Oldest Skeleton In New World Discovered 485
Death Metal Maniac writes "Dubbed Eva de Naharon, or Eve of Naharon, the female skeleton has been dated at 13,600 years old. If that age is accurate, the skeleton along with three others found in underwater caves along the Caribbean coast of the Yucatán Peninsula could provide new clues to how the Americas were first populated. The skeletons' skulls hint that the people may not be of northern Asian descent, which would contradict the dominant theory of New World settlement. 'The shape of the skulls has led us to believe that Eva and the others have more of an affinity with people from South Asia than North Asia,' González explained."
Re:Amazing! (Score:2, Insightful)
Paleolithic?
40,000 year old footprints (Score:4, Insightful)
Although a slightly older skeleton is news, doesn't anyone remember in Mexico? [bbc.co.uk]
The more I read about archaeology and ancient history, the more I think that the conventional view is as Ford called it, "bunk."
wierd theory here (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ethnic group migration (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't have the data, but that theory should be easy to test. If Eva's group used to live in North Asia and was then driven into South Asia (and into North America) by outsiders, we should find remains of other "Evas" in North Asia. If we don't, then it is more likely that Eva's group originated in South Asia and managed to cross the Pacific Ocean by some manner.
Re:40,000 year old footprints (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of archaeology and ancient history is supposition in view of the facts that we do have or think we have. That is how science works, continuously reviewed and revised until no further revisions can be found.
The fossil record (such as it is) has holes in it, and it will never be as complete as the living record was. Only where evidence was preserved is there anything to use for guessing what life was like 10, 14, 20 more millenniums ago.
It's actually fair to suggest that mankind was as intelligent as we now find modern man to be, just without the same science and knowledge. I'm sure sun worshipers were as neighborhood friendly as those people that stop by to invite me to go to church with them on Sundays now. The rub is that we simply do not have records of what happened then.
Judging on the shape of the skull and other items found around the skeleton is a good guess, but hardly CSI accurate despite advances in science. Only through an abundance of evidence can we say with any veracity why a skeleton would be wearing a necklace with tiger claws on it. It's a guess. So one skeleton cannot determine how the Americas were populated, but will add fuel to the fire that says it was not simply northern Asians crossing over to Wasilla and moving on.
Then, IMO, just as now, people who move to a region do not all come from only one source region. To assume so is not fair, and shows shallow thinking as to the resourcefulness of humankind.
Re:Amazing! (Score:3, Insightful)
Is that better than the "old farts young tarts"-sex in the White House we had a few years ago?
Oldest HUMAN skeleton? (Score:3, Insightful)
Quite a few dinosaur skeletons (1e8 years) have been discovered in the "New World".
Re:Amazing! (Score:1, Insightful)
No, they found Sarah Palin's world view.
Let us know when someone finds Obama's.
And find out how long it lasts.
PS - don't you guys just love styrofoam columns? They're pretty, but lightweight with no substance. They also fly all over the place depending on which way the wind blows.
How appropriate for fair Obamacles [typepad.com].
Re:40,000 year old footprints (Score:3, Insightful)
nit pic, but...
Please try to avoind this term:
"add fuel to the fire " when discussing science. It has the unitended side effect of turing someting into a 'competition' of views.
Sad, but true.
I would suggest saying "may add some evidence that indicates it may not have been simply northern Asians crossing over to Wasilla and moving on."
SAdly, science in the media and non science science polorizes very fast.
Re:Everyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps you too could show some respect for those who are diverse in their opinions and ideas
Perhaps creationists could provide an opinion to this discovery? If they did, would it be respectful?
Re:Amazing! (Score:4, Insightful)
If you do not believe in Science, can you really a run a country this complex?
Re:this can't be right (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Everyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Everyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
My beef with (most) creationists is that they also think:
* That my girlfriend (wife, now) should really not be so uppity to believe she should have a career and exercise her mind and opinion Instead, she should be barefoot in the kitchen, continually pregnant, and look to me as head of the household as Christ is head of the church.
* That my children should not be taught to think, but rather think exactly like they do, and ignore most things that science and reasoned investigation have revealed.
* That 90% of those 6.6 billion people (i.e., the ones not like them), not to mention nearly everyone who has lived before, are going straight to hell and damnation, whether they are moral or not.
So I don't think I'll apologize and respect their diverse opinions.
Re:its easy to understand populating the new world (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't let facts get in your way. Such as the fact that the current Icelandic population is descended from Scandinavian roots. Never mind that your assumption of 'Asian' descent is based on 'obvious' characteristics rather than any actual information.
Re:Everyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
But I guess the whole study of paleontology is an ignorant falsehood. My bad. I'm probably the one off the mark here.
Re:this can't be right (Score:5, Insightful)
There IS evidence for creationism? Really? That IS news. You'd think if there were some actual, real, credible, verifiable, reproduceable and refutable evidence for it, it wouldn't just be a small percentage of crackpots who believe it to be true. Even the Jews, who wrote the book you believe to be inerrant, know it to be a fairy tale.
Re:Everyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are some things which aren't a matter of "opinion", and holding an opinion contrary to measurable fact is, well, senseless.
People who claim the Earth is flat may have an "opinion", but since their opinion is directly falsifiable, it's not a very good opinion. It's one they hold onto irrationally in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
The people who haven't been able to adapt their view of their creator god to actually encompass reality ... well, that just makes no sense. Heck, if the Catholic Church can accept that fossils are real and actually millions of years old, anyone fanatically clinging to the notion that the Earth is 6000 years old ... well, they're not even trying to be rational. They're just holding onto a notion and saying "la la la" when someone tries to tell them truth.
This isn't about respecting differences in subjective things. This is about claiming that objective reality has been faked. That's just plain irrational.
Cheers
Re:Everyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed, it is time to put an end to these barbaric religions.
I recently sent a funny email about creationist idiocy to a friend. Here's the response I got back:
==================
you kid, but we Texas people know the reality of crazed parental notions. I am reminded of my first experience in small town Texas where I was told "you don't use the rod?" and the woman proceeded to pull out a leather replica of a ruler with embossing that said "the ROD of GOD" on it.
I nearly fell out. That and the accompanying "you must spank your child until they cry with tears of repentance"
And this regarding [name of kid kept private] who was TWO at the time and reluctant to potty train. She no more knew what sin or redemption was than she could explain quantum physics. Yet I was to punish her over lack of bowel control upon demand.
===================
Really. I call for zero tolerance for "biblical" morality. You wouldn't let a kid be taught that 2 + 2 = 5, or that the earth is flat, or that the earth is the center of the solar system. Don't teach them that the bible is the full truth and spirit of an all-powerful, all-knowing being who created everything, either.
The bible is an archaic, brutal, ridiculous text of ancient folklore. Nothing else. Seriously, read it cover to cover, not in cherry-picked bits and pieces. And if you're a christian, do not park your god-given powers of reason and logic at the door. Consider the possibility that the bible itself is the work of satan, and that God gave us reason and logic in his own image. The true religious mission is to learn about the universe from the universe itself. To hell with the bible, where it belongs.
On second thought, carry on. My children will need some good, obedient servants when they get older.
Re:Everyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Everyone? (Score:2, Insightful)
Probably. I haven't known Creationists to flame athesists or joke about how they're going to hell for not believing. But on Slashdot, the guy who makes a slam at Creationists gets modded funny, while the guy who says "live and let live" gets modded flamebait. Evolutionists may be able to back up their beliefs with science, but that doesn't cover up the fact that most of them are assholes.
Re:this can't be right (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the appropriate argument that allows scientific fact and the bible to peacefully coexist can be summed up as follows, assuming that the bible is divinely inspired:
1) God created the heavens and earth, light, the solar system, all of creation in seven days.
2) God is outside of his creation.
3) A day is an arbitrary amount of time based upon the length of time it takes aplanet to rotate once around its axis.
4) If God was outside of creation, (in heaven?) then a day was the length of time it took heaven to rotate around itself.
Therefore, since a day is a subjective measurement, based upon the perspective of the observer. And, since we assume that God "wrote" the bible through his instruments on earth, and the bible is therefore based upon God's perspective, then we must ask the question how long is a day in heaven?
Since heaven is eternal, and eternal is synonymous with infinite, then a heavenly day must be very long indeed.
Re:this can't be right (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that Genesis 1 gets the order wrong. The second and third days before there are stars. land animals before fish.
Re:Everyone? (Score:1, Insightful)
Hmmph, I still cannot believe that the current dating systems are accurate. Therefore I do not know if the Earth is 6000 years or several billion years.
Therefore, I can justify believing that the Earth is however old I feel it to be. For me, I say it is about 21 years old... I know I was alive 21 years ago and can therefore prove it's existence.
Re:Everyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Respecting someone's right to an opinion and respecting their opinion are two completely different things. I respect other peoples right to an opinion, but that doesn't mean I have to respect the opinion itself. Quite frankly, I think that people who seriously believe in creationism need to be checked into the loonie bin.
No, they just need a better understanding of what the scientific method is and how it works. In all my years of school, the vast majority of the time spent learning "science" has revolved around reading a book full of assertions, with nothing presented to the reader for the purposes of backing those assertions up.
To be clear, I'm not claiming that scientists dictate assertions to the rest of us. I now know that there is a method, with checks and balances, but the impression I got in school was always that science was a list of terms to memorize, and an occasional fact or process that needed to be explained "in your own words". In short, I wasn't learning what science is or how it works. I was seeing the product, instead of the process, and that kind of thinking is what allows creationism to flourish in, otherwise, reasonable people.
Re:so you know (Score:3, Insightful)
Quite simply, you're confusing phenotype with genotype to propose an argument. Bad Thing.
Re:Everyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
As someone who was raised protestant, but is no longer a Christian ... I honestly have no farking idea what 'whore of Babylon' means, or why I wouldn't think anyone spouting off about it isn't batshit crazy. Oddly enough, I don't recall ever hearing those words in Church, and the points of disagreement between the various denominations mostly strikes me as arcane and meaningless. I tuned out the animosity between Protestants and Catholics decades ago.
I may be too stupid to know their religion, but that kind of stuff to an outsider just comes across like a nut job who is standing on a street corner screeching out gibberish that most of us haven't a clue what the fuck it means.
Sounds like an incoherent loon to me. :-P
Cheers
Re:this can't be right (Score:3, Insightful)
The Bible is evidence. [...] but I know the difference between "no evidence" and "evidence so thin it could hide behind a supermodel".
Oh really? So if I say the world is in fact a cube orbiting around a great spaghetti monster and write it down... that piece of paper is evidence to my or someone else's claims this is the truth? When evidence is this thin, scientists don't call it evidence. Just because no-one can REALLY (in the philosophical sense) prove gravity ("What if the 1 million to the power of a millionth time you drop something it doesn't fall?") doesn't mean we can't call it fact. Same goes with something so unlikely as what is described in the bible... which in facts contradicts itself on numerous occasions.
[*] Creationism is a great topic for a practical philosophy class. It has it all: the testable vs the untestable; would a creator be so fickle as to trick his creations into heresy and punishing them for it; is carbon dating really proven -- ie can we really assume that the laws governing radioactive decay haven't changed over the millenia etc etc etc. Creationism is a fantastic topic for debate if no-one's trying to force it on other people as a "truth".
No it isn't, and I'm tired of people making this semi-intellectual argument. There's nothing untestable about God... if He exists and exerts influence over this world, it can be proven or disproven (i.e. made extremely unlikely like it is today). If He exists and exerts NO influence over the world, he might as well not exist and His existence is just as likely to be true as the Spaghetti monster, etc.
Re:this can't be right (Score:4, Insightful)
What beliefs are you talking about? The decay of radioactive isotopes is pretty much stable. There are some small derivations from the ideal geometric sequence though, but they are depending on the distance between Earth and Sun and Sun activity. They account for about 1/300th of the medium rate. So if the age of the bones is estimated at 13600 years, the small derivations of the decay rate would change this to 13600 years +/- 25 years. Not really something to lose sleep over, right?
What you probably are talking about is that the relation between C14 and C12, which was thought to be constant during history is not as constant as expected. So the estimated margin of error was larger than expected, and some dates had to be corrected up to 15%. But still: With an estimated age of 13600 years, 15% would be about +/- 2000 years. So the bones could be 15600 years old, but also 11600 years could be correct. Still, this means that the bones had to be created 6012 years ago with an age of at least 5600 years.