http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/07/health/oldest-homo-sapiens-fossils-found/index.html

But still no evidence of Nephites.

One of the sacred doctrines of the Church is that the earth will have seven thousand years of its continuance, or its temporal existence. See D&C 77:6 (link - https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/77?lang=eng) for details. And may all the naysayers on this doctrine remember that the "D" in "D&C" is "Doctrine". Thus the very idea that a fossil could be 8000 years or older sure sounds pretty anti-Mormon to me.

Maybe it was just a typo in the article. They meant 3000.00 years old. ;o)

Oh that is good news if it was a typo and the fossil is actually 3000 years old. Nevertheless it would be impossible for me to ever seriously entertain a thought that the fossil could possibly be older than 6017.4 years because that would be the start of Satan working to undermining a rock solid testimony in the glorious gospel. And considering the wondrous teaching that Heavenly Father has a loving 24/7 surveillance program on all our thoughts/actions then just a mere millisecond of serious consideration on the idea that a fossil could be that old would be a grievous sin that could get me fried on Judgment Day. Thus I got to close out such thinking and just sing praises to having the marvelous teachings of the LDS gospel and remind myself over and over that we have the most honest, transparent, and open-minded religion ever :) And besides how could I possibly have time to think deeply anyway on these things? The beloved Brigham Young setup the Beehive State and the programs for the LDS members for them to act like honeybees who stay endlessly busy completely focused on industriously serving the Kingdom. Thus there is little time left for anything else but to serve and to be constantly reminded of the most important doctrines :) For example, the most important doctrine we have this year is to be even more obedient than ever to the Brethren :) Yay :)

The LDS church previously undermined Christ's gospel, thank you very much :(

Wow that Satan...he's such a prankster!!!

Or so it seems to me...

Does that beat the COB record?

I do not think the fossils found at the COB are quite that old, close, but not quite.

Three hundred thousand years?!? That's well beyond the parameters of C-14 dating, and yep, I see they utilized "optical thermoluminescent" dating. That technique is, IMHO, totally suspect because it makes uses of hypothetical assumptions that can't be proven scientifically (like the last time a particular soil was "exposed" to sunlight). The same technique was used at the Buttermilk Creek site in Texas, and the DNA evidence shows that if there were humans in this hemisphere 15,500 years ago, they left no record in the Native American genome.

I could be wrong, of course; anybody got a link to the original source (peer-reviewed, preferably)? Science reporters in general give me indigestion, a bit ironic since I've been one occasionally in the past.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/07/2017 06:44PM by SL Cabbie.

It's just some crappy journal that nobody has heard of before

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature22336.epdf


Edit:You have to pay for it unless you have Nature already.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/07/2017 10:59PM by Darren Steers.

Hah! Praise be to the Google God! If I were younger I would sacrifice a virgin's honor at its altar...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/science/prehistoric-humans-north-america-california-nature-study.html

>Humans Lived in North America 130,000 Years Ago, Study Claims

Sarcasm is wasted on me, Darren, seriously, and it's the sort of passive-aggressive tactic common in the Mormon collective.

I see this is in the form of a letter and hasn't been peer-reviewed yet. Surprise, surprise, surprise...

/gomer pyle voice off

From reading the first page, there's a lot of obfuscatory rhetoric, and as I suspected, "optically stimulated thermoluminescence dating" was used.

'Nuff said. Thanks for playing...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/07/2017 11:46PM by SL Cabbie.

SL Cabbie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> Sarcasm is wasted on me, Darren, seriously, and
> it's the sort of passive-aggressive tactic common
> in the Mormon collective.
>

Ahhhhh, but you noticed it was sarcasm. :o)

Sarcasm is also a method of communication particularly common on the British Isles. You can take the man out of Scotland, but you can't take the Scotland out of the man......

Oh, and Nature isn't a perfect journal(as you already demonstrated), but it is highly rated , and things that are published are peer reviewed. Which is what you asked for.

It looks like more study on the site is required, and the authors recognise this. Perhaps their early findings are intriguing enough to enable them to source additional funding to allow them work some more at the site, to firm up their dates. Perhaps change them as they use other dating techniques, perhaps confirm them.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/08/2017 07:57AM by Darren Steers.

Darren Steers Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You can
> take the man out of Scotland, but you can't take
> the Scotland out of the man......

I thought that was haggis, not men? :)

Just a note that "optically stimulated luminescence" and "thermoluminescence" dating are two similar but different things...OSL uses light to stimulate the release of the stored electrons, TL uses heat. There isn't an "OSTL" version.

And while more work does need to be done at the site to give more certainty, the 300k ybp age does fill in some gaps between DNA results showing homo sapiens/neanderthal gene mixtures as far back as 500k years, and the oldest homo sapiens samples known previously at about 200k years. The more we find, the more we know.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/08/2017 09:26AM by ificouldhietokolob.

ificouldhietokolob Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> I thought that was haggis, not men? :)
>

You are correct you can't take the haggis out of Scotland.

Haggis imports stopped in 1971 when the US introduced a ban on sheep lungs, one of the ingredients of authentic haggis.

“Sheep lungs cannot enter the US as a human food because FSIS has determined that such material made from sheep slaughtered in the United States is inedible and is not inspected for use as an edible material,” a USDA spokesperson said. “Sheep lung material from foreign inspection systems likewise are not permitted for human consumption in the United States.”

I got to try authentic haggis the first time in 2002 in Dundee.

The FDA is right, it's not fit for human consumption :)

Blasphemy!

ificouldhietokolob Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I got to try authentic haggis the first time in
> 2002 in Dundee.
>
> The FDA is right, it's not fit for human
> consumption :)

"My theory is that all of Scottish cuisine is based on a dare." - Mike Myers

After I tried haggis, I was made painfully aware of what he means. ;)

What's all this dissing of haggis? I LOVE haggis and I'm not even Scottish.

Luckily I have two sources of haggis: tinned haggis is available in some French supermarkets and my wife has a colleague who works with Edinburgh University and who brings us back regular supplies.

I hope Brexit doesn't block that source....

Tom in Paris

Soft Machine Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What's all this dissing of haggis? I LOVE haggis
> and I'm not even Scottish.

I'm sure it's an acquired taste...

I managed to get a large serving down -- with the help of something that IS exportable from Scotland, and tastes a whole lot better: Scotch whiskey.

it is traditionally served with 'neeps', which is boiled mashed turnip, or more commonly swede, and the sweet moisture of the neeps compliments the dry spicy haggis perfectly.

Butchers have their own recipes that they keep secret and pass on or sell, as vendors do for other products. A chip shop owner in aberdeen retired back in the 90s, selling his fish and chip shop for one pound but his macaroni pie recipe - which was famous for miles around and his best selling product - for 150K.

I'm sorry you were given substandard cuisine. A good haggis and neeps dinner is hard to beat and extremely healthy.

He also liked head cheese. No thanks...

Five hundred thousand years on Neanderthals?

Right...

(yeah, that one gets the "S tag")

Never mind the extreme dates for Neanderthal's presence, the presumed admixture took place outside of Africa because Neanderthal DNA sequences haven't been found in Africa.

Wiki will do for now on "Optically Stimulated Luminescence Dating":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminescence_dating

>"Most luminescence dating methods rely on the assumption that the mineral grains were sufficiently "bleached" at the time of the event being dated."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optically_stimulated_luminescence

>Recent OSL dating of stone tools in Arabia pushed the "out-of-Africa" date hypothesis of human migration back 50,000 years and added a possible path of migration from the African continent to the Arabian peninsula instead of through Europe.

Note the "weasel wording" using "hypothesis" instead of theory. The African ancestry of humans long ago reached the tipping point where it should be considered a theory rather than a hypothesis.

I think we are generally agreeing with you SLCabbie.

There are concerns about the data and the dates, but nothing that a little more research and analysis wont resolve. This has just been an opening salvo from a new archaeological find.

Time will tell if the researchers were blinded by their excitement at an impressive dating result, or if there really is some validity to their data.

SL Cabbie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Five hundred thousand years on Neanderthals?
>
> Right...
>
> (yeah, that one gets the "S tag")

http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-neanderthalensis

"Both fossil and genetic evidence indicate that Neanderthals and modern humans (Homo sapiens) evolved from a common ancestor between 500,000 and 200,000 years ago."

(follow the references from the page as well)

> Wiki will do for now on "Optically Stimulated
> Luminescence Dating":

I'm in agreement with you that the luminescence dating methods aren't well-established enough (yet?) to be definitive. And probably aren't good enough on their own to establish conclusive dates.

I was just pointing out that you combined two different methods into one ("optically stimulated thermoluminescence"). :)

Ahh, well - I grew up in San Diego, and wish my mother had kept the family home there. I'd have myself some valuable property now. And I seriously miss the climate.

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/06/07/531804528/315-000-year-old-fossils-from-morocco-could-be-earliest-recorded-homo-sapiens

I like the "appropriate skepticism" of the NPR article. And from the Nature story linked:

http://www.nature.com/news/oldest-homo-sapiens-fossil-claim-rewrites-our-species-history-1.22114#/ref-link-1

>Palaeontologist Jeffrey Schwartz, at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, says the new finds are important — but he is not convinced that they should be considered H. sapiens. Too many different-looking fossils have been lumped together under the species, he thinks, complicating efforts to interpret new fossils and to come up with scenarios on how, when and where our species emerged.

SL Cabbie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I like the "appropriate skepticism" of the NPR
> article. And from the Nature story linked:

Me, too. This is far from settled yet :)

Monson ... Is that you ?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/09/2017 12:15AM by Dave the Atheist.

Tip of the hat to Darren, Hie and Cabbie. Nice to read an actual sensible dicussion about scientific research, as opposed to something along the lines of 'do your own research. It is well known that vaccines don't work.'

I hate having to adjust my blood pressure meds after reading some of the stuff passed off as science here. (Yes, being hyperbolic :)

ziller can confirm this thred ~



ziller am 50 year old non-homo sapiens ~

*gaassssp!* You mean the Earth is older than the 6,000 years Young Earth Creationists think it is? ;)