Proteins, Apes & Us (Introduction)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Sunday, April 08, 2012, 00:24 (4591 days ago) @ David Turell

Ok, I think David missed the thrust of those questions, so I will try to redefine them. -We see a lot of hooplah chatter in the news about our evolution from monkeys or apes, or their evolution from us, or how we all crawled up out of the muck. We also see a lot of strangely fixed dates and proclamations, about which there is not really enough evidence to make such proclamations. -Retrograde analysis of the fossil record is only as good as your ability to date the fossils. Even within the span of a few thousand years, C14 dating becomes quite inaccurate, much more so over the span of millions and millions of years. So, if you are studying two fossils dated approx 20my old, then you have quite a large probability for error, which in turns colors your results. If the dating for the Ape was off by 1 million years in one direction, and the hominid by a million in the other direction, you could be putting the chicken before the egg. Now, that being said, while we know that C14 degrades at a constant rate, we have only been studying that rate for less than a century, so our understanding of the long term degradation rates, or of things that may influence that rate over time, is limited. Note, I am not saying it is wrong, just that we do not have impirical evidence for more than the last hundred years. Even if we test older objects for which we know the time they were created precisely, that still limits us to less than 10k years of human history. So, my question is, how do we know the date of separation? How can we be sure that we are not stuck in a chicken and the egg conundrum that is simply being overlooked in our desire to promote one methodology of looking at the world? -All of the questions pertaining to the degree of difference between say, hominids an apes or chimps, is to say this. There are certain immutable laws that are in effect. Some are universal such as radiation, others are localized and terrestial, such as gravity. In any given epoch of Earth's history, all creatures in a given biosphere had to adapt to certain conditions that were beyond their control. These would have included air quality, temperature, gravity, micro organisms, even food sources. Any creature that had to deal with the same environmental pressures would have by necessity had to have come to extremely similar physiological methods of dealing with it. These methods are limited by certain facts.


• DNA, is the blueprint for these changes and adaptations.

• There are only a limited number of combinations of DNA molecules within the segment of the genetic code allocated to dealing with that particular scenario

• Whatever structure is arrived at must work for the environment

• Whatever structure is arrived at must work for the given phenotype


-So there are some logical assumptions that stem from this:-Creatures in the same habitat would have to conform to the same environmental pressures to varying degrees. Further, the closer the creatures are to each other physiologically, the more likely they are to adapt in the same or extremely similar manner because that is the only viable method of adaptation for that specific pressure.-This suggest that you would see extreme similarities, genetically, between any creatures that posessed similar physiology and shared a similar environment, IRREGARDLESS OF ANCESTERY. -My point is, commonalities in the genetic structure logically do not necessarily imply common decent.

--
What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.