I have heard for years who GAE was intended for. But I never heard of anyone say that the scientific evidence about human origins is more compelling or more acceptable because of GAE. YECs continue to spew their falsehoods under the guise of religion. Ken Ham continues to sell tickets to children to the anti-science Creation Museum and Ark Encounter. When is a large majority of Americans going to accept the real story of human origins? When is it going to be taught in every school without controversy?
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What does any of this have to do with neandertals?
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Because science curriculumâs in US schools do not teach the latest results of human origins. Evolution is taught but in a most general way. Very little time is spent on hominid evolution from Australopithecus to modern human including intermating with other human species of Neanderthals and Denisovans. Teaching this will give students a better understanding of how the human race across the Earth came to be and how present racial divide of humans is not in the biological or genetic record. The study of the history of humanity should start in Africa 2 million years and go to the 40,000 years ago when one intermingled species remain. Our species settlement of Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Americas from an Africa origin over the past 40,000 can clearly show how skin color was an adaptation to climate and vitamin D.
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In an ideal world I would certainly like to see more detailed coverage in many subjects of the typical high school curriculum, including the topics @Patrick has mentioned. (I consider Patrickâs topical description outstanding. Fascinating topics!) But the high school teachers I know all tell me the same thing: They are already constantly pressured to cover so much material in so little time while also attending to lots of duties and bureaucratic hassles which do nothing to enhance the student educational experience.
And teachers have the added stress of being called to the principalâs office to meet with complaining parentsâand even their attorneyâover some ridiculous thing that allegedly has offended the child or the parents. I keep hearing from those leaving the profession, âI wanted to educate kids but itâs just donât worth the hassle and my mental health.â One might assume that the troublesome parents are all hyper-fundamentalist conservatives offended at something said about evolution or Trump. Yes, those happen. But the stories I hear also run the gamut from the trans parent angry that a child wasnât properly called ze/zir to âharming my daughterâs mental health by flunking her from English Comp class.â
In my entire experience as a university professor, I only recall one instance where I met with the parents of a student. In that case I was the faculty advisor of a young lady who had quit attending classes and the parents were worried and confused (because she had performed so well in high school.) Nowadays, some undergrad professors have told me that it is not unusual for parents to accompany a student to a routine faculty-advisor meeting with a student to review their degree progress. That could actually be a positive thing if done for the right reasons and attitudes, I suppose. But it is certainly a change from my day in any case. But I would assume that it creates yet more potential for parents to complicate and pressure the educational process.
Patrick, I am mainly impressed at how much progress there has been in the understanding of human origins and migrations during my own lifetime. Pretty remarkable. I had not anticipated so many key discoveries made possible by DNA analysis. (And the costs of that analysis has plummeted.)
Most of all I would wish that students would pick up on the excitement that surrounds the progress in these fields. That includes the average person being able to easily find out how much Neanderthal DNA is in their genes. Very cool.
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I too am amazed at the progress in analyzing ancient DNA together with the millions of DNA sequences from alive people. To have ancient DNA that were a few generations from the mating of Neanderthals and Modern Humans is astounding. To learn about specific traits we get from Neanderthals like skin color and immune system really changes the discuss on real human history the past 40,000 years in Europe, Asia, and the rest of the world.
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You arenât really connecting the dots here. Some of the things you say are true, and some others may be true. But none of it makes any connection between neandertals and GAE.
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My claim that Neanderthals were the true historic GAEs of humanity has much more validity than the divinely created GAE conjectured here.
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No, it has exactly as much validity, since itâs evidence-free. And Iâm now wondering if you know what any of the letters in âGAEâ stand for. Your claim, and your point if thatâs the same as your claim, is opaque and seemingly incoherent.
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Since I carry Neanderthal genes does it mean that Neandertals were in my genealogy?
To my understanding, these would not be mutually exclusive alternatives.
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I presume it is possible to estimate, for any given time in prehistory, how many genealogical-but-not-genetic ancestors we (or somebody living 2000 years ago) would have had?
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Yes. Not only that, thereâs probably at least one neandertal, maybe many more, who are in the genealogy of all the people living 2000 years ago. But that still has exactly nothing to do with GAE. You get the G part, but thousands of others would also fit. Itâs the AE part thatâs the problem for you.
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What is the AE part that I am missing?
It stands for Adam and Eve. Those are two specific, if hypothetical, individuals who are in particular the two people in the bible story. They are not the same as the most recent common ancestor of all people or any of many other common ancestors of all people. If there are a GAE, they arenât your GAE; theyâre everyoneâs GAE. And if they existed, for which there is no evidence and by the nature of the scenario could be no evidence, they were almost certainly not neandertals. And finally, believing in their existence doesnât get in the way of accepting any of our evolutionary history.
I think that Patrick has a point apropos this whole Adam and Eve debate. Since, as Dr. Swamidass takes great pains to emphasize, GAE is completely consistent with human evolution, GAE is superfluous except to rationalize Genesis and preserve âoriginal sinâ in the twisted notion of original sin as inherited sin, a notion created by Augustine (of course) in the 5th century. No original sin, no need for Jesus. Christianity dies on the vine. Since I am relatively new to this blog, someone else may have pointed out this obvious asymmetry between evolution and GAE before and to them my apologies. But it seems pretty simple to meâŚ
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It seems like stating the obvious to me. GAE is an apologetic seeking to reconcile a created Adam and Eve with the genetic data. It is not intended to be science, only compatible with science without invoking any miracles beyond the miraculous creation it is trying to protect. It is not trying to convince anyone that there was a miraculously created Adam and Eve, only that the proposed scenario is compatible with our scientific knowledge.
To me the most important thing is that it is an honest and intellectually honest apologetic which does not slip into pseudoscience or obvious errors or falsehoods. Something that in my experience is very rare.
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I speak only for myself but I think that all knowledgeable participants in the forum, by which I mean those who have tried to understand the GAE and know what the letters stand for, agree with what you wrote. I suppose some would find the word âsuperfluousâ to be a bit dismissive, but tough.
I donât know what you mean by âasymmetryâ but will take a guess, which is that you are pointing to the difference between evolution, which is a vast comprehensive explanatory scientific endeavor/framework, and the GAE, which is a weird religious origins story that can be told without ignoring or misrepresenting science. That is one huge obvious asymmetry, but it has absolutely nothing to do with Neanderthals or ancient DNA, and itâs damned annoying to see repeated ignorant claims to the contrary.
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What would the genomes of the Swamidass GAE look like?
The point of GAE is that they wouldnât have an effect on the modern genome, since theyâre genealogical ancestors but not genetic ones. So we have no idea what their genomes would look like.
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Well, theyâre unlikely to be genetic ancestors. Itâs still possible, perhaps even likely, that some people may have some fraction of one or the other of their genomes. Or they could have been completely lost. No way to know. (Assuming they were real people, of course.)
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