Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon

Hi Volunteer,I think Dwise1 was just trying to indicate that much of your Message 64 contained false information. For example: Darwin didn't publish Origin of Species until 1859, so Huxley is very unlikely to have expressed sentiments like this in 1856, or ever, for that matter. Since Virchow died in 1902, he is unlikely to have written an article in Science Digest in 1971, 69 years after his death. Dwise1 provides you the correct information when he tells you that Virchow rendered his opinion on the first Neanderthal fossil, not to claim that the differences from modern humans were the result of rickets, but just that this Neanderthal individual might have had rickets in childhood. Virchow was a leading rickets expert of the day. The many, many Neanderthal fossils discovered and examined since that time over 140 years ago clearly indicate that the Neanderthals were a separate and unique species, and modern DNA analyses (which Mammuthus mentioned in Message 1) have confirmed this view. Yes, of course, they were Homo sapiens, and while not exactly like us very, very similar. What in the world led you to conclude that Mammuthus was saying anything else? Here's a quote from the passage Mammuthus cited in Message 1: Given that Mammuthus was citing an article pointing out how similar Cro-Magnon man was to modern man, even calling them "anatomically modern Homo sapiens sapiens", why in the world would you write a rebuttal as if it had said the opposite?--Percy

EvC Forum has a set of Forum Guidelines that encourage civility in discussion, but that doesn't mean people have to withhold guffaws when outrageously boneheaded arguments are made. Being told you are wrong and are being duped by Creationist websites authored by people who probably know less than you do isn't getting personal. Is this how you reacted when teachers handed back your test papers? "Look, teach, you marked these answers wrong, and I don't appreciate your getting personal." Besides, this is an Internet discussion board, not a meticulously formal debate conducted within hallowed halls.--Percy

What, you're illiterate? Blind? We assumed you were reading the replies. One more time...It is unlikely for Huxley to have ever expressed such sentiments as, "Neanderthal bones belonged to people and did not prove evolution," as you claimed in Message 64, certainly not in 1856 as your originally claimed, and not even in the 1860 debate you just mentioned. In his 1863 book Man's Place in Nature he stated his opinion that Neanderthals, while possessing a number of differentiating features from modern men, were not so different that they couldn't as members of our own species, but he counted the differences as evidence of recent evolution in Homo sapiens. What on earth gave you the idea that Huxley, "ardent evolutionist and defender of Darwin" (your own words), would argue against evolution.Rudolf Virchow was long dead by the time of the 1971 Science Digest article you mentioned, and he never claimed that the Neanderthal specimen he examined was a human with rickets. He was a leading expert on rickets and merely noted that the Neanderthal had evidence of having had rickets as a child."Einstein and all physicists" were not wrong about the second law of thermodynamics. Einstein never had any defining role in thermodynamics that I'm aware of. It sounds like you're confused about open and closed systems. The second law of thermodynamics can be expressed in terms of both open and closed systems. For a closed system we would say that the entropy of a closed system can never decrease. For an open system we would say that once the additions and subtractions of entropy crossing the system boundary are accounted for, the remaining entropy can never decrease. You're just very confused. It isn't Einstein and Huxley who are wrong but you. Either you're attributing to them things they never said and positions they never held, or you're misinterpreting things someone said about them.--Percy

As already noted, the 2nd law of thermodynamics is off-topic unless you can somehow tie it in with Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon man, but I can't help but wonder why you're asking if a fundamental law of physics is correct.I described the 2nd law in terms of entropy for both open and closed systems. Another way of thinking about the 2nd law is as the availability of energy in a system to perform work. Yet another way is in terms of heat where heat can only flow from hot to cold unless work is exerted to make it flow in the opposite direction.If you read at some Creationist website that the 2nd law of thermodynamics says that the universe is running down and that order and complexity can never increase, then they're lying to you about the 2nd law, but there's a kernel of truth in there. Closed systems can never decrease in entropy (entropy is the inverse of the ability to perform work), and if we consider the universe as a closed system then it is probably increasing in entropy (running out of available energy to do work), but not everywhere all the time. All it takes is the application of energy doing work to increase order and complexity, and the sun provides an enormous amount of energy to the earth every second. That's how sunlight turns seeds into trees, which couldn't happen if the universe were running down everywhere all the time.Again, this is off-topic. If you want to know more about thermodynamics, check out the Wikipedia's entry for the 2nd law. or join a thread discussing the 2nd law, or propose a new thread of your own.--Percy