Neanderthals

That would be natural selection. Either we were sufficiently adapted and they were not, or else we were just lucky. Because language is the prerequisite for all those things, and it took a very, very long time for hominds to develop language.After all, without language, everything you know dies with you. How could technology or science advance under such a condition? But once we had complex, symbolic language, those things took off like a rocket.

I don't understand what you want evidence for. Species go extinct. Is this something you deny? Do you want evidence that species we evolved from are extinct? Or what? I don't understand what you're asking for evidence for. Huh? If you don't have language, how do you pass knowledge on to anybody else? That's as dumb as saying "you can be alive if your ancestors are dead. Your grandfather is dead, therefore you don't exist."Are you thinking these things through before you write them? It doesn't sound like you are. What are you even talking about?I said that, in a population where nobody has language, knowledge can' be passed on. Therefore anything an individual learns dies when he does, so the population as a whole doesn't advance. But when individuals can pass on information to others, then the population can advance because learning persists beyond the lifetime of the individual.You may need to read a little harder. You're clearly misunderstanding what I'm trying to tell you.

Well, yes. Observational learning could be taken as a kind of transfer of technique. On the other hand, some things can't be learned through observation. For instance, I can't communicate a map through observational learning, though I could take you to the fruit tree to show you where it is. But we wouldn't be able to plan a trip there, for instance.

Because there's a hundred thousand reasons that species become extinct. Most of them don't leave evidence. Most of the time, we have to guess why they went extinct.But so what? Why does it matter why this or that species went extinct? They're extinct. End of story.It's like asking "why did Jim win the lottery, and not Steve? They both bought tickets! They even live on the same block!" It doesn't matter. Some things happen at random. Species exitinction can be one of those things. Because they didn't. It's like asking "why did the coin land heads and not tails?" It's a meaningless question because it assumes purpose where there is none.

It is, because you don't understand why your question is pointless. I can only assume that it's because you have a deep misunderstanding of what evolution is, and how scientists think humans came to be. Yes, and the simple answer is, why wouldn't they? I'm sorry if you're seeing these as non-answers, but you're asking non-questions. No, it's really not. Fossilization is rare for land animals. Skeletons decay quickly under all but very specific conditions. Oh, it's not all guessing. But what you're asking is "where's the evidence for the non-existence of certain individuals?" But how can you have evidence of something not existing?You're asking me to tell you why a given species went extinct. Well, I'll be honest - I can't tell you, because many of the things that cause extinction - and there are many - don't leave evidence.If there's no evidence to point to the cause of the extinction, though, that's not evidence that the extinction didn't happen, or something. It simply means that any scenario we come up with will be mostly guesswork until we can find some hard evidence.I just don't understand what you think you've gained, here, or what you think I've "admitted". Scientists don't know everything. We're only human, after all. And not everything that happens leaves evidence for us to find. If it surprises you to find this out then you just don't know the first thing about science, the scientific method, or evolution.

Ah, ok. Now I understand. See, your question hasn't really been clear till now.The reason they went extinct and we didn't is because they lived in the wrong place. When what we call humans arose, they did so through a process of geographical isolation - what happened was, a population of just-almost-humans (whatever you want to call them) diverged from the main population and moved to another place. Isolated from their original population they experienced genetic drift and mutation until they were a separate species altogether.But then a radical climate change occured and food sources were lost. The original population starved to death and went extinct. The other population nearly went extinct - they were down to some 10,000 individuals - but survived by being in the right place at the right time.Does that answer your question?

I would step in and point out here that "maybe" and "it could have been that" are inherent in any human endeavor to understand the past - especially times in the past where no human was.Can you name a single field that looks into the unobservable past and does so without any uncertainty whatsoever? I mean, surely you don't demand total certainty from the history books you read, so why the double standard with evolution?

Yeah, you know how they did that? (This was the Greeks, by the way.) Through a process of acquisition of evidence and testing hypotheses. It was known that ships sailing over the horizon disappeared from the bottom up. It didn't take Greek thinkers too long to figure out why that might be.They certainly didn't look it up in a 3000-year-old book and proclaim it as the truth. They opened their eyes to the evidence before them and used their minds. Yeah, yeah. They laughed at Einstein. But you know what? They also laughed at Bozo the Clown.Being laughed-at doesn't mean you're right. In fact, 99% of the time it means you're totally wrong. But nobody bothers to keep track of the idiots. As a friend of mine once said, "It's not too difficult to come up with wrong ideas."But anyway, I wasn't talking about recorded history. I was talking about unrecorded history. When it's human events, do you have a problem with guesswork? If not, then why the beef when scientists make a guess about events that we know happened, but have left no evidence as to how they happened?

Well, your opinion is totally irrelevant to historical science.I mean, consider coming home and finding a broken teapot on your floor. You know it's broken - you're looking at it! But do you know how? You could try and find out, but your brother and sister were home at the time and neither one of them are talking. So, there's two explanations for the teapot situation. But you don't have to know which one of your siblings broke it to know that it's broken.

No, actually, I wouldn't. I would say "The teapot was broken. How? Historians are uncertain. Perhaps the siblings. Perhaps cosmic rays. We may very well never know." I would cretainly never try to pass conjecture as fact. The teapot is broken. That's a fact. Any attempt to explain how is conjecture (so long as there's a lack of evidence), of course, but that the teapot broke is incontrovertable. And if all we care about is teapots, then how it broke is rather irrelevant.The point I was trying to make was that you appeared to take the statement "Historians are uncertain as to how the teapot was broken" as evidence that the teapot may not have been broken after all. A clearly false inference.

No, we discuss it all the time. Because it's a hoax. It's not a plesiosaur at all, it's a misleading photo of a well-rotted basking shark. DNA tests confirm it. But I suppose your source didn't mention that, did they?So, it doesn't get addressed by those who believe in evolution because we're better informed than creationists. I suggest you become better informed, as well. Interesting, I guess you'd already heard the rebuttal. What you don't explain of course is why it has the DNA of a basking shark if it's really a plesiosaur.Sure, it looks more like a plesiosaur than a healthy basking shark. On the other hand it looks very, very much like a rotting basking shark, because that's what it is. Huh? If it's real, it's a fact. How could you have a real fiction? Do you think about your statements before you write them?

Yes, I made an erroneous claim. I thought I had remembered DNA testing but I remembered wrong. Sorry to be misleading.On the other hand, protien analysis is as damning as DNA would have been. It's a basking shark because it has unique shark protiens.

I think you can. What possible interest would Japanese fishermen have in covering up evidence to "protect" evolution? What could possibly motivate them to do so?Furthermore, the fact that they threw it back - suggesting a lack of interest - is evidence against it being a marine reptile. I mean, we can assume fishermen have at least a passing familiarity with ocean life. If they thought the carcass was simply a rotting shark, isn't it reasonable to assume they know what they're talking about?If the fisherman had thought it was an important living fossil (well, not quite living), wouldn't they have kept it?

Fascinating, but I'm not sure what it has to do with my point that while our species may be hundreds of thousands of years old, the reason we only see great progress in the past couple thousand is because that's how old language is. You can't have civilization without language.For some reason Rabair thought this was a stupid thing to say. It may be stupid to point it out, as it's rather obvious, but Rabair seemed like somebody you had to point the obvious out to. That may very well be true. I have not myself seen sufficient evidence to confirm any hypothesis as to the fate of Neanderthals, but I favor the hypothesis that they merged into the modern human gene pool. Seems more optimisic, somehow. Plus I think I know a few modern-day Neanderthals, so they can't all be gone.

Yes. I don't recall saying anything to the contrary, but maybe I forgot. If I equivocated "language" and "speech" it's because ASL is equivalent to speech in my mind.Clearly gestures would have played as important a role in early communication as they do in modern communication, if not more.Anyway the precise reason that Rabair thinks it's stupid to point out that civilization requires language is known only to him.