Nathaniel Jeanson is still using this absurd approach of counting up branches on a tree and using that as a proxy for population growth and overlaying those counts on a graph of human population growth. I can not believe he thinks this is valid. He’s arguing that if you include neanderthals then you can’t make a pretty curve that fits over his population growth curve so therefore something is wrong with the neanderthal sequences. Unbelievable.
Jeanson @ 20:15 Bold mine
When you include something that approximates a Neanderthal sequence, and the result is a very poor match. This is my experimental rejection of including Neanderthal sequences. So what’s the explanation? What’s going on with Neanderthal sequences? It might be unreliable, it might be something else. Whatever is going on, if you treat Neanderthal DNA sequences as reliable, and that they represent a group of post flood individuals from Noah who mutated their DNA at a constant rate, you do not get an accurate reproduction of human history. That’s an experimental finding.
I agree that Neanderthal DNA falsifies the idea that they were extent post flood within the past 4500 years.
In his book, Jeanson attempted to just circumvent ancient DNA. That he is now doubling down and discussing it is an indication that this criticism has stuck and gained traction.
Hi Ron @Herman_Mays
It would appear that an independent study shows:
The Y chromosome of Neanderthals has also been studied, primarily by Mendez et al. in 2016. Unlike mtDNA, Y chromosomes are passed along the paternal line. The data suggests that the Neanderthal Y chromosome is not present in modern human samples at all. Mendez concluded that mutations made the Neanderthals genetically incompatible to humans and consequently resulted in the loss of the Neanderthal Y chromosome in present-day humans.
Are there more recent studies that contradict this?
Where did you get that quote? Because you should mark that source as unreliable, since Mendez et al. did not conclude that. Instead, they said (my emphasis):
It is tempting to speculate that some of these mutations might have led to genetic incompatibilities between modern humans and Neandertals and to the consequent loss of Neandertal Y chromosomes in modern human populations.
It appears to be a blog containing articles from undergrads enrolled in the introductory archaeology class at Vassar. It’s definitely a case of some undergrads misrepresenting a speculative suggestion as a supported conclusion.
One further quote from the Mendez paper:
As always, the prudent thing to do is go to the primary source.
When you do Bill’s work for him it ruins my fun!
Of course it’s always possible that all introgression from the Neanderthal to the H. sapiens population involved H. sapiens fathers and Neanderthal mothers. Anybody ever read Bjorn Kurten’s novels about this?
Or Neanderthal fathers and H. sap mothers where only the female offspring survived pregnancy.
I haven’t read his books. If my adolescent memory serves, there was a bit of a pre-historic human trend in media in the 80’s/90’s.
Jeanson, naturally, ignores the evidence that those sequences are perfectly valid, like having coverage comparable to his “high quality” studies from which he pulls mutation rates in Traced, and the expected levels of fragmentation and cytosine-to-uracil enrichment for sequences of that age. There’s no technical reason to reject the validity of neanderthal and other ancient DNA sequences, and other YECs, like Rob Carter, agree.
But they completely wreck Jeanson’s model. So out they must go.
So his argument is, “if you do the wrong analysis with the right data, you get the wrong result, so the data must be wrong”? If so, that’s inane.
When you challenge the validity of data because it contradicts your conclusions then it isn’t the data that is invalid.
You calling this method insane?
“By definition, no apparent, perceived, or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record.”
Then you’re right.
Bill Cole says you only say that because you have no real comprehension of Jeanson’s model. What with it’s “wonky things pre-flood” and all that he might have a point.
Haldane’s rule?
How are you sure these ancient sequences are valid? There may be other reasons to reject these sequences depending on the model you are testing.
Yeah, not like I’ve read and annotated everything he’s published since 2015 or so.
This “you don’t understand his work”, or even better, “you haven’t actually read the work you are critiquing” is weak sauce. If my characterization of his methods and conclusions is off base, anyone up to and including Jeanson can correct me. Nobody has, because I am accurately characterizing his work.
It’s only when we get to the “therefore this is hilariously wrong” that YECs raise an objection, but instead of justifying the conclusions, we get what amount to vague accusations of ignorance or dishonesty.
But maybe @colewd would like to be specific. What, specifically, am I and/or other critics getting wrong/mischaracterizing/misrepresenting about Jeanson’s work?
You reference a paper that accepts the sequences as valid. If the sequences were not valid, then how could they conclude that there were specific mutations in specific genes?
I think he needs to show real comprehension of his hypothesis first. Hopefully that will surface in his write up. In the discussion he was just trying to understand Jeanson’s hypothesis. He had some alternative looks at the data that supported a longer time frame but it was not clear which data was more likely to be correct.
@colewd how about you tell exactly what I’m missing when it comes to Jeanson’s work. Recall that when I spoke with him, he agreed with my characterizations of, for example, his 3-node tree (could have been “something wonky pre-flood”), his branch-counting method (yes, he’s saying everyone who does such techniques for a living are wrong, no reason given beyond his population curves), and the mutation rate/substation rate business (“yes, I’m using a per generation mutation rate as a substation rate”). So what am I missing, unclear about, etc. in my understanding of Jeanson’s work, specifically?
Correct, if both those pronouns refer to Jeanson. Otherwise, no. Do you understand that the antiquity of the human lineage rests on much more than the genetic data? And also on much more genetic data than Jeanson is willing to look at?
Do you realize that his rooting of the tree depends entirely on the assumption that the number of branches over time is proportional to population size, and that this assumption is not true? Do you realize that his fit of the tree to population size depends on an arbitrary scaling of that proportion?