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Evidence for Human Evolution

Dan4reason

Facts not Faith
Hello everyone. I would like to share something I found about human evolution. We have found many Neanderthal fossils and have been able to sequence their DNA and compared it to human DNA. The result is that their DNA is shown to be distinct.

43.jpg

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7290/full/nature08976.html#f2

31.PNG

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/mtDNA.html

So what do you think about human evolution? Is there strong evidence we evolved from apes or is it all nonsense?
 

leibowde84

Veteran Member
Hello everyone. I would like to share something I found about human evolution. We have found many Neanderthal fossils and have been able to sequence their DNA and compared it to human DNA. The result is that their DNA is shown to be distinct.

View attachment 11261
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7290/full/nature08976.html#f2

View attachment 11262
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/mtDNA.html

So what do you think about human evolution? Is there strong evidence we evolved from apes or is it all nonsense?
Human evolution is backed up by this and by countless other forms of verifiable evidence. So, I believe that evolution is true. Why wouldn't you expect the DNA from neanderthals to be distinct? Human Evolution demands that the DNA would not be the same.
 

viole

Ontological Naturalist
Premium Member
Hello everyone. I would like to share something I found about human evolution. We have found many Neanderthal fossils and have been able to sequence their DNA and compared it to human DNA. The result is that their DNA is shown to be distinct.

View attachment 11261
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7290/full/nature08976.html#f2

View attachment 11262
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/mtDNA.html

So what do you think about human evolution? Is there strong evidence we evolved from apes or is it all nonsense?

We seem to look much more similar to a gorilla than to a spider.

Don't you think so?

Ciao

- viole
 

jonathan180iq

Well-Known Member
Hello everyone. I would like to share something I found about human evolution. We have found many Neanderthal fossils and have been able to sequence their DNA and compared it to human DNA. The result is that their DNA is shown to be distinct.

View attachment 11261
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7290/full/nature08976.html#f2

View attachment 11262
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/mtDNA.html

So what do you think about human evolution? Is there strong evidence we evolved from apes or is it all nonsense?

From your first link:

"...Notably, when the evolution of mitochondrial protein-coding genes in modern humans, Neanderthals, chimpanzees and bonobos is gauged in conjunction with the Denisova hominin mtDNA, a previously described reduction of silent substitutions causing an increased dN/dS in Neanderthals1, 26 is not observed. This is probably due to a more accurate reconstruction of substitutional events when the long evolutionary lineage leading to modern humans and Neanderthals is subdivided by the Denisova hominin mtDNA (see Supplementary Information).

Although nuclear DNA sequences are needed to clarify definitively the relationship of the Denisova individual to present-day humans and Neanderthals, the divergence of the Denisova mtDNA lineage on the order of one million years shows that it was distinct from the initial radiation of H. erectus that first left Africa 1.9Myr ago, and perhaps also from the taxon H. heidelbergensis, if the latter is the direct ancestor of Neanderthals27. An unambiguous association of the Denisova mtDNA with morphologically defined hominin taxa awaits determination of mtDNA sequences from more complete skeletal remains.

We note that the stratigraphy and indirect dates indicate that this individual lived between 30,000 and 50,000 years ago20, 28. At a similar time individuals carrying Neanderthal mtDNA4 were present less than 100km away from Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains, whereas the presence of an Upper Palaeolithic industry at some sites, such as Kara-Bom and Denisova, has been taken as evidence for the appearance of anatomically modern humans in the Altai before 40,000 years ago2, 3. Although these dates are associated with large and unknown errors, this temporal concurrence suggests that complete and successive replacements of distinct hominin forms, similar to what occurred in Western Europe11, may not have taken place in southern Siberia. Rather, representatives of three genetically distinct hominin lineages may all have been present in this region at about the same time. Thus, the presence ofHomo floresiensis in Indonesia about 17,000years ago29, 30 and of the Denisova mtDNA lineage in southern Siberia about 40,000years ago suggest that multiple Late Pleistocene hominin lineages coexisted for long periods of time in Eurasia."


It should be expected to be distinct, as modern humans are obviously not Neanderthals and Neanderthals are obviously not modern humans... What you do see is a grouping of similar gene pairing, indicating which parts of the distinctly Neanderthal DNA we modern humans have held onto over the millenia. This can be viewed a little more easily in the study of canine genomes. Chihuahuas have parts of their DNA that are distinctly Chihuahuan, yet they also have sections that are still identical to that of their wolf ancestors. Only certain sections are held onto as species change and evolve into other things. This is why you can still find very small sections of your DNA that are identical to mice, trees, lichen and all kinds of other crazy things that you'd not normally think about.

image.jpg


Humans picked up traits along the way that Neanderthals didn't have. Neanderthals picked up traits along the way that their predecessors didn't have...and so on and so forth.
 

jonathan180iq

Well-Known Member
In the sense that we have a common ancestor, who was neither modern human or neanderthal. Lots of evidence for occasional interbreeding though.
Yeah - it's a mistake to view the evolution of hardly anything as being linear, leading from one thing directly to another.
 

Ouroboros

Coincidentia oppositorum
So what do you think about human evolution? Is there strong evidence we evolved from apes or is it all nonsense?
I took some college classes in biological anthropology and some lab classes as well. We measured and compared fossils. I have no doubt about the evolution on humans or any other species.
 

George-ananda

Advaita Vedanta, Theosophy, Spiritualism
Premium Member
Hello everyone. I would like to share something I found about human evolution. We have found many Neanderthal fossils and have been able to sequence their DNA and compared it to human DNA. The result is that their DNA is shown to be distinct.

View attachment 11261
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7290/full/nature08976.html#f2
I have no doubt about the existence of evolution. In that first diagram; What is the double pointed human-human portion saying, do you know? Is it representing the Africa and out-of-Africa human populations?
 

Princeps Eugenius

Active Member
Many people believe that nowadays "europeans" mixed with neaderthals. And produced these light skinned, blue eyed and blonde creature as germans and swedes. Ofcourse its still a theory but i think there is something behind it,
 

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
Actually there's a greater proportion of Neanderthal d.n.a. in Asian populations with the genome studies, and I believe they figure the average is around 6% of all genetic material, if my memory is correct.
 

Skwim

Veteran Member
Many people believe that nowadays "europeans" mixed with neaderthals. And produced these light skinned, blue eyed and blonde creature as germans and swedes. Ofcourse its still a theory but i think there is something behind it,


"June 22, 2015
Between 35,000 and 45,000 years ago, modern humans spread throughout Europe. Around the same time, Neanderthals disappeared from the landscape—but not before interbreeding with Homo sapiens. Recent research has revealed that all non-Africans living today retain a genetic trace—1-3 percent of the genome—of Neanderthal ancestry. And 40,000 years ago, human genomes may have contained twice as much Neanderthal DNA, according to a study published today (June 22) in Nature.
"
source
 

dust1n

Zindīq
Is there strong evidence we evolved from apes or is it all nonsense?


1. Genetic Diversity. Human children inherit 3 billion base pairs of DNA from each parent, but they are not an exact duplicate. The rate of change has been measured precisely to an average of 70 bases (out of our 6 billion total) per generation. So as we go back on the family tree, there are more and more genetic differences between us and our ancestors. For example, there would be about 140 differences between your DNA and that of your four grandparents, and 210 differences between you and your eight great-grandparents, and so on. That enables us to make a prediction from the amount of genetic diversity between two species about the time since their common ancestor population lived. Using non-genetic evidence, the common ancestor between humans and chimpanzees was estimated to have lived about 6 million years ago. The calculation from genetic differences gives a figure remarkably close to the estimated value.

2. Genetic “scars”. Just as scars stay on our bodies as reminders of past events, the DNA code contains “scars” and these are passed on from generation to generation. DNA scars result from the deletion or insertion of a block of bases (not just single base changes as in the previous section). Because we have a lot of these (hundreds of thousands) and they can be precisely located, they serve as a historical record of species. If we have the same scar as chimpanzees and orangutans, then the deletion or insertion must have occurred before these species diverged into separate populations. If we and chimpanzees have a certain scar but orangutans do not, we can conclude the deletion or insertion must have occurred after the common ancestor of chimps and humans separated from our common ancestor with orangutans. In this way we can create a detailed family tree of common ancestors.

3. Genetic synonyms. In a certain context, the words “round” and “circular” mean the same thing to an English speaker—they are synonyms. So too, there are “synonyms” in the genetic code—different sequences of DNA bases that mean the same thing to cells (that is, they cause the production of the same proteins). Mutations in the genetic code are often harmful, resulting in an organism not being able to successfully reproduce. But if the mutation results in a “synonym”, the organism would function the same and continue passing on its genes. Because of this we would expect the synonymous changes to be passed on much more effectively than non-synonymous changes. That is exactly what we find among the DNA of humans and chimpanzees: there are many more synonymous differences between the two species than non-synonymous ones. This is exactly what we would expect if the two species had a common ancestor, and so it provides further evidence that humans and chimpanzees were created through common descent from a single ancestral species.

https://biologos.org/common-questio...c-evidence-do-we-have-about-the-first-humans/
 

Timothy Bryce

Active Member
1. Genetic Diversity. Human children inherit 3 billion base pairs of DNA from each parent, but they are not an exact duplicate. The rate of change has been measured precisely to an average of 70 bases (out of our 6 billion total) per generation. So as we go back on the family tree, there are more and more genetic differences between us and our ancestors. For example, there would be about 140 differences between your DNA and that of your four grandparents, and 210 differences between you and your eight great-grandparents, and so on. That enables us to make a prediction from the amount of genetic diversity between two species about the time since their common ancestor population lived. Using non-genetic evidence, the common ancestor between humans and chimpanzees was estimated to have lived about 6 million years ago. The calculation from genetic differences gives a figure remarkably close to the estimated value.

2. Genetic “scars”. Just as scars stay on our bodies as reminders of past events, the DNA code contains “scars” and these are passed on from generation to generation. DNA scars result from the deletion or insertion of a block of bases (not just single base changes as in the previous section). Because we have a lot of these (hundreds of thousands) and they can be precisely located, they serve as a historical record of species. If we have the same scar as chimpanzees and orangutans, then the deletion or insertion must have occurred before these species diverged into separate populations. If we and chimpanzees have a certain scar but orangutans do not, we can conclude the deletion or insertion must have occurred after the common ancestor of chimps and humans separated from our common ancestor with orangutans. In this way we can create a detailed family tree of common ancestors.

3. Genetic synonyms. In a certain context, the words “round” and “circular” mean the same thing to an English speaker—they are synonyms. So too, there are “synonyms” in the genetic code—different sequences of DNA bases that mean the same thing to cells (that is, they cause the production of the same proteins). Mutations in the genetic code are often harmful, resulting in an organism not being able to successfully reproduce. But if the mutation results in a “synonym”, the organism would function the same and continue passing on its genes. Because of this we would expect the synonymous changes to be passed on much more effectively than non-synonymous changes. That is exactly what we find among the DNA of humans and chimpanzees: there are many more synonymous differences between the two species than non-synonymous ones. This is exactly what we would expect if the two species had a common ancestor, and so it provides further evidence that humans and chimpanzees were created through common descent from a single ancestral species.

https://biologos.org/common-questio...c-evidence-do-we-have-about-the-first-humans/

Awesome post! I have such a deep respect for the scientific method and biologists in particular despite being a laymen regarding it. I'll have to set this post aside for my future personal reference.
 

Brickjectivity

Turned to Stone. Now I stretch daily.
Staff member
Premium Member
So what do you think about human evolution? Is there strong evidence we evolved from apes or is it all nonsense?
I appreciate your bringing this to my attention. The idea of evolution will ever be a thought experiment which correlates facts and connects them together, much as one connects the dots or solves a mystery. The evolution story is interesting and helpful. It can never be complete despite that it does appear to be true. There will always be gaps, and it is our rare and precious honor to be a species that gets to study its own fossil record. This may not be the case for other species on other planets, particularly in the future. We see that as the stars spread apart and accelerate away from one another there will be stars that cannot see any indication of a common origin or 'Bang'. Species may not have the advantages we have of seeing the spreading galaxies, the record of bones and shell imprints or the nice geological layers that ours can see. Just to know these things is a privilege.
 
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