: Well if "speciation takes hundreds of thousands of generations" to occur, let's do some quick computations for the human "ancestors":: 1 generation = 20 years (conservatively)
: 200,000 generations is the minimal required for hundered(s) of thousands
: 20 years/generation x 200,000 generations = 4,000,000 years
: Are we saying that Homo-Neanderthalis is minimally 4,000,000 years old? I've always heard that he was on the order of 130,000 years.
: Or perhaps, H-D does not qualify as a different species, by your definition?
Homo Sapiens Neanderthalis was indeed a different species to Homo Sapiens Sapiens; that's why they have different Latin names.
However, Homo Sapiens Neanderthalis is not an "ancestor" of humanity; Neanderthals were a branching of the evolutionary tree that died out; as such, they can be a different species; that arose from Homo Erectus
'nother one bites the dust.
: Floyd, dear friend. I'm not trying to characterise you, and I'll never call you a name (even though you've called me an idiot before). I'm just attempting to warn you off as to where your evolutionary thought may lead you.
And we have both told you repeatedly that to equate the theory of evolution with Naziism is a gross misrepresentation of the theory.
Again, to quote that famous Carl Sagan quote for the nth time:
"...the Darwinian insight can be turned upside down and grotesquely misused: Voracious robber barons may explain their cutthroat practices by an appeal to Social Darwinism; Nazis and other racists may call on "survival of the fittest" to justify genocide. But Darwin did not make John D. Rockefeller or Adolf Hitler. Greed, the Industrial Revolution, the free enterprise system, and corruption of government by the monied are adequate to explain nineteenth-century capitalism. Ethnocentrism, xenophobia, social hierarchies, the long history of anti-Semitism in Germany, the Versailles Treaty, German child-rearing practices, inflation, and the Depression seem adequate to explain Hitler's rise to power. Very likely these or similar events would have transpired with or without Darwin. And modern Darwinism makes it abundantly clear that many less ruthless traits, some not always admired by robber barns and Fuhrers - altruism, general intelligence, compassion - may be the key to survival." (Sagan, 1995, 260).
Farinata.
