/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.15370417]

https://phys.org/news/2014-08-taung-child-skull-brain-human-like.html
>By subjecting the skull of the first australopith discovered to the latest technologies in the Wits University Microfocus X-ray Computed Tomography (CT) facility, researchers are now casting doubt on theories that Australopithecus africanus shows the same cranial adaptations found in modern human infants and toddlers – in effect disproving current support for the idea that this early hominin shows infant brain development in the prefrontal region similar to that of modern humans.

All the fossils discovered in Africa that supposedly prove we descended from apes are really just dead apes. Their cranial structure, in reality, have no value in terms of evidence. They're so far removed from us physically that only wishful thinking will prove anything.

[Anonymous No.15370971]

>>15370417
So this implies evolution to be false? Or at the very least to be misleading.

So if not evolution, where do we come from?
God?
Aliens?

[Anonymous No.15370993]

>>15370971
God is the only answer that doesn't lead to infinite regression (i.e. "Who created the aliens?").

[Anonymous No.15371008]

>>15370993
Religion has the same problem dipshit:
>God created the universe
>Who created God?
>YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO ASK THAT QUESTION

[Anonymous No.15371017]

>>15371008
Many people have asked that question and formed a logical answer for it. A timeless being has no point of creation and no necessity to be created.

[Anonymous No.15371024]

>>15370971
Aliens

[Anonymous No.15371026]

>>15371024
Did the aliens evolve from monkeys?

[Anonymous No.15371028]

>>15371017
That is just the fancy way of saying "this is a cop out answer by just cheating the question in stating that God is a necessary being or noncontingent starting point of the universe because we said so." - Literally the metaphysical equivalent to one kid saying a million is the biggest number just for another kid to say nuh uh a million and one is!

[Anonymous No.15371036]

>>15371024
>>15371026
>"What do you mean it was buried here?"

[Anonymous No.15371046]

>>15371008
Look at you lashing out like an impotent seething child, I guess you have to feel rebellious somehow against your religious parents, lol.

[Anonymous No.15371063]

>>15371046
>out of nowhere personal attack based on nothing in a feminine attempt to discredit the argument
You claiming nothing came before God has the same merit as someone else claiming that something had to have come before. It is an inherent problem not only within cosmology but in religion as well with the only real of "solving" it being to simply state that God is the starting point. To lash out and not understand the logic of this argument is to be the real child anon.

[Anonymous No.15371068]

>>15371063
I'm not that anon, dork. Didn't read your rage post, just wanted you to know that you're an embarrassment, ha.

[Anonymous No.15371076]

>>15371068
>"haha hey guys, look how wrong this guy is, am I right? Am I in the majority? Haha!"

(+1)Upvote

[Anonymous No.15371083]

>>15371076
You come across as extremely insecure.

[Anonymous No.15371087]

>>15371076
Do you really want me to rape you mentally? Is that what you're requesting here or are you just asshurt at the original anon for even suggesting that a God could be plausible?

[Anonymous No.15371139]

>>15371087
>>15371083
samefag (4chan pass flavor)

[Anonymous No.15371171]

>>15371028
only as much of a copout as it is for scientists to suggest that the universe was just an extremely compact region of space before the big bang and that it goes through expansion and contraction cycles. What started it? Maybe nothing, goes on forever. Right. So what's the problem with God being outside of time then?

[Anonymous No.15371180]

>>15371171
He's seething uncontrollably due to conditions outside this argument, God just trigged him so it's best to ignore him.

[Anonymous No.15371202]

>>15370417
so you think those bipedal apes that appeared after genetics predicts we split from chimps had nothing to do with us?

How deep does your conspiracy theory go?

[Anonymous No.15371204]

>>15371083
>>15371087
>>15371180
Nignog the argument was never about god existing or not. The whole argument is me trying to describe how logic breaks down since our universe operates on cause and effect which doesn't coincide well with a "starting point". Hence why I said one of the few solutions, albeit kind of a cop out one, is to simply say that there is a God and that he or it is a first principle. The rest of the argument is you rambling about nothing and acting like a pure faggot derailing the entire thread.

[Anonymous No.15371222]

>>15371204
You continue to seethe but your "logic" is already faulted, I suggest you go to bed.

[Anonymous No.15371278]

>>15370417
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1402905111
>In sum, we believe the claim of high frequencies of metopic sutures in early hominins (2) is premature, and thus the proposition that delayed metopic suture closure may have conferred a selective advantage in early hominin evolution is equally premature. Rigorous analysis of a lynchpin specimen in this argument (i.e., the Taung Child) provides no support for the notion that australopiths may have delayed metopic suture fusion, possibly for adaptive reasons. We suggest that the scenario hypothesized by Falk and colleagues (2) requires substantially more evidence to support the anatomic, neurologic, and adaptive assertions promulgated therein. Where instances of direct disagreement exist with original descriptions, the state of metopic sutures suggested by Falk and colleagues should be precisely illustrated to support the new characterizations. To this end, we suggest that high-resolution image data sets, such as obtained here from the Taung specimens, could be extremely helpful, if not necessary, to substantiate claims of delayed metopic suture closure. Relatively low-resolution images (e.g., medical CT) likely do not offer enough spatial resolution to provide definitive evidence, as was the case with the Taung Child.
Your takeaway?
>Scientists doing science and finding cause to disagree on order of events or particular strength of evidence means ALL evolution wrong
>>>/x/

[Anonymous No.15371317]

>>15371222
>argument not found

[Anonymous No.15371383]

>>15370417
>yes, the cranial structure is everything. It’s not like we already knew they had more chimp like brains, ignore the whole upright posture thing

[Anonymous No.15375398]

>>15370417
Anon, stop using futurama logic and saying a single inconsistency disproves a whole theory. Evolution isn't a single continous chain, it branches off all the time. If aussie here isn't in our direct lineage, he is still close enough to us that we took decades to reach this level of analysis, meaning it helps to show how gradual changes really are from species to species.

[Anonymous No.15375547]

>>15371026
They might have created us using the most suitable native donor - some monkey - as a blueprint.

[Anonymous No.15375569]

>>15370417

[Anonymous No.15375685]

>>15370971
no, it implies out of apefrica to be false

[Anonymous No.15375802]

>>15371278
It means most likely that we evolved from human-shaped brainlets, not brainy chimps. Humanness is late. Crucial brain structures evolved super late and b/c they did so in a tremendously dexterous animal the genus got catapulted into world domination in a short order. The emergence of some kind of switch from the baseline to language-compatible brain structure sealed the deal (supposedly great apes have some facoulties better than we do, better short term memory, IMO instead of growing from nothing something got rewired and plugged into abstracting).

Meanwhile whales, elephants, pigs, magpies, hyenas etc. languish in their shitty niches, unable to even scratch their itchy assholes unless they acquire a butt buddy./cue elephant scat eating video. I always asserted baseline intelligence arises "quickly" and fairly often. Structures like the neocortex aren't designed in CAD printed out in somebody's garage, they're the least predetermined structure of our body, probably. Intelligence has occurred often in calorie-intense organisms, probably as early as the dinosaurs (although not as strongly as in a dolphin or a human, but still, there probably was a dinosaur with pig- or hyena-level Int running around, trying to grow longer forelimbs before it got knocked off the census).

OR we're looking at the wrong spot and the most direct ancestors are some ape under the Mediterranean Sea, Levant etc. There was a wide monke horizon and we fucked up both the genetics and the archeology.

[Anonymous No.15375967]

>>15370417
>>15371202
>>15371204
>>15375547
I think that the current model of human evolution is simply wrong, as the civilisation collapsed long time ago, and this is the postapo world. This, together with the mission portion of evolution WITHIN civilization is what results in the seemingly sudden appearance of implausibly evolved people, as if there was some breakthrough change that ripped us apart from the rest of animals. I think a more plausible explanation would be like this:
Paranthropus invented language. The popular culture grunting caveman was that far back, slowly tuning its hearing and vocal control for language, and also began inventing tools.
From this now talking ape emerged a new species, homo habilis, a new species tuned for the talking world and tool making. It slowly improved on making its tools, using lanfuage language, and understanding the world until a society became possible.
From this evolved a new species, tuned to live in society, Homo erectus, which lived in civilization. Their civilization experienced only slow, gradual change, as the ability to come up with anything new was highly constrained by the intelligence of the people. Progress was limited to people evolving smarter. This went on until a more radical changecoccured, it could be something we have already experienced, like the invention of an engine, or a machine, but it could be just as well people settling space. From which the Neanderthals and Denisovans grew. But then, something happened. Either someone screwed up very badly, a natural catastrophe occured, or the two species went into war with each other, or the solar system got attacked from the outside. But either way something nearly wiped people out, and sapiens is the result, the survivors of the apocalypse

[Anonymous No.15376160]

>>15375967
There's nothing to suggest technology retention in early hominins. No material tradition of even stacking rocks, no elaborate tool making. You just got flakes and later "handaxes" (flakes whacked into having an edge on one end and an oval on the other for grip) and they don't start with paranthropus. Rather we see completely language-devoid chimps and bonobos using rocks and flakes.

Low intelligence wouldn't have suppressed superstition and organization in wider hierarchies. An Erectus society would result in an Erectus Gobeliki Tepe, basically, even if it was just a bunch of stacks of rock. We don't see bushmen maintaining societies, meanwhile. Instead HG family groups with small amounts of out-group interactions.

Rest is just comedy. A global war or lil green men.

[Anonymous No.15376307]

>>15376160
>No material tradition of even stacking rocks, no elaborate tool making. You just got flakes and later "handaxes" (flakes whacked into having an edge on one end and an oval on the other for grip) and they don't start with paranthropus.

Aside from the catastrophe wiping out the tech (and perhaps people using whatever remained until it fell apart) how do you know what these actually were used for? Were they the actual tools, or just common parts that only happened to survive because they were made of stone, unlike the rest of whatever they were part of that was made of wood, leather, etc? How long will our tech last? Think of what we could be doing with little glass bowls, and shaped pieces of ruby or other jewel stones?
Second, how well can you tell an exquisitely preserved 142869BC bronze axe from poorly preserved 1628BC bronze axe?
>Rather we see completely language-devoid chimps and bonobos
How can you tell if they were language-free?
>>15376160
>An Erectus society would result in an Erectus Gobeliki Tepe, basically, even if it was just a bunch of stacks of rock.

How well can you tell an exquisitely preserved 142869BC bronze axe from poorly preserved 1628BC bronze axe?

[Anonymous No.15376547]

>>15376307
>Aside from the catastrophe wiping out the tech (and perhaps people using whatever remained until it fell apart) how do you know what these actually were used for? Were they the actual tools, or just common parts that only happened to survive because they were made of stone, unlike the rest of whatever they were part of that was made of wood, leather, etc? How long will our tech last? Think of what we could be doing with little glass bowls, and shaped pieces of ruby or other jewel stones?
We have the Mesolithic findings for comparison. Late stone age is ripe with very intricate tool crafting and we can see the quality and consistency.You have no rubies or ceramics, so dunno why you try to bring those up. Ceramic shards especially accrue around camp sites and dwellings. They are not something you can easily overlook.
>Second, how well can you tell an exquisitely preserved 142869BC bronze axe from poorly preserved 1628BC bronze axe?
From isotope half life, we probably can tell if something is a million and a half years out of the earth vs couple thousand years.

Also, atoms get exchanged to some degree with the surrounding material. Even gold does this. A million year old bronze piece would probably have some of the base metals as well as the carbon from the bloom working leach out from the surface at different rates as well.

And a million years is a tremendous amount of time. You already suggest we can't tell the difference and somehow confuse proto-chalcolithic with erectus-through-heidelberg-to-neantherthall-to-modern human gorillion year civilizational run... have you ever considered that even the feeblest intensity of a metal-working and/or stone-cutting civilization with a big C would leave us standing on a sea of spearheads, metal chips, cyclopean masonry etc?

You're clearly just spitballing for trolling value and I am not taking your posts on face value, I just think it's beneficial to not let you go on before you snowball into /x/ critical mass.

[Anonymous No.15376715]

>>15370971
This: >>15375685
It just means that human intelligence likely evolved out of africa, probably in colder regions where survival depended on planning and organization more.

[Anonymous No.15376724]

>>15376547
>Late stone age is ripe with very intricate tool crafting and we can see the quality and consistency.
Yes, indeed it seems to be a completely separate endeavor. You can see clearly shaped tools like axes, unlike old stone tools where the use can be at best guessed at.
>You have no rubies or ceramics, so dunno why you try to bring those up.
No, I mean today. What do we use tiny glass bowls and shaped ruby pieces for? They will be found two millions of years later.
>From isotope half life,
I don't think that smelting leaves any such signature.
>Also, atoms get exchanged to some degree with the surrounding material.
Would it be found? Most metals are nutrients that get absorbed by plants once they leach. Even if not, would anyone detect that?

>have you ever considered that even the feeblest intensity of a metal-working and/or stone-cutting civilization with a big C would leave us standing on a sea of spearheads, metal chips, cyclopean masonry etc?
It's a lot of time more than enough to erase it almost completely.

[Anonymous No.15378134]

>>15376547
>have you ever considered that even the feeblest intensity of a metal-working and/or stone-cutting civilization with a big C would leave us standing on a sea of spearheads, metal chips, cyclopean masonry etc?
That's literally the exact circumstance we find ourselves in. Cyclopean masonry with only minor aesthetic form differences is present on every habitable continent in huge volumes.

[Anonymous No.15379988]

>>15378134
Yes the problem is timing. Especially in the indus valley you can find sculptures of ancient people (with eyes on top of the head, rather than in the middle like in modern people)

[Anonymous No.15380054]

>>15371204
go back

[Anonymous No.15380567]

>>15370971
evolution is another one of the soience religions many dogmatic, nondisprovable theories, that alone is enough to disprove it.
theres no need for any scientist to circumvent the scientific method other than as a means of lying

[Anonymous No.15383569]

>>15380567
There is the scientific method and the soientific method. The two are not the same

[Anonymous No.15385565]

>>15371008
thats not the same problem

[Anonymous No.15386951]

>>15371008

[Anonymous No.15387277]

>>15371028
>this is a cop out answer by just cheating the question in stating that God is a necessary being or noncontingent starting point of the universe because we said so"
>because we said so
>WE
You are really uniformed on this topic and treating it like "us vs them" for some reason. There is no "we" . Look up Aristotle's prime mover arguments and the various re-interpretations throughout the past 2 millennia by many different people.

Also pic related

[Anonymous No.15387296]

>>15371017
yes, God is a necessary being and a noncontingent starting point of the universe.
Congratulations.

[Anonymous No.15388491]

>>15375802
>>>/pol/