Well, I remember hearing once that all us hominids were almost wiped out in a mass extinction event were we could be numbered in just a few thousand. So maybe that stress triggered something. I don't know where to access the link yet to show what I mean yet.

Weird mutations though in my book. Makes more sense to be covered in fur for survival than bare skinned. Especially when this is common through all races but other genetics changes
show a difference. But. Nobody kept their fur?

Due to complains we had a clean up event in this thread.
Please, all members, remember that this thread has only the scientific discussion (as good as that is possible for us laymans between the few professionals here) of Evolution as topic and please remember to stay on topic.

Quote:

Originally Posted by k3lt01 The problem is actually that Athiesm isn't part of the scope of this thread and starting a flamewar about atheism vs creationism is not needed.

To bad we don't live a million years...i.e. to evolve.

What about the missing link part you did not understand or is it the words discussion and (missing from your title)-science (of evolution)

Assuming (please don't assume I'm setting myself up) Ardipithicus, Australopithocene and Homo are assumed instances of earlier "human" skeletal structures, definitely on the fossile record, approximately how many such complete, established, physical such instances do we have on record?

Found something that refers to what I am referring to.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/20...-in-70-000-b-c

Not sure how credible though. Being a lay person and all.

I wound up here today assuming, from the title, that the thread would be discussing the Linux internet suite. Silly me.

But to be pedantic, there is no Homo floriensis. It's Homo floresiensis, "man from Flores". :-P

IMO, the search for a "missing link" is futile and misdirected, because there is no one link missing, there are myriads of them. Evolution is a continuum, with infrequent jumps caused by catastrophic events. The chances of an individual's bones being preserved for millions of years are vanishingly small, and the fossil record is glaringly incomplete. That's why there are so many theories - there is scant evidence for how things actually happened, so there is room for all kinds of speculation. The available evidence shows that evolution occurred (and occurs) but gives disappointly little information on the exact details of how hominid evolution actually progressed. The field will have room for lots of investigation for generations, I think.

In post number two I explained my theory of why I believe there is no missing link. The search for one resulted in a fragmentary fossil record, in which it was falsely believed all the species represented were in our ancestral line.
The are many gaps, but most of them leave us trying to figure out which species were descended from which, and how many species there were at different periods.
"Humans" begin with us, Neanderthals and perhaps other human species. The creatures before that were different apes. There are many specimens in the archaeological record, but almost none of them are complete skeletons. As I referred to post #2, only one tibia has been found of a species that has yielded many remains. Although that is an exceptional case. In most cases, the complete skeleton was formed by combining the information from more than one individual. In some cases that gives us us an accurate picture, in others a probable representation. The fewer individuals there are, the less certain we can be if they are representative. It is similar to trying to identify victims of a bomb blast. Some things can be determined with certainty, some will have probably conclusions and some cannot be known.

I found the material on the changes of the brain concerning blood flow I refered to the other day. It is located in Reconsturucting Human Origins: A Modern Synthesis by Glenn C Conroy and on pages 180-182 and it says
Thank you for quoting the post this is in response to, I have blocked this individual so I do not see his material unless I unblock him.

I response to this individuals post reading the entire post plus the tags (call them keywords if you wish) is extremely important. Forget about reading between lines, read what is actually on the page.

Sun rises, sun sets, mooon rises, moon sets.

The ark that the sun travels in the sky changes in a predictable pattern throughout the year giving us seasons such as summer and winter. The moon changes in a predictable pattern through each lunar cycle which lasts approximately 1 month. Anyone who took an interest in these patterns could develop a calender in a very short space of time (2 years for the sun, 2 months or so for the moon). Then you have the movement pattern of the stars etc because the planet spins on an axis while going around the sun so the starts and other celestial bodies also appear to move. This would take many years to "map" purely because of how many starts there are.

You will probably find there were never any more than a few thousand of any species before the later Homo anyway.

For everything with eyes on the planet. But, since the forum is such a poor platform for me
to express my assumptions/questions and ideas. Maybe I should back outa here.

Leave it to you educated guys.

I believe rokytnji is wondering how we developed the cognitive ability to have a concept of time. [And since chimpanzees make tools and put them away for future use (and apparently occotpi as well), they also have at least a minimal awareness of time.] That roky, is a question that will probably always remain a mystery. Before we can postulate on how the brain developed, we need to understand it. Evolution of the brain is fairly straight-forward, but evolution of the mind is at least as complex as the mind itself.

That was 1 line from a post that had an extra paragraph explaining it.

Lots, and lots more partials. Again, easily looked up, and anyone from your local university would probably be able to help you too. This article is a few years old, but is nicely done:
http://pactiss.org/wp-content/upload...t-Nonsense.pdf

...from Scientific American.

And didn't you say you were leaving?

It will probably help matters if we consider exactly what, say, Charles Darwin, was and was not doing. He was not making, and of course could never make, any sort of declaration. Instead, he was engaging in philosophy of science.

PoS (the alternative term "scientific philosophy" is misleading since "scientific" sounds like an adjective) can be thought of as thinking about "thinking." The principal game is to take a line of reasoning and to explore just how far (and in what areas) you can or cannot take it without encountering what appears to be a contradiction. You might be right, you might be wrong, and either way you will never know for sure. But you can explore a solution-space that way. This was, and is, a standard practice of science for use in cases where "the experimental method" cannot be used.

After observing that objects in nature do "evolve," Darwin and others speculated, in this controlled and well-defined way, just how far "evolution" could (maybe) go "without apparent contradiction." And he found that it could go a very long way, even to the point of being "The Origin of Species." (Leaving Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, and Genus out of it.) If you've ever actually read the book (and it's difficult reading ...) he does seem to make that point quite convincingly. Does that make it "True?" Of course we will never know ... and in any case, "without apparent contradiction" does not mean "true." (Or, "false.")

Same song, second verse, when it comes to "all those bones." Do we "know?" No. Can we? No. But, once again, we can use the tool of philosophy of science to guide our speculations and explorations ... abstract though those explorations must be. They will not create "truth" where truth cannot be known. We weren't there. We didn't see it. We can't test it.

PoS supplies a framework for speculation and exploration of things for which "an experiment" cannot be constructed, and for which "empirical evidence" does not exist. All of these writings were intended to be viewed in that light ... not as expressions or assertions of (by definition, unobtainable) "TRVTH."