Six possible things for creationists to disbelieve before breakfast

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

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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

This site has been given a pretty old date from long before the mtDNA was sequenced. The presence of the particular fossils alone suggests an older date.I'm not sure of the dating methods used as the articles don't say much, but apparently the site has been worked since 1983 and the mtDNA was just sequenced recently.

I see your point. You are correct.

A bit off the topic but...A fairly popular hypothesis regarding the extinction of the Neanderthals is that they lost the battle for resources with modern humans. I have read that there were not more than about 3500 breeding Neanderthal women and so the population was always small. Do we know about how many modern humans they would have been competing with? It seems to me that the populations of both groups was too small to indicate that there would be much competition for resources over such a large area as Europe and Asia.

The populations do seem to have been small.But I think we still have a lot to learn about Neanderthal. The DNA sequencing that they're now doing is telling us a lot, and there will be more to come!

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

Seems way more plausible to me. Still, how long did it take for the glaciers to advance? We are talking at least decades right and did they even reach Spain? You would think that they could have migrated out of the way.

They reached Spain, Portugal, and Italy.But here is an interesting one for you:http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...a-spain-denisovan-cave

Thanks that was interesting. Obviously there is plenty more to figure out but it is astounding to me how much we can learn from a few old bones.I have this image of one single offspring carrying the critical genetic material that led to modern humans. Our entire existence resting on one single essential mutation that allowed us to prosper. Such an incredibly thin beginning.

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The bones of the Sima people share the features of Neanderthals, notably their thick-browed skulls, as well as the features of a much older group of human ancestors called Homo heidelbergensis, which lived about 600,000 years ago.

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Is it possible that the "sima hominin" is an intermediate between heidelbergensis and Neanders and Denesovians?

Here is another interesting read:Frontiers of Zoology: Neanderthal Family Tree Reflects Geography

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

I meant in a sort of 'so to speak' way. Being hunter gatherers I would think that they were adept at following the food. If the food supply is moving over the course of decades I would think that they would have simply followed along. As the glaciers advanced both the food and the people would have been concentrated I guess. Still a pretty big area.Is it odd that there should only be a population of about 10k of them if they were around for 370k yrs? Maybe they just weren't all that good at surviving.

I think we still have a lot to learn about those guys.And now that they are getting DNA from the bones, I think that'll be a big help.

Why are the ages assumed?
How did they come to these ages?