http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=9&article=2860
Evolution Wrapped Around the Pinky Finger of Woman X
| by | Kyle Butt, M.A. |
Just a few months ago, the evolutionary community paraded before us Ardi and Ida—two “amazing” links between humans and their alleged primate ancestors. These two “links” proved to be quite an embarrassment to the evolutionary community (see Butt, 2009). The debunked links were quite useful, however. They manifested the fact that the evolutionary scientific community will relentlessly trumpet evidence that supposedly substantiates evolution, even if that evidence is false or misleading. Unfortunately, this is especially true when it comes to alleged human evolution. As another example of such sensationalized, exaggerated tactics, Woman X recently hit newsstands.
Woman X is the name given to an unidentified creature whose partial pinky bone was found in the Altai Mountains in Siberia. Johannes Krause, et al. recently reported in Nature that they took a mtDNAfragment from a tiny piece of a pinky bone found in the Denisova Cave (2010). Supposedly, this fragment of DNA gave the researchers everything they needed to conclude that this find “represents a hitherto unknown type of hominin” DNA that “shares a common ancestor with anatomically modern human and Neanderthal” DNA. The media instantly seized upon the report, and hailed the creature as “a new and unknown type of pre-human [that] lived alongside modern humans and Neanderthals” (Fox, 2010).
On what amazing evidence did the researchers base their conclusion? They used mitochondrial DNAto determine the alleged evolutionary relationship. As Fox described the situation, “Krause and colleagues said they sequenced DNA from the mitochondria, a part of the cell, which is passed down virtually intact from a woman to her children” (2010). The problem with such mtDNA sequencing is that it has been shown repeatedly to be an inaccurate indicator of ancestral relationships (seeThompson and Harrub, 2003). Furthermore, not only is mitochondrial DNA sequencing impotent to establish any type of evolutionary ancestry, all such genetic comparisons are fraught with faulty assumptions and incorrect conclusions (see Thompson and Harrub, 2005).
Fox noted in passing that the “genetic sequence tells scientists little about what the creature would have looked like or whether it interacted with other humans” (2010). Notice the shift in the new “evidence” that supposedly proves human evolution. No longer does the evolutionary community feel the need to discover leg or hipbones that would indicate that the creature walked upright. No longer do these evolutionists feel compelled to find a skull that would show half-and-half characteristics between humans and apes (which are conspicuously absent from the fossil record). It is now the case that a tiny, microscopic piece of DNA supposedly gives them all they need to extrapolate an entirely new “pre-human” creature. If the amount of evidence needed to establish evolution continues to shrink at this rate, soon the evolutionary community will be able to discard the need for any physical “evidence,” and base their theory on nothing more than imagination—which, in fact, is what has already happened.
REFERENCES
Butt, Kyle (2009), “Ardi Joins a Long, Infamous List of Losers,” [On-line], URL:http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/240241.
Fox, Maggie (2010), “Possible New Human Ancestor Found in Siberia,” Yahoo!, [On-line], URL:http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100324/sc_nm/us_human_species;_ylt=AgOdUD_YoUe _PoNvY1i.cFus0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFpOG5vNTZmBHBvcwMzOARzZWMDYWNjb3JkaW9u X21vc3RfcG9wdWxhcgRzbGsDcG9zc2libGVuZXdo.
Krause, Johannes, et al. (2010), “The Complete Mitochondrial DNA Genome of an Unknown Hominin from Southern Siberia,” Nature, March, [On-line], URL:http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/pdf/nature08976.pdf.
Thompson, Bert and Brad Harrub (2003), “How Many Times Does ‘Mitochondrial Eve’ Have to Die?” [On-line], URL: http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2332.
Thompson, Bert and Brad Harrub (2005), “The Molecular Evidence of Human Origins,” Parts 1 & 2,Reason & Revelation, [On-line], URL: http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2718 andhttp://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2734.