Unfortunately, Stephen, you will get to have the last word. The movers are
packing my books tomorrow and I won't be able to do the research to answer
your next reply. My books will be in storage for 2 months. :-( So have at it.
>Dr Stringer: 1) refutes Glenn's allegation about him not having
>an open mind;
What do you expect him to say? Did you expect him to say, 'yep my mind is
as closed as a steel trap?"
2) rejects Glenn's claims about the OoAH;
What claims. This is rather nebulous.
and 3) points
>out that Glenn is wrong about this fossils's muscle insertions
>being uniquely Neandertal.
I call upon Glenn to live up to the high standards of conduct
that he enjoins on other Christians, and publicly retract his
baseless allegations about Dr Stringer. It would be nice if
Glenn also retracted or moderated his claims about the OoAH and
this fossil's muscle insertions.
I will double check on this.
Steve
On Thu, 24 Jun 1999 21:00:10 -0500, Glenn Morton wrote:
>SJ>No doubt. But the fact is that the "other reports" weren't "bad" for
>>the Out-of-Africa hypothesis (OoAH) side either. But this report is a
>>little better for it.
G
CS>I have NEVER said that Neanderthals could not have interbred with modern
>humans (e.g. see Stringer & Gamble pp. 72, 193; Stringer, C.B. 1992
>Replacement, continuity and the origin of Homo sapiens. In G. Brauer and
>F.H. Smith (eds) Continuity or replacement? Controversies in the evolution
>of Homo sapiens. Balkema: Rotterdam, pp. 9-24; Stringer, C.B. and Brauer, G.
>1994 Methods, Misreading, and Bias, American Anthropologist 96: 416-424),
>but did want to see good evidence for it having occurred on any detectable
>scale. However, the mitochondrial DNA results of Cann, Stoneking & Wilson
>ten years ago certainly suggested there COULD have been complete replacement
>of archaic humans by "Out of Africa" moderns.
I do stand corrected here. Stringer does allow some interbreeding. My
apologies to Dr. Stringer. So Stephem, if your expert says that
Neanderthals can interbreed and thus are the same biological species as us,
are you willing to state publically that Neanderthals are us?
>The fact is that only if hybridisation was common would the OoAH be
>threatened and the MR/RCH supported. If hybridisation was comparatively
>rare, then the OoAH would need little or no modification.
By stating that OoA would need little modification, one ignores the fact
that neither would the multiregional theory require much modification.
Such invasions as the africans into europe become nothing more than part of
the gene flow process.
GM>They believe
>that Neanderthals were so different that they were an entirely separate
>species. And if a separate species, then by definition,
>Neanderthals and humans could not interbreed and produce fertile
>offspring.
>This depends on one's definition of species. Some taxa classed as
>separate species can interbreed, but rarely do in nature, as Glenn
>himself says at the foot of this message:
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>GM>Coyotes and wolves/dogs split 1 million years ago and they can still
>produce fertile offspring.
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>The true defintion of species is a bit more complex, as Stringer himself
>points out in his excellent book, African Exodus:
>"In fact, a species is usually designated as a group of
>Organisms which normally do, or could, interbreed to produce fertile
>offspring (that is, ones which can in turn successfully breed). Closely
>related, but different species, may interbreed, but either this is not
>their normal behaviour, or the hybrid offspring cannot reproduce in
>the long term - such as the mule, the sterile offspring of a male
>donkey and female horse. Even when they meet, closely related
>species show differences in behaviour, physical appearance or scent,
>which deter interbreeding." (Stringer C., & McKie R., "African Exodus,
>1997, p51)
By this definition, coyotes wolves and dogs are the same species. They
breed out here in the southwest all the time. Same goes for wolves and
coyotes. Bednarick states:
"Wolves can breed
with coyotes, a whole population of mixed descent exists in parts of North
America. So they produce certainly fertile offspring."Robert G. Bednarik,
"Origin of Dogs," Artefact 1997, 20, pp.81-82, p. 82
>If it turns out that Neandertals and modern humans *could* have
>fertile offspring but rarely did so, then they could still be classified
>as a closely related but different species. Dr Stringer agrees with this:
Theologically your point is uninteresting. The issue is can we exclude
from humanity someone with whom we can produce fertile offspring? If humans
produced even one fertile child with Neanderthal, then we MUST include them
as human. There are lots of women I have never produced a child with and
you can't claim that we are different species.
>Not really. Behind this wise saying is the truth that a rule that has only
>minor exceptions is established as a *rule*. It may not be a *law* of
>nature, but it is a *rule*. And the rule that this N-MH hybrid would
>establish (if it holds up as a hybrid), would be that certain Neandertal
>characteristics would be detectable if there was interbreeding with Modern
>Humans. If such characteristics are rarely detected, then it is
*devastating*
>for the Multiregional/Regional Continuity Hypothesis (MR/RCH), which
>posits that such mating should be common, but leaves a slightly modified
>OoAH as the only game left in town.
It is not really devastating to MR. MR does not guarantee that every
variant will leave offspring. or even leave a lot of offspring.
>GM>Out of Africa (OoA)
>>hypothesizes that all modern humans are descended from a
>>group of people who came out of Africa about 120,000 years ago.
>
>My understanding is that it *began* 100,000 years ago:
>"This date, of course, perfectly accords with the idea of a separate recent
>evolution of Homo sapiens shortly before it began its African exodus about
>100,000 years ago." (Stringer C. & McKie R., 1997, p114).
This time it is your turn to be wrong. I cite Johanson for the earliest
modern humans. It is actually older than I stated.
"Chris believes that Omo I may be the oldest modern skull and skeleton
because its postcranial bones are more modern in morphology than any
specimens from Klasies. The uranium series dating technique, which was
applied to shells from the same sediment layer where the skull was found,
produced an age of 130,000 years. Chris stressed that this date should be
verified by other dating techniques, but he pointed out that the sediment
layer containing the skull was nearly two hundred feet beneath a layer
radiocarbon-dated to almost 40,000 years ago." ~ Donald C. Johanson, Lenora
Johanson, and Blake Edgar, Ancestors, (New York: Villard Books, 1994), p. 239
>Thus if it turns out that there was some rare interbreeding, then the OoAH
>is still OK. But the MR/RCH requires that interbreeding be *common*.
Fine, let MR be wrong. My point has always been that if we can interbreed
with Neanderthal then they are like us. We can't exclude them from the
human family and that means that the history of Adam's race goes further
back than you are willing to let happen.
GM>Modern men, in this view totally replaced all earlier
>populations.
Agreed. But this could still be done if interbreeding was rare.
So are you saying that interbreeding is possible? If so what is your basis
for rejecting them from humanity?
>The link that Glenn provides no longer works. My understanding is that
>paternal inheritance of mtDNA is far from having been proved. It is well
>known that paternal mtDNA does occasionally pass over into the fertilised
>cell, but that does not mean it survives into future generations.
Stephen, you are grasping for straws here. Take a look at these two very
recent articles.
"It seems liekly that paternal mtDNA molecules might make a small, albeit
significant, contribution to mtDNA lineages, particularly if measured over
prolonged time periods of evolutionary history." ( E. Hagelberg et al,
"Evidence for Mitochondrial DNA Rcombination in a Human Population of
Island Mwelanesia," Proc. Royal Soc. Lond. B (1999) 266:485-492, p 489-490)
"It is generally accepted that, in higher plants and animals, mitochondria
are inherited from one parent, usually the mother, and that their
inheritance is therefore clonal. This dogma appears to have arisen out of
the belief that paternal mitochondria do not penetrate the egg. However,
it is now well-known that paternal mitochondria do enter the egg and
survive for several hours in mammals. Since mitochondria alaso contain the
enzymes necessary for homologous recombination, it seems possible that
there is recombination between mitochondrial lineages and that the
inheritance of mitochondria is not clonal.
"Phylogenetic trees constructed using mitochhondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences
condtain many homoplasies, i.e., back or parallel changes at a site).
Homoplasies are either due to repeated mutation or to recombination." Adam
Eyre-Walkeer, Noel H. Smith and John Maynard Smith, "How Clonal are Human
Mitochondria?", Proc. Royal Soc. Lond. B (1999) 266:477-483, p. 477
>Besides this article Glenn cites wrongly confuses the Mitochondrial Eve
>hypothesis with the OoAH.
If you couldn't read it, then how do you know what the article says?
>I don't need to prove or disprove the "mtDNA paternal inheritance" claims.
>First, it has yet to be shown that paternal mtDNA has any last inheritable
>effect.
Wrong. See the two articles:
Eyre-Walkeer, Noel H. Smith and John Maynard Smith, "How Clonal are Human
Mitochondria?", Proc. Royal Soc. Lond. B (1999) 266:477-483
E. Hagelberg et al, "Evidence for Mitochondrial DNA Rcombination in a Human
Population of Island Mwelanesia," Proc. Royal Soc. Lond. B (1999) 266:485-492
GM>Why, you won't switch camps regardless of how many people tell you that
>your position is wrong. Just tonight you said that multiple people
>criticize you for the same thing. have you considered taking the hint?
I take this is just another attempt by Glenn to divert attention from
the weakness of his position, so I won't take the bait!
Why don't you take it as a serious question to you? It is.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm