What Led To The Evolution Of The Homo Family?

I feel people honestly don’t appreciate or understand the vast amounts of time this all took place over. It’s really mind-boggling. Generation after generation reproducing over endless time with little changes here and there eventually adding up to whole new species. It’s crazy to think about, but totally makes sense.

Q: Why do creatards belong in zoos with gorillas? A: They admit it themselves that they haven’t evolved Q: What’s a creatard’s favorite animal? A: Storks, because they still think that’s where babies come from. Q: Why did the creatard ask a snake to help him with his illness instead of a doctor? A: Creatards believe in talking snakes but not antibiotic research Q: Why do creatards talk about Darwin more than “evolutionists”? A: Because creatard “science” is still in the 1800s. Q: Why did the creatard jump off the building? A: He thought gravity was “just a theory”

Evidence for Evolution – The DNA Molecule. All life on earth is dependent on the DNA molecule that regulates bodily functions and transmits hereditary information to progeny. That is very strong evidence for common ancestry in that there are about 1 million other molecules that could conceivably perform the same function. The fact that the DNA molecule is both heritable and mutable makes evolution inevitable.

Clueless creatard cliche number 26: If we came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? Reality: Evolution confirms that we share a common ancestor with apes, not that we came from modern apes. Gorillas, chimps and orangutans have already gone down their own paths of evolution and we’ve gone down ours. No modern creature is going to evolve into another modern creature. Evolution is going forwards, not sideways.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science statement on evolution: “Evolution is one of the most robust and widely accepted principles of modern science. It is the foundation for research in a wide array of scientific fields and, accordingly, a core element in science education. The AAAS Board of Directors is deeply concerned, therefore, about legislation and policies recently introduced in a number of states and localities that would undermine the teaching of evolution and deprive students of the education they need to be informed and productive citizens in an increasingly technological, global community. Although their language and strategy differ, all of these proposals, if passed, would weaken science education. The AAAS Board of Directors strongly opposes these attacks on the integrity of science and science education. They threaten not just the teaching of evolution, but students’ understanding of the biological, physical, and geological sciences.” Creationists, who are often scientifically illiterate, often make the claim that evolution is not really science. The AAAS, in essence, is saying they lie.

People that actually understand Evolution add 0.1 ten times and get 1.0. Evolution deniers ignore 0.1 ten times so they get zero, because they think 0.1 is insignificant, unable to simultaneously hold 10 ideas that fit together. Deniers simply don’t have the ability to concurrently view many puzzle pieces in the head winds of their fears, willful ignorance, and delusions.

Clueless creatard cliche number 56: Micro evolution is proven but macro evolution isn’t. Reality: First of all, this is cherry-picking. It’s like saying that “2+2=4 but 2 million + 2 million doesn’t = 4 million.” Secondly, macro evolution is speciation, which has been observable in American Goatsbeard flowers since the 1950s.

IF YOU HAVE BEEN LEAD TO BELIEVE THAT EVERYTHING IN THE BIBLE IS LITERALLY TRUE, THIS IS WHAT IT TELLS YOU: 1. You can own slaves. You can buy and sell slaves. You can even sell your own daughter (Exodus 21:7-10). If she fails to please her master, you must refund him the purchase price. 2. You can beat the living shit out of your slaves without being punished, as long as they do not die within two days (Exodus 20:20-21). Under what standards of morality is it ever okay to beat another human being like that and not suffer any consequences? It is reassuring the bible endorses property rights, but a source of morality it is not. 3. The bible not only condones slavery but sets prices for them (Leviticus 27:3-7). The bible obviously was concerned about human traffickers getting a fair price for their goods. 4. Surely Jesus had compassion towards slaves. He tells slaves to be obedient and subservient. That is why slave owners in the Americas pushed Christianity onto their slaves and punished those caught practicing their ancient religions.. Very reassuring. It was okay to beat slaves, those who unwittingly made mistakes were to be given few lashes, those who knowingly violated rules were to be given many lashes. 5. Thou shalt not kill. Now THERE is a good one. However, it seems there are exceptions: No sooner had Moses returned from his first trip up the mountains to find a party to which he had not been invited, in a fit of rage he orders his Levite goon squad to kill “every man his brother, and every man his friend and every man his neighbor.

I’ll never forget visiting the Natural History section of the Smithsonian Institute as a kid with my parents back in the 60’s (I’m 69 now, BTW). They had an exhibit there that would blow your mind! It consisted of a wall depicting human evolution where they had probably a hundred or so skulls in rows against a dark backdrop, I assume so the images would stand out better. It led the viewer visually from human’s earliest known ancestors with authentic fossil skulls from the most primitive (e.g. Australopithicus) all the way to modern man (Homo sapiens). It was quite impressive and left the viewer with no doubt about human evolution. There it was – in terms of a tangible fossil record, expertly organized – right before the viewers eyes. 😵‍💫

IF YOU HAVE BEEN LEAD TO BELIEVE THAT EVERYTHING IN THE BIBLE IS LITERALLY TRUE, THIS IS WHAT IT TELLS YOU: 1. You can own slaves. You can buy and sell slaves. You can even sell your own daughter (Exodus 21:7-10). If she fails to please her master, you must refund him the purchase price. That is just another example of the low esteem in which the biblical authors held women in general. Whereas the bible limits the servitude of male slaves to six years, women were granted no limitations and would remain slaves for life. Children born to a female slave were property of her master and slaves from birth. Whereas a male Hebrew slave was entitled to be freed after 6 years, a wife provided by his owner was not, nor were any children born of that marriage. That was a strong incentive for a male Hebrew slave to reject freedom and commit to life as a slave. Free will? 2. You can beat the living shit out of your slaves without being punished, as long as they do not die within two days (Exodus 20:20-21). Under what standards of morality is it ever okay to beat another human being like that and not suffer any consequences? It is reassuring the bible endorses property rights, but a source of morality it is not. 3. The bible not only condones slavery but sets prices for them (Leviticus 27:3-7). The bible obviously was concerned about human traffickers getting a fair price for their goods. 4. Surely Jesus had compassion towards slaves. He tells slaves to be obedient and subservient (Luke 12:47-48).

This brought tears in my eyes. This was so nostalgic for me to watch and reminded me of how different the new generations grew up compared to us straight out of monkey folks. Kids these days will never know the feeling of a successful hunt after a week with barely any food. Thank you for making this article, no matter how much this made me feel old, at least the kids have an idea of how lucky they are right now to be able to have everything we worked billions of years for.

Questions creatards can never answer: Why do endogenous retroviruses like syncityn exist? Why do antibiotics need to kept up do date with micro organisms if they don’t evolve? How do you explain ring species? Where can I find a single example of a non-transitional fossil? Why does DNA show that some species are more distantly related than others? Why have there been three new variations of American Goatsbeard flowers if macro evolution doesn’t happen? Why do you pretend that you’re qualified to separate micro evolution (speciation) from macro evolution when you can’t even tell the difference between evolution, abiogenesis and atheism? Why do we have vomeronasal organs despite not using pheromones? Where did we get chromosome 2 and cytochrome B from? Why do we have pseudogenes, appendixes, wisdom teeth, Plica semilunaris and Nictitating membranes? Why are there stars farther than millions of lightyears away if the earth is only 6,000 years old? Why do tree rings say the earth is older than 6,000 years old? Why were stone tools older than 790,000 years found in Gesher Benot Ya’akov? Why were stone tools older than 400,000 years found at the Revadim Quarry in Israel? When has a creatard used electron spin resonance and thermoluminescence to prove the earth is only 6,000 years old? What is the flat earth method for predicting an eclipse? Where can I find a map of your space frisbee that makes geometrically accurate flight patterns? What is the flerfer explanation for the phases of the moon?

WHERE IS HOMO ERECTUS? This is an excellent article that crams a lot of information into 8.5 minutes. The curious thing is that they never mention the most successful hominin of all time, – Homo erectus. That ancestral species walked the earth for almost two million years. What the article does say is this at 04:51 – “Around 1.5 million years ago a new species appeared – Homo ergaster (‘working man’).” Their information is somewhat out of date. Most paleo anthropologists regard Homo ergaster as merely an African variant of Homo erectus, the earliest fossils of which were skull fragments discovered in a South African cave that datinged between 1.95 and 2.04 mya. It seems H. erectus got wanderlust soon afterwards, as 5 fossil skulls of H. erectus have been found at Dmanisi in the Republic of Georgia (Europe), dated at 1.8 mya. The original discovery of H. erectus took place in 1890 in Java, which at that time was part of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), by Dutch anatomist Eugene DuBois. He originally named it Pithecanthropus erectus, or “Java Man”. They were estimated to be between 700.000 and 1 million years old. Then, in the 1920’s teeth, skull fragments and tools were discovered at Zhoukoudian near Beijing (then Peking), China and named Sinanthropus pekinensis (Peking Man). Recent tests of soils that held the fossils dates them at 770, 000 years old, making them contemporaneous with the Java population. (In 2012, during a trip to China, I made a pilgrimage to Zhoukoudian, just to see the several caves.

All life on earth is dependent on the DNA molecule that regulates bodily functions and transmits hereditary information to progeny. That is very strong evidence for common ancestry in that there are about 1 million other molecules that could conceivably perform the same function. THE FACT THAT THE DNA MOLECULE IS BOTH HERITABLE AND MUTABLE MAKES EVOLUTION INEVITABLE.

No one other than creationists ever claimed evolution to be “one organism turning into another”. And no, that never happens. If it ever did it would invalidate the Theory of Evolution. What we observe is that every organism born will most resemble its parents, yet will differ genetically due to the copy errors (mutations) that occur when cells divide and replicate (mitosis and meiosis). It is those mutations that create the genetic variation we see in every population of organisms. Most of those organisms will not survive and only those that live long enough to reproduce will pass their variant genes to future generations. THAT is called Natural Selection and it is repeated generation after generation; each of those generations acquiring more variant genes until at some point, the population is sufficiently different from their ancestors to be called a ‘new species’. At no point, however, would any of those organisms be anything other than a variation of its ancestors. The change from generation to generation would be like a color spectrum where orange becomes red. There is no point at which you could say the change had taken place. It is a continuum. The creationist argument that evolution is one animal ‘morphing’ into another is a classic ‘Straw Man’ argument, a logical fallacy. It is used by creationists because they have no evidence against what the Theory of Evolution actually says. Are you capable of learning or not?

Birds are descended from and are a living branch of dinosaurs. We have found many dinosaur fossils with the imprints of feathers preserved, even dinos that were too heavy to ever fly. Even the velociraptor of “Jurassic Park” fame has been shown to have the anchor points on the bone of its fore limbs of feathers indistinguishable from the same bumps found in eagles or geese. This case is further reinforced by the fact that chickens still have the DNA for a long bony tail like a dinosaur.

Gotta love the hypocrisy of the Islamic creatards. They’re own holy book literally mentions people being suddenly and magically transformed into apes but deny the opposite happening gradually over the course of millions of years despite overwhelming evidence. “And you had already known about those who transgressed among you concerning the sabbath, and We said to them, “Be apes, despised.” And We made it a deterrent punishment for those who were present and those who succeeded (them) and a lesson for those who fear Allah” -Surah Al-Baqarah 2:56 and 2:66

God was a tremendous invention and a great benefit to mankind. Before man created God, they felt really stupid. Confronted with any question, all they could say was “Gee, I don’t know” and no matter how hard they thought, they couldn’t think of a better answer.. Then someone came up with the brilliant idea of God. It was wonderful, it obviated the need to think about anything. The answer could always be “Gee, I don’t know, it must be God.” Problem solved. The “God concept” alleviated the need to think about mundane things and they could concentrate on serious questions, like “How many bibles can we sell?” There was no incentive for human intellect to advance beyond that of ancient goat herders. Religions need to perpetuate ignorance in order to preserve their influence. It is quite likely that the “god concept” originated with Homo erectus as an explanation for thunder..

SOME PEOPLE STILL ASK, “WHY ARE THERE STILL APES (OR MONKEYS)?” It should be obvious that such people lack an understanding of what evolution is and how it works. Apparently someone told such people that humans evolved from apes, and from that, due to their lack of education, they assumed that all apes were supposed to evolve into humans. That is not how evolution works, but creationists have no interest in learning anything other than creation mythology. They might just as well have asked “If dogs are descended from wolves, why are there still wolves?” Or even “If Americans came from Europe, why are there still Europeans?” Just as dogs descended from a population of wolves, so too did humans evolve from one particular population of apes. What we know is that the first apes evolved in Africa about 25 million years ago from a population of Old World Monkeys. Whereas monkeys run on all four feet across the TOPS of branches, apes evolved the ability to swing, arm over arm, from branch to branch. Evolution works to make each species best suited to their environment. For apes, that environment was the forest and they are well suited for it. At one time there were about 30 different species of apes in those forests. Had environmental conditions remained the same, we would still see forests covering the whole African continent. However, conditions did not stay the same; the climate became drier. As a result, forested areas shrank in size and were replaced by grasslands, the African savanna, with just a few scattered trees.

Does every scientific organization in the world endorse evolution as a fact? YES. Do all science organizations in the world regard evolution as a branch of science? YES. DO Biology departments of every secular university in the world back evolution? YES. Does the Biology department of Baptist Baylor University teach evolution? YES it does. DO the Geology departments of every secular university in the world endorse evolution? YES. Does the Geology department of Baptist Baylor University endorse evolution? YES it does. Does the Episcopalian church endorse evolution? YES it does. Does the Catholic Church endorse evolution? YES it does. Does the United Methodist Church? YES it does. Does the Presbyterian Church? YES it does. Do creationists accept the evidence for evolution? NO, because their belief system requires them to reject any evidence that does not support their biblical interpretation. They grew up with that belief. It was not reasoned into them, and most likely cannot be reasoned out of them. One cannot reason with those who reject its use. That would be like giving medicine to a dead man.

Early mammals had a basic body plan; hair, 4 legs, a tail, and a snout. They mostly lived under ground and only came out at night. They looked a lot like rodents, but rodents and primates diverged in different directions. They both diverged from from their mammalian ancestors about the same time. Then the ancestors of modern primates split from the ancestors of modern rodents about 75 million years ago. While they are not our direct ancestors, their DNA is still a 90% match for ours. That, plus their small size and rapid reproduction makes them great as laboratory animals for studying human diseases. Rodents went on to be incredibly successful, eventually making up around 40 per cent of today’s mammal species. The rodent evolutionary path to success lay in their reproductive ability, assuring that despite heavy predation, enough offspring would survive for continuation of the species. Primates on the other hand, relied on their larger brains and increased cognitive ability for enhanced survival. Rather than relying on having large litters of young, primates invested more time and effort producing one or two offspring (only 2 ‘feeding stations’), investing much of their life nurturing them over long periods of time during which offspring learned survival skills from their parents. Over millions of years of evolution, there was incremental increase in brain size and cognitive ability from Prosimians to Simians to apes with humans continuing that trend. Each increase in cognition correlates with a longer childhood, with humans having the longest childhood of all primates.

What Charles Darwin actually wrote: “In each great region of the world the living mammals are closely related to the extinct species of the same region. It is, therefore, probable that Africa was formerly inhabited by extinct apes closely allied to the gorilla and chimpanzee; and as these two species are now man’s nearest allies, it is somewhat more probable that our early progenitors lived on the African continent than elsewhere. But it is useless to speculate on this subject, for an ape nearly as large as a man, namely the Dryopithecus of Lartet, which was closely allied to the anthropomorphous Hylobates, existed in Europe during the Upper Miocene period; and since so remote a period the earth has certainly undergone many great revolutions, and there has been ample time for migration on the largest scale.” (Chapter 3 (page 117) of The Descent of Man) In the above, Darwin makes reference to Édouard Lartet, a contemporary of his, a French geologist and paleontologist, and a pioneer of Paleolithic archaeology. What is amazing is that these men in 1871 knew of prehistoric apes in Europe. The term Hylobates refers to the taxonomic classification of gibbons as genus Hylobatidae. They were first scientifically described by Carolus Linnaeus in 1771 as members of genus Homo. What is amazing is that in 1870, Charles Darwin, Édouard Lartet and other scientists, knew of Miocene apes in Europe. Recently, more examples have been found. As Darwin conjectured, it does seem that apes left the formerly warm and humid European forests prior to their appearance in Africa.

FUN FACT; Female humans are the only mammals with permanent breasts. They are mostly fatty tissue and a product of sexual selection. They, like our outwardly curved lips, are sexual attractants missing in our closest primate relatives. At puberty, estrogens, in conjunction with growth hormone, cause permanent breast growth in female humans. It is no coincidence that women will emphasize both breasts and lips to enhance their attractiveness. ANOTHER FUN FACT; In contrast, Monotreme mammals (the egg laying platypus and echidnas) don’t have breasts or even nipples. They secrete milk from patches of skin that their offspring lick up. ONE MORE FUN FACT; Our earliest mammalian ancestors also laid eggs. The evidence is in our DNA and that of all mammals. Every mammal has 3 genes for the production of yolk; VT1,VT2 and VT3. Those 3 genes are present and active in non-mammalian vertebrates (birds and reptiles) and were presumably active in primitive mammaliaformes, the Mesozoic forerunners to mammals. However, in almost all mammals, those genes have been disabled by mutations that created either a premature STOP codon or a frame shift the scrambled subsequent DNA sequences. In monotremes however, one of those genes remains active and they produce a dime sized egg with a small yolk. That egg is secreted into a pouch where it hatches within days.

SOME PEOPLE STILL ASK, “WHY ARE THERE STILL APES (OR MONKEYS)?” It should be obvious that such people, usually creationists, lack an understanding of what evolution is and how it works. Apparently someone told such people that humans evolved from apes, and from that, due to their lack of education, they assumed that all apes were supposed to evolve into humans. That is not how evolution works, but creationists have no interest in learning anything other than creation mythology. They might just as well have asked “If dogs are descended from wolves, why are there still wolves?” Or even “If Americans came from Europe, why are there still Europeans?” Just as dogs descended from a population of wolves, so too did humans evolve from one particular population of apes. What we know is that the first apes evolved in Africa about 25 million years ago from a population of Old World Monkeys. Whereas monkeys run on all four feet across the TOPS of branches, apes evolved the ability to swing, arm over arm, from branch to branch. Evolution works to make each species best suited to their environment. For apes, that environment was the forest and they are well suited for it. At one time there were about 30 different species of apes in those forests. Had environmental conditions remained the same, we would still see forests covering the whole African continent. However, conditions did not stay the same; the climate became drier. As a result, forested areas shrank in size and were replaced by grasslands, the African savanna, with just a few scattered trees.

HOW EVOLUTION WORKS It is helpful to understand that evolution is a molecular process. The random mutations that naturally occur during cell division and replication (mitosis and meiosis) are the raw material for the genetic variation we see in every population of organisms. Mutations are ongoing and continuous for every living species. Mutations are essential to evolution; they are the raw material of genetic variation. Without mutation, evolution could not occur. WITH mutations, evolution is inevitable. (NOTE: My original essay had links to applicable illustrations and scientific studies, but YouTube keeps deleting it. My apologies for their absence here.) Those genetic variants are subjected to a selection process that is performed by whatever environment the organisms find themselves. In this respect, evolution is an ongoing, continuous set of natural experiments. Those that work get perpetuated, those that don’t, perish. It is as if the environment acted as an umpire who says “There are good mutations and there are bad mutations and there are neutral mutations, but they ain’t nuthin’ until I (the environment) calls ’em.” That is Natural Selection. Neutral mutations just go along for the ride producing neither immediate benefit nor harm (Genetic Drift). The result of those selection processes is organisms best suited for their current environment. Should that environment change, it would put the population under stress. If the population gene pool has sufficient genetic variation it increases the likelihood that at least some offspring should be able to survive and perpetuate the species (albeit one of slightly different genetic makeup).

The Earth: Provides mountains of archaeological evidence of humans and archaic humans in the past and distant past. The human body: Provides mountains of biological evidence of traits that we retain from our ancestors, such as goose bumps, tailbones, wisdom teeth, auricular muscles, and plantaris muscles. Creationists: “Nah, a book written by troglodytes with no understanding of the real world is DA TRUTH!”

Where is Homo erectus? This is an excellent article that crams a lot of information into 8.5 minutes. The curious thing is that they never mention the most successful hominin of all time, – Homo erectus. That ancestral species walked the earth for almost two million years. What the article does say is this at 04:51 – “Around 1.5 million years ago a new species appeared – Homo ergaster (‘working man’).” Their information is somewhat out of date. Most paleo anthropologists regard Homo ergaster as merely an African variant of Homo erectus, the earliest fossil of which is dated at 1.9 mya in Africa. It seems H. erectus got wanderlust soon afterwards, as 5 fossil skulls of H. erectus have been found in the Republic of Georgia. dated at 1.8 mya. The original discovery of H. erectus took place in 1890 in Java, which at that time was part of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), by Dutch anatomist Eugene DuBois. He originally named it Pithecanthropus erectus, or “Java Man”. They were estimated to be between 700.000 and 1 million years old. In the 1920’s teeth, skull fragments and tools were discovered at Zhoukoudian near Beijing (then Peking), China and named Sinanthropus pekinensis (Peking Man). Recent tests of soils that held the fossils dates them at 770, 000 years old In 1950, a study of the comparative anatomy of Pithecanthropus erectus (Java Man) and Sinanthropus pekinensis (Peking Man) led Ernst Mayer to reclassify both as Homo erectus. It appears that a population of H. erectus survived until quite recently on the island of Java.

SCIENCE PROVIDES THE ONLY RELIABLE WAY TO DETERMINE WHAT IS TRUE OR NOT TRUE ABOUT THE UNIVERSE. It has not yet answered all the questions, but is the only methodology that has the capacity to do so. There are gaps in scientific knowledge and questions remain; What is Dark Matter? Dark Energy?, How did life begin? Why do socks disappear? Science proceeds from evidence to conclusion and does not make a determination where there is insufficient evidence to do so. Science has no problem saying “We don’t know…YET.” However, that doesn’t mean that science is clueless, we know more today than we did yesterday and every tomorrow takes us another step closer. As Richard Feynman said “Science is the joy of finding things out.”

Monkeys and apes has long stayed in trees like are ancestors. Most likely they died often from the predators during those times until now. And I believe this was the event that kept them from evolving like we did. Our ancestors that parted ways in caves to keep warm from the Ice age and have better protection from the insane predators that existed at those times, which would had been the biggest factor in humans evolution while at the same time we self domesticated. Living longer, losing hair ( mammals and long term hiding from the elements equals losing hair LOL and changing of color), which allowed our bonds stronger with eachother and surviving better eventually getting smarter do to the fact we lived longer ( more time to learn). Let’s say if some of us survived an attack from some predator we could then spread the knowledge they learnt. Otherwise if wiped out there would be no way for them to spread knowledge.(I believe all living things learn this way that’s how creatures know things they know now, because of the continuous passing knowledge or them showing the others. For example the parents or elderly acting in a certain way to certain events, the young would always follow their parents foot steps or older family members and do what they seen their elderly do in the same event. Basically creatures still alive had some other to show them things. And if not these creatures would whine up doing something they shouldn’t unless instinct tells them different. You can notice different behaviors between a solo creature vs.

The DNA of humans, chimps and bonobos is almost identical. Those three species are closer related to each other than any of the three are related to gorillas. Those four species; gorillas, chimps, bonobos and humans are closer related to each other than any of them are related to orangutans. We not only had ape ancestors, we ARE apes, Great Apes (Hominidae) to be exact. Those are FACTS established by EVIDENCE. Truth is determined by EVIDENCE, not by what anyone says and not by words in an old book. Humans differ from both common chimps and bonobos in about 1.6% of coding DNA, and share 98.4%. Gorillas differ somewhat more, by about 2.3%, from us and from both of the chimps. Humans differ from orangutans by 3.6% of DNA, and from gibbons and siamangs by 5%. This evolutionary relationship is supported both by the fossil record and DNA analysis. A 2007 study showed that humans and rhesus monkeys share about 93% of their DNA.

Very nicely narrated. I’m a little bothered by the transition to two legs and “life in the trees was left for good” early humans, being much closer to Ape’s would be climbing trees and such all the time. Theire Movement would be much more fluid and animalistic compared to the way whe move today. It wasn’t just like once they where walking on two legs they instantly just started adapting the movement of the modern man. Here it seems more like a snap of the finger thing. like whe left the trees and boom next stage? I think the transition to walking the way they do in these animations would have been much much slower. Whenever theres a animation or anything they always are just walking like us. Just wouldnt be the case.

EVIDENCE FOR EVOLUTION – HUMANS ARE PRIMATES. That is in addition to being Chordates, Vertebrates and Mammals. The physical similarities between humans and monkeys/apes has been noted since ancient times. We have grasping hands with opposable thumbs, fingernails instead of claws and forward facing eyes, among other common attributes. It was not Charles Darwin, but Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus (aka Carl von Linne) who, one hundred years before the publication of “On the Origin of Species”, established a system of classification for living organisms that is still used today. In so doing, he classified humans as Genus Homo and Species sapiens (lower case ‘s’) and placed us in the Order Primates, meaning ‘first order’. Initially, he placed chimpanzees and orangutans (gorillas were unknown in Europe at the time) with us in genus Homo. Modern Science, in the massive Human Genome Project has decoded the 6.2 billion base pair (BP) human genome and discovered that it contains only about 2,300 genes, each gene coding for one protein. That is less than 2% of the entire genome. Within non-coding DNA are numerous switches that determine when genes are turned on and for how long. It was also determined that there are a similar number of pseudo-genes, segments of DNA that once coded for a protein but, due to mutations, no longer do so. They remain, like the stuff in our attics, no longer useful but not yet disposed of. Related organisms not only share most of the same active genes, but many of the same pseudo genes as well.

HOW DID FISH ACQUIRE LUNGS? It seems lungs may have developed independently in different evolutionary lines of fish. Most fish today are Ray Finned fishes (Acteropterygians) and among them are several fish with lungs, and some with both lungs and gills. Examples are the Giant Aripaima if the Amazon Basin and the Bowfin and Gar of the American south east. The lung evolved from an expansion of the gut which was gas permeable. This was useful for fish inhabiting swampy areas where decaying vegetation consumes much of the oxygen. Many fish have a swim bladder which is used to give them neutral buoyancy rather than expending energy to maintain a position in the water column. Darwin hypothesized that the swim bladder evolved into lungs, but it seems now that the swim bladder evolved from primitive lungs. They are homologous to lungs. Those ray finned fishes came to dominance in the Triassic, but the Devonian seas were dominated by Lobe-finned Fishes (Sarcopterygians) that are represented today by two species of coelacanth and six species of lungfish.

HUMAN VARIATION – Skin Color There are really no peoples who are actually “white”, unless they are albinos, which can occur among any human population but are most noticeable among Africans. Everyone has melanin in their skin to protect against the harmful UV radiation in sunlight. Since humans evolved in tropical Africa, dark skin is the ancestral condition and it naturally tends to predominate in areas of intense tropical sunlight. Even in Africa, there is a wide variation in skin tones, from the ebony of Nilotic peoples of the tropic north to the cafe-au-lait of the Khoi and San (KhoiSan) people that predominated in southern Africa prior to the influx of the agricultural Bantu peoples from the north. Those more recent emigrants displaced the original Khoi and San peoples, often taking their women much as European colonists did in the Americas. As a result, many dark skinned South Africans have KhoiSan mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from a female ancestor. Light skinned peoples in tropical areas are generally there due to migration and they must take precautions against UV radiation or risk skin cancer. Light skin does have an advantage in areas of less intense sunlight, since it allows the body to produce vitamin D from sunlight. Europeans and peoples of northern Asia are thought of as being light skinned, but the genomes derived from the bones of early European hunter gatherers show that they had genes for dark skin and apparently got sufficient vitamin D from a diet of native plants and wild game animals.

The DNA of humans, chimps and bonobos is almost identical. Those three species are closer related to each other than any of the three are related to gorillas. Those four species; gorillas, chimps, bonobos and humans are closer related to each other than any of them are related to orangutans. We not only had ape ancestors, we ARE apes, Great Apes (Hominidae) to be exact. Those are FACTS established by EVIDENCE. Truth is determined by EVIDENCE, not by what anyone says and not by words in an old book. Your ignorance is not proof that a god exists. Humans differ from both common chimps and bonobos in about 1.6% of coding DNA, and share 98.4%. Gorillas differ somewhat more, by about 2.3%, from us and from both of the chimps. Humans differ from orangutans by 3.6% of DNA, and from gibbons and siamangs by 5%. This evolutionary relationship is supported both by the fossil record and DNA analysis. A 2007 study showed that humans and rhesus monkeys share about 93% of their DNA.

Questions creatards can never answer: Why do endogenous retroviruses and syncityn exist? Why do antibiotics need to kept up do date with micro organisms if they don’t evolve? How do you explain ring species? Where can I find a single example of a non-transitional fossil? Why does DNA show that some species are more distantly related than others? Why have there been three new variations of American Goatsbeard flowers if macro evolution doesn’t happen? Why do you pretend that you’re qualified to separate micro evolution from macro evolution when you can’t even tell the difference between evolution, abiogenesis and atheism? Why do we have vomeronasal organs despite not using pheromones? Where did we get chromosome 2 and cytochrome B from? Why do we have pseudogenes, appendixes, wisdom teeth, Plica semilunaris and Nictitating membranes? Why are there stars farther than millions of lightyears away if the earth is only 6,000 years old? Why do tree rings say the earth is older than 6,000 years old? Why were stone tools older than 790,000 years found in Gesher Benot Ya’akov? Why were stone tools older than 400,000 years found at the Revadim Quarry in Israel? When has a creatard used electron spin resonance and thermoluminescence to prove the earth is only 6,000 years old? What is the flat earth method for predicting an eclipse? Where can I find a map of your space frisbee that makes geometrically accurate flight patterns? What is the flerfer explanation for the phases of the moon? Why is there continental distribution when Noah’s Arc says different?

EVIDENCE FOR EVOLUTION – Vestigial Human Traits. Vestigial refers to an organ or part which is greatly reduced from the original ancestral form and is no longer functional or is of reduced or altered function. They are not necessarily useless as some people assume. Just as humans inherit characteristics of their nearest relatives, each of us has characteristics inherited from more distant relatives. In the inner corners of your eyes, you have what is called a semilunar fold or plica semilunaris. There is a muscle attached to it, but it doesn’t do anything in humans. In many other animals (sharks, frogs birds, your cat), however, that muscle controls a transparent nictitating membrane or “third eyelid” that can be drawn over the eye. Proponents of ‘intelligent design’ have no explanation as to why humans have those muscles. They are perfectly consistent with evolutionary theory as vestigial remnants of an ancestral characteristic. You also have three sets of muscles attached to your ears. In other animals, those muscles turn the ears to focus on the direction of a sound. This ability is found in monkeys, most of which cannot turn their head horizontally. Humans and the other apes can turn their heads vertically and the ability to move the ears is largely lost in those species. Using sensitive electronic devices, researchers find that the human brain is still sending nerve impulses to those muscles in response to sounds, but the most any human can do is a bit of a wiggle. Proponents of ‘intelligent design’ have no explanation as to why humans have those muscles.