Six possible things for creationists to disbelieve before breakfast

Hi Coyote ...I think this post over at EFF says it all about creationist responses

quote:

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Seems like they found DNA from a femur that is 400,000 years old.

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I like one of the quotes in the article from Juan Luis Arsuaga. He says, and I quote,

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Quote: "Now we have to rethink the whole story"

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Ah yes, let's see how we can make it all fit so it makes sense!

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... accusations of ad-hoc reasoning. Because we don't know the whole story perfectly the first time, it must all be wrong.However, it does seem a bit confusing how they dated these fossils. It appears they used sequence divergence to determine the age of these fossils. Is that right? Do they have corroborating data that supports the 400,000 kya date? (I did not read the original paper just the news article)HBD

I suspect that climate change had something to do with it, as they went extinct just prior to the last glacial maximum. They were probably not well adapted to changing food sources that were a result of climate change, while H. sapiens were more adapted and so were able to out-compete in that way.I don't really have evidence that was the case, it is simply my suspicion.HBD

You're asking if the glaciers made it all the way to Spain, right? No, I don't think so. Northern Europe, I'm not exactly sure of the extent. The timing is approximately right, though. The Last Glacial Period was from about 110,000 ya to 12,000 ya. with peak coverage at about 22,000 ya. The Neanderthals are thought to be extinct (or absorbed into the human population) somewhere between 25,000 and 30,000 ya. Denisovians disappear around the same time.But I am not suggesting the glaciers ran over them, so it's not a matter of migrating out of the way. At the Last Glacial Maximum it is estimated that global temperature was 3^oC lower than normal. Just considering that today we are experiencing global climate change of 1^oC and the significant shifts in vegetation and animal populations that are occurring, that period would have experienced 3 times the effect.So, my suspicion is that their food sources "migrated" while they did not. H. sapiens were then better at exploiting the changing environment and so were able to survive while the other hominid species were not.There is also the possibility that the Neanderthals and Denisovians were simply bred out of existence by interbreeding with modern humans. But I would still see this as a byproduct of climate change. Why would there be significant population movement and intermingling except as a reaction to shortages of food. Additionally, I suspect H. sapiens were more aggressive and dominating than the other groups - just based on what I know about modern humans HBD