Re: DISCOVER/Neanderthal/Homo Sap.
Gerrit Hanenburg (ghanenbu@inter.nl.net)
Tue, 5 Sep 1995 19:14:50 GMT
hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu (H. M. Hubey) wrote:
>Why should we care about "paleontological species".
Because when dealing with the fossil record that's the only ones we have.
>In the end, what we want to know is if the Neandertals belonged
>to the same human species and if the modern Europoids are
>descended from both the Cro-magnon (African-modern) and Neandertal.
>The evidence points more and more to mixing. The only that keeps
>the old ideas alive is that the first thoughts on the Neanderthals
>set a trend which keeps leaving its residue behind no matter what
>new finds point in the opposite direction.
You keep appealing to evidence but fail to mention a single specimen that
displays a transitional morphology.The least you can do is name the specimens
which you think are the evidence so that other people can check them and
possibly refute your claims.
A theory deserves to be defended when contra-"evidence" is controversial.
>Suppose via artificial selection we produce breeds A,B,C....Z of
>a particular species. Then we discover to our surprise that they
>can all interbreed except A and Z. Then a really nasty guy comes
>along and kills off B,C,...Y. Now we only have A and Z left, but
>they can't interbreed; so now we have two species from one.
>Are you implying that this is "the" mechanism of evolution and that
>the Neanderthals split from the rest of the "humanoids" such
>a long time ago that they could not have interbred with the arrivals
>from Africa?
The mechanism of evolution is natural selection and possibly some genetic
drift.The idea behind the separate species hypothesis is indeed that
Neanderthals and modern humans have descended from a common ancestor (the
"humanoids" as you call them) and that by the time they came into contact
they had diverged too much to be able to interbreed.(as A and Z in your
example).
Gerrit.
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