A shrinking date for ‘Eve’

by Carl Wieland

Most creationists will have by now heard of the ‘mitochondrial Eve’ hypothesis, the finding that all modern humans can be traced back to one woman. Some recent findings on when ‘Eve’ is supposed to have lived are very encouraging for creationists. But first we should review a few things, and hopefully sweep away some common misunderstandings.
Evolutionists do not claim, nor can it be fairly stated, that this evidence proves that there was only one woman alive at any point in the past. Holders to the ‘Eve’ theory certainly insist that all modern humans are indeed descended from one woman. However, they believe that there were other women present at the time, and that any of these other women could have contributed DNA information to our present gene pool of humanity. How does this apparent contradiction come about?
The answer lies in the fact that while we all inherit our usual complement of (nuclear) DNA from both mother and father, we only inherit mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from our mother. Think of it like a surname, only related to the opposite sex. In our society, we inherit our surname only from our father. A surname can become ‘extinct’ without implying that all the people in a line have died out—all it takes is for there to be only female descendants at any level.
In the same way, if a line of descent in a human population has only males at one point, then that line ‘dies out’ as far as its ‘mitochondrial signature’ is concerned, i.e., nuclear DNA is still passed on, but not mtDNA. To make it easier to understand, let’s return to the surname analogy (then later just substitute females for males). Imagine that an island is colonised by four couples, each with the first names Harry and Sally, but with four different surnames: Smith, Jones, Brown and White. In due course the population grows, with each generation marrying only among any of the other surnames available. It is very easy to set up a simple computer simulation to show how readily a surname can ‘die out’ with a line ending in only daughters. In due course, all the people on that island could end up with one surname only—say Smith. (Something like this happened on Pitcairn Island. Of the nine Bounty mutineers, six families settled the island in 1790. Of those six names [Christian, Young, Adams, McCoy, Quintal, Mills] only the first two have survived, even though Christian and Young were not the only ‘founding fathers’ to contribute genes to the island’s current small population. And some names have been ‘added’ from outside male settlers in the interim.) This is only probable where there is only a small number of surnames initially, i.e., a small original population; if the number of surnames is too large, it becomes very improbable for it to narrow down to only one or two.
In one sense it could be said that ‘Harry Smith’ is the ‘father of all on the island’. Yet this does not imply that Harry Jones, for example, is not the ancestor of any of them. Harry Jones could very well have contributed nuclear DNA to any of today’s islanders, without being their ‘surname ancestor’.
Let’s say you are a researcher investigating this particular island, without the benefit of any written records. You notice that all people on the island today are named Smith. Now this could be for two reasons:

1. Because there really was only one couple that colonised the island in the beginning, called ‘Smith’, or
2. There was only a small number of surnames on the islands to begin with, and the other surnames became extinct.

Returning to the ‘Eve’ debate, it is clear from the above example (by just swapping the sexes around) that the evidence from mtDNA, which has suggested that all modern humans come from one woman, can mean one of two things.

1. There really was only one couple in the beginning—i.e, mitochondrial Eve could be the real (biblical) Eve, or:
2. All modern humans are descended from only a small population existing at one time. The other ‘mitochondrial lines’ (from the other females living alongside the one whose mitochondrial ‘surname’ is found in all populations today) have become extinct whenever a line had no female offspring. ‘Mitochondrial Eve’ is the only one of the original population in whose offspring there has been a continuous supply of female descendants in each generation. Any of the other women living alongside her could have contributed nuclear DNA to today’s populations, via their sons.

I trust the analogy is clear. The mitochondrial Eve data does not force the belief that there was only one woman from whom we all descended—in other words, it doesn’t prove the Bible—but—a very important ‘but’—it is most definitely consistent with it. In other words, had there been more than one mitochondrial ‘surname’, it would have been a severe challenge to the biblical scenario. And it was not something that was expected by evolutionists. To explain it in their scenario requires a small population of modern humans to arise in one part of the world (archaic humans having already evolved and spread across the globe), and from there, spread out to replace all the other less-evolved humans, so that we all descend from that small original population (the ‘out-of-Africa’ or ‘Noah’s Ark’ theory of human evolution).
The biblical creationist would conclude that the one woman suggested by the mitochondrial data is almost certainly the real Eve.¹

When did ‘Eve’ live?

Evolutionists, aware of the way in which the mitochondrial Eve discovery could be seen to have vindicated the Bible, have long countered by saying that their ‘Eve’ lived far too long ago to be the biblical Eve. How do they calculate this? The answer has to do with why this scenario came about in the first place. MtDNA is known to be much more transparent to selection than nuclear DNA. In other words, there are many places where a genetic ‘letter’ can be replaced with another by way of a mutational ‘copying mistake’ without causing any problems to the organism. Comparisons between various groups of people alive today can be made on the basis of the number of letters which are ‘different’, having been substituted by mutation. Modern humans were much closer to each other than standard evolutionary theory had predicted, hence the out-of-Africa theory.
Evolutionists have guessed at when their mitochondrial Eve lived via the idea of the ‘molecular clock’—i.e., that there is a more or less fixed rate of mutational substitutions per year in any population. How do they know what this rate is—in other words, how is the ‘molecular clock’ calibrated? By using evolutionary assumptions about the timing of events based on their interpretation of the fossil record. For example, if it is believed that humans and baboons, for example, last shared a common ancestor ‘x’ years ago, and if the number of differences between baboon and human mtDNA is y, then the substitution rate per year is y/x. In this way, estimates of when ‘Eve’ lived have varied from as low as 70,000 to 800,000 years ago, more commonly in the range 200-250,000 years.
It has recently been claimed that Neandertals were not direct human ancestors, but a different species in fact. This claim has been made on the basis of the number of substitutional differences in one stretch of mtDNA between that extracted from the one Neandertal ever tested and the average of today’s populations. In a consistent biblical model, there would be no ‘proto-humans’ having music, jewellery, trade, clothing, shelter, sophisticated hunting weapons and the like. ‘If he/she acts in so many respects like a human, he/she is a human’—and thus a descendant of Adam. Neandertals (some of whose physical traits can be found in some European populations) were not a different species (or a spiritless race not descended from Adam, as Rossists proclaim) but were post-Flood humans, representing a subset of the original gene pool broken up at Babel.
Creationists have correctly countered both Eve’s ‘age’ and the Neandertal assertions by saying that the molecular clock calibrations are way off.² Since, for example, the creationist’s (true) Eve lived only a few thousand years ago, the mutational substitutions in mtDNA must have happened at a much faster rate than assumed by evolutionists to date.

Good news

In fact, a number of recent studies on living populations have indeed come up with results which indicate a much higher rate of mutation in human mtDNA.^3,4
Although not all studies to date have found the same high rate, at least two studies, looking directly at substitutions occurring today, have found rates as much as 20 times higher than previously assumed.⁵ Studies on the bones of the last Tsar of Russia also showed that he, along with 10–20 % of the population, actually had at least 2 types of mtDNA, a condition called ‘heteroplasmy’, also caused by mutations.³ This, too, throws off the ‘molecular clock’ calibrations.
According to one review of the data, these recent results would mean that mitochondrial Eve ‘lived about 6500 years ago—a figure clearly incompatible with current theories on human origins. Even if the last common mitochondrial ancestor is younger than the last common real ancestor, it remains enigmatic how the known distribution of human populations and genes could have arisen in the past few thousand years.’³
The review in Science’s ‘Research News’ goes still further about Eve’s date, saying that ‘using the new clock, she would be a mere 6000 years old.’ The article says about one of the teams of scientists (the Parsons team⁵) that ‘evolutionary studies led them to expect about one mutation in 600 generations ... they were “stunned” to find 10 base-pair changes, which gave them a rate of one mutation every 40 generations’.⁴
Evolutionists have tried to evade the force of these results by countering that the high mutation rate only occurs in certain stretches of DNA called ‘hot spots’ and/or that the high (observed) rate causes back mutations which ‘erase’ the effects of this high rate. Therefore, conveniently, the rate is assumed to be high over a short timespan, but effectively low over a long timespan. However, this is special pleading to get out of a difficulty, and the burden of proof is on evolutionists to sustain the vast ages for ‘Eve’ in the face of these documented, modern-day mutation rates. These are indeed encouraging results for creationists. In summary:

1. The mitochondrial Eve findings were, in the first instance, in line with biblically-based expectations; while not proving the biblical Eve, they were consistent with her reality, and were not predicted by evolutionary theory.
2. The dates assigned to mitochondrial Eve were said by evolutionists to rule out the biblical Eve. But these dates were based upon ‘molecular clock’ assumptions, which were calibrated by evolutionary beliefs about when certain evolutionary events occurred, supposedly millions of years ago.
3. When these assumed rates were checked out against the real world, preliminary results indicate that the mitochondrial ‘molecular clock’ is ticking at a much faster rate than evolutionists believed possible. If correct, it means that mitochondrial Eve lived 6,000 to 6,500 years ago, right in the ballpark for the true ‘mother of all living’ (Genesis 3:20).
4. These real-time findings also seriously weaken the case from mitochondrial DNA which argued (erroneously) that Neandertals were not true humans.

• The Neutral Model of evolution and recent African origins
• Update: Mitochondrial Eve and biblical Eve are looking good: criticism of young age is premature

Further Reading

• The Neutral Model of evolution and recent African origins

References

1. I say ‘almost certainly’ to cover the claim that she may have been one of the small post-Flood population, although I would not expect sufficient mtDNA divergence in the small number of generations between creation and the Flood. Return to text.
2. Lubenow, M.L., 1998. Recovery of Neandertal mtDNA: an evaluation. Journal of Creation 12(1):87–97. Return to text.
3. Loewe, L and Scherer, S. ‘Mitochondrial Eve: the plot thickens.’ Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 12(11):422–423, November 1997. Return to text.
4. Gibbons, A. ‘Calibrating the Mitochondrial Clock’. Science 279(5347):28–29, January 2, 1998. Return to text.
5. Parsons, T.J. et al ‘A high observed substitution rate in the human mitochondrial DNA control region’, Nature Genetics Vol. 15: 363–368, 1997; as cited in ref. 4. Return to text.

(Available in Spanish)

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Taken from: http://creation.com/a-shrinking-date-for-eve

Was Adam from Australia?



The mystery of ‘Mungo Man’

by Stacia Byers and Jonathan Sarfati

17 January 2001, updated 20 February 2003

Although many Australians believe their continent to be something akin to the Garden of Eden, the answer, sadly for them, is no, Adam was not from Australia, despite recently reported findings.

UPDATE 20 February 2003 The so-called infallible dating methods that assigned a date of 62,000 years ago to Mr Mungo are now considered to be flawed. Now they have revised the date considerably downwards to 40,000 years. See Tests knock 22,000 years off ‘Mungo Man’, based on Bowler, J.M. et al., New ages for human occupation and climatic change at Lake Mungo, Australia Nature 421:837–840, 20 February 2003.

Current ideas by the evolutionary establishment on the origin and evolution of modern humans seem to be in a continuous state of ... well, evolution. For example, a news article from December 2000, Mother Africa: Mitochondrial DNA Study Supports ‘Out of Africa’ Evolution (News/human_evolution001206.htm>, which is no longer available online) reported that, according to recent mtDNA research, the date of our early ancestors’ migration out of Africa needed to be revised from 100,000 years ago, to 52,000 years ago. This research seemed to lend credence to the ‘Out of Africa’ hypothesis, which states that Homo sapiens evolved in Africa and rapidly migrated across the world and replaced other hominids. For responses, see ‘Out of Africa’? A brief response ... and A shrinking date for ‘Eve’.
Now a recent find by a team of Australian researchers claims to bolster another, competing idea concerning human origins.¹ DNA tests conducted on the remains of an anatomically modern human (dubbed ‘Mungo Man’) found in New South Wales, Australia in 1974 supposedly show that he was genetically different from modern humans—despite looking identical to people living today.² This would mean that Mungo Man was not descended from the small group of Homo Sapiens that allegedly evolved in Africa. This apparently casts doubt on the ‘out of Africa’ idea, and supports the opposing view, called the ‘regional-continuity theory’ (or ‘multi-regional’ or ‘candelabra’ theory), which suggests ‘modern man evolved from Homo erectus^[3] in several different places.’⁴
Dr Carl Wieland explains both the ‘out of Africa’ and ‘regional-continuity’ ideas and offers a Biblical view in his article, No Bones about Eve. The acrimony between the proponents of these rival theories is due to, according to the anthropologist Peter Underhill of Stanford University: ‘Egos, egos, egos. Scientists are human.’⁵
Incidentally, the ages assigned to Mungo Man allow us the opportunity to once again point out the tenuous nature of any secular dating method: originally assigned the age of 40,000–45,000 years old by the man (Professor Jim Bowler) who discovered the bones, Mungo Man received another age of 62,000 years in May 1999 by Dr Alan Thorne, who conducted tests using methods different from Bowler’s. The evolutionary paleoanthropologist Peter Brown mentions a number of problems with the 62,000 year date, citing with approval the papers by Bowler and others in Journal of Human Evolution, e.g.:⁶

• internal inconsistency
• inconsistency with other dating methods
• inappropriate selection of samples
• problems with the assumptions.

Professor Bowler stands by his age and Dr Thorne believes his age to be right.⁷
Which is the correct age for Mungo Man—40,000 or 62,000? The criticisms—by evolutionists!—just show that all ‘dating’ methods, like all claims about the past, have problems because scientists who weren’t there have to make certain assumptions. This is far from a rare example of the fallibility of dating methods—see Q&A: Radiometric Dating.
If one accepts the assumption that the Bible is the infallible eye-witness account of creation (see Q&A Bible for good reasons to believe this), then one would argue that neither 40,000 or 62,000 is correct. Rather, the Biblical framework suggests that Mungo Man lived less than 4500 years ago—after Noah and his family came off the Ark and after the dispersion at Babel.
It’s important to note that of the two evolutionary dates put forward, either one would further damage the credibility of Hugh Ross and other compromisers, who try to marry the Bible with billions of years and a local flood. Ross dates this Flood that wiped out all humanity (apart from Noah and his three sons) at 20–30 thousand years ago. Since he claims it was a local middle Eastern flood, he has to claim that humanity had not yet dispersed beyond the Middle East. Yet here we have humans that looked identical to modern humans living well before his date of the Flood. This puts day-agers like Ross in a bind, because they affirm the general reliability of long-age dating methods in other respects.
Dr John Mitchell of La Trobe University adds another interesting facet to ‘Mungo Man’ by saying, ‘The sheer ability to analyse 60,000-year-old DNA is revolutionary.’⁸ Perhaps this comment stems from the fact that DNA has been shown to decay relatively rapidly after death (living cells have elaborate repair mechanisms), and would not be expected to survive longer than around 50,000 years.⁹ Of course, starting from the Biblical framework, we would say that since Mungo Man is, in fact, only a few thousand years old, it is perfectly within reason to expect some DNA to have survived.

So, who was ‘Mungo Man’ and when did he live?

The Bible reveals that all humans share a common ancestor in Adam, and more recently Noah. After Noah and his family came off the Ark, God used the confusion of languages at Babel (at around the time of Peleg, Genesis 10:25) to cause Noah’s descendants to spread out and fill the earth (Genesis 11:1–9). Therefore, Mungo Man lived less than 4500 years ago and was a relative to you and me.

References and notes

1. Holden, C., Oldest Human DNA Reveals Aussie Oddity, Science 291(5502):230–231, 12 Jan 2001. Return to text.
2. Since no-one doubts that Mungo was a true human, it shows that allegedly largely different DNA is not proof that Neandertals were not human either. See Note 3. Return to text.
3. Most modern creationists regard Homo erectus as a variety of true humans, descended from Adam and Eve, and probably post Babel. This is supported by the overlapping of cranial vault sizes (Woodmorappe, J., How different is the cranial-vault thickness of Homo erectus from modern man? TJ 14(1):10–13, 2000) and many other physical characteristics (see The non-transitions in ‘human evolution’ — on evolutionists’ terms and Marvin Lubenow’s book Bones of Contention). And an article by Wolpoff et al. in Science 291(5502):293–297 (comment p. 231), as recently as 12 Jan 2001, showed that the features of various human skulls indicated that there must have been interbreeding among modern-looking Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals and even Homo erectus (Claims of Neanderthal and Human Mixing Leave Some Cold, NYTimes.com, 14 January 2001). Thus they are all the same species by definition, and therefore Hugh Ross is wrong to claim that the latter were soulless pre-human hominids.Return to text.
4. Scientists Challenge Evolution Theory, ABCNews.com, 10 January 2001. Return to text.
5. Claims of Neanderthal and Human Mixing Leave Some Cold, NYTimes.com, 14 January 2001. Return to text.
6. Brown, P., The first Australians: The debate continues, Australasian Science 21(4):28–31, May 2000. Return to text.
7. Tait, Paul. Fossil Finder Disputes Age, Backs Evolution Claim, Daily News, 10 January 2001. Return to text.
8. Dayton, Leigh. DNA clue to man’s origin, The Australian, 10 January 2001. Return to text.
9. Lindahl, T., ‘Instability and decay of the primary structure of DNA’, Nature 362(6422):709–715, 1993. S. Pääbo has found that DNA fragments a few hours after death into chains 100–200 units long, that water alone would completely break it down by 50,000 years, and that background radiation would eventually erase DNA information even without water and oxygen, ‘Ancient DNA’, Scientific American 269(5):60–66, 1993. Return to text.

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Taken from: http://creation.com/was-adam-from-australia-the-mystery-of-mungo-man

Mungo Man : Turning evolution upside down

In the study of human evolution, Australia has not traditionally believed to have much to offer; however, the skeletal record has thrown up a few spanners in the works that may one day transform beliefs about where humans came from.

One of these spanners is Mungo Man, who was discovered in 1974 in the dry lake bed of Lake Mungo in west NSW. Mungo Man was a hominin who was estimated to have died 62,000 years ago and was ritually buried with his hands covering his penis. Anatomically, Mungo Man's bones were distinct from other human skeletons being unearthed in Australia. Unlike the younger skeletons that had big-brows and thick-skulls, Mungo Man's skeleton was finer, and more like modern humans.

The ANU's John Curtin School of Medical Research found that Mungo Man's skeleton's contained a small section of mitochondrial DNA. After analysing the DNA, the school found that Mungo Man's DNA bore no similarity to the other ancient skeletons, modern Aborigines and modern Europeans. Furthermore, his mitochondrial DNA had become extinct. The results called into question the 'Out of Africa' theory of human evolution. If Mungo Man was descended from a person who had left Africa in the past 200,000 years, then his mitochondrial DNA should have looked like all of the other samples.

Another spanner in the traditional theories are the Kow Swamp skeletons from northern Victoria, which are reminiscent of Homo erectus. Specifically, they have thick brow ridges, sloping foreheads and very large teeth. If the Kow Swamp skeletons had been found in Indonesia and dated at 100,000 + years, then they might have been categorised as Homo erectus but being found in Australia and dated at only 10,000 years was problematic. According to traditional theories, Homo erectus never reached Australia and was believed to have died out when Homo sapiens reached Indonesia in excess of 50,000 years ago. Even if the Kow Swamp people weren't Homo erectus, it was hard to explain why an ancient looking people occupied Australia after a more modern looking people. As explained by Professor Alan Thorne,

"The Kow Swamp people have thick brow ridges, very large faces and the biggest teeth that have ever existed in modern humans. And that creates a problem. They look ancient but at 10,000 years of age they’re much younger than the lightly built Mungo people. How could that be?"

One academic, Dr Tim Stone from the University of Melbourne, tried to argue the unusual skeletal shapes were the result of some kind of localised adaptation to the cold. (1) Stone basically argued that the Homo sapiens of the area evolved to look like Homo erectus because the body shape was better suited to the climate. No other Australian population groups looked like them because the Kow Swamp people became geographically isolated for tens of thousands of years. This was an illogical explanation considering that Kow Swamp was on a relatively flat area of land near the Murray River, which would likely attract high volumes of human traffic. As a point of comparison, a small population of humans in Tasmania were genetically isolated for at least 10,000 years in a very cold climate. Although paintings and photos show a slight divergence from some mainland Aborigines, their skeletons and features looked very similar to modern gracile humans.

Tasmanian Aborigines looked a lot like Africans but despite being isolated for perhaps 10,000 years in a cold climate, they still looked like modern humans.

Others have argued that the unusual head shapes were the result of cranial modification by mothers wrapping cloth around their infants' heads (3) . This was also an illogical explanation as body modification of infants tends to be a feature of agricultural societies that have developed hierarchical systems of status. Body modification in hunter gathering societies tends to occur during teenage years as part of initiation ceremonies. Furthermore, cranial modification in hunter gatherer societies would have had to use animal skin, which could be risky as animal skin can expand and shrink thus potentially killing the baby. In short, if cranial modification was occuring, then the Kow Swamp people probably weren't hunter gatherers, which would be as problematic as proposing they were Homo erectus.
One academic defending the orthodox position, Dr Colin Groves, didn't even bother offering any explanations and simply said that those who did were racist because the explanations would interfere with contemporary activist campaigns. In his own words:

"But at the same time as one "pure-race" hypothesis was hitting the dust, another was rising. Ancient Australian skeletons were being discovered in Victoria and southern New South Wales, and they seemed to show great diversity. None of them were Negritos, Murrayians or Carpentarians, but those from Keilor and Lake Mungo were like modern Aboriginal people, whereas some (not all) of those from Kow Swamp had very flat, sloping foreheads, and some people even likened them to so-called "Java Man", Homo erectus, that had preceded modern humans (Homo sapiens) in the region to the Northwest of Australasia at least as late as 300,000 years ago. Unfortunately, although Alan Thorne, the describer of the Kow Swamp skeletons, never actually said that they were Homo erectus, the idea that an extremely primitive people preceded the present Aboriginal people in Australia, and was eliminated by them, seems to have seeped into some folks' consciousness just like the Negritos did. Negritos or Homo erectus - either way, the Aborigines were not the first possessors of Australia so the land doesn't really belong to them and the whites needn't feel too bad about dispossessing them. Really good fodder, this, for the One Nation Party, and the Prime Minister needn't feel he has to say "sorry".

If sarcasm and the need to conform to contemporary activist campaigns were highly valued qualities in academic inquiry, then it appeared as though Groves had made a powerful and compelling argument.

Some theories based on the skeletal record have proposed that the first humans in Australia were the "negrito" Tasmanian people, who were displaced by "Murrayans", who were in turn displaced by "Carpentarians". Academics like Dr Colin Groves have proposed that the theories are racist and that there was only one migration and all Aborigines are the descendents from that one migration.

Out of Africa Theory

The 'Out-of-Africa' theory proposes that 1.4 million years ago Homo erectus left Africa and spread throughout Europe and Asia. In Europe, Homo erectus evolved into the Neanderthals. In Asia, most Homo erectus stopped evolving - with the exception of a small group in the Indonesian archipelago that branched off to become Homo floresiensis (aka the Hobbit). Unlike most of the Homo erectus in new Asian environments, which stagnated, the Homo erectus that stayed in Africa continued to evolve and eventually became Homo sapiens.
About 200,000 years ago, Homo sapiens left Africa. They spread throughout the globe and conquered or out-competed Neanderthals and Homo erectus. The last Neanderthal died out around 30,000 years ago. The last Homo erectus died out somewhere between 200,000 and 30,000 years ago. The last Hobbit is believed to have died out in a volcanic eruption around 10,000 years ago. After conquering Homo erectus in Indonesia, Homo sapiens moved to Australia. If Homo erectus had made it to Australia first, then they too would have been conquered.
In a nutshell, 200,000 years ago an African tribe, either through superior food gathering ability or open war, started the extinction of all hominin species living throughout Eurasia.
Supporting the Out-of-Africa theory was work by Allan Wilson who provided evidence in 1987 that all modern humans share a single female ancestor who lived in Africa approximately 200,000 years ago.

Interactive journey of humanity - http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/journey/

Nature 408, 7 Dec 2000, p. 653

Regional Continuity or Multiregional Evolution
Mungo Man is a huge spanner in the works for the Out-of-Africa theory because it can't explain how Mungo Man looked liked modern humans, yet was not related to any human that had left Africa in the last 200,000 years. A 'Multiple-Regions' theory was held up as the answer. If Out-of-Africa is a theory of war, then Multiple Regions is a theory of sex. The theory proposed that Homo erectus was not conquered; rather, once Homo erectus left Africa 1.4 million years ago, it kept evolving on migration lines between Asia and Africa (and possibly Australia). Interbreeding among nomadic tribes kept most of the different groups on a relatively constant evolutionary track and ensured they remained the same species.
Most proponents of the Multiple-Regions theory argue that the Neanderthals in Eurasia and the Hobbit in Indonesia were not unique species and therefore must have contributed DNA to modern Homo sapiens.
Testing of Neanderthal DNA has produced mixed evidence. Repeated testing of mitochondrial DNA of modern humans found no evidence of Neanderthal DNA. Because mitochondrial DNA is passed on by women, the lack of it indicated that Homo sapiens do not have a female Neaderthal ancestor. Even though sapiens don't have female Neaderthal ancestors, they do have male Neandethal ancestors. In 2010, 60 per cent of the Neaderthal had been mapped and was subsequently compared to modern humans from Papua New Guinea, Europe, Asia and Africa. It found that 1-4% of modern human DNA, in populations outside of Africa, was Neanderthal in origin. While the results found evidence of male Neanderthal in non-African Homo sapiens, there was no evidence of Homo sapien DNA, either male or female, contributing to Neaderthal DNA.
The results suggested that Neanderthals had the ability to breed with Homo sapiens (so were not a unique species) but breeding was minimal. Furthermore, the one-way flow of genes, and the absense of Neaderthal mitochondrial DNA in modern humans, would suggest it was only a few Neanderthal men breeding with Homo sapien women. On the whole, the two Hominins bred very little.
Perhaps the small flow of genes could also be attributed to migration routes. The Neanderthals may have evolved independently because they were an ice age people living in caves. Ice age Eurasia was just too inhospitable for nomadic Homo erectus. Likewise, in the Indonesian archipelago, the ancestor of the Hobbit may have been cut off from migration routes due to changes in sea levels or volcanic activity. Consequently, they also become a unique species.
Aside from the Neanderthals and the Hobbits, all other Homo erectus keep migrating, keep breeding and kept evolving on a constant track. Eventually they evolved into Homo sapiens.
At some stage in the last 850,000 years (or longer), either Homo erectus or Homo sapiens made the crossing from Java to Australia. These hominins were the ancestors of Mungo Man. It would not have been a difficult crossing to make. Rats are believed to have made the crossing 2 million years ago.
200,000 years ago, females from an African tribe started spreading their genes through the entire arc between Australia and Africa. This spreading of female genes could have occurred as a result of a nomadic African tribe emerging from Africa and breeding throughout Asia. It could also have occurred as a result of an Asian tribe going to Africa, and forcibly taking women back to Asia. (*Although evidence indicates that all humans might have had a common female African ancestor 200,000 years ago, as yet there is no evidence to show a common male ancestor.)
60,000 years ago, Homo sapiens with African ancestors started migrating into Australia, and joined Mungo Man. The first group of Africans were known as Robust due to their heavy-boned physique. This group was significantly different from the slender body shaped Gracile of Mungo Man that was already in Australia. The Robust soon came to dominate Australia. Many thousands of years later, perhaps more people with a Gracile body migrated to Australia. The similarity in shape probably stemmed from parallel evolution rather than recent common ancestors. Alternatively, the Robust Homo sapiens perhaps evolved a more Gracile shape due to climatic changes. (Robust shapes were more suited to cold climates and tackling megafauna. Gracile shapes were more agile and had better endurance.) Aborigines today have a Gracile body shape that is like the 62,000-year-old Mungo Man but unlike the 10,000-year-old Kow Swamp people.

Sites showing where Homo erectus was found. Debate exists about European sites. Some skulls have been found in Australia that show Homo erectus features but they have not been categorised as Homo erectus. Homo Flores (the hobbit) was found on the eastern side of the Wallace line, indicating that its Homo erectus ancestor had the capacity to make ocean crossings.

One view on human evolution. Note, overlap is only deemed to have occured in Europe where Homo sapiens and Neanderthals co-existed. Homo floresiensis was not included.

Implications for Australia

If Out-of-Africa is to be believed, then human occupation of Australia has to be less than 200,000 years. Exactly when humans arrived would have been determined by how long it took Homo sapiens emerging from Africa to cause the extinction of the Homo erectus tribes spread throughout Asia. If Multiple Regions is to be believed, the length of human occupation of Australia can be greatly extended. Homo erectus was known to be in the Indonesian archipelago 850,000 years ago. If they had made the crossing to Australia, then hominin occupation of Australia could be anywhere up to 850,000 years.
It is generally believed that Homo erectus was not intelligent enough to make the boats that would have been required to cross to Australia. Arguably though, making a raft or a canoe is much much easier than making stone tools that can kill animals. Furthermore, Homo erectus obviously had a degree of intelligence as it had crossed rivers and adapted to diverse climates on its way from Africa to Java and Peking.
It should also be noted that the Hobbit was found on the Australian/Papua New Guinea side of the Wallace Line. In previous ice ages, Papua New Guinea was part of the Australian zooalogical regions and Flores showed signs of both Asian and Australian fauna. Stone tools on the island of Flores have been dated at 840,000 years, which proves that Homo erectus was capable of making a sea crossing. It also proves that after crossing the Wallace Line, Homo erectus gained the opportunity to migrate into Australia.

The Wallace Line - A stretch of deep water that separates the zoological regions of Asia from those of Australia and Papua New Guinea. 840,000-year-old Homo erectus tools have been found on the Australian New Guinea side.

Sahul – The land mass that comprised PNG and Australia during the last ice age. Australia was not as isolated as some people believe.

The possibility that Homo erectus made it to Australia was supported by archaeological excavations from 1968 to 1972 by Professor Alan Thorne at Kow Swamp, which found skeletons showing Homo erectus features. The main problem with seeing them as Homo erectus was that they were between 10,000 and 13,000 years old. If they were Homo erectus, then it would suggest that either Homo erectus lived in Australia until very recently, or came in a migration wave after Homo sapiens and then died out or was bred out.

Implications for human evolution

Survival of the Fittest proposes that the strongest and most intelligent will eventually emerge triumphant. Out-of-Africa supports the theory because it proposes a smart and strong African tribe was able to cause the extinction of all other hominin species spread across the globe. It caused the extinction due to its superior food gathering ability and/or superior battlefield might.
A Multiple-Regions theory indicates that Survival-of-the-Fittest is only half true. Physical weakness can aid promiscuity and therefore the proliferation of genes. In the case of the Neanderthals, the fact that male Neanderthals survives in the DNA of Homo sapiens but female Neanderthals DNA does not suggests that Neanderthal men probably raped Homo sapien women and the offspring was raised by Homo sapien tribes. It would have been easy for Neanderthals to rape the women because they were far stronger. (It is possible that Neanderthal boys/men were adopted by Homo sapien tribes but this would not explain why Neanderthal women were not adopted.) While Neanderthal men could rape Homo sapien women, Homo sapien men were too weak to rape the stronger Neanderthal women and to carry them back to the tribe as typically occurred in hunter gatherer communities. Ironically, by being strong, the Neanderthal women were not forcibly inducted into tribes that could survive.
Similar problems may have been experience by the women of Mungo Man’s tribe. If they were particularly agile or strong, other groups of Homo sapiens would not have been able to force them to join their tribes as was custom in hunter gathering. If the other tribes came to dominate, then the women’s evolutionary lines would have gone extinct like those of the Neanderthal.

1) Groves, Colin, (2002) Australia for the Australians http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-June-2002/groves.html)
2) http://archive.uninews.unimelb.edu.au/news/1255/
3)Susan C. Antón, Karen J. Weinstein (1999) Artificial cranial deformation and fossil Australians revisited Journal of Human Evolution Volume 36, Issue 2, February 1999, Pages 195–209

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Taken from: http://www.convictcreations.com/aborigines/prehistory.htm

The search for Sodom and Gomorrah: Scientists drill beneath Dead Sea seeking priceless data



By Batsheva Sobelman

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Rock samples underwater for eons are likely to be better preserved, researchers say. Expectations are high that the lowest place on Earth can answer questions --- on climate change and other key matters
JewishWorldReview.com |


EAD SEA — (MCT) If you thought you couldn't get any lower than the Dead Sea, think again. You can go under it.

Scientists here are drilling 1,640 feet beneath the bottom of the Dead Sea, to a depth of more than 2,600 feet below sea level.

Rock samples that have been underwater for eons are likely to be better preserved, they say, than samples taken from under an exposed surface, which can be damaged by aridity and erosion.

As a result, the Dead Sea bore hole is expected to contain priceless information about the planet's past and to offer insight on its future. Expectations are high that the lowest place on Earth can answer questions on climate change, earthquake risk and untapped natural resources.

Since the region was mentioned in biblical contexts that include Sodom and Gomorrah, the ruins of which some scholars believe are submerged under the Dead Sea, the $2.5-million project might also crack an ancient mystery or two.

It's a massive undertaking. A unique rig was constructed and then towed more than 4 miles into the salty sea, where drilling will go on for 40 days and nights, perhaps appropriate for the region.

Forty scientists from six countries are taking part in the deep-drilling program, sponsored by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the German-based International Continental Scientific Drilling Program, which conducts deep sea and lake drilling worldwide.

The samples are expected to provide a sort of tree-ring-style annual log that will enable experts to say, for example, that year X "was a very rainy year," says Zvi Ben-Avraham, head of the Minerva Dead Sea Research Center at Tel-Aviv University.

At a nearby laboratory, the rings are clearly visible through Plexiglas tubes containing the first samples. A pair of layers, brown and white, represent a normal year with a wet season and a dry one. Variations bear witness to drought, flood and trauma. "These are the pages of our history," says Amotz Agnon of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The Dead Sea — a lake, really — is what has remained of the series of ancient bodies of water in the Jordan Valley. It fills one of Earth's deepest holes, located in a depression on the border between two tectonic plates forming part of the long Syro-African fault line. The plates are still moving. Small tremors are not infrequent, but Ben-Avraham says the region is relatively calm. The last big quake occurred in 1927.

Experts say the Dead Sea should provide invaluable historical data because the region served as a corridor through which humankind migrated from Africa.

Filled tubes are kept in a freezer outside an unassuming lab in Kibbutz Ein Gedi, in the hills above the water. Early batches have been passed through a scanner that buzzes and beeps while sending data to a computer.

More tubes lie on the floor of the lab, soon to be put through the machine. In one, a 4-inch stretch of mud reflects a century-long wet period around 400 years ago, in what is known as the Little Ice Age. Deeper samples should corroborate other documented events such as the volcanic eruption of Santorini about 3,500 years ago.

Data contained in these "archives," as Moti Stein of the Geological Survey of Israel puts it, are of global importance. The data of past relations between two climate belts, the Mediterranean and the desert, will help prepare climate models in times of global warming and desertification, Stein says.

The Dead Sea itself is as unusual as the drilling project.

Fresh water flowing into the sea is trapped; with no outflow, the only way out is up. High evaporation rates in this hot, arid zone result in extreme hyper-salinity.

The buoyancy draws tourists who come for a float. Others are attracted by the purported cosmetic and healing properties of the minerals, fabled since antiquity, or simply for the striking landscape.

But the Dead Sea is in trouble. Receding about 3 feet a year, the water, pessimists warn, could soon vanish. Stein says the lake has naturally recovered from catastrophic aridity before.

But humans are playing a role. "We're not helping," says Michael Lazar, the marine geophysicist from the University of Haifa who manages the project.

Tectonic plates aren't the only things grating against each other. There's regional politics too. The Dead Sea fills an area shared by Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians. The site's nomination for the Seven Wonders of the World competition was almost undone by conflicting political claims.

Though no Jordanian or Palestinian scientists were to be seen during a recent media tour of the site, organizers said the multinational project includes both. A project official said Arab scientists were keeping a low profile because of political sensitivities.

"The Dead Sea doesn't belong to Israel, Jordan or the Palestinians," Lazar said. "They're in, and we're happy to have them."

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Taken from: http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1210/dead_sea_drilling.php3

Pope Francis RFID Hoax: ‘Goes Public With Support Of RFID Micro Chip Implantation’ is Fake

By Jack Phillips, Epoch Times | May 21, 2014

An article saying Pope Francis support RFID chip implantation isn’t real.

The fake report, published on “satire” website National Report, appears to be poking fun at the fear that a widespread microchip implantation is “the mark of the beast,” as described in the Bible.

“In a controversial move by the Catholic church, Pope Francis has come out in vocal support of RFID Chip technologies and the extraordinary potential they hold for mankind. The outrage stems from a belief held by many Evangelicals, Fundamentalists and Catholics, that RFID implants are the Mark Of The Beast, spoken about in their Holy Book’s chapter regarding the end of the world,” the article reads.

Pope Francis holding a tall, lit, white candle, enters a darkened St. Peter's Basilica to begin the Easter vigil service, at the Vatican, Saturday, April 19, 2014. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

According to a disclaimer that has since been removed, National Report isn’t a real news source.

“National Report is a news and political satire web publication, which may or may not use real names, often in semi-real or mostly fictitious ways. All news articles contained within National Report are fiction, and presumably fake news. Any resemblance to the truth is purely coincidental,” it states, according to hoax-debunking website Waffles at Noon.

A quick search shows that Pope Francis has never made statements about RFID chips.

Advertisement:Replay Ad

No legitimate local or national media reports have anything about it either.

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Taken from: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/687952-pope-francis-rfid-hoax-goes-public-with-support-of-rfid-micro-chip-implantation-is-fake/

Big Bang just a mirage?

Well at least that explains what happened to your lost keys. Picture: NatureSource: Supplied

WHAT if we told you the Big Bang was a myth?

That's right. Everything we know about the universe may be wrong.
Cosmologists have speculated that the universe was created after a star collapsed into a black hole - a theory that helps to explain why it seems to be expanding in all directions.
The Big Bang theory suggests that the universe was created from a single point in the universe but despite years of research, nobody yet knows what triggered the eruption.
It also fails to explain why the Universe has an "almost completely uniform temperature."

"There does not seem to have been enough time since the birth of the cosmos for it to have reached temperature equilibrium," researchers explain in the scientific journal, Nature.

Astrophysicists from the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada have released a paper discussing a previous theory out of Germany that posited that the universe is a three-dimensional "membrane" floating through a four-dimensional "bulk universe".
A bulk universe is a very complicated concept out of string theory that puts forward the idea that space is a plane of infinite dimensions through which other planes of infinite dimensions float.
The team claimed that if the "bulk universe" contained four dimensional stars, some of them could collapse and cause black holes in the same way that stars in our universe do - they turn in supernovae, ejecting their outerlayers while their inner layers collapse into the black hole.
Black holes in our universe are spherical in shape and possess some kind of "membrane" that keep them that way. These "membranes" are known as "event horizons". Anything that passes through this event horizon is done for, because the gravitational pull is so great it makes escape impossible. In our universe only a two dimensional object is capable of becoming an event horizon within a black hole, Nature explained. Whereas in a bulk universe, the event horizon of a four dimensional black hole would have to be three dimensional, known as a "hypersphere".
Confused yet? We don't blame you.
In a nutshell this means that a star floating through a multidimensional plane got sucked into a black hole, half of it got swallowed up and the other half that survived spawned the creation of the universe.
The fact that our universe is expanding in all directions could be a sign simply of cosmic expansion, rather than as the origin of the universe itself, the researchers suggest.
"Astronomers measured that expansion and extrapolated back that the Universe must have begun with a Big Bang - but that is just a mirage," said team member Niayesh Afshordi.
However, the theory has some holes. (Get it, holes?)
So far it doesn't entirely answer how the expansion of the universe occurred.
The European Space Agency recorded slight fluctuations in the temperature of the universe and found that the cosmos contained imprints of radiation that matched predictions made in the Big Bang theory. Obviously this creates a discrepancy in the astrophysicists' research.
The scientists say they're going back to the drawing board to adjust their model.
Stay tuned. Everything we may know about the universe may be wrong.

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Taken from: http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/has-the-big-bang-theory-been-busted/story-fn5fsgyc-1226721187118

Pope Francis’s envoy warns of ‘horrible consequences’ of Lord Falconer’s Assisted Dying Bill

Pope Francis will back you, Papal representative tells opponents of change in   law, warning it would be a ‘Pandora’s Box’

By John Bingham, and Nick Squires

8:30PM BST 08 May 2014
 

Legalising assisted suicide in the UK would open a “Pandora’s box” with    “horrible consequences” for the frail, elderly and sick, Pope Francis’s   personal representative has insisted.

In a rare public intervention into a domestic political matter, the Apostolic   Nuncio to Great Britain, Archbishop Antonio Mennini, condemned moves led by   Lord Falconer, the former Lord Chancellor, to relax the euthanasia laws as   an attack on “human life as a gift from God”.

He urged opponents to expose what he called the “reality” of Lord Falconer’s    “nice, politically correct and compassionate” term “assisted dying” to mean   a form of euthanasia.

And he singled out the issue as a litmus test of whether Britain remains, in  the words of David Cameron, a “Christian country”.

His remarks, in a private address to the Roman Catholic bishops of England and   Wales, echo those of Pope Francis, who has attacked moves towards assisted   suicide as an attempt to “eliminate” sick and disabled people.

The new Nuncio with Archbishop Nichols

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And he pointedly offered them the personal support of the Pope on the issue, setting the Church on course for another battle with politicians in the wake   of the bruising encounters over issues such as gay marriage.
Last night supporters of a change in the law claimed that the Pope’s   representative was “on the wrong side of British public opinion”.
Members of the House of Lords are preparing to debate proposals, tabled by   Lord Falconer, to allow doctors to prescribe a lethal dose of drugs to   terminally-ill patients in the next few months.
David Cameron and Nick Clegg, who both personally oppose the change, have   nevertheless promised MPs and peers a free vote and some ministers have   signalled their support.
Under the 1961 Suicide Act, it is a crime punishable by 14 years in jail, to   help someone to take their own life but prosecution guidelines now make   clear that many who do so will escape charges.
Supporters of Lord Falconer say a change in the law is urgently needed but   opponents claim that safeguards written into the bill could be swept away.
They point to the extension of assisted suicide in Belgium to children as   proof that it would be a “slippery slope”.
Archbishop Mennini spoke about the recent debate about whether the UK is a    “Christian country, arguing that although Britain had been “profoundly   formed by Christian values”, the influence of the faith had undoubtedly   declined.
“In this regard, I cannot fail to express concern about the Assisted Dying   Bill which will be discussed in the next few months in the House of Lords,”    he said.
“This is a very sensitive issue, which required a serious commitment from us   to protect and defend human life as a gift from God.”
Praising those who had highlighted “sense and nonsense” on the issue, he   added: “May I encourage … you to announce the gospel of life among our   people, as well as in society in general, presenting the reality which hides   behind the ‘nice’, ‘politically correct’ and ‘compassionate’ expression    ‘assisted dying’.”
He added: “Unfortunately we know from experience how easily public opinion can   be manipulated, especially using ‘emotional’ arguments that try to move   compassionate sentiments.
“But once we open this Pandora’s box we know as well the horrible consequences   that follow.”
“We have seen that even here, among us, regarding abortion, and the last news   about ‘selective abortion’.
“But also elsewhere, in other European countries which recently have made   change in their laws moving from a limited concept of euthanasia” to a wider   spectre, also including children, as in Belgium.”
He pointedly added: “Please be assured of our support, as well as that of the   Holy Father, regarding this important issue.”
Sarah Wootton, chief executive of the campaign group Dignity in Dying, which   supports Lord Falconer’s bill, said: “Everyone’s opinion on assisted dying   must be respected and if Archbishop Antonio Mennini does not want the choice   to control the manner of his death then that is his decision.
“However, it is not acceptable for the Archbishop to impose his views, based   on principle, on others who do not share them and by doing so cause   unnecessary suffering for the small but significant number of people who   want the option of an assisted death when palliative care is not enough.
“The Archbishop is on the wrong side of British public opinion not because it   has been manipulated but because people listen to those who are terminally   ill and their call for a right to choose when they die.”

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Taken from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10817765/Pope-Franciss-envoy-warns-of-horrible-consequences-of-Lord-Falconers-Assisted-Dying-Bill.html