Stone tools now dated to 3.3 million years ago

_{Denyse O'Leary

May 21, 2015

Human evolution, News}

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The discovery is the first evidence that an even earlier group of proto-humans may have had the thinking abilities needed to figure out how to make sharp-edged tools. The stone tools mark “a new beginning to the known archaeological record,” say the authors of a new paper about the discovery, published today in the leading scientific journal Nature.

“The whole site’s surprising, it just rewrites the book on a lot of things that we thought were true,” said geologist Chris Lepre of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Rutgers University, a co-author of the paper who precisely dated the artifacts.

The tools “shed light on an unexpected and previously unknown period of hominin behavior and can tell us a lot about cognitive development in our ancestors that we can’t understand from fossils alone,” said lead author Sonia Harmand, of the Turkana Basin Institute at Stony Brook University and the Universite Paris Ouest Nanterre.

Hominins are a group of species that includes modern humans, Homo sapiens, and our closest evolutionary ancestors. Anthropologists long thought that our relatives in the genus Homo — the line leading directly to Homo sapiens — were the first to craft such stone tools. But researchers have been uncovering tantalizing clues that some other, earlier species of hominin, distant cousins, if you will, might have figured it out. More.

Of course, the unconfronted real story is that human paleo groupings are probably artificial. Class, discuss.

Revolutionary stone tools found in India “much earlier than thought,” 385 kya

Stone tools confirmed from 3.4 mya?

See also: Human evolution, the skinny

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Comments

Were Paleoanthropologists Too Eager to Detect Design in Ancient "Stone Tools"? Casey Luskin May 26, 2015 - video - living apes making simple stone tools http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/05/were_paleoanthr096341.htmlbornagain77_{May 26, 2015
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Ok, so who else besides me thinks that K.platytops deserves its own genus? And that Homo "branched off" of K.platytops and not Australopithecus? Heck, maybe K.platytops is the original homo? This tool evidence sure points in that direction. http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/oldest-stone-tools-predate-evolution-of-homo-genusppolish_{May 23, 2015
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No evidence sigh. Box of Rocks debating sigh. I'm really looking forward to the day an Atheist here at UD posts; "All right! All right! There's Design! I admit it. Freaking mountains of evidence of Design. Guided Designs. Puposeful Designs. Wondrous Awesome Designs. But they're NATURAL Designs. Not Supernatural." I'm really looking forward to the Natural Design versus Supernatural Design debate.ppolish_{May 23, 2015
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ppolish: And not knowing the face of the designer is irrelevant to knowing design. Not having even the slightest evidence connecting the supposed artifact to the artisan and the art, having absolutely nothing scientific to say about the artisan and the art, undermines any scientific claim that the object is an artifact.Zachriel_{May 23, 2015
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Biological Design makes Pliocene tool design look so simple. Cmon Zach. And not knowing the face of the designer is irrelevant to knowing design. And even more fundamental - a design can not comprehend its own designer. True for a shaped Pliocene rock, Zach, and true for a biological you.ppolish_{May 23, 2015
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ppolish: We have specific information about the hominins who assemble the tools for Stanley and Craftsman too. That's right, and which is vastly more than ID is willing to venture about the purported designer of biological organisms; an unknown designer, with unknown methods, at an unknown place, at an unknown time, for unknown reasons. See #18.Zachriel_{May 23, 2015
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"Sure, by knapping the stones. That means we have a great deal of specific information about the artisans." We have specific information about the hominins who assemble the tools for Stanley and Craftsman too. Chinese hominins. Like me, Zach, none of them know what your point is.ppolish_{May 22, 2015
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ppolish: of course the tools were built by hominins. Sure, by knapping the stones. That means we have a great deal of specific information about the artisans. Silver Asiatic: You’ll notice there that the ID project does not include research on the nature of the designer. That’s outside of the scope of its area of study. It's an entailment of the claim concerning an external intelligent agent, and the lack of supporting evidence undermines the claim. Silver Asiatic: Do you understand what is meant by the phrase “when that [the ID scientific proposal] is accepted”? There's nothing stopping further research. It doesn't take universal agreement. That's how science progresses, by pushing the boundaries, not by making claims then calling it a day. Silver Asiatic: I accept that its likely that they were fashioned by Homininae, which is a vague categorization It's hardly vague. It includes everything from how the Krebs cycle generates energy to how the stones were knapped.Zachriel_{May 22, 2015
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Zach
Do you accept that the tools were fashioned by hominins?
Yes, I accept that its likely that they were fashioned by Homininae, which is a vague categorization, but in any case, it remains true that they were fashioned by unknown designers. In the same way, I accept evidence indicating characteristics that must be present in the Intelligent Designer of the universe, but that evidence comes from outside the scope of ID.Silver Asiatic_{May 22, 2015
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Zach
Notably, you didn’t say scientific research to determine the nature of the designer.
You might be new to the topic and not familiar with ID. I think I gave you a link to read. You'll notice there that the ID project does not include research on the nature of the designer. That's outside of the scope of its area of study. I realize that might be difficult to understand, but I think I already gave you several examples that might help. Oh yes, you were flatly incorrect to claim that my statement: "When that proposal is accepted, the study could move ..." was equivalent to my admitting "there is no scientific evidence". Do you understand what is meant by the phrase "when that [the ID scientific proposal] is accepted"?Silver Asiatic_{May 22, 2015
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Zachriel, you have no evidence, either in the fossil record or in laboratory work spanning the last four decades, to substantiate your atheistic belief that unguided Darwinian processes can create humans.
"Gradualism is a concept I believe in, not just because of Darwin’s authority, but because my understanding of genetics seems to demand it. Yet Gould and the American Museum people [i.e., Eldredge] are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils. As a paleontologist myself, I am much occupied with the philosophical problems of identifying ancestral forms in the fossil record. You say that I should at least ‘show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived.’ I will lay it on the line – there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument." Colin Patterson to Luther Sunderland, April 10, 1979, quoted in Luther .D. Sunderland, Darwin’s Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems, 4th ed. (El Cajon, CA: Master Book Publishers, 1988), 89. “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain – Michael Behe – December 2010 Excerpt: In its most recent issue The Quarterly Review of Biology has published a review by myself of laboratory evolution experiments of microbes going back four decades.,,, The gist of the paper is that so far the overwhelming number of adaptive (that is, helpful) mutations seen in laboratory evolution experiments are either loss or modification of function. Of course we had already known that the great majority of mutations that have a visible effect on an organism are deleterious. Now, surprisingly, it seems that even the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.,,, I dub it “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain. http://behe.uncommondescent.com/2010/12/the-first-rule-of-adaptive-evolution/
Shoot, you can't even provide empirical evidence that unguided Darwinian processes can create a single functional protein, much less do you have any empirical evidence that unguided Darwinian processes can organize trillions upon trillions of protein molecules into a structure that is far, far, more complex than the entire internet combined, i.e. the human brain!:
Doug Axe Knows His Work Better Than Steve Matheson Excerpt: Regardless of how the trials are performed, the answer ends up being at least half of the total number of password possibilities, which is the staggering figure of 10^77 (written out as 100, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000). Armed with this calculation, you should be very confident in your skepticism, because a 1 in 10^77 chance of success is, for all practical purposes, no chance of success. My experimentally based estimate of the rarity of functional proteins produced that same figure, making these likewise apparently beyond the reach of chance. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/06/doug_axe_knows_his_work_better035561.html Human brain has more switches than all computers on Earth - November 2010 Excerpt: They found that the brain's complexity is beyond anything they'd imagined, almost to the point of being beyond belief, says Stephen Smith, a professor of molecular and cellular physiology and senior author of the paper describing the study: ...One synapse, by itself, is more like a microprocessor--with both memory-storage and information-processing elements--than a mere on/off switch. In fact, one synapse may contain on the order of 1,000 molecular-scale switches. A single human brain has more switches than all the computers and routers and Internet connections on Earth. http://news.cnet.com/8301-27083_3-20023112-247.html Component placement optimization in the brain – 1994 As he comments [106], “To current limits of accuracy … the actual placement appears to be the best of all possible layouts; this constitutes strong evidence of perfect optimization.,, among about 40,000,000 alternative layout orderings, the actual ganglion placement in fact requires the least total connection length. http://www.jneurosci.org/content/14/4/2418.abstract "Complexity Brake" Defies Evolution - August 8, 2012 Excerpt: Consider a neuronal synapse -- the presynaptic terminal has an estimated 1000 distinct proteins. Fully analyzing their possible interactions would take about 2000 years. Or consider the task of fully characterizing the visual cortex of the mouse -- about 2 million neurons. Under the extreme assumption that the neurons in these systems can all interact with each other, analyzing the various combinations will take about 10 million years..., even though it is assumed that the underlying technology speeds up by an order of magnitude each year. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/08/complexity_brak062961.html
Neo-Darwinists believing that unguided material processes built that level of unfathomed complexity in a single human brain should be the very definition of insanity that we find in dictionaries!bornagain77_{May 22, 2015
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Zach, of course the tools were built by hominins. Or space aliens? Why do you ask such an obvious question?ppolish_{May 22, 2015
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bornagain77: humans evolved in spite of the evidence that he himself admits is lacking. That is certainly not our view. bornagain77: I pointed out that the evidence does not support the claim. A hash of quote-mines is not evidence. Silver Asiatic: ID shows that there is scientific evidence of intelligent design in nature. That's what it claims. Silver Asiatic: You might want to read this: https://uncommondescent.com/id-defined/ We're quite familiar with the text. What does "intelligence" mean in the context? Silver Asiatic: Your statement is false. You said, "When that proposal is accepted, the study could move to philosophical or even theological research to determine the nature of the designer." Notably, you didn't say scientific research to determine the nature of the designer. Silver Asiatic: I’m saying you don’t know the difference between a non-human ancestor of humans and humans You didn't answer the question. Do you accept that the tools were fashioned by hominins?Zachriel_{May 22, 2015
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Silver Asiatic: Darwinists don’t want to talk about that. Or they’ll make the absurd claim that all of those differences are explained in the 1% genetic difference. Or, they’ll falsely claim that differences between human and chimp are ‘minor’.
Even granting the 1% difference claim, the fact is the genetic information that is shared is arranged in wildly different order. That matters. A helluva lot. If I disassemble a 747 and make a heap of component parts, it is still true that the heap of 747 parts are 100% identical to the parts in a functioning 747. It doesn't mean much when it comes to function. The heap of parts won't fly. If I take Microsoft Excel and randomly swap 1% of the code with random bytes, Excel will is going to be comparatively non-functional, have severe issues, and probably be completely unusable. Whatever the genetic differences are between chimps and humans, they result in radically different outcomes.mike1962_{May 22, 2015
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Ahh ha, we have a candidate On Assignment: Monkeys Use Stones to Crack Open Nuts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B_pYUuE_b4bornagain77_{May 22, 2015
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"The oldest handmade stone tools discovered yet predate any known humans and may have been wielded by an as-yet-unknown species, researchers say." Yes, textbooks need to be rewritten along with assorted Dawkin fictions. But textbooks may want to wait until the "unknown species" is discovered. Dawkins should refrain from updating though. His books will be classic nonsense someday. http://m.livescience.com/50908-oldest-stone-tools-predate-humans.htmlppolish_{May 22, 2015
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BA77
You, instead of countering the fact that the evidence itself does not support his, or your, claim, trumpeted his belief instead of the evidence.
Yes, it's a faith-based belief for him and evolutionists in general.
Yet, it is exactly in this area of the genome (i.e. regulatory networks) where substantial, ‘orders of magnitude’, differences are found between even supposedly closely related species. Needless to say, this is the exact opposite finding for what Darwinism would have predicted for what should have been found in the genome. If Darwinism were a science, instead a faith based belief system for atheists, this finding, by itself, should be enough to falsify neo-Darwinism.
That's a good example of the contradictory evidence that is ignored or covered-up. For me, it's easy to see that there is a personal commitment given to the Darwinian fairy tale. Another good example is how the supposed 99% genetic similarity of human and chimp is promoted as proof of human evolution from non-human ancestors. When we look at the obvious morphological differences between human and chimp, virtually every part of the body is different. That says nothing about the infinite difference between a conscious, rational being and an animal lacking consciousness and rationality. Darwinists don't want to talk about that. Or they'll make the absurd claim that all of those differences are explained in the 1% genetic difference. Or, they'll falsely claim that differences between human and chimp are 'minor'. On that point, we have to conclude that evolutionists do not know what humans are, and they can't possibly explain the origin of human life.Silver Asiatic_{May 22, 2015
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Zach
It’s not a research program, but a claim that life was designed by a conscious external agent ...
ID shows that there is scientific evidence of intelligent design in nature. It's clear to me that you don't know what ID is. You might want to read this: https://uncommondescent.com/id-defined/
you admit there’s no scientific evidence
Your statement is false. That's a pretty good example of how you frequently make false claims to defend your point of view.
Are you saying the tools were not fashioned by hominins?
I'm saying you don't know the difference between a non-human ancestor of humans and humans - or if such ancestors existed.Silver Asiatic_{May 22, 2015
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Zacheriel, he, like all Darwinists, you included, says humans evolved in spite of the evidence that he himself admits is lacking. I pointed out that the evidence does not support the claim. You, instead of countering the fact that the evidence itself does not support his, or your, claim, trumpeted his belief instead of the evidence. Hard evidence could care less about personal beliefs, and the hard evidence itself does not support the atheistic beliefs of neo-Darwinists.bornagain77_{May 22, 2015
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bornagain77: Despite his claim ... You cited him as an authority. He says humans evolved. Silver Asiatic: ID is a research program within actual science. It's not a research program, but a claim that life was designed by a conscious external agent. Silver Asiatic: When that proposal is accepted, the study could move to philosophical or even theological research to determine the nature of the designer. Philosophical or theological research? In other words, you admit there's no scientific evidence. In any case, why wait?
Dean, to the physics department: "Why do I always have to give you guys so much money, for laboratories and expensive equipment and stuff. Why couldn't you be like the math. department - all they need is money for pencils, paper and waste-paper baskets. Or even better, like the philosophy department. All they need are pencils and paper."
Silver Asiatic: They do point to an unknown designer {of the stone tools} – otherwise, the designer would be known. They point to hominins known to be geographically and temporally associated with the tools. These organisms were eukaryotes, metazoa, bilaterian, deuterostoma, chordate, craniate, vertebrate, gnathostome, tetrapod, amniote, mammal, primate, hominid, hominin; with the associated traits. Silver Asiatic: That’s one difference with ID – usually it does not simply offer speculations that are not supported by evidence. Are you saying the tools were not fashioned by hominins?Zachriel_{May 22, 2015
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Zach
The difference between ID and actual science is that actual science tries to answer the questions about who the designer was, how the tools were made, when they were made, where they were made, and the reason they were made.
ID is a research program within actual science. It works within limits. Evolution, for example, does not try to answer how life began. Marine biology, for example, does not try to answer how human tools were made. So, you might be confused about what ID proposes.
scientists continue to seek evidence that tie these aspects together.
ID continues to look at several evidences of design in nature. When that proposal is accepted, the study could move to philosophical or even theological research to determine the nature of the designer. ID continues to look at evidence of design in nature - that's the limit of its program.
Scientists do not point to an unknown designer,
They do point to an unknown designer - otherwise, the designer would be known. They are willing to offer conjectures which could be (and usually are) proven wrong. That's one difference with ID - usually it does not simply offer speculations that are not supported by evidence.
... for unknown reasons, then call it a day.
In evolutionary-materialism, there are no reasons for anything. Reasons and purposes are teleological.Silver Asiatic_{May 22, 2015
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Thus, the claim that our species evolved from some ape like ancestor is unsupported both at the molecular level and at the level of the overall fossil record. I hold that only severe prejudice, and ample imagination, sees evidence for human evolution where no actual evidence exists (i.e. seeing faces in the clouds). At the end of the day, it is found that all Darwinian claims for human evolution rest on imagination, not any solid substantiating evidence:
“We have all seen the canonical parade of apes, each one becoming more human. We know that, as a depiction of evolution, this line-up is tosh (i.e. nonsense). Yet we cling to it. Ideas of what human evolution ought to have been like still colour our debates.” Henry Gee, editor of Nature (478, 6 October 2011, page 34, doi:10.1038/478034a), Paleoanthropology Excerpt: In regards to the pictures of the supposed ancestors of man featured in science journals and the news media Boyce Rensberger wrote in the journal Science the following regarding their highly speculative nature: "Unfortunately, the vast majority of artist's conceptions are based more on imagination than on evidence. But a handful of expert natural-history artists begin with the fossil bones of a hominid and work from there…. Much of the reconstruction, however, is guesswork. Bones say nothing about the fleshy parts of the nose, lips, or ears (or eyes). Artists must create something between an ape and a human being; the older the specimen is said to be, the more apelike they make it.... Hairiness is a matter of pure conjecture." http://conservapedia.com/Evolution#Paleoanthropology "National Geographic magazine commissioned four artists to reconstruct a female figure from casts of seven fossil bones thought to be from the same species as skull 1470. One artist drew a creature whose forehead is missing and whose jaws look vaguely like those of a beaked dinosaur. Another artist drew a rather good-looking modern African-American woman with unusually long arms. A third drew a somewhat scrawny female with arms like a gorilla and a face like a Hollywood werewolf. And a fourth drew a figure covered with body hair and climbing a tree, with beady eyes that glare out from under a heavy, gorilla-like brow." “Behind the Scenes,” National Geographic 197 (March, 2000): 140 picture - these artists "independently" produced the 4 very "different" ancestors you see here http://www.omniology.com/JackalopianArtists.html
Verse and Music:
Genesis 1:27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Chris Tomlin - The Way I Was Made http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF5SZWox_JE
bornagain77_{May 22, 2015
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Zachriel, Tattersall's area of expertise, paleontology, is where he admits there is a unbridged gap:
“A number of hominid crania are known from sites in eastern and southern Africa in the 400- to 200-thousand-year range, but none of them looks like a close antecedent of the anatomically distinctive Homo sapiens…Even allowing for the poor record we have of our close extinct kin, Homo sapiens appears as distinctive and unprecedented…there is certainly no evidence to support the notion that we gradually became who we inherently are over an extended period, in either the physical or the intellectual sense.” Dr. Ian Tattersall: – paleoanthropologist – emeritus curator of the American Museum of Natural History – (Masters of the Planet, 2012) "The record jumps, and all the evidence shows that the record is real: the gaps we see reflect real events in life's history -- not the artifact of a poor fossil record." (Niles Eldredge and Ian Tattersall, The Myths of Human Evolution, p. 59 (NY: Columbia University Press, 1982).)
as to this claim:
“the bottom line here is that our ancestors evolved in a period of increasingly unsettled environmental conditions.”
Despite his claim, the overall fossil record demonstrates remarkable stability over long periods of time despite widely varying environmental factors:
Read Your References Carefully: Paul McBride's Prized Citation on Skull-Sizes Supports My Thesis, Not His - Casey Luskin - August 31, 2012 Excerpt of Conclusion: This has been a long article, but I hope it is instructive in showing how evolutionists deal with the fossil hominin evidence. As we've seen, multiple authorities recognize that our genus Homo appears in the fossil record abruptly with a complex suite of characteristics never-before-seen in any hominin. And that suite of characteristics has remained remarkably constant from the time Homo appears until the present day with you, me, and the rest of modern humanity.,,, The complex suite of traits associated with our genus Homo appears abruptly, and is distinctly different from the australopithecines which were supposedly our ancestors. There are no transitional fossils linking us to that group.,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/08/read_your_refer_1063841.html Donald Prothero: In evolution, stasis was general, gradualism rare, and that’s the consensus 40 years on - February 2012 Excerpt: In four of the biggest climatic-vegetational events of the last 50 million years, the mammals and birds show no noticeable change in response to changing climates. No matter how many presentations I give where I show these data, no one (including myself) has a good explanation yet for such widespread stasis despite the obvious selective pressures of changing climate. Rather than answers, we have more questions— Donald Prothero - American paleontologist, geologist, and author who specializes in mammalian paleontology. https://uncommondescent.com/darwinism/donald-prothero-in-evolution-stasis-was-the-general-pattern-gradualism-was-rare-and-that-is-still-the-consensus-40-years-later/
In fact, the environmental transformations do not match supposed evolutionary timelines
Another Difficulty with Darwinian Accounts of How Human Bipedalism Developed - David Klinghoffer - February 21, 2013 Excerpt: A Darwinian evolutionary bedtime story tells of how proto-man achieved his upright walking status when the forests of his native East Africa turned to savannas. That was 4 to 6 million years ago, and the theory was that our ancestors stood up in order to be able to look around themselves over the sea of grasslands, which would have been irrelevant in the forests of old. A team of researchers led by USC's Sarah J. Feakins, writing in the journal Geology, detonate that tidy explanation with their finding that the savannas, going back 12 million years, had already been there more than 6 million years when the wonderful transition to bipedalism took place ("Northeast African vegetation change over 12 m.y."). http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/02/another_difficu069411.html
Moreover, molecular biology gives no indication that such transitions are remotely plausible for unguided neo-Darwinian processes.
More from Ann Gauger on why humans didn’t happen the way Darwin said - July 2012 Excerpt: Each of these new features probably required multiple mutations. Getting a feature that requires six neutral mutations is the limit of what bacteria can produce. For primates (e.g., monkeys, apes and humans) the limit is much more severe. Because of much smaller effective population sizes (an estimated ten thousand for humans instead of a billion for bacteria) and longer generation times (fifteen to twenty years per generation for humans vs. a thousand generations per year for bacteria), it would take a very long time for even a single beneficial mutation to appear and become fixed in a human population. You don’t have to take my word for it. In 2007, Durrett and Schmidt estimated in the journal Genetics that for a single mutation to occur in a nucleotide-binding site and be fixed in a primate lineage would require a waiting time of six million years. The same authors later estimated it would take 216 million years for the binding site to acquire two mutations, if the first mutation was neutral in its effect. Facing Facts But six million years is the entire time allotted for the transition from our last common ancestor with chimps to us according to the standard evolutionary timescale. Two hundred and sixteen million years takes us back to the Triassic, when the very first mammals appeared. One or two mutations simply aren’t sufficient to produce the necessary changes— sixteen anatomical features—in the time available. At most, a new binding site might affect the regulation of one or two genes. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/more-from-ann-gauger-on-why-humans-didnt-happen-the-way-darwin-said/
As well, the genetic sequence data is found to be 70% not 98%
The Myth of 98% Genetic Similarity (and Chromosome Fusion) between Humans and Chimps - Jeffrey Tomkins PhD. - video https://vimeo.com/95287522 Tomkins conservative 70% analysis "One must also keep in mind the fact that the chimpanzee genome assembly is still based largely on the human genomic framework as discussed in detail by author Tomkins in several journal publications (Tomkins, 2011a; Tomkins 2011b). In fact, this current study did not use any of the unanchored chimpanzee sequencing contigs that could not be aligned to the human genome. Had these additional segments of DNA been included, similarities would have been lowered even further, although only slightly. Furthermore, human DNA not found in chimp was also not included in the comparison—another factor that would have lowered similarity estimates. While, chimpanzees and humans do share many localized protein-coding regions of very high similarity, there is overall an extreme DNA sequence discontinuity between the two genomes, which defies evolutionary time-scales and dogmatic presuppositions about a common ancestor." https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/a-liberating-voice-on-the-feathered-dragons/#comment-503178
Moreover, the dGRNs (developmental Gene Regulatory Networks) between chimps and humans are found to be far more different still than even the protein coding regions are now found to be:
"Where (chimps and humans) really differ, and they differ by orders of magnitude, is in the genomic architecture outside the protein coding regions. They are vastly, vastly, different.,, The structural, the organization, the regulatory sequences, the hierarchy for how things are organized and used are vastly different between a chimpanzee and a human being in their genomes." Raymond Bohlin (per Richard Sternberg) - 9:29 minute mark of video https://vimeo.com/106012299 Richard Sternberg PhD – podcast – On Human Origins: Is Our Genome Full of Junk DNA? Part 2. (Major Differences in higher level chromosome spatial organization) http://www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/2014/11/on-human-origins-is-our-genome-full-of-junk-dna-pt-2/
Moreover, mutations to dGRNs are 'always catastrophically bad'
A Listener's Guide to the Meyer-Marshall Debate: Focus on the Origin of Information Question -Casey Luskin - December 4, 2013 Excerpt: "There is always an observable consequence if a dGRN (developmental gene regulatory network) subcircuit is interrupted. Since these consequences are always catastrophically bad, flexibility is minimal, and since the subcircuits are all interconnected, the whole network partakes of the quality that there is only one way for things to work. And indeed the embryos of each species develop in only one way." - Eric Davidson http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/12/a_listeners_gui079811.html
Thus, where Darwinists most need plasticity in the genome to be viable as a theory, (i.e. developmental Gene Regulatory Networks), is the place where mutations are found to be 'always catastrophically bad'. Yet, it is exactly in this area of the genome (i.e. regulatory networks) where substantial, ‘orders of magnitude’, differences are found between even supposedly closely related species. Needless to say, this is the exact opposite finding for what Darwinism would have predicted for what should have been found in the genome. If Darwinism were a science, instead a faith based belief system for atheists, this finding, by itself, should be enough to falsify neo-Darwinism.bornagain77_{May 22, 2015
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Mapou @11 - thanks! I enjoyed your blunt responses to Z also.Silver Asiatic_{May 22, 2015
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bornagain77 (quoting Ian Tattersall): “A number of hominid crania are known from sites in eastern and southern Africa in the 400- to 200-thousand-year range, but none of them looks like a close antecedent of the anatomically distinctive Homo sapiens… From the same book by Ian Tattersall: "the bottom line here is that our ancestors evolved in a period of increasingly unsettled environmental conditions." bornagain77: wants to know ‘What are the characteristics of the designer of the flagellum?’, when where, etc.. etc… Did you answer the question somewhere? Mapou: making up crap Apparently the stone tools are real, and date to about 3.3 million years ago. Mapou: as you go and still no OOL theory that explains where it all came from. You're right! No one has a valid theory of abiogenesis. However, it is an area of active scientific interest, e.g. Jack Szostak's lab. http://molbio.mgh.harvard.edu/szostakweb/ Mapou: Where did the universe come from? Cosmologists believe it started about 13.8 billion years ago in a very dense state. How that came about is still a matter of intense scientific investigation. Again, you highlight the fundamental difference. Scientists are very interested in the origin of life and of the universe. tjguy: 3.3 million years ago or there abouts, some HOMINIDS figured out how to make tools. But it took these people another 3.29 million years to figure out farming? Well, settled farming. However, it's likely that people tended plants long before becoming settled. Certain tribes still live this way. It took a long time before grasses were sufficiently evolved through artificial selection to provide enough sustenance for settled life. Also, you do realize that hominins from 3 million years ago had smaller brains than modern humans? ppolish: Apes have been watching humans use tools for 4 million years. Many other hominid species have gone extinct so that the gap between humans and other apes is rather large. Most surviving non-human hominids live in isolated areas, and of those more than a few are threatened with extinction. ppolish: Apes now fling poop. Yahoos were a sort of ape. Houyhnhnms were equines.Zachriel_{May 22, 2015
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Monkey see, monkey do. Apes have been watching humans use tools for 4 million years. And the best a modern ape can do is pound a nut with a rock. Smart ape. Here's a banana.ppolish_{May 21, 2015
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Evolutionary bias is just dripping from this article! Their interpretation of the find is steeped in it. So let's get the facts straight. 3.3 million years ago or there abouts, some HOMINIDS figured out how to make tools. But it took these people another 3.29 million years to figure out farming? Stop and think about that for a minute! Don't be so gullible as to accept whatever mumbo jumbo they put out there as a new scientific fact! This is totally illogical. The facts don't fit the evolutionary paradigm very well here. Quote: "Most paleoanthropologists concede that members of Homo (whether neanderthalensis, erectus, habilis or the like) used fire and made weapons, sailed boats, created art and musical instruments, understood semantic communication, and were for all practical purposes just like us before the Cro-Magnon arrived. If they could do all these other things, why didn’t any of them think of planting a crop or riding a horse throughout 1.9 million years?" http://crev.info/2013/07/farming-came-too-late-in-the-evolutionary-timetable/#sthash.O1IEgQlD.dpuf This article did not mention farming, but intelligence is being found further and further back in history, yet the evolutionary story is that farming did not develop until 10,000 years ago. Every time they find discoveries like this, they are surprised. It rewrites the book on what they thought to be true. Why were they so far off in their beliefs? Because they are expecting everything to fit their evolutionary view of history. So they are forced to believe that these people never thought to develop farming or ride a horse until 10,000 years ago. If such an interpretation did not support the evolutionary paradigm, it would be laughed into oblivion! Evolution forces them to believe some really wild things sometimes.tjguy_{May 21, 2015
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ppolish,
Goodusername, you may think this discovery is a “nothing to see here” yawn discovery. I disagree. No big deal that:)
I'm not sure what I said to give you that indication. I think it's a very exciting discovery. There had been earlier discoveries of supposed stone tools with australopithecines/kenyanthropus, but, IMO, they were very unconvincing. I was looking at pics of these stone tools however, and they certainly appear to be the real deal. As I mentioned, if this holds up, it may mean a re-drawing of the line for the Homo genus. Perhaps Afarensis and/or kenyathropus will be moved into our genus, or perhaps they will determine that making stone isn't a good marker for our genus after all, and perhaps move habilis and other more primitive members of our genus into the australopithecine genus. Edit: Just realized that you may have been talking about the discovery of kenyathropus. It's always interesting to find good fossils from that time period in order to get a sense of how they vary, but the fossil is very similar to other austalopithecine fossils.goodusername_{May 21, 2015
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Goodusername, you may think this discovery is a "nothing to see here" yawn discovery. I disagree. No big deal that:)ppolish_{May 21, 2015
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"It was almost certainly some sort of hominin, a type of intelligent flint-knapping ape" A flint-knapping ape haha Zach. Now we have poop-flinging apes. 3.5 millions years. Apes now fling poop. Evoluuuution.ppolish_{May 21, 2015
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