Posted on 01/30/2006 10:27:35 PM PST by Sweetjustusnow
That is very interesting. I'll give it some thought. Thanks.
The individual finds don't usually excite me much. The really interesting part is correlating the results of 35 years of research, along with what others are finding. That's when the real discoveries are made. Then you begin to get a picture of how the early cultures arrived, developed, reacted to climate changes and other incoming groups, and finally how they reacted to the European conquest.
Putting all of that together is what I like. Of course, going out and playing in the dirt on a nice sunny day is hard to beat!
I was reading recently that apparently cold temperatures can affect the cranium size in a population. I was surprised, if it's true.
You are just another liberal troll trying to use up FR bandwidth, please go back to DU.
Countdown to a creationist taking elements of your post out of context and presenting it as an "admission"...
The human is determined by DNA. A human sperm and human egg produce a human zygote which, given enough time, grows into an adult human being. Do scientists have a different method for determining what a human is than genetics? Or any other animal, for that matter.
Fine, supply your own evidence. Since you're concerned about science, please supply the supporting evidence and references the way Ichneumon has.
Oh, I forgot. The entire scientific community is engaged in a Humanist Conspiracy.
Why don't you scan in a few textbooks and take up a bit more of the FR bandwidth with your liberal DU krap?
The issue of whether a given creature is human or not has never arisen. Think about it. We don't find live hominids of debatable humanity.
The issue of how close Neanderthal genes are to humans, however, is a hot area of research. But even that's a controversal topic. How different does a piece of mitochondrial DNA have to be to be a different species? There's no good answer, because species are not defined by genetic difference, they're defined by reproductive compatibility.
Fossils are classified according to particular objective criteria. The weight we give to criteria was controversial, but it's becoming less so, as we check those criteria against genetic sequences, where there are precise quantitative metrics of relatedness.
If that's the case then there would be no difference of opinion among scientists and no need to revise parts of the tree from time to time.
You're making the false assumption that because something is controversial, it must be subjective.
Too much of a coward to admit that you don't want to look at the evidence because you're afraid of learning?
Of course not. It's when you capitalize "Intelligent Deseigner" that you give away a theistic bent. You yourself have said that intelligent design by definition should be considered "supernatural." I maintain there is nothing inherently supernatural about either organized matter or intelligent design. There are attributes of human existence that science has yet to explore, yet science does not dismiss intelligent design out of hand as "supernatural" just because humans have inexplicable attributes, or may be absent from a humanly-designed artifact or implement.
It appears that The Big Brother of Anti-Evoism has sent out the word that "Ichneumon" is the designated "Emmanuel Goldstein" of the CREVO threads on FR, and the faithful followers are dutifully manifesting their "2 minute hate" right on schedule; note the first attack on "Ichneumon" by the poster in question was posted at 2 minutes past 11AM in the Central time zone.
I anticipate we will witness more of this sort of anti-intellectual hysteria directed at "Ichneumon," whether it be allegations that his thoughtful, deliberative, and extensive fact-filled posts are "spam" or evidence-free accusations that he is some sort of evil, liberal invader from DU bent on destroying Conservatism, Motherhood, Apple Pie, the fabric of a moral society, and good dental hygeine.
In fact, it wouldn't surprise me at all to see the outwitted dimwits accuse him of supporting that ultimate horror of horrors: fluoridation. General Ripper can't be far off now.
I don't recall seeing this one. The normal reaction to cold is to increase body volume to surface area, providing relatively less area from which to lose heat (i.e., heavy/rounded body shape, as opposed to tall/lineal body shape). One of the ways to do this is very large bodies, and it is possible that Neanderthal went this route.
Cranial capacity ties in directly to the size of the birth canal. The infant skull can only get so large and after that there are problems--mostly fatal in primitive societies. For this reason infants are born far earlier in the development cycle that is the case for most other animals. Horses (and many other prey-animals) in the wild have to be up and moving within minutes to hours or they are dinner. Human infants can't really take care of themselves for some years, and it is likely this is to accommodate the large brain size. And it probably can't get too much bigger than it is now unless something really unusual happens.
There are a lot of other neat tricks that have shown up. The aboriginal population of Tierra del Fuego, at the southern tip of South America live in a cold climate. I have heard that the veins and arteries in their forearms run closer together than normal, transferring heat from the arteries to the veins so it is retained in the body and not lost from the hands.
For adaptation to really cold environments technology was required--clothing, alternate source of vitamin D, etc. This largely took the place of physical adaptations.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=516480
This is the article. Of course, a lot of it is over my head, but I get the general meaning (I think).
Yeah, I wasn't sure if many Freepers would get the joke. I guess that M M may not be real popular around here.
Well, I hate to tell you this but creationists understand real science and also know the difference between junk science, philosophy and illusions. People can paste and copy all the evolutionary philosophy and junk science and say to themselves see "let them refute this" Well, there are scientific refutes to most of this junk science so do you want me to start pasting pages of refutes? So I can say see? Why don't you just pick your best example of facts that support your claim and let us all focus on that.
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