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ORIGINAL: essentialsaltes

This line of evidence does not require any naughty macroevolution: our African ancestors were fully human. This only relies on microevolution and empirical data.

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So does that mean that the Garden of Eden was in Africa?

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ORIGINAL: EStan

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So does that mean that the Garden of Eden was in Africa?

I think one could assume so. We know that, historically, Old Testament events from Abraham forward took place in northern Africa.

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ORIGINAL: essentialsaltes

So, if you accept that

1) microevolution can occur
2) 'relatedness' can be traced through genetics by comparing how much microevolution 'separates' two gene pools
3) Current experiments have determined an approximate rate of genetic change

Then the combination of these leads to a conclusion that requires tens of thousands of years of human adaptation, contradicting a YE position.

This line of evidence does not require any naughty macroevolution: our African ancestors were fully human. This only relies on microevolution and empirical data.

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ORIGINAL: essentialsaltes

Although the e-word gets quite a few people here upset, most everyone seems to find a certain amount of random shuffling, mutation, adaptation and descent acceptable, at least as long as the micro doesn't get too macro.

It's kind of old news, but a recent Scientific American article (only a preview available for free, I'm afraid) goes over the most recent research into tracing the human lineage through objective genetic markers shared among different ethnic groups.

These changes fall into a cladogram with Africa at its root and Polynesia and the New World at the most distant twigs. This genetic evidence falls in line with our understanding from archaeological and anthropological evidence that humans originated in Africa and reached the New World and the Pacific Islands most recently.

From empirical knowledge of rates of genetic change, scientists can make estimates of the timeline for humanity's spread over the earth. This system places an approximate date of 10,000 years ago for the introduction of mankind into the New World, which accords reasonably well with the standard date of 13000 years ago for Clovis sites. The earliest migrations have genetically estimated dates of about 60,000 years ago.

So, if you accept that

1) microevolution can occur
2) 'relatedness' can be traced through genetics by comparing how much microevolution 'separates' two gene pools
3) Current experiments have determined an approximate rate of genetic change

Then the combination of these leads to a conclusion that requires tens of thousands of years of human adaptation, contradicting a YE position.

This line of evidence does not require any naughty macroevolution: our African ancestors were fully human. This only relies on microevolution and empirical data.

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ORIGINAL: DanJames

quote:

ORIGINAL: essentialsaltes

So, if you accept that

1) microevolution can occur
2) 'relatedness' can be traced through genetics by comparing how much microevolution 'separates' two gene pools
3) Current experiments have determined an approximate rate of genetic change

Then the combination of these leads to a conclusion that requires tens of thousands of years of human adaptation, contradicting a YE position.

This line of evidence does not require any naughty macroevolution: our African ancestors were fully human. This only relies on microevolution and empirical data.

"Relatedness" can certainly be traced through genetics. I personally don't think that we can take current mutation rates, however well known, and extrapolate that to mean that we know all mutation rates throughout all space and time. We don't know what the rates of mutations have always been. I can look at a genome of a Tomato plant and compare it to a genome of a Potato plant and say, "Hey these two are pretty related". But that doesn't tell me how long ago they branched off. Heck, it doesn't even tell me that they ever branched off! It just shows me that the two have very similar genomes. It tells me that they have very similar biological functions, some of which have been crippled through mutations. I just don't think that we can make a very accurate clock, no matter how accurately we can calculate current mutation rates. We just don't know what our ancestors' genome had to put up with at the time.

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ORIGINAL: GroupW
You're not referring to "The Seven Daughters of Eve" by any chance, are you? (Enjoyed that book immensely)

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ORIGINAL: essentialsaltes

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ORIGINAL: GroupW
You're not referring to "The Seven Daughters of Eve" by any chance, are you? (Enjoyed that book immensely)

Not specifically. I haven't read it. But (judging from a quick scan of a review) I think the non-fictional part of Seven Daughters covers similar ground to what I'm talking about.

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ORIGINAL: DanJames
I personally don't think that we can take current mutation rates, however well known, and extrapolate that to mean that we know all mutation rates throughout all space and time. We don't know what the rates of mutations have always been.

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Hum Mutat. 2003 Jan;21(1):12-27.

Direct estimates of human per nucleotide mutation rates at 20 loci causing Mendelian diseases.

Kondrashov AS.

National Center for Biotechnology Information, NIH, Bethesda, Maryland 20892, USA. Kondrashov@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

I estimate per nucleotide rates of spontaneous mutations of different kinds in humans directly from the data on per locus mutation rates and on sequences of de novo nonsense nucleotide substitutions, deletions, insertions, and complex events at eight loci causing autosomal dominant diseases and 12 loci causing X-linked diseases. The results are in good agreement with indirect estimates, obtained by comparison of orthologous human and chimpanzee pseudogenes. The average direct estimate of the combined rate of all mutations is 1.8x10(-8) per nucleotide per generation, and the coefficient of variation of this rate across the 20 loci is 0.53. Single nucleotide substitutions are approximately 25 times more common than all other mutations, deletions are approximately three times more common than insertions, complex mutations are very rare, and CpG context increases substitution rates by an order of magnitude. There is only a moderate tendency for loci with high per locus mutation rates to also have higher per nucleotide substitution rates, and per nucleotide rates of deletions and insertions are statistically independent on the per locus mutation rate. Rates of different kinds of mutations are strongly correlated across loci. Mutational hot spots with per nucleotide rates above 5x10(-7) make only a minor contribution to human mutation. In the next decade, direct measurements will produce a rather precise, quantitative description of human spontaneous mutation at the DNA level. Published 2002 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

PMID: 12497628 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

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I just don't think that we can make a very accurate clock, no matter how accurately we can calculate current mutation rates. We just don't know what our ancestors' genome had to put up with at the time.