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InterestingTrithinium, when do you think humans arrived on planet Earth? 30 million years sounds like a long time. Consider the layers visible at Grand Canyon. I hear that some one billion years of strata is exposed according to certain dating methods. Also missing layers of time too at GC.
I'm not sure you can measure in time when humans first arrived here.Trithinium, when do you think humans arrived on planet Earth?
I asked this in post #2, it is important. In archaeology we have records of Sumer and Babylon showing the Zodiac and some constellations, none earlier than about 3,000 BC or 5,000 years ago. See The Ancient Circle of Animals, Sky & Telescope 135(1):66-71, 2018, and "The Sun lay in Taurus on the first day of spring when our Western zodiac was invented, about 4,000 to 5,000 years ago.", Northern Hemisphere's Sky, Sky & Telescope 121(1):42, 2011
How much earlier do you date the arrival of humans in relation to the ancient tablets showing Zodiac and some constellations?
Okay. Where did you get the 30 million years from?I'm not sure you can measure in time when humans first arrived here.
Well, I was looking up short necked horses from 30 million years ago and it occurred to me where are the human bones?Okay. Where did you get the 30 million years from?
Maybe for some reason our bones didn't turn into fossils that far back. Now I need to rethink this. Thanks! Ha.Using geologic dating methods, I am not aware of any human riders dated back 30 million years ago to ride those fossil record horsesThanks for clarifying here where the 30 million year time frame came from.
I'm not sure all information can be dated. I know there was a philosopher named Oscosolties from 10,000 years ago. I asked a really smart man around 90 years old if he had heard of him and he's the one that gave me the info when Oscosolties lived.Okay, start with the earliest recorded accounts, written down as history. Only about 5,000 years or so, including Sumerian records and the Zodiac, including Babylon. I like to start there, using astronomy as the anchor for the dates
Trithinium, here is an example of what I consider reliable, astronomical anchored dates for humans on the planet, "Ugarit Eclipse One of the earliest solar eclipses recorded, the Ugarit eclipse darkened the sky for 2 minutes and 7 seconds on May 3, 1375 B.C., according to an analysis of a clay tablet, discovered in 1948. Then, a report in the journal Nature in 1989 suggested, in fact, the eclipse actually occurred on March 5, 1223 B.C. That new date was based on an historical dating of the tablet as well as an analysis of the tablet's text, which mentions the visibility of the planet Mars during the eclipse. Mesopotamian historians in Ugarit, a port city in Northern Syria, recount that the sun was "put to shame" during this total eclipse.", ref - Ugarit Eclipse, http://www.livescience.com/57865-famous-solar-eclipses.html
Thank you for the reply.Critics of evolution relish in emphasizing the complexity and unsolved problems surrounding its mechanisms. They point to errors made by earlier researchers, and enthusiastically conclude from all of these difficulties that evolution is “only a theory.” They routinely misinterpret or ignore the repeatable, observable, measurable scientific evidence that overwhelmingly supports evolution as a fact. This evidence is abundant. It is the worldwide, sum total of the fossil record. Sedimentary rocks and the fossils preserved in these rocks, even though an incomplete paleontological record, are primary, factual evidence of what has happened back through time. One thing apart from all others presents a compelling case for evolution that is independent of its weaknesses. It is the simple, repeatable observation that deeper, older rocks contain fossils of more primitive, less-evolved organisms than do the younger rocks that rest above them. Consider the magnificent Grand Canyon in Arizona. The rock layers at the base of the gorge are undeniably older than those at the top. No matter how much time was involved in cutting the gorge through all these rocks, there is no way of reasonably denying that as one takes the winding path down the gorge and passes across the layers of rock one also goes back through recorded time. Today we can observe the same thing, obviously on a vastly smaller scale, in the layers of trash at waste disposal sites. The old newspapers, bottles and cans, the less “evolved” cameras and telephones, 78-rpm records, and vacuum-tube radios are preserved among the layers found toward the bottom. The younger more evolved “fossils” are among those found near the top. In the vast Grand Canyon geological “dump” the deeper flat-lying rock layers contain the simpler, more primitive fossils. Gaps in the record notwithstanding, there are shells buried there that record the presence of species not found in the younger rocks above, and no bones of any kind are to be found. The rocks at the top contain fossil remains of still more evolved (developed) animals. All of these thousands of feet of flat-lying rocks rest directly on still older layers. Those below are set at a steep angle. Obviously, substantial time must be allowed for these even older sediments to have been deposited, hardened, turned on edge by mountain-building processes, and later cut down by erosion. In these much older rocks there are precious few fossils of any kind. There are neither shells nor bones. Only a few fossils of simple, microscopic life forms have been found. Geologists find similar rock sequences in many regions of the globe. While these may not have the grandeur and ease-of-visibility that the deeply cut Grand Canyon offers, their included fossils exhibit the same upward changes. I find it hard to escape the conclusion that from this overall geological and paleontological evidence there has been an increase upwards through time in the complexity and sophistication of life. The global fossil record does not present a jumbled mixture of large and small, older and younger, as would be the case after a giant flood of some kind. This record is repeatable, undeniable factual global evidence for a long process of evolution…of biological change over time. The total fossil record reveals these same upward changes, irrespective of the mechanisms that caused them.
Yes, a "fact", by one definition, can mean something that is considered to be indisputable. But things that are indisputable shouldn't be a label for any scientific theory. By definition, a scientific theory must be falsifiable, meaning any prediction of the theory must involve the ability to test those predictions. So if something must be capable of falsification, how can it also be indisputable?As described earlier, the fossil record exposed by erosion in the flat-lying sediments on both sides, and down to the base of the Grand Canyon, is specific and objective evidence of evolution being a fact. No other scientific (non-religious) interpretation makes sense.
The dating of fossils seem to be best determined by indirect dating methods. I'm unclear why. In the case of Arid, they were very fortunate to discover that the layer below Ardi and the laywer above Ardi were from ages close to one another, thus Ardi would have to be an age somewhere in between those ages. IIRC, the upper layer was 4.2 million years and the lower layers was 4.6 million years, but I may be off a little here, thus she is about 4.4 million years old.FYI. I see in this discussion some interesting thinking about the past. Here are three examples that stand out to me.
1. "a philosopher named Oscosolties from 10,000 years ago" from post #11.
2. "Lucy" was one of the most famous, if not the most famous with the public, but "Ardi" is older still and, apparently, shows more a connection to our tree-loving ancestors. [I'm still reading this book.]" from post #12.
3. "the eclipse actually occurred on March 5, 1223 B.C." from my post #10.
Are all three examples, facts of antiquity and reliably dated or does one example have better dating and a more reliable witness and authentication, i.e. better attested?
First. There are multiple facts for both cases. Are there multiple accounts of that eclipse? Each would be considered a potential fact. Each would need to be tested rather than just assumed. If multiple and reliable accounts argue for a certain date and time for an eclipse, they would be considered facts. Claims that gave a different date would likely be considered non-factual (ie false).Helio, after reading what you said in post #22, you did not answer which of the three examples were a fact as I asked in post #18 (I go with #3, the solar eclipse record date and witness). So is the solar eclipse record and date from ancient Canaan at Ugarit, a fact, better dated and attested in antiquity than Lucy or Arid?
Thanks. That's interesting. Did they explain the ~150 year original error? Was there also an eclipse in 1375 as mentioned, but Mars's location changed the account?The earliest known solar eclipse record redated, https://www.nature.com/articles/338238a0
Also, https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1989Natur.338..238D/abstract, March 1989.
"Abstract AN astronomical event recorded on a clay tablet found in 1948 among the ruins of the ancient city of Ugarit, in what is now Syria, was identified 20 years ago as a description of a total solar eclipse that occurred on 3 May 1375 BC1,2. The dating of ancient solar eclipses provides reference points to fix the long-term evolution of angular momentum in the Earth-Moon system3. We have reanalysed the Ugarit eclipse record4. A new historical dating of the tablet, and mention in the text of the visibility of the planet Mars during the eclipse as well as the month in which it occurred enables us to show that the recorded eclipse in fact occurred on 5 March 1223 BC. This new date implies that the secular deceleration of the Earth's rotation has changed very little during the past 3,000 years."