Academia, Science

Early Human Gives Finger To Scientists: Proto-Human Discovery Shatters Theories on Early Human History

A finger bone found in a cave in 2006 in Russia has scientists re-examining their assumptions about early human history. A DNA analysis would suggest that proto-humans left Africa about a million years ago and traveled as far as Siberia. Of course, now that Sarah Palin is a host on Discovery Channel, she may have her own views given that she believes scientists have forgotten that the Earth is only a few thousand years old.

It is unclear what this group looked like, but they may have existed as recently as 40,000 years.
Terry Brown, a molecular paleontologist at the University of Manchester, put it simply: “People are going to be what we call ‘gobsmacked’ by this news. There is going to be open-mouth amazement.” For those without advanced molecular degrees, that means that people will be utterly speechless.

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44 thoughts on “Early Human Gives Finger To Scientists: Proto-Human Discovery Shatters Theories on Early Human History”

  1. Duh,

    My guess is we’re using different definitions of the word demonstrate. Here’s mine:

    2 a : to prove or make clear by reasoning or evidence

  2. Duh,

    I think cooking with atmospheric friction would be far superior to cooking with gravity alone – aside from the unwanted side effects of cooking through impact heating (the ‘splatter’ effect), it would heat the steak relatively evenly. I would much prefer the surface heating due to friction which would leave the center nice and rare (just the way I like it). Not to mention that it’s easier to catch a steak at terminal velocity…

  3. So the best food was cooked for poor Hansel, but Gretel got nothing but crab-shells. Every morning the old woman hobbled out to the stable and cried: “Hansel, put out your finger,that I may feel if you are getting fat.” But Hansel always stretched out a bone, and the old dame, whose eyes were dim, couldn’t see it, and thinking always it was Hansel’s finger, wondered why he fattened so slowly.When four weeks had passed and Hansel still remained thin, she lost patience and determined to wait no longer. “Hi, Gretel,” she called to the girl, abe quick and get some water. Hansel may be fat or thin, I’m going to kill him to-morrow and cook him.” Oh! how the poor little sister sobbed as she carried the water, and how the tears rolled down her cheeks! “Kind heaven help us now!” she cried; “if only the wild beasts in the wood had eaten us, then at least we should have died together.” “Just hold your peace,” said the old hag; “it won’t help you.

    I understand that Sarah has deduced that this discovery is proof-positive of her new favorite fairy tale, Hansel & Gretel. She was heard to exclaim,” I didn’t know the kids were so old!”

  5. Gyges,

    “What part of “demonstrate how abiological matter became biological life via evolution alone” wasn’t satisfied by that first article?”

    Answer: Lifelike behavior is not biological life.

    (And, YES The evolution of life must be a natural process.)

    I never asked you to prove that God doesn’t exist. Did I?

    As for your challenge to “demonstrate how steak can be cooked via gravity alone”, I’m pretty sure Slarti will tell you that if you get it going fast enough (even without gravity) it will cook itself. 🙂

  6. Duh,

    There’s a reason I capitalized both god and gaps, and why Slart put it in quotes. In fact, I’d be willing to bet we both use similar methods when talking about a True Scotsman. It’s not referring to a specific god you may or may not worship, but rather a species of argument.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps

    I happen to think “worship a God of the Gaps” is a nice turn of phrase. It’s not overly purple, no mixed metaphor, has good imagery, and very few people would be so literal minded as to think I actually meant you were supplicating yourself to a god whose domain was an overpriced chain of clothing stores.

    Here’s the thing, it’s no more my duty to prove to you that there isn’t a god of some sorts than it is your duty to prove to me there’s no teapot in orbit between the Earth and the Moon. Frankly I don’t really care which particular grade of theism or non-theism you believe. You issued (badly phrased) challenge, I accepted. What part of “demonstrate how abiological matter became biological life via evolution alone” wasn’t satisfied by that first article? Other than the evolution part, because unless you meant ‘natural processes’ what you said makes as much sense as me demanding you demonstrate how steak can be cooked via gravity alone.

  8. An interesting article: The X-Woman’s Fingerbone

    Wind back the clock to a million years ago. In Africa, there’s a population of hominids that will eventually give rise to Neanderthals and humans. The Neanderthal lineage expands out across Europe and Asia. They take with them a wide diversity of mitochondria. Most of the studies on Neanderthal DNA have focused on European Neanderthals–and have thus only captured a limited sample of that diversity. Now, in Siberia, Paabo and his colleagues have moved so far from the areas they had studied before that they’re finally getting to other branches of Neanderthal mitochondria.

  9. Gyges,

    ‘Close but no cigar’ still results in no cigar. 🙂

    Worship? Where do you come up with my assertion, that our “spark of life” might have a being as its origin, to be accompanied by some desire to worship that being? I acknowledge your existence, but I would hardly say that I worship you.

    The “God of the Gaps” either is or is not. Just because you may want to consider the unknown as simply being yet unanswered, and I consider that the unknown may be something that is incapable of being answered, that doesn’t make either of us correct. Does it?

    It’s one thing to make light of religious beliefs that are contrary to logic and reason, and quite another to infer that the possibility of the existence of life on earth has, at its origin, a superior being having the capability of producing the creation.

    Given the vastness of the universe, isn’t it possible that our Creator is what we would consider an alien, who, much like some of the scientists on earth today are working towards, discovered the secret that would permit that being to (for lack of a better term) breath life into his own creation? And that creator was the product of creators before him? And when we discover how to initiate that spark of life, we will then become the creators for other worlds?

    The question would then be; who was the first creator, and what is that creators origin?

    You’ve got to admit that it is pretty arrogant for beings whose origin is space dust to think they could, thru evolution, be able to discover their own origin.

  11. Duh,

    As Gyges pointed out, you are using a ‘God of the gaps’ argument which will result in your creator shrinking into virtual non-existence as scientific understanding progresses. As Gyges points out with his links (very interesting, Gyges!) abiogenesis has come a long way since Miller-Urey, but just the fact that the Miller-Urey experiments showed that it is possible for amino acids to spontaneously form under conditions similar to what is thought to have existed around the time that life originated on Earth indicates to me that the lifetime of this particular gap is limited. And just because I wouldn’t want to disappoint you, here’s a link:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_urey

    😉

  13. Fer all y’all “gobsmacked” out yunner, here is a real beetle-browed Neanderthal who ‘splains all ‘bout dem ol’ arekeyohlogeekal finds by makin’ no bones ‘bout it…

  14. Why would this finding present a problem for creationists?

    When someone can demonstrate how abiological matter became biological life via evolution alone, we can then avoid the Creator. Until such time, I see no way of avoiding the acceptance of the likely existence of Creator(s).

  15. vlf2112,

    I think that you underestimate creationist’s ability to hold contradictory ideas in their heads…

  16. Everywhere across the land one can hear the popping sound of Creationists heads exploding …

  18. It is all explainable from Sarah’s point of view. God created the Earth and then rested realizing that he was not finished he created man, realizing that there were some grave errors created Alaska and then stopped after it was realized that a mistake was made. The earth has suffered ever since.

  20. Professor Turley,

    Don’t you understand that God created things like this to in order to mess with scientists…

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