Comments on: Mankind's Close Call With Extinction

DNA Evidence Reveals How Humanity's Stone-Age Almost Went Way Of The Dodo

[talkingham]

You''re wrong ThinkHarder. I work with a bunch of genenticists and I don''t like ''em. They are pretentitious to the point of boredom and overconfident in rather filmsy methods that don''t provide the clear picture they claim to report. And in science, it''s called "modelitis" when scientists shape their methods to fit an outcome they perceive as being more *** than plain scinece.

[denn034]

Yeah, mankind had a close call with extinction but, that occurred at the time of the worldwide flood mentioned in Genesis 6 not earlier.

[usbrit-2009]

Posted by LloydBest1 - thanks for the great input Lloyd.

[kommoncents-2009]

*Obamasgranny* THAT WAS A GOOD ONE! HYSTERICAL!!

[superdem]

I hate to tell you but Eve was no buxom blonde hottie. She was a monkey girl about three feet tall who ate bugs while trying to stay away from the leopards.

[davide73-2009]

The comments above show both the best and worst of what man has become since his near escape.

[obamasgranny]

I thought this article was going to be about what would happen if Obama is elected!!

[speakinup]

"Eastern Africa experienced a series of severe droughts between 135,000 and 90,000 years ago"

Man, that Global Warming just won''''t let up. Posted by Extremophil


Ain''t THAT the truth. Wonder if Eve''s SUV was burning too much hydrocarbons. If only they had backed off on the polution - think of all the polar bears that would have been saved.

[locke10]

Just to say: the dodo would not have gone "the way of the dodo" if it had not been for humans. Check these things before you print it, CBS.

[lloydbest1]

I won''t say yea or nay but it could have happened. Here''s how:
The earth was already at the height of the Pleistocene glacial advance. Global temperatures may already have averaged as much as 8 to 10 degrees F lower than today''s.
A massive volcanic blast at Lake Toba in Sumatra during the time the bottleneck was said to have occurred may have temporarily dropped global temperatures temperatures another 8 to 10 degrees F. Given that the worst case scenario would yield a planet that averaged a temperature only a little bit above the freezing point of water, I would guess the wild game and other food sources sapiens (and their Neanderthal and Heidelberg cousins) depended on would very suddenly have been in extremely short supply.
Let''s not underestimate the effect this super-eruption had. It was graded as the most catastrophic eruption the Volcanic Explosivity Index has. The only other blast in the last 25 million years that MAY have been worse was the Lava Creek eruption at Yellostone - 650000 years ago.
Krakatau is the gold standard by which all other volcanic bangs are measured. In historic times, only the Santorini blast 1500 years BCE and the Mt. Tambora thing that caused the "Year without a summer" were worse; and Santorini was only about 3 times as bad.
Toba was a minimum of 2000 times as explosive and I can easily see how such a thing could have had a massively negative impact on a human population already stressed by a deteriorating climate.

[extremophil]

"Eastern Africa experienced a series of severe droughts between 135,000 and 90,000 years ago"

Man, that Global Warming just won''t let up.

[rudy2281]

Science & religion=people: They always ''have it right this time'' only to revise or overturn their findings a couple years later. As marvelous as our brains are, we can no more fathom what happened or what will happen than a grain of beach sand can fathom the great storm on Jupiter.

[kommoncents-2009]

You can''t argue with ignorance, and religion = ignorance.

[sentry88]

everyone of us has EVE''S dna we are from her.

[rushlimpdrug]

This sounds like a bunch of krap.

So they have it down to one "Eve"?

Sure Bob.

Whatever you tell me.

[thinkharder-]

I don''''t buy it. I think they are looking through the wrong keyholes at very small samples designed to fit their theories.
Posted by talkingham at 12:49 PM : Apr 24, 2008

I think you have the wrong idea about how science works. You see, you don''t typically come up with a theory (particularly one as detailed and elaborate as the one above) and then design your experiments in such a way to show preference towards your fabrication. That''s religion''s job. What these scientists have done was to simply observe what occurs in nature, particularly at the molecular (DNA) level, and take those observations and use them to create a picture of our history with a level of confidence proportional to the weight of the observations made. That is science.

[mwhc1]

I agree with talkingham... and the earth is flat... and god made the everything in seven days...

[mcvet]

I don''''t buy it. I think they are looking through the wrong keyholes at very small samples designed to fit their theories.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted by talkingham at 12:49 PM : Apr 24, 2008
+ report abuse

What don''t you buy... what part of the study? It appears to me they have taken apart the DNA and determined the facts they present. Please tell me you aren''t one of those people who will convict a man to die based on DNA but refuse to accept findings is it doesn''t fit your religion.

[talkingham]

I don''t buy it. I think they are looking through the wrong keyholes at very small samples designed to fit their theories.