Re: DISCOVER/Neanderthal/Homo Sap.

H. M. Hubey (hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu)
4 Sep 1995 13:49:19 -0400

ermiller@tezcat.com (Erin Miller) writes:

>EXACTLY. In a natural situation, if you had a species, say generic "dog"
>which for whatever reason developed into two different physical extremes,
>then no, they probably *would not* interbreed. THe fact that human
>intervention has bred for the extremes, at the same time as keeping the
>variations breedable is not "normal."

See my other post on this.


> Are they they "laws of genetics" yes, but ones which would never happen
>in a 'natural' setting. You seem to not want to believe this, that is
>your choice, I just hope you are at least attempting to base that choice
>from educating yourself on the material rather than assuming "of course
>that is the way it must be."

Actually I wanted to know what you believe before I explain the
problem that I see. (For one thing see my other post related to
this idea).

So now let's look at evolution.

On the one hand "natural" evolution (like regression to the mean)
makes the species more like one another and not less, so that if
this were to be the rule rather than the exception, we have
no way of creating "new species" so then evolution takes a dive.

In fact, we wouldn't even have species differing from one another
to any degree so that even making them "more like one another" via
mixing would be pointless to talk about. The only way around this
is to appeal to isolation where the drift of that particular subpopulation
can take off onto its own path and differ from the same species in
other isolated subpopulations.

[I'm assuming that as far as the evolution of any of these populations
the rules of selection apply, fed on by random mutations.]

So then the question is whether the Neanderthals and the Africans
had separated sufficiently to be unable to breed again. Appealing
to bone shapes is pointless since we couldn't make this method
give the right answer in the hypotethical case of the dogs.

Then what alternative reasoning can you give for the no-mixing
scenario when fossil evidence of transitional types exist?

>That shows your extreme ignorance of the material. If you really think
>that the differences are only "a small bump on the chin ... and the teeth"
>then there is no point in continuing this debate. If that were the only
>difference, then the subject would hardly be as much a topic of debate in
>the academic community as it is.

Don't be silly. That's what it boils down to. And the stuff about
bone shapes is dead-end; and the point has already been made
by others.

>because there exist species that don't interbreed that are widely
>different in their skeletons (elephants, dogs, gorillas) that doesn't mean
>there aren't species that don't interbreed that are very similar. To
>me, this doesn't follow your earlier argument. If I missed something,
>please explain.

It's explained in other posts. A method that's full of failure
can't be used to overcome evidence of mixing which shows up in
the fossil record.

That's like the story of the farmer who went to borrow a neighbors
donkey. The guy didn't want to lend it and said that it wasn't there.
Right at that moment the donkey started braying in the stable. When
reproached by his neighbor,the guy said:

"Well if you're willing to take the word of my donkey instead of mine
then I certainly won't lend it to you."

What point is there to fighting over some bone differences and contending
that they imply that they were a different species, when there's
fossil evidence that shows evidence of mixing in the transitional
types?

And all this after it's practically admitted that in some species
the bone differences don't mean diddly squat.

What logic?

-- 



Regards, Mark



http://www.smns.montclair.edu/~hubey