A link showing clear evolution of a human being

In summary, an international research team has found that the Neanderthals, a species closely related to modern humans, diverged from the same primate line that led to humans 400,000 years ago in Africa. They migrated to Europe and western Asia, evolving independently from humans. DNA samples from three female Neanderthals were compared to samples from five present-day humans, and it was found that DNA signatures from Neanderthals are present in present-day Europeans and Asians, but not in Africans. This provides evidence for interbreeding between Neanderthals and early humans, which may have contributed to the disappearance of Neanderthals approximately 30,000 years ago.
  • #1
GTank7
My friend who thinks we were "created" keeps telling me that there's no link of a human evolving from a previous species..

Now I keep telling that there's tons of evidence in museums & whatnot, but is there any good links online that can clearly show him?
 
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  • #2
A mind changed against its will
Is of the same opinion still.
 
  • #3
You could show him a lineup of humans skulls going back a few million years and he'd look at each of them saying "human, human, human, human", then when he reaches one that's too different from humans to be called human, "monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey". And if he sees the tiniest detail about evolution that he doesn't understand, suddenly the entire theory is shot.
It's his job to search for something before blindly claiming it doesn't exist. There's no shortage of evidence, he's just never bothered to look.
 
  • #4
GTank7 said:
My friend who thinks we were "created" keeps telling me that there's no link of a human evolving from a previous species..

Now I keep telling that there's tons of evidence in museums & whatnot, but is there any good links online that can clearly show him ?
You can't argue with a person that already has their mind closed.

Feel free to look at the many threads here explaining evolution. No need to keep repeating this once a week.

There is plenty of information here http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-qa.html
 
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  • #5
Tell him about the human chromosome "2" is a result of the fusion between ancestral chromosomes "2a" and "2b". This is proof of humans and chimpanzees sharing a common ancestor (as well as splitting off from that ancestor too).

http://www.pnas.org/content/88/20/9051.full.pdf
 
  • #6
Thread pruned and reopened. Please be respectful in your comments or this will be locked for good.
 
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  • #7
I think inquisitive creationists ought be encouraged to puzzle over "why so many experts have adopted a viewpoint contrary to creationism" (even with an initial aim of finding an approach to persuade scientists of creation). That way, they'll be trying to ponder the evidence and arguments from both perspectives for themselves, and be less actively opposed to changing their minds if appropriate. Surely few would insist harm could come of this?

(Really, the OP implies a kind of a funny place to put the goal posts, though probably not uncommon. Does it mean this friend believes that plants and animals and even other chimpanzees all evolved, but having retreated so far, still holds out that humans are too special to have come from the same process? If so, then having contravened so much literalism already, surely it is a small step to say that perhaps human evolution was divinely guided? Otherwise how does the timeline work: is every human skull younger than 4000BC? Are there so few human genes as could all be traced back to only 92 chromosomes with so little opportunity for mutations, or is it allowable for viruses to insert monkey-genes in Adam and Eve's children? But anyway, I think lisab's quote is valuable.)
 
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  • #8
fossils=simple, living species=complex

is really all the evidence you need o_o
 
  • #9
cesiumfrog said:
I think inquisitive creationists ought be encouraged to puzzle over "why so many experts have adopted a viewpoint contrary to creationism" (even with an initial aim of finding an approach to persuade scientists of creation). That way, they'll be trying to ponder the evidence and arguments from both perspectives for themselves, and be less actively opposed to changing their minds if appropriate. Surely few would insist harm could come of this?

(Really, the OP implies a kind of a funny place to put the goal posts, though probably not uncommon. Does it mean this friend believes that plants and animals and even other chimpanzees all evolved, but having retreated so far, still holds out that humans are too special to have come from the same process? If so, then having contravened so much literalism already, surely it is a small step to say that perhaps human evolution was divinely guided? Otherwise how does the timeline work: is every human skull younger than 4000BC? Are there so few human genes as could all be traced back to only 92 chromosomes with so little opportunity for mutations, or is it allowable for viruses to insert monkey-genes in Adam and Eve's children? But anyway, I think lisab's quote is valuable.)

A simple way - would be to use in present day is to discuss why do resistant bacteria occur or why insects that were once susceptible to chemicals are now resistant. Or as recently as a year back the virus epidemic like H1N1.
 
  • #10
just tell him to have a little faith.
After all, if god can evolve, so can humans.
 
  • #11
Ouabache started a topic about Neanderthals in “Social Sciences” that I participated in, mentioning there I would place in the “Biology” section information about them.:smile: I think this might be the best topic to present it. The National Human Genome Research Institute on May 2010: Complete Neanderthal Genome Sequenced- DNA Signatures Found in Present-Day Europeans and Asians, But Not In Africans.


The international research team, which includes researchers from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health, reports its findings in the May 7, 2010, issue of Science.

The current fossil record suggests that Neanderthals, or Homo neanderthalensis, diverged from the primate line that led to present-day humans, or Homo sapiens, some 400,000 years ago in Africa. Neanderthals migrated north into Eurasia, where they became a geographically isolated group that evolved independently from the line that became modern humans in Africa. They lived in Europe and western Asia, as far east as southern Siberia and as far south as the Middle East.

Approximately 30,000 years ago, Neanderthals disappeared. That makes them the most recent, extinct relative of modern humans, as both Neanderthals and humans share a common ancestor from about 800,000 years ago. Chimpanzees diverged from the same primate line some 5 million to 7 million years ago.

The researchers compared DNA samples from the bones of three female Neanderthals who lived some 40,000 years ago in Europe to samples from five present-day humans from China, France, Papua New Guinea, southern Africa and western Africa. This provided the first genome-wide look at the similarities and differences of the closest evolutionary relative to humans, and maybe even identifying, for the first time, genetic variations that gave rise to modern humans.

"This sequencing project is a technological tour de force," said NHGRI Director Eric D. Green, M.D., Ph.D. "You must appreciate that this international team has produced a draft sequence of a genome that existed 400 centuries ago. Their analysis shows the power of comparative genomics and brings new insights to our understanding of human evolution."

The Neanderthal DNA was removed from bones discovered at Vindija Cave in Croatia and prepared in the clean room facility of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, to prevent contamination with contemporary DNA. The Max Planck group is led by their Department of Evolutionary Genetics Director Svante Pääbo, Ph.D., a well-known pioneer in Neanderthal genome research. The team deposited the Neanderthal genome sequence in the publicly available NIH genetic sequence database GenBank.

To understand the genomic differences between present-day humans and Neanderthals, the researchers compared subtle differences in the Neanderthal genome to the genomes found in DNA from the five people, as well as to chimpanzee DNA. An analysis of the genetic variation showed that Neanderthal DNA is 99.7 percent identical to present-day human DNA, and 98.8 percent identical to chimpanzee DNA. Present-day human DNA is also 98.8 percent identical to chimpanzee.

"The genomic calculations showed good correlation with the fossil record," said coauthor Jim Mullikin, Ph.D., an NHGRI computational geneticist and acting director of the NIH Intramural Sequencing Center. "According to our results, the ancestors of Neanderthals and modern humans went their separate ways about 400,000 years ago."

The comparison between Neanderthal and present-day human genomes has produced a catalog of genetic differences that allow the researchers to identify features that are unique to present-day humans. For example, the catalog includes differences in genes that code for functional elements, such as proteins, in which the Neanderthal versions are more like those of the chimpanzee than present-day humans. Some evolutionary changes were found in known genes involved in cognitive development, skull structure, energy metabolism, skin morphology and wound healing.
Please read on . . .
http://genome.gov/27539119

Enjoy the weekend everyone!

rproulx said:
just tell him to have a little faith.
After all, if god can evolve, so can humans.
That is silly nonsense! This is a science board. In the future please leave 'god" out of science discussions. Thank you in advance for your consideration in this matter.
 
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  • #12
Creationists, following Lubenow in the creationist tirade Bones of Contention, tend to dismiss any talk of H. Neanderthalensis as "merely humans with rickets". However, the signs of rickets differ from Neanderthal fossils in many ways: people with rickets are often have weak bones due to calcium-deficiency, whereas the bones of Neanderthals are around 50% or so thicker than the average human. Rickets also tend to cause a sideways curvature of the femur, whereas Neanderthal femurs bend backward.

The false notion that Neanderthals was "merely humans with rickets" probably came from creationists quoting Virchow out of context. Virchow merely stated that a particular Neanderthal fossil seemed to have had rickets as an early childhood (and other conditions such as arthritis in old age).
 
  • #13
cesiumfrog said:
I think inquisitive creationists ought be encouraged to puzzle over "why so many experts have adopted a viewpoint contrary to creationism" (even with an initial aim of finding an approach to persuade scientists of creation). That way, they'll be trying to ponder the evidence and arguments from both perspectives for themselves, and be less actively opposed to changing their minds if appropriate. Surely few would insist harm could come of this?

The creationist "answer" to why so many scientists accept evolution has already been "provided" to them by "prominent" creationists such as Kent Hovind and Ken Ham: scientists are predominantly atheists who need to come up with a way to explain away the existence of divine creator. In fact, many creationists argue, evolution was not first postulated by Darwin (it wasn't, Darwin was among the first to propose the mechanism of natural selection), but by the serpent, interpreted as Satan, in the Garden of Eden.

According to Genesis 3:1-5 (KJV): Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

According to Hovind, the first word out of the mouth of the serpent was a question, a way to question and undermine the word and authority of the biblical god. Hovind continues and asserts that evolution states that humans started as slime, then became bigger, better, stronger and faster and that, and as Satan said, become like gods (compare this with the Aristotelian great chain of being). Since creationists think that evolution is incompatible with their faith, they can apparently draw no other conclusion than that evolution was invented by Satan in the Garden of Eden to tempt man to disobey the divine creator of all things.

If a creationist has this perspective, then encouraging him or her to study the evidence may be felt like a temptation to disobey and sinning against the divine creator, who, according to biblical creationism, will judge every human at the end of life. Needless to say, this may provide some difficulties with your project. Furthermore, due to the strong cognitive biases inherent in creationism, chances are that the data that seems to the creationist to support creationism will be embraced, whereas the data that is inconsistent with creationism will be forgotten.
 
  • #14
RE: "That is silly nonsense! This is a science board. In the future please leave 'god" out of science discussions. Thank you in advance for your consideration in this matter."

Maybe, in your science library, you have a dictionary. Look up the word..Sarcasm. Besides that, your sensitivity to this little quip reminds me of how much science and religion have in common...to the detriment of both. For example:

A dogmatic belief in it's ultimate "rightness".

The facts/beliefs are always right, until they change.

We give you the questions, then we give you the answers.

Prophecy and hypothesis are about the same, trying to predict the future, and when it's predicted wrong, we must have mis read the data/scripture.

Dissenting views are punished until they are proven right, like the guy who proposed plate tectonics, or Darwin.

So please, don't rag on me for being a skeptic, facts are facts...until they're proven wrong, and God is almighty...until you open a Bible.

Now, back to your alter lackey!(please note: more sarcasm.)
 
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1. How do we know that humans evolved from other species?

Scientists have studied the fossil record, genetic evidence, and comparative anatomy to show that humans share a common ancestor with other primates. Fossil evidence shows a gradual change in physical characteristics over time, while genetic evidence shows a close relationship between humans and other primates.

2. What are some key traits that show evidence of human evolution?

Some key traits that show evidence of human evolution include our upright posture, bipedal locomotion, and increased brain size. These traits developed over time and are not seen in other primate species, indicating a unique evolutionary path for humans.

3. How long did it take for humans to evolve?

The process of human evolution is estimated to have taken around 6 million years. This may seem like a long time, but in the grand scheme of evolution, it is a relatively short period. The earliest known human ancestors appeared around 4-5 million years ago.

4. Are humans still evolving?

Yes, humans are still evolving. Evolution is an ongoing process and it is likely that humans will continue to adapt and change over time. However, the rate of evolution may be slower now due to advancements in technology and medicine that allow individuals with less advantageous traits to survive and reproduce.

5. Is there a missing link in the evolution of humans?

No, there is not a single missing link in the evolution of humans. The concept of a "missing link" is a misconception - evolution is a continuous process with many transitional forms. Fossils and genetic evidence help to fill in the gaps and show a gradual progression of human evolution.

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