Archaeologica.org

Min wrote:But Darwin, writing 150 years ago, predicted what the fossil record would show. Museums are now full of the results.

"transitional forms" are conspicuous by their absence.

hardaker wrote:Hi Min,
HSS at 400k, Tanzania? Can you give me a link? I'd heard of 190k from Omo (?), but this doubles that. Is it a tech designation, or are there bones? Both? As a cheerleader for Valsequillo, it sure would help if Saps are that old; Lake Chappala as well, (the prounounced orbit frag).

uniface wrote:Darwin, IMHO, isn't so much the issue as the behavior of those to whom he's the Moses-like Lawgiver.

Darwin the theorist is fine. Theories stand, are modified or fall on evidence. It doesn't get sticky until he's beatified into "Saint Darwin," as it were.

Certainly no one could argue with that but just because someone is a "founder" does not mean that their original work is still relevant to the discussion.

That many and grave objections may be advanced against the theory of descent with modification through natural selection, I do not deny. I have endeavoured to give to them their full force. Nothing at first can appear more difficult to believe than that the more complex organs and instincts should have been perfected not by means superior to, though analogous with, human reason, but by the accumulation of innumerable slight variations, each good for the individual possessor. Nevertheless, this difficulty, though appearing to our imagination insuperably great, cannot be considered real if we admit the following propositions, namely, -- that gradations in the perfection of any organ or instinct, which we may consider, either do now exist or could have existed, each good of its kind, -- that all organs and instincts are, in ever so slight a degree, variable, -- and, lastly, that there is a struggle for existence leading to the preservation of each profitable deviation of structure or instinct. The truth of these propositions cannot, I think, be disputed.

but in main, does one accept evolution or not?

The point is the scientific theory of evolution. Either a person accepts that it explains life and speciation as understood by science today or they don't.

I've currently got a debate going on Darwin with Ish, and others as well.
Poor old Darwin gets the blame for everything, mostly things he never claimed I might add.

Digit wrote:Some time ago, in a well reported experiment, scientists, by a single genetic change, changed a twin chambered heart in a Sea Cucumber? to a much more efficient three chambered heart.
If it had been released into the wild its ability to reproduce would not have been affected, some of its offspring would have had the same adaption, had there then been a reduction in the oxygen content of it environment, for example, those with the three chamber heart would have had an edge.