Human evolution: no time for chance (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, June 19, 2021, 15:12 (1251 days ago) @ David Turell

Using necessitated mutational genetic timetables, there is not enough elapsed time to explain human evolution:

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2021/06/neo-darwinism-is-dead.html

"Some of you will recall that I thoroughly, and in some detail, demonstrated the way in which, according to the present scientific understanding of astrophysics, genetic biology, and mathematics, the modern Neo-Darwinian synthesis of the theory of evolution by (mostly) natural selection is impossible, caught as it is between the Scylla of a fixed amount of time and the Charybdis of the number of fixed mutations required to take place in the evolution between one historical species and a present species.

"To put it in the most simple terms that even a biologist should be able to follow, if we are told that a football team has gained 1,500 yards on the ground while averaging three yards per rushing play, and we know that the maximum number of offensive plays per team per game is 84, then we know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the yards reported were not gained in a single 60-minute game. They could not have been. It is impossible.

***

"In like manner, the number of fixed mutations that are presently observed to distinguish two species, whether we contemplate modern Man and the Chimpanzee–Human last common ancestor (CHLCA) or the dog and one of the therapsids, are considerably - CONSIDERABLY - in excess of the maximum amount of time that could have passed since the speciation process is believed to have begun. There is only one defense against this straightforward mathematical observation, and that is the idea that enough parallel mutations happened very, very quickly to significantly reduce the average time per fixed mutation to permit it to happen in the intervening time period.

"The problem here, of course, is that the numerical gap that needs to be filled is so large that if that were the case, then these mutations would be have to be happening so rapidly, and fixing in parallel so quickly, that we could observe evolution by natural selection happening in real time all the time.

"And, as predicted, the new advances in genetic science combined with new archeobiological discoveries are methodically reducing the already insufficient time in which evolution had to go from point A to point Z.

"Peştera Muierii woman is related to Europeans, but she is not a direct ancestor

"Reduced diversity in Europe caused by Last Glaciation, not out-of-Africa bottleneck

"Genetic load appears indifferent across 40,000 years of European history

"New DNA extraction approach recovers up to 33 times more DNA from ancient remains

"Summary:

"Few complete human genomes from the European Early Upper Palaeolithic (EUP) have been sequenced. Using novel sampling and DNA extraction approaches, we sequenced the genome of a woman from “Peştera Muierii,” Romania who lived ∼34,000 years ago to 13.5× coverage. The genome shows similarities to modern-day Europeans, but she is not a direct ancestor. Although her cranium exhibits both modern human and Neanderthal features, the genome shows similar levels of Neanderthal admixture (∼3.1%) to most EUP humans but only half compared to the ∼40,000-year-old Peştera Oase 1. All EUP European hunter-gatherers display high genetic diversity, demonstrating that the severe loss of diversity occurred during and after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) rather than just during the out-of-Africa migration. The prevalence of genetic diseases is expected to increase with low diversity; however, pathogenic variant load was relatively constant from EUP to modern times, despite post-LGM hunter-gatherers having the lowest diversity ever observed among Europeans.

"Translation: there was even more genetic diversity among early humans than previously believed, which further increases the required rate of time per fixed mutation.

"Or to put the point in even more simple terms, it is mathematically more credible to claim that you drove from New York to Los Angeles in a 1976 Cadillac Eldorado in one hour on a single tank of gas than to claim that any modern mammal evolved from the first crown group mammal in the amounts of time currently estimated."

Comment: This summary of of genetic speed in evolutionary studies covers the fact that I have not presented much of this in the past. The papers are filled with higher math formulas that I cannot follow and the conclusions seem to cone out of thin air. This presentation is not that, but quite clear. Mutational changes seem driven and compressed into less time than current estimated mutation rates allow. And this can be applied to the Cambrian complexity gap in spades. Totally new complex body forms with a full complement of organ systems, including eyes with complex bifocal lenses.