They are comparing fossils from supposedly 1,750,000 B.C. and 18,000 B.C. Interesting.

So the early humans were smaller for a long period of time and then suddenly had a growth spurt?

Aren't Asians generally small people?

Lots of paleontologists think that there were multiple emigrations out of Africa, and even some waves that returned and left again many eons later. The whole question of where Homo Sapiens comes from is kind of pointless: there were probably multiple lines of ancestry from Africa, Asia, and the European continent.

Interesting stuff.

What is this "originated from" bullshit?

All peoples of the world - all races: Asians, blacks, whites - were designed and placed in their respective dominant geographic regions by the intelligent designer, 25,000 years ago.

Right Brewfan? Bart? Tell these jerk-offs what's up!

I wouldn't be so bold and arrogant to pretend to know the origin of life.

You've got to love the round numbers that the scientists throw around - 1.75 million, 18 thousand. Oh look, a rock. Let me test it and determine its age. Gee, it's 2 million years old.

Really, Mr. Peabody? Wow, the Wayback Machine is awaesome and so smart.

No, Sherman, machines aren't smart, you silly boy. People are smart, and talking dogs are smart.

Why does human historical record begin less than 10,000 years ago?

Doesn't it strike any of you evolved apes that the human race lived like savages for millions of years and suddenly pyramids pop up and the technological and civil advances are, by comparison to the previous periods, are exponential in occurence?

Humans didn't arise until about 100,000 years ago, dude.

At what point do you imagine they should have begun great civilizations with permanent, lasting buildings and survivable writings? A thousand years after their appearance?

Whatever. The earth is 6,000 years old, however you like it. Dinosaur bones were buried by Satan to mislead us.

Dinosaur bones were buried by Satan to mislead us.

That's why they call him the Wily Magician, my friend. If he's not stirring up rancor over the president's Supreme Court nominations, he's building fake triceratops heads.

Humans didn't arise until about 100,000 years ago, dude.

Well...depends on what you mean when you say human. Are you talking about Homo Sapiens? If so, you've got maybe 80,000 years back. Homo Erectus? Homo Habilis? The dividing line between other apes and human beings isn't a razor-sharp line; the common ancestor of Chimpanzees and modern humans lived about six million years ago, so any primate on the human side of that branch could be called "human".

Technology has a way of accelerating, once there are enough individuals with free time to think up shit.

Think of what has changed in just the last 50-100 yrs.

My grandmother died in 1994, and I never told her what a computer was, because I never figured out how to describe it to her.

My own grandmother, whose generation crossed into mine, had lived an agrarian lifestyle, and had cooked all food over a fire, and had lived in a house with no heat or electricity.

She was in her forties the first time she saw ice.
The Ice Man would regularly bring a big block of it for her new High Tech refrigerator.

And here I am, talking to you, wherever you are in the world, on my home computer.

That should seem even stranger to you, than how bands of primitive man, preyed upon by animals, living hand to mouth hadn't up and built gigantic monuments sooner.

lauraw:

I know what you mean. One of the most amazing facts of the 20th century was that we went from Kitty Hawk to landing men on the moon in a little over sixty years. The technical-knowledge curve tends to be asymptotic; it has a sharp "elbow" at a certain point in technical development. Ray Kurzweil posits a notion of a singularity where humans essentially become trans-human -- technologies like nanotech and biotech will allow humans to live for centuries, if not longer. (His most recent book is called The Singularity is Near; it's a little over-the-top, but interesting speculation.)

My pet theory of why the Sumerians seem to have been illiterate for so long, and then sudenly produced all of these elaborite cuneoform documents is that they were just using sun dried clay for a long time. What they left behind where only the later oven baked recipts and stuff. Actually, that might not be my own pet theory, maybe I read it somewhere.

66 years if memory serves Monty

Ray Kurzweil posits a notion of a singularity where humans essentially become trans-human -- technologies like nanotech and biotech will allow humans to live for centuries, if not longer.

Yeah, and beyond the theory of biological life extension (almost a minor corollary of the book) are the greater implications of the singularity - namely, that machine intelligence will surpass biological intelligence yet also further it as a technological extension of biological evolution, changing the nature of humanity and "non-humanity," and - eventually, theoretically - all the matter of the universe itself (the seemingly over-the-top part), if self-reinforcing technological innovation and paradigm shifts continue to accumulate exponentially. Think of thinking machines innovating thinking machines, biology and matter and energy themselves, all at will, in ways we don't currently have the intellectual processing power to fathom, and exponentially faster and faster, all the time. The best part being - we're entering the knee of the curve.

it all seems like bs, until you get some perspective at how quickly change has been accelerating, and review the old fable about the grain of rice.

http://www.punahou.edu/acad/sanders/geometrypages/GP11Fable.html

Resistance is futile.

Think of thinking machines innovating thinking machines, biology and matter and energy themselves, all at will, in ways we don't currently have the intellectual processing power to fathom

...then becoming self-aware and (a) launching tactical nuclear strikes on major population centers to eliminate their human rivals, and (b) building a race of killer mesomorph robots with Austrian accents to mop up the nuke survivors.

Except the joke's on them. Because at the eleventh hour, Hugh Hewitt's going to appear, riding on the back of a magical talking lion, to smite the robot heathens in the valley of Megiddo. "Blog" will become the Bible of a post-apocalyptic world.

Looking forward to it!

This is the voice of World Control.

then becoming self-aware and (a) launching tactical nuclear strikes on major population centers to eliminate their human rivals,

Shortly after machines gain self-awareness, humans will probably be about as relevant to higher intelligence as the microscopic mites on your skin are to you. ("natural" humans, that is)

And another hole in your scenario: Hugh Hewitt IS a cyborg, designed, built and deployed by MIT researchers working from an RNC/Heritage Foundation grant.

Dumbass.

Shortly after machines gain self-awareness, humans will probably be about as relevant to higher intelligence as the microscopic mites on your skin are to you. ("natural" humans, that is)

You think you're formulating those thoughts on your own, Bill, but you know who's really responsible, don't you?

Right. The wily magician.

You probably opposed Harriet Miers, too. Figures.

I find your mockery of the destruction of the human race most peculiar.

I find your mockery of the destruction of the human race most peculiar.

Some futurists are actually looking forward to it.

Which way, do you suppose, that guy leans politically?

To you, he is Professor de Garis.
To me, he is Father.

You guys are getting weird. So I guess I can to.

(Isa 13:6-11 NIV) Wail, for the day of the LORD is near; it will come like destruction from the Almighty. {7} Because of this, all hands will go limp, every man's heart will melt. {8} Terror will seize them, pain and anguish will grip them; they will writhe like a woman in labor. They will look aghast at each other, their faces aflame. {9} See, the day of the LORD is coming --a cruel day, with wrath and fierce anger-- to make the land desolate and destroy the sinners within it. {10} The stars of heaven and their constellations will not show their light. The rising sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light. {11} I will punish the world for its evil, the wicked for their sins. I will put an end to the arrogance of the haughty and will humble the pride of the ruthless.

Or, I could do Batman quotes, if you prefer.

Based on many other biblical descriptions of the "day of the Lord," I'm guessing that the Battle of Armegeddon will be fought with space-based energy weapons that have planet-destroying potential.

Understand, I'm just guessing.

These weapons are currently technologically possible. The engineering just needs to catch up.

Kind of like, ten years ago my cell phone was the size and shape of a brick. Now, it fits comfortably in my shirt pocket and I can take digital pictures with it.

Yeah they can fly a man to the moon only 66 years after the first powered flight but they can't get me a flying car. Exponential my ass.

Gee according to those paliobable nit wits we were all suppst to have origionanted in africa from a dumb looking ape woman named LUCY looks to me like them evolutionists are the biggist liars or their just plan out of their minds

You know, R Buckminster Fuller was pushing this idea 25 years ago in his book.

Jared Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee asserts the first real humans evolved the voicebox around 100,000 years ago, allowing us to communicate in a much more meaningful way than had been possible up to that post.

Fuller, in Critical Path, noted that humans are odd in having no fur and being one of only 3 mammal species that cry saltwater tears (one of the others are dolphins), and speculated that this means at some point in human development all of protohumanity lived in the Asian atolls. He cites as further evidence of this some very old irrigation canals in the region.