My biology teacher claimed that Neanderthals' DNA is just 30-40% similar to modern humans' (Homo sapiens sapiens, but you already knew that) DNA.Yet when I checked on the Live Science website, they said that Neanderthals' DNA were 99.5% similar! Not even twins are that similar! I quote from the link:
"[Neanderthals'] genomes and ours are more than 99.5 percent identical."(See Neanderthal: 99.5 Percent Human.)
With a percentage like that, Neanderthals might as well be fully human, because as I've just said, not even twins are that similar. Speaking of being "fully human", what is the standard for being "fully human"? Five fingers? Hair? Bipedalism? A brain? You might as well call a warthog a human, or a lemur, as G+ user Sirius Lee put it. Or even Godzilla, for crying out loud. We just don't know the standards of what is "human", so how can we trust that Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis) was a human? I mean, I've already debunked her, but still.
What we now know, however, is that Neanderthals were fully human; they were just people who suffered rickets or arthritis. See Making Monkeys out of Man. Also, their features are so much like "modern man" that they might as well be "modern man". They could've just slipped on a T-shirt and jeans and put on a baseball cap and looked just like you and I. Check out Darwin's Demise, authored by Joe White and Nicholas Comninellis. Another "missing link" refuted.
Stay tuned for tomorrow's blog: Science and the Bible. Also, I am scheduled to have a conversation this Saturday with Young "Kid" Apologist! I will be interviewing him, and we will discuss and share thoughts and information about creation/evolution.
Questions? Comments? Say something below!
I know the argument is now starting to fade out, but very recently evo-scientists were saying that the 98% similarity between humans and chimps showed how they were our ancestors. So going from 98% to 99.5%,----- how were they not fellow humans?
ReplyDeleteAlso, if you want to read more, the book "Bones of Contention" by Marvin L. Lubenow has an excellent section devoted to Neandertals and the evidence for them being modern humans. Including a look at the "artless" argument that is often used to declassify them to non-human standing.
Why, thank you. :-)
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