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Originally Posted by Detector  Take the story of Mosses leading the Israelites to the promise land. As has already been pointed out possible mistranslation from the original bible needs clarifying. It is now believed it was not the Red Sea but the Sea of Reeds. A much smaller sea making the event less spectacular and more plausible.
Just as science was used on the story of Custer's last stand, science could also examine, test(repeatable) and verify the event. Such a large group would surely leave evidence behind such as pottery shards. By testing and dating the relics they could determine if such an event occurred, when it occurred, who was there and the path taken.
As far as the missing link I am aware of the new information linking Neanderthal. Seems rather convenient to me that not long ago science determined and made the claim that Neanderthal was not related to man(homoerectes{sp}) but a different species that died out. Now new information makes that information false.
The idea the Neanderthal was not an ancestor of man was not a theory but supposedly fact. Now its oops we were wrong, here is the real facts. Science self-correcting? Is that just a more acceptable way of saying we were wrong?
In any case a missing link has yet to be found. Proof that Neanderthal may have mutated to modern man is far from proof that plants mutated to animals. |
Well first of all Neanderthal didn't mutate into modern man. Homo erectus is not modern man, I think you know that but from your post it seems that is what you said. With the genomic testing they are able to give an approximate date of when Neanderthal and man split, this time period is thought to have been 1 million to 700,000 years ago (ie this is when the last common ancestor would have been living). Then fro some 300,000 years the populations are thought to have interbred because of SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms). From there, about 400,000 years ago it is thought that the populations had little interbreeding to maybe none at all and just co-existed until about 30,000 years ago. Now, scientists are searching the Neanderthal genome for more SNPs, that could possibly prove that there was interbreeding. Say, perhaps, a rare human SNP (present in 5% of the population or less) is found in the Neanderthal genome as the major SNP. This would point to evidence that the groups have indeed interbred. However, this is very difficult because of amination of cytosine (C base in DNA) over time. This makes the DNA code as a U (which isn't possible because uracil only occurs in RNA). However, when using PCR, the most accurate way to reproduce DNA, you are reading the chain available, and then reproduce a T to bond to the U. This makes the Neanderthal DNA look as it contains a lot more mutations than it really does, so to say it is challenging would be a large understatement. None the less, this is very exciting stuff!