In other words, the DNA that Neanderthal and modern humans share can all be attributed to their common origin, without any recent influx of Neanderthal DNA into modern humans."


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-08-esearch-modern-humans-neanderthals-interbred.html#jCp

If anything this demonstrates exactly my point. The issue is far from settled. I predict you will only dig your heels in deeper. In any case, whether there was or was not interbreeding, Neanderthals are not the ancestors of all humans (if that was what you were arguing). All peer-reviewed scientific sources suggest common ancestry between the two groups. And none claim they are the same sub/species.

 

[6days]

*You were comparing the difference between us and Asians to the difference between neanderthals and us. There is no comparison, and you know it.

Of course there is a comparison and great similarity.*Neandertals have always denied the humanity of evolutionists. *The creationists, however, were correct; evolutionists are just as much human as the rest of us. *

There is a much greater difference between us and Neanderthals. This is why it is a nonsense comparison.

The humanity of Neandertals can be seen in the way they cared for their elderly, as we do. Neandertals created art...better than I do. *The humanity of Neandertals can be seen in their use of jewelery and makeup. The intelligence of Neandertals can be seen as they understood chemistry and the 650 degree temp in making pitch. Neandertals were farmers and hunters. *The intelligence of Neandertals can be seen in their use of tools.*Etc etc etcSo...why would an evolutionist want to deny the HUMANITY of Neandertals? The science....the evidence shows Neandertals very similar to us.*DS....You want Neandertals to be something less than you and me because of your beliefs. But, follow the evidence...not your beliefs. Is it possible Neandertals were more intelligent than us? Of course thats possible, but we dont know. *What you seem to cling to in hoping that Neandertals were not as human as us is a .2% difference in DNA from us. (You and me may be .1% different from each other) But if you are going to be consistant then you would argue that some chimps are not true chimps because their DNA varies more than .3%. *Your arguments dont come from science...but in old evolutionary beliefs about inferior cavemen.*Neandertals fit in the Biblical model quite nicely. God created Adam *and Eve. All humanity including Neandertals are descendants from the original couple. The slight variation between people groups is explained by genetic drift, sexual selection and other factors.*In the beginning, God created...

 

[Jukia]

Perhaps back up your horses and read what the conversation has been about. We can discuss the dates later, but the point is that we seem to be descendants of Neandertals. That does fit the Biblical account.
(Evolutionists have been wrong about EVERYTHING when it comes to Neandertals so don't go tying your horses to a date which jumps around based on false beliefs)

Lets cut to the chase. Your date for the Neanderthals is........?

 

[Daedalean's_Sun]

Of course there is a comparison and great similarity.

Then Neanderthals do not exhibit greater genetic variance to us than other extant homo sapien groups? Yes or no.

The humanity of Neandertals can be seen in the way they cared for their elderly, as we do. Neandertals created art...better than I do. *The humanity of Neandertals can be seen in their use of jewelery and makeup.

Unfortunately these things are not distinguishing factors of taxonomic identity. Neanderthals may in fact have done all of these things, and yet you are still no closer to demonstrating that they are the same species and/or subspecies as we are.

The intelligence of Neandertals can be seen as they understood chemistry and the 650 degree temp in making pitch.

Setting ablaze an object does not require knowledge of chemistry.

Neandertals were farmers and hunters.

Hunters? Yes. Farmers? No. They ate grains, but eating wild grains does not require farming. Farming began during the neolithic revolution roughly 12,000 years ago, and neanderthals went extinct roughly 30,000 years ago, long before the advent of agriculture.

The intelligence of Neandertals can be seen in their use of tools.

So did Homo Habilis.

Homo habilis made and used stone tools in the Oldowan tradition for nearly a million years but with gradual improvements over time. The early Homo erectus also used what could be described as advanced or evolved Oldowan tool making techniques. By 1.8 million years ago, the skills of some Homo erectus had increased to the point that they were making more sophisticated stone implements with sharper and straighter edges. Their tool kits were sufficiently advanced by 1.5 million years ago to consider them to be a new tool making tradition now referred to as Acheulian click this icon to hear the preceding term pronounced. It was named after the Saint Acheul site in southwest France where these kinds of tools had been discovered in the 19th century. However, the Acheulian tool making tradition was first developed in East Africa. Perhaps, the most important of the Acheulian tools were hand axes. They are rock cores or very large flakes that have been systematically worked by percussion flaking to an elongated oval shape with one pointed end and sharp edges on the sides. Since they were shaped on both faces, they are also referred to as biface click this icon to hear the preceding term pronounced tools. In profile, hand axes usually had a relatively symmetrical teardrop or broad leaf shape. Referring to these artifacts as hand axes may be misleading since we do not know for sure whether they were primarily axes in a modern sense or even if they were held in the hand. Based on tool edge wear patterns and the brittle fracturing lithic materials that were used to make them, it is likely that hand axes were multipurpose implements used for light chopping of wood, digging up roots and bulbs, butchering animals, and cracking nuts and small bones. In a sense, they were the Swiss Army knives of their times. They were reusable portable tools intended to be carried from place to place rather than made each time they were needed.

Throughout most of the Homo erectus geographic range, there is clear evidence of progressive improvement in tool making over time. The late Homo erectus had more complex mental templates guiding them in the manufacture of their artifacts. In addition, the reliance on tools increased as the implements became more useful. By half a million years ago, major Homo erectus habitation sites commonly had tens of thousands of discarded stone tools.

source

Etc etc etcSo...why would an evolutionist want to deny the HUMANITY of Neandertals? The science....the evidence shows Neandertals very similar to us.*DS....You want Neandertals to be something less than you and me because of your beliefs. But, follow the evidence...not your beliefs. Is it possible Neandertals were more intelligent than us? Of course thats possible, but we dont know.

Part of the problem I think is that "human" is so poorly defined, but generally it is used in two senses. In the first sense it refers to Homo Sapiens, and in the second it refers to the whole of the genus Homo. In this way neanderthals are both human and not human. They are human in the later sense but not the former sense.

What you seem to cling to in hoping that Neandertals were not as human as us is a .2% difference in DNA from us. (You and me may be .1% different from each other) But if you are going to be consistant then you would argue that some chimps are not true chimps because their DNA varies more than .3%.

Citation?

Your arguments dont come from science...but in old evolutionary beliefs about inferior cavemen.*Neandertals fit in the Biblical model quite nicely.

I don't recall reading about neanderthals in the bible.

God created Adam *and Eve. All humanity including Neandertals are descendants from the original couple. The slight variation between people groups is explained by genetic drift, sexual selection and other factors.*In the beginning, God created...

Are we not including homo habilis? What about homo erectus? There are roughly 25 Hominini species representing a smooth continuum of traits ranging from the very "ape-like" ardipithecus to modern humans. This is expressed in a number of ways including a gradation of endocranial volumes, parietal bulge, and the pronunciation of prognathism and brow ridges.

endocranial volumes

Parietal bulge (The vertical loci where the brain cavity is widest)

Now consider that the more "ape-like" pongid, fossils are consistently found to be older, and deeper within the geologic column.

Those are some pretty astounding coincidences. :think:

 

[6days]

You were making grossly inaccurate allegations as to what "evolutionists believed", so yes I want credible sources from scientific publications

What is grossly inaccurate is how evolutionists portrayed some people groups as sub human. It wasnt just Neandertals, but even Australian aborigines, Jews, pygmies and others have suffered horrible persecution due to evolutionary beliefs.Re your demand for sources to back up my claim...sure *I will once again post the answer I already gave you.*Quoting 6days"WHAT I REALLY SAID..."evolutionists used to believe Neandertals were stooped over hairy dimwitted beasts. But science has proven the evolutionists wrong on those points and many others"I have given sources showing some of the false beliefs evolutionists*...EXAMPLE...."We can now move away from this view of Neanderthals as dim-witted big game hunters," Hardy (paleoanthropologist)told LiveScience."...it helps cast doubt on previous assumptions that Neanderthals lacked the abilities of modern humans to plan ahead, innovate, and communicate through language, art, and symbolism. There is a growing weight of evidence that we may have underestimated Neanderthal skills and behavior, and that they were not the lumbering, dim-witted cartoon cavemen..."http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/defy-stereotypes.html"

 

[Daedalean's_Sun]

No, this is a gross mischaracterization. Here is an excerpt from a paper published on Neanderthal speech:

"...that Neanderthals could not have produced the full range of human speech sounds follows from re-constructions of their supralaryngeal airways. Neanderthal airways appear to be closer to the nonhuman configuration, in which the tongue is largely contained within the oral cavity (Lieberman and Crelin 1971, George 1976, Grosmangin 1979; see also the Keith Negus reconstruction in Negus 1949). This would have prevented Neanderthals from accomplishing the abrupt changes in airway shape that are necessary for producing the vowels I, U, and A and from sealing off the nasal cavity from the rest of the supralaryngeal airway."

The argument was that they were incapable of producing certain vowels. You rendered this as "incapable of speech".

There could be no clearer indication of the poverty of topical comprehension, or intentional misrepresentation than this, I think.

 

[Daedalean's_Sun]

What is grossly inaccurate is how evolutionists portrayed some people groups as sub human. It wasnt just Neandertals, but even Australian aborigines, Jews, pygmies and others have suffered horrible persecution due to evolutionary beliefs.Re your demand for sources to back up my claim...sure *I will once again post the answer I already gave you.*Quoting 6days"WHAT I REALLY SAID..."evolutionists used to believe Neandertals were stooped over hairy dimwitted beasts. But science has proven the evolutionists wrong on those points and many others"I have given sources showing some of the false beliefs evolutionists*...EXAMPLE...."We can now move away from this view of Neanderthals as dim-witted big game hunters," Hardy (paleoanthropologist)told LiveScience."...it helps cast doubt on previous assumptions that Neanderthals lacked the abilities of modern humans to plan ahead, innovate, and communicate through language, art, and symbolism. There is a growing weight of evidence that we may have underestimated Neanderthal skills and behavior, and that they were not the lumbering, dim-witted cartoon cavemen..."http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/defy-stereotypes.html"

No, I asked for a source from a scientific journal for a reason. Articles intended for lay audiences are notorious for inaccurate summaries of scientific studies.


Also try addressing more than one line of text at a time, otherwise this might take awhile.

 

[6days]

The argument was that they were incapable of producing certain vowels. You rendered this as "incapable of speech"

It actually was evolutionists who "rendered" *Neandertals incapable of speech. Once again I will quote Hardy (paleoanthropologist)told LiveScience."... previous assumptions that Neanderthals 'lacked the abilities of modern humans to.... communicate through language"That was based on beliefs....not science.

Some evolutionists thought Neandertals communicated by grunting.. Again,this was based on evolutionary beliefs that *Neandertals lacked in humanity."Neanderthals were once portrayed by scientists as primitive cavemen. These ancient humans, who inhabited Europe 30,000 years ago, were believed to grunt and were considered incapable of creating specialised tools."http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/sci_tech/highlights/010710_neanderthal.shtml

But fortunately science has been dispelling those evolutionary beliefs...."Neanderthals were capable of speech, according to a new analysis....*languages, it was generally believed, is a distinctively human trait"*http://www.natureworldnews.com/arti...human-like-speech-bone-analysis-suggests.htm*

 

[Daedalean's_Sun]

It actually was evolutionists who "rendered" *Neandertals incapable of speech.

No, "they" did not. I am astounded by your determination to insist on being wrong despite facing decisive evidence to the contrary.

I cited the exact conclusion from a paper published in a scientific journal, you're just quoting a summary from a news article. I hope you see why this is problematic.

Once again I will quote Hardy (paleoanthropologist)told LiveScience."... previous assumptions that Neanderthals 'lacked the abilities of modern humans to.... communicate through language"That was based on beliefs....not science.

The ability of humans to communicate involves abrupt changes in airway shape that are necessary for producing the vowels I, U, and A. The lack of this capability in Neanderthals was based on supralaryngeal reconstructions, and not just "beliefs". And this is ignoring the still larger point, that even this was disputed by other "evolutionists". Which you would know if you actually read the conclusions of researchers reported in their studies, rather than just the soundbites you gleen from news reports intended for a lay audience. You're attempting to paint a picture with really broad strokes and it just isn't working for you.

 

[Jukia]

6 days: During what period since Creation did Neanderthals live? Years, please. Thanks.

 

[Daedalean's_Sun]

Good question. A notion or deravative or a notion greatly substantiated without controversy? See, to me, I think 'great controversy' means someone is overstepping quite a bit or not explaining themselves very well. The only two conclusions can be 1) incorrect or 2) idiot savant.

Which wrote my science book 'interpretation' as if it were fact???

I'm still no closer to knowing whether it was that you agree or disagree with the notion that you can just 'know' something without verification.

:nono: Christopher Hitchens and Dawkins et al cry like babies because of the persistent questioning of supposed 'facts.' I say "Good! Cry some more and after you blow your nose, answer the question!"

Again, I disagree, but I don't see what it matters anyway?

:chuckle: Are you or am I the naive~ one? I love these questions because I don't mind if someone remotely thinks I'm naive. Doesn't bother me.

Well, for one the authors don't get to pick the reviewers, the publisher does, and the majority of the time the authors don't even know who the reviewers are, and sometimes in double-blind reviews the reviewers don't know the authors are either.

:idunno: as opposed to a vowel? I don't mean to be dense but I'm trying to figure out what your actual word was supposed to be, "consistent" or am I missing something (not a slam or anything, just not following)?

con·so·nant

adjective
3.
in agreement; agreeable; in accord; consistent (usually followed by to or with ): behavior consonant with his character.


Even if you didn't know that consonant could be used in this way, surely you could have determined from context my meaning. I think you were being dense.

Yes and yes. The problem is that I have to appease/appeal to authority. It is my belief that the authority (God) cannot be incorrect or be corrected. Therefore there are only two places such can go wrong: The person telling me or the way I interpretted data myself.

Assuming the truth of a proposition is not equivalent to assessing how likely it is to be true. The authority that you are appealing to isn't God. What you're appealing to are things written about God, by other humans.

:chuckle: (sorry) I'm a teacher. I'm fairly familiar with science within the education framework.

It certainly hasn't prevented you from thinking that Publishing scientists get to choose who reviews their work.

I believe having an ultimate unfallible authority precludes such. That doesn't mean I get it right every time - I misunderstand my wife sometimes and I know her very well but that's not exactly in the dark.

If that were the case then pastors, and not scientists, would be making the discoveries, curing diseases, and going to space.

I'm not convinced. If your teacher in school suggested or steered you in any scientific inquiry, you'd be wise to follow those directions. We learn from 'what we know' going toward what we don't better than when we aren't even sure what the question is supposed to be. That kind of science would be a very long time in coming around AND why we get into these conversations/debates.

You're begging the question.

Somewhat agree, but also disagree.

With which parts?

Point? Even what we use comes from God.

If your proposition holds true, sure, but you cannot verify it and therefore we don't know if it holds true.

No, not correct. You do not discover penicillin by doing a purposeless experiment.

You're conflating ad hoc purpose with existential purpose.

Doctors and scientists in medicine, for example, study ethics and other philosophical matters. Philosophy has a place in our actions and in regard to them.

As they should, but this does not mean that philosophy is now science.

Agreed but it doesn't preclude them either.

It doesn't have to for them to remain unreasonable propositions.

That there are facts that no scientist can explain. He/she/they will never be able to climb into one family and qualify the matters of love that bind it together.

They already do.

http://spr.sagepub.com/content/4/4/409.short

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_basis_of_love#Neurochemistry

http://psp.sagepub.com/content/3/2/173.short

http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/58/2/281/

A good many truths are relative and very hard to qualify or quantify by any science method BUT we all believe they exist, even without those qualifications.

Such as?

Er, I absolutely disagree. I have absolutely no problem distinquishing any human being from a chimpanzee.

And I have no problem distinguishing my sister from my cousin, and yet genetically they are more similar than dissimilar. Chimpanzees are 98.8% - 94% genetically similar to us. Remember you said Neanderthals were "more alike than not".

I have a very difficult time believing we have any common ancestor.

Fortunately it doesn't depend on your belief.

On top of that "every animal producing after its kind" also enforces such notions.

I fail to see how belief dictates reality.

Science was waaaaaay to cocky to offer such up and still is. They think that 50 years or 100 and all objections would just go away?

I don't think Charles Darwin was optimistic that religious objections would acquiesce to his findings.

They have not fielded or entertained objections, even from their own community.

This is incorrect in more ways than I care to explain or you care to listen. How else do you think the Darwinian model of evolution underwent it's revision into the modern evolutionary synthesis?

Such is fairly poor discussion, fairly poor science reporting, and likely fairly poor conclusions. Its too bad they don't see the problem as one of their own making but it is.

From where I'm standing, it looks like the creationists lost the scientific argument roughly 150 years ago, and are still sore about it. Perhaps you'd be justified rejecting the theory of evolution in 1859, but certainly not in 2014. Not dissimilar to 1Mind1Spirit and his rejection of Heliocentrism, and for roughly the same reasons too.

Oh sure. I'm not for teaching creation in school unless the class is set up for the discussion of politics behind our textbooks and wants to discuss those details. I'm simply saying it is really easy to take two steps back and simply write a textbook that gives basics and lets kids and their parents draw their own conclusions. Simply tell them what we 'know' collectively. We do agree on a bit.

I think it would be a great disservice to the children to handicap their science education because it contravenes certain customary beliefs of the public.

The only thing I want is for us to move forward on agreements, not get to hung up over disagreements.

The disagreements are over the fundamentals of science, that are necessary for a scientifically literate public.

Simply don't forward them in textbooks without qualifiers. It is better to write "We believe this tells us the earth is several million years old" than "the earth is several million years old." Problem (at least for me) solved.

No, because it misleads the children by giving undue credence to objections which are necessarily rooted in religious dogmatism, and not in science. Theists and atheists alike accept the evidence for an old earth, the only refusal comes from those who insist on a particular hermeneutic of a particular faith text. We do not qualify our history books simply because there are some who deny the holocaust. Why then should we amend our science textbooks to appeal to those that deny the age of the earth?

No, I'm talking about these peripherals mostly. Can you list one (or three) 'fact' that creationists and scientists sqabble over that is basic science that cannot be done without the divergent assumption?

Radioactive decay rates.

 

[AveryE]

Current museum exhibit, Updated Neanderthal Rendition.

"Uncle Joe" of Petticoat Junction

​

 

[6days]

It actually was evolutionists who "rendered" *Neandertals incapable of speech.

No, "they" did not. I am astounded by your determination to insist on being wrong despite facing decisive evidence to the contrary.

You are determined to rewrite history but evolutionists certainly did claim Neandertals were incapable of speech.
Fortunatly, science has over turned the evolutionary beliefs.
Smithsonian.com: "Fred H. Smith, a physical anthropologist at LoyolaUniversity in Chicago who has been studying Neanderthal DNA. “They were believed to be scavengers who made primitive tools and were incapable of language or symbolic thought.”Now, he says, researchers believe that Neanderthals “were highly intelligent, able to adapt to a wide variety of ecologicalzones, and capable of developing highly functional tools to help them do so. They were quite accomplished.”


Re. the article you refer to...Even the researcher Lieberman tries to claim Neandertals couldn't produce sounds universal in human speech....
"In contrast, Philip Lieberman still believes that Neandertals were incapable of producing proper unnasalized speech, and could not pronounce such vowels as a, i, and u, or velar consonants as k and g, all of which are almost universal in human speech
http://www.neandertals.org/language.html

The humanity of Neandertals can be seen in the way they cared for their elderly, as we do. Neandertals created art...better than I do. The humanity of Neandertals can be seen in their use of jewelery and makeup. ETC

Unfortunately these things are not distinguishing factors of taxonomic identity. Neanderthals may in fact have done all of these things, and yet you are still no closer to demonstrating that they are the same species and/or subspecies as we are.

Those things are a few of the things that demonstrate the humanity of Neandertals... descendants of Adam and Eve.
Because of your belief system, it is important to you to prove they are a different species/ subspecies.
But I think you have already agreed that this is subjective....Its called "the species problem".
Slight differences in anatomy don't make a difference in determining different species. Even large differences don't tell us something is a different species...as in the case bulldogs, poodles and Great Danes.
Our slight DNA difference with Neandertals is also not enough to call them a subspecies. There are other animals who have a larger variance that are called the same species. (And we are separated by several thousand years of mutations between us and Neandertals,which accounts for some of the difference) .
So why do you want them to be a different species??
There is no reason other than evolutionary beliefs.

Perhaps lets look at definitions...
Definition of species
Bing Dictionary
•spe·cies
•[ spée sheez ]
1.taxonomic group: a subdivision of a genus considered as a basic biological classification and containing individuals that resemble one another and may interbreed

or definition of species from dictionary.com
the major subdivision of a genus or subgenus, regarded as the basic category of biological classification, composed of related individuals that resemble one another, are able to breed among themselves, but are not able to breed with members of another species.

DS... "species" is subjective. Different sources give slightly different definitions. Often, taxonomists will reclassify organisms ...it isn't a precise science. Your beliefs about Neandertals resemble some of the old evolutionary beliefs that black people and women were not as highly evolved as white males. Nothing in the definitions precludes Neandertals from being classified the same species as Europeans, Australian Aboriginees, Pygmies, Asians etc.

The intelligence of Neandertals can be seen as they understood chemistry and the 650 degree temp in making pitch.

Setting ablaze an object does not require knowledge of chemistry

You are too eager to believe Neandertals are inferior...Like Darwin believed women were inferior.
NOVA: "Chemists have discovered that distilling pitch from birch bark requires an oxygen-free environment and sustained temperatures of over 650° F. How could Neanderthals, with their Stone Age technology, have produced such conditions? If they really did master this complex process, it is hard to resist the conclusion that they must have had language and a sophisticated ability to think and plan ahead.


Back to the definition of species... It often if not always includes ability to interbreed...
Here is some more recent research helping to confirm the Biblical model ...All humanity is "one blood".


Genetics Society of America
Newswise — BETHESDA, MD – April 8, 2014 – Technical objections to the idea that Neandertals interbred with the ancestors of Eurasians have been overcome, thanks to a genome analysis method described in the April 2014 issue of the journal GENETICS. The technique can more confidently detect the genetic signatures of interbreeding than previous approaches and will be useful for evolutionary studies of other ancient or rare DNA samples.
http://www.newswise.com/articles/new-method-confirms-humans-and-neandertals-interbred


BIBLE "And He has made all nations of men of one blood to dwell on all the face of the earth, ordaining fore-appointed seasons and boundaries of their dwelling."

 

[Daedalean's_Sun]

You are determined to rewrite history but evolutionists certainly did claim Neandertals were incapable of speech.

Again, I supplied the exact conclusion that was being drawn from the paper published in an academic journal. You're quoting summaries from news articles, as if they were somehow more accurate than the papers they are summarizing. If you don't see why this is problematic, then I'm afraid you lack the intellectual wherewithal to have a productive discussion on this.

Fortunatly, science has over turned the evolutionary beliefs.

I'm underwhelmed by your capacity to make such pronouncements, given that your fact-checking appears to be no better than your spell-checking.

Smithsonian.com: "Fred H. Smith, a physical anthropologist at LoyolaUniversity in Chicago who has been studying Neanderthal DNA. “They were believed to be scavengers who made primitive tools and were incapable of language or symbolic thought.”Now, he says, researchers believe that Neanderthals “were highly intelligent, able to adapt to a wide variety of ecologicalzones, and capable of developing highly functional tools to help them do so. They were quite accomplished.”

Again, this is a summary, and not a summary of his position but of others he disagrees with. Ignoring the nuances of what constitutes language and what range of phonetic vocalizations Neanderthals would have been precisely capable of, Neanderthals were certainly capable of speech (even if not language), even this Paper from 1972 by Lieberman only argued that their phonetic repertoire inferior to modern man, and not as you are trying to insist, non-existent.

Re. the article you refer to...Even the researcher Lieberman tries to claim Neandertals couldn't produce sounds universal in human speech....

And yet even at his boldest he never claimed that neanderthals were "incapable of speech". Furthermore, he didn't base his conclusions on "evolutionary beliefs" but on supralaryngeal reconstructions. How advanced or primitive we imagine neanderthals were, this has no affect on the veracity of evolution.

As I mentioned before, there are roughly 25 Hominini species representing a smooth continuum of traits ranging from the very "ape-like" ardipithecus to modern humans, and that the more "ape-like" pongid, fossils are consistently found to be older, and deeper within the geologic column. To which I quanlified "ape-like" as gradation of endocranial volumes, parietal bulge, and the pronunciation of prognathism and brow ridges, accompanied by data demonstrating these facts.

"In contrast, Philip Lieberman still believes that Neandertals were incapable of producing proper unnasalized speech, and could not pronounce such vowels as a, i, and u, or velar consonants as k and g, all of which are almost universal in human speech
http://www.neandertals.org/language.html

In contrast to nasalized speech.

At any rate, I've already presented two different papers written by Lieberman himself, and you can see for yourself what he himself wrote in his own words, so I'm a bit unclear as to why you insist on using 2nd-hand interpretations of his statements by others.

Because of your belief system, it is important to you to prove they are a different species/ subspecies.
But I think you have already agreed that this is subjective....Its called "the species problem".
Slight differences in anatomy don't make a difference in determining different species. Even large differences don't tell us something is a different species...as in the case bulldogs, poodles and Great Danes.
Our slight DNA difference with Neandertals is also not enough to call them a subspecies.

DS... "species" is subjective. Different sources give slightly different definitions. Often, taxonomists will reclassify organisms ...it isn't a precise science.

Okay, let's ignore the "species" and "subspecies" labels for a minute. I will state my position in this more quantifiable and testable way:

It is my position that the genetic difference between neanderthals and modern humans is equal to if not greater than the genetic difference between domesticated dogs and gray wolves.

Do you agree with this position, yes or no?

Your beliefs about Neandertals resemble some of the old evolutionary beliefs that black people and women were not as highly evolved as white males. Nothing in the definitions precludes Neandertals from being classified the same species as Europeans, Australian Aboriginees, Pygmies, Asians etc.

Because they're not definitionally different, they're genetically different.

You are too eager to believe Neandertals are inferior...Like Darwin believed women were inferior.

Where have I made any such argument? I'd be willing to accept whatever the evidence indicated. That's ignoring the point that "inferior" is a perfectly useless adjective unless stated relative to some specific capacity. We likely were inferior to neanderthals, for instance, in regard to cold acclimation. We must have had some survival advantage as they went extinct and we did not. So in that sense we could say they they had inferior adaptations to their ecological environment.

NOVA: "Chemists have discovered that distilling pitch from birch bark requires an oxygen-free environment and sustained temperatures of over 650° F. How could Neanderthals, with their Stone Age technology, have produced such conditions? If they really did master this complex process, it is hard to resist the conclusion that they must have had language and a sophisticated ability to think and plan ahead.

A question which was answered in the very article you supplied:

After some practical experiments, the team proposed that the Neanderthals had invented the following procedure: first, wrap a long strip of birch bark around a small pebble so that it forms a cigar-shaped roll. Next, dig a narrow pit, then set light to one end of the roll and place the burning end at the bottom of the pit. In the confined space at the bottom of the pit, the smoldering bark quickly uses up oxygen and causes the pitch to “sweat,” or condense, out of the roll of bark onto the surface of the pebble.

and again...

In 2010, another team reported success by a variation on the technique: lay strips of bark on a flat stone surface, cover them with a couple of inches of sand to exclude oxygen, then build a fire on top. After a little over an hour, the team dug up the stone and found that enough pitch had dripped onto its surface to haft two or three spears or tools.

And ironically enough, this gem:

Roebroeks adds that the significance of the Neanderthal pitches should not be overblown. “After all, they were produced by hunter-gatherers who survived in western Eurasia for hundreds of thousands of years in a wide variety of environments, successfully exploiting a wide range of mammals and other resources…That they discovered a trick or two which we are unable to reproduce nowadays should not come as a surprise—unless of course one assumes that they were 'complete idiots,' lacking the flexibility and learning capacities of other primates.”

 

[6days]

You are determined to rewrite history but evolutionists certainly did claim Neandertals were incapable of speech.

Again, I supplied the exact conclusion that was being drawn from the paper published in an academic journal.

Your paper and its conclusions are fine(Well...The conclusions were actually proven faulty... but the article does not refute what I had said)... What I said was that evolutionists claimed Neandertals were incapable of speech. I have quoted evolutionists who admitted that once was the belief.

Once again...From Smithsonian.com....."Fred H. Smith, a physical anthropologist at LoyolaUniversity in Chicago who has been studying Neanderthal DNA. “They were believed to be scavengers who made primitive tools and were incapable of language or symbolic thought.

I'm afraid you lack the intellectual wherewithal to have a productive discussion on this.

Evolutionists might say its also possible that I'm incapable of language and symbolic thought.

Fortunatly, science has over turned the evolutionary beliefs.

I'm underwhelmed by your capacity to make such pronouncements, given that your fact-checking appears to be no better than your spell-checking

You just don't appreciate a guy who doesn't depend on spell check!

Even manny evolootionists r know addmitting that sience has proved some of their beliefs were incorrect.:rapture: ha
Almost every article you find on Neandertals discusses the incorrect beliefs from the past. Ex. "We tend to think of them as lumbering, weak-minded brutes too stupid to ensure their own continued survival.

But new research suggesting that Neanderthals had continuous control of fire is challenging the widely held opinion that our hairy ancestors were cognitively inferior to early modern humans"

Because of your belief system, it is important to you to prove they are a different species/ subspecies.
But I think you have already agreed that this is subjective....Its called "the species problem".
Slight differences in anatomy don't make a difference in determining different species. Even large differences don't tell us something is a different species...as in the case bulldogs, poodles and Great Danes.
Our slight DNA difference with Neandertals is also not enough to call them a subspecies.

DS... "species" is subjective. Different sources give slightly different definitions. Often, taxonomists will reclassify organisms ...it isn't a precise science.

Okay, let's ignore the "species" and "subspecies" labels for a minute. I will state my position in this more quantifiable and testable way:
It is my position that the genetic difference between neanderthals and modern humans is equal to if not greater than the genetic difference between domesticated dogs and gray wolves.

Do you agree with this position, yes or no?

Even IF you were correct, which I don't think you are...Wolves and dogs are still the same kind of animal and can interbreed.


Neandertals..."They are very closely related to modern humans,differing in DNA by only 0.12%."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal

. “The domestic dog is an extremely close relative of the gray wolf, differing from it by at most 0.2% of mtDNA sequence....

In comparison, the gray wolf differs from its closest wild relative, the coyote, by about 4% of mitochondrial DNA sequence.”
http://www2.fiu.edu/~milesk/Genetics.htm

In an case DS, differences in DNA are something that can be considered but it is not a determining factor. Modern chimps have as much as 3 times as much difference between them as do the most divergent humans.... yet chimps are still considered chimps.
"The largest study to date of genetic variation among chimpanzees has found that the traditional, geography-based sorting of chimps into three populations -- western, central and eastern -- is underpinned by significant genetic differences, two to three times greater than the variation between the most different human populations'
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070420104723.htm

Your beliefs about Neandertals resemble some of the old evolutionary beliefs that black people and women were not as highly evolved as white males. Nothing in the definitions precludes Neandertals from being classified the same species as Europeans, Australian Aboriginees, Pygmies, Asians etc.

Because they're not definitionally different, they're genetically different

We are all genetically different of course.

 

[Daedalean's_Sun]

Your paper and its conclusions are fine(Well...The conclusions were actually proven faulty... but the article does not refute what I had said)...

You were claiming that "evolutionists" believed that Neanderthals were incapable of speech. The only scientist I know that says anything remotely close to this is Lieberman and his associates, which only ever asserted that neanderthals don't posses the phonetic range of modern humans including the ability to produce certain vowels. That's a world away from "incapable of speech". Your only recourse has been to quote inaccurate summaries of his conclusions from his scholarly competitors in popular news articles.

If you know of any scientist that claims that neanderthals were incapable of speech, feel free to name them and provide links to where they claim this, otherwise your argument is dead on arrival.

You just don't appreciate a guy who doesn't depend on spell check!

Perhaps you should.

Even IF you were correct, which I don't think you are...Wolves and dogs are still the same kind of animal and can interbreed.

So is that a yes or no?

Neandertals..."They are very closely related to modern humans,differing in DNA by only 0.12%."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal

. “The domestic dog is an extremely close relative of the gray wolf, differing from it by at most 0.2% of mtDNA sequence....

Which would be an airtight argument if not for the fact that mtDNA is not the same thing as DNA. Do you have a reference for mtDNA average variance by percentage between Neanderthals and humans?

In an case DS, differences in DNA are something that can be considered but it is not a determining factor.

What is a determining factor in your opinion?

Modern chimps have as much as 3 times as much difference between them as do the most divergent humans.... yet chimps are still considered chimps.

There are three extant sub-species of the Common chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes. They are as follows:

• Pan troglodytes versus
• Pan troglodytes troglodytes
• Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii

^Source

So, yes across three separate sub-species there is a lot of genetic variation. Anatomically modern humans, the Homo sapiens sapiens, are the only extant sub-specis of human and therefore it is not unexpected that there should be more genetic variation across three sub-species than within just one.

 

[6days]

You were claiming that "evolutionists" believed that Neanderthals were incapable of speech.

Yes... Evolutionists thought Neandertals were incapable of speech. They had no evidence of that but believed it because they thought Neandertals were a "dim witted" ape man. Its easy for you to find articles written by evolutionists, admitting their beliefs were wrong...Science has shown that the evolutionists were incorrect.
EXAMPLE: "The Neanderthals have fascinated both the academic world and the general public ever since their discovery almost 200 years ago. Initially thought to be subhuman brutes incapable of anything but the most primitive of grunts.....
....Recently, due to new palaeoanthropological and archaeological discoveries and the reassessment of older data, but especially to the availability of ancient DNA, we have started to realise that their fate was much more intertwined with ours and that, far from being slow brutes, their cognitive capacities and culture were comparable to ours."
http://phys.org/news/2013-07-neanderthals-speech-language-modern-humans.html

Biblical creationists have always known that evolutionists stories about Neandertals were false. God's Word tells us that He created humans distinct from animals. All humanity is descendants of the original human pair, Adam and Eve.
Acts 17:26 "From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands."