Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Geology, Palaeontology & Archaeology => Topic started by: pharmacist2030 on 28/04/2018 21:41:51
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I have a friend who is quite religious, he doesn't believe that we are evolved from a common ancestor. He said that God created us and we are special compared to our Ancestors such as ( Homo erectus- Homo Habilis- Neanderthal). His argument is the time between Neanderthal and Homo sapiens is just 300,000 years which is a short period of time for any significant evolution such as the ability of speech in the mutation of FoxP2 gene that enabled us to speak. Also, there is a huge transformation in the drawings in caves homo sapiens are more advanced in weaponry and other artefacts. The question is are we evolved from Neanderthals or there was a common ancestor between us? And if Adam and Eve were real where they will be on the chart ? Were they like us Homo Sapiens?!! And if 300,000 years is enough time for a significant evolution?!!! I would like some logical evidence to try to answer his questions.
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One thing you could do would be to look up the percent difference in nucleotide sequence between Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis and see if the mutation rate needed to create that difference within the prescribed amount of time is feasible. I'll probably do it myself a bit later.
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I have a friend who is quite religious, he doesn't believe that we are evolved from a common ancestor. He said that God created us and we are special compared to our Ancestors such as ( Homo erectus- Homo Habilis- Neanderthal). His argument is the time between Neanderthal and Homo sapiens is just 300,000 years which is a short period of time for any significant evolution such as the ability of speech in the mutation of FoxP2 gene that enabled us to speak. Also, there is a huge transformation in the drawings in caves homo sapiens are more advanced in weaponry and other artefacts. The question is are we evolved from Neanderthals or there was a common ancestor between us? And if Adam and Eve were real where they will be on the chart ? Were they like us Homo Sapiens?!! And if 300,000 years is enough time for a significant evolution?!!! I would like some logical evidence to try to answer his questions.
Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals are actually separate branches of the Human evolutionary tree. Neanderthals evolved from a human ancestor that made an early migration out of Africa and Homo Sapiens continued evolving in Africa and entered Europe during a later migration. Neanderthals and H. Sapiens both evolved from a common ancestor. Neanderthal did not evolve into H. Sapiens. This means that their evolutionary paths diverged further back than that 300,000 yr figure. ( it's kind of like the fact that the difference between the birth date of you and your cousin is only 5 yrs, But you have to go back to both your grandparents to locate your common roots.)
There is some evidence to suggest that once the two branches met up again that there was some interbreeding, and thus there are some Neanderthal genes still floating about in the modern human pool.
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This link will probably prove valuable to you: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/314/5802/1113 (http://science.sciencemag.org/content/314/5802/1113)
It states that genetic analysis is used to estimate the divergence time. It gives a common ancestor of modern humans and Neanderthals at 706,000 years ago and that the two species became distinct populations at 370,000 years ago. So your friend has it backwards: the genetic differences between modern humans and Neanderthals is the very tool that is used to estimate how long ago the two species split.