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Humans Nearly Went Extinct 1.2M Years Ago
Hugh Pickens writes "Scientific American has a story on researchers from the University of Utah who have calculated that 1.2 million years ago, at a time when our ancestors Homo erectus, H. ergaster, and archaic H. sapiens were spreading through Africa, Europe, and Asia, there were probably only about 18,500 individuals capable of breeding in all these species together (PNAS paper here). Pre-humans were an endangered species with a smaller population than today's gorillas and chimpanzees. Researchers scanned two completely sequenced modern human genomes for a type of mobile element called Alu sequences, then compared the nucleotides in these old regions with the overall diversity in the two genomes to estimate differences in effective population size, and thus genetic diversity between modern and early humans. Human geneticist Lynn Jorde says that the diminished genetic diversity one million years ago suggests human ancestors experienced a catastrophic event at that time as devastating as the Toba super-volcano in Indonesia that triggered a nuclear winter and is thought to have nearly annihilated humans 70,000 years ago."
Genetics today is obsessed with conserved DNA sequences as "proof" of evolutionary kinship. It is based on a faith that DNA mutates at a uniform rate over time. But why should we assume a uniform rate over time, when evolutionary theory says that genetic differentiation happens in leaps and bounds? DNA homology amounts to a linear extrapolation, when it is known that evolution takes curvy, twisted paths. I venture to guess that DNA homology will turn out to be about as reliable as phrenology. I'm getting my PhD in statistics, and I've taken several courses in genetics -- enough to know that all theories in genetics are wrong. Indeed, much of science is based on a giant leap of faith in linear regression; physicists, chemists, doctors, engineers, all use linear regression without questioning its assumptions. The assumptions implicit in linear regression are not justified by real world data when examined closely, but very few science papers go into this level of inquiry. I used to be an atheist, but I've come to the conclusion that science is just as irrational as Wahabbism. They say mathematics is the one infallible science, but numbers are just an idealization of reality; they fail to capture all the complexity. Science wants simple explanations, yet the world isn't simple; it is inherently an exercise in circular logic.
Hey, your bias against Christians is showing!
You must be a liberal. You know, tolerant of everything, except for the things you aren't. I'd make fun of your beliefs but you dont really have any. So I guess I'll just feel bad for you.
...a report by the NRA that the first human weapons resembling guns were developed at precisely the time we *almost* went extinct. Coincidence? I think not. More at 11...
And a mere 6000 years ago too. All that business about 70,000 and 1.2 millions years ago is a distraction to test our faith.
We have written evidence of a 6,000-year-old Earth, and we have pseudo-scientific evidence of a 4.5 billion-year-old Earth (where not a single dating method works in this time scale, hence it is pseudo-science, not science). The only people who can't conceptualize a 6,000-year-old Earth are those who assume that decay rates and geologic deposition processes are constant rather than slowing down due to entropy. I observe a car slow down to a stop light, so therefore all cars drive 10 MPH.