Re: [asa] Fw: What Darwin Didn't Know article by Dr. Fuz Rana

It's truly disappointing and frustrating that Rana continues to popularize
the notion that mitochondrial DNA studies "attest[] to" what Rana would
offer as the Biblical notion of Adam and Eve. He knows better. He knows
that mDNA studies don't establish a single Adam or Eve who were contemporary
with each other, he knows that both mitchondrial Eve certainly lived among a
population of many other breeding pairs, and he knows of Ayala's "Myth of
Mitochondrial Eve" paper and other similar population genetics studies. Any
popular article or talk that makes such claims and doesn't address the
foregoing is simply misleading.

David W. Opderbeck
Associate Professor of Law
Seton Hall University Law School
Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology

On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 5:13 PM, D. F. Siemens, Jr. <dfsiemensjr@juno.com>wrote:

>
> On Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:07:01 -0800 (PST) John Walley
> <john_walley@yahoo.com> writes:
> >
> > FYI..
> >
> > >
> > > Dr. Fuz Rana has a very good article in the latest Charisma
> > > magazine entitled What Darwin Didn't
> > > Know. Here is the link to it.
> > >
> > > http://charismamag.com/issues/index.php/cm209
> > >
> There are two matters that I didn't note having comments. The first:
> "But some of the most recent advances related to hominid-human
> relationships raise questions about evolution's validity. In 1997
> fragments of Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA from a 40,000- to
> 100,000-year-old skeleton were found in West Germany. When scientists
> compared them with the corresponding fragment of human DNA, the
> researchers discovered that Neanderthals made no contribution to human
> genetics."
>
> What does a lack of contribution from contemporaries have to do with
> evolution? The claim is that Homo sapiens, H. neanderthalensis and now H.
> floresiensis (?) all share ancestry, not that one is the ancestor of the
> others. Since H.s. and H.n. had overlapping ranges, I suggest that some
> modern Europeans could still have Neanderthal inheritance. Mitochondrial
> DNA is inherited only though the mother. So, if a H.s. male fathered a
> son with a H.n. female, and the son fathered offspring with a H.s.
> female, there would be no evidence in the mitochondria of the H.n.
> genetics, though the chromosomal inheritence might be retained.
>
> The second:
> "Scientific consensus confirms that humanity originated about 100,000
> years ago in east Africa near the location ascribed to the Garden of
> Eden."
>
> I'll not use the vulgar but appropriate term to describe the claim that
> East Africa is the Near East.
> Dave (ASA)
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Received on Wed Jan 28 17:26:56 2009