Comments on: Human evolution: FoxP2 and speech

By: grannyape92

grannyape92 — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 15:41:11 +0000

Oh, now you are changing your story. Before it was

...I have seen proportionately formed women on the streets of Toronto who were not more than one metre tall

now its

...I am familiar with specimens of homo sapiens who have strikingly diverse body proportions...

certainly achondroplastic dwarfs have limb length proportions unlike others, they are also unlike H. floresiensis. You also failed to address the point that H. floresiensis shares quite a few traits in common with H. erectus and the earlier australopithecines (the aforementioned limb length proportions being one). At this point, there is quite a bit of doubt as to what H. floresiensis actually is and the taxonomic position and phylogenetic status of H. floresiensis will be the subject of a lot of future research. So your last point is kind of meaningless considering the unsettled status of H. floresiensis.

By: O'Leary

O'Leary — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 02:31:58 +0000

grannyape92, living as I do in a multicultural city, I am familiar with specimens of homo sapiens who have strikingly diverse body proportions – though they usually resemble their own relatives, for whatever reason.

What struck me about homo Flo was that they lived pretty much the same way all humans of their generations lived.

Yes, doubt is a dangerous thing – but misplaced faith is much more so.

By: grannyape92

grannyape92 — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 02:53:41 +0000

Paleoanthropologists have been trying to work out what H. floresiensis is ever since the material was first discovered. Glad you could solve the problem without even laying eyes on the skeleton, much less performing any kind of analysis of the material:

For what it is worth, I also don’t believe that Flores man is really a separate human species, because I have seen proportionately formed women on the streets of Toronto who were not more than one metre tall.

One problem with this statement is that Homo floresiensis does not have the same body proportions as anatomically modern H. sapiens. Then, of course, there are all those traits linking H. floresiensis to H. erectus and other traits linking H. floresiensis to the australopithecines.

By: bFast

bFast — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 21:44:17 +0000

The FoxP2 gene is by no means inconsistant with common descent. However, like the HAR1F, it is a highly stable gene that is decidedly different in humans than in the other mammals. Two facts need to be rectified when the HAR1F is considered.

1 – This gene’s high stability would indicate that any single mutation in the FoxP2 is net deleterious.

2 – Behe’s “The Edge of Evolution” effectively rules out two mutations if both, on their own, are deleterious.

3 – The modified FoxP2 causes changes to the structure of over 100 protiens. As 99.*% of protein modification is either neutral or deleterious, pulling off an edit that affects so many proteins, without producing a genetic catastrophy is highly unlikely.

The FoxP2 presents a serous challenge to the neo-Darwinian hypothesis.

Its nice to see a thread on data, rather than just philosophy. (Not to undervalue the philosophy, only to value the evidenciary case.)