Genesis and evolution

[puff]

A couple of weeks ago i spent an afternoon at the museum ,included in the displays was a exhibition on fossils , dinosaurs ect , i was trying to get my mind around the idea that anything could exist for 265 million years on this planet , then i saw some fossilised remains of shells , dated 460 million years , looking at the dinosaur fossils it struck me that they all looked simalar in skull design , thinking about it , snakes lizards frogs and crocs all have simalar designs showing a common ancestor way back , so i did a bit of research about snakes as they feature highly in ancient mystical beliefs and found that the oldest snake fossils date to 120 million years ago , interestingly snakes have developed a venom system which is very sophisticated , i was trying to figure out how chemicals could evolve in snake venom to know what chemicals will cause sudden death , well i did not get very far on that one , but heres where it gets interesting ,millions of years ago, snakes originaly did have legs , the stumps of these can still be found on boa,s today , thinking about the genesis story of the snake , it originaly has legs and is punished by god and made to go on his belly , i was wondering how the writer of genesis has been able to tap into a relevant evolutionary fact when forming the story , could it be that some ancient teachings were around that recorded the evolutionary process dating back millions of years .
other interesting ideas that go with this is i remember reading somewhere of of ancient cave paintings depicting dinosaurs , i believe these were found in south america , along with that is chinese mythology that depicts the dragon , which on the face of it looks very much like a dinosaur , could it be again the preserving of ancient knowledge of things which once existed in the dawn of time , perhaps some alantian society way back had recorded the things of the ancient past as we do know , and fragments of that knowledge coming down to us in mythology , i am getting far more interested in evolution , can anybody recomend any really good books to keep my brain nicely fried

[miss taken]

Puff. I just found this link on religioustolerance.org

http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_disp.htm

which was interesting...

I was recommended a really good book about some refutations to popular science on just how long humans have lived on the earth. (nothing to do with creationism)

(I have forgotten its name and will have to go on a hunt)

When you think about it, (I think Helemon posted a clever piece about it) everything we are made of is just re-used matter. Every rock and material we see has been here since the creation of the earth in one form or another, and even the tons of stardust that accumulate on the planet each year get re-cycled and re-used.

The thing I love about evolution is that it actually argues for stability and continuity with the occassional catastrophe to upset the status quo a little.

It's fascinating stuff.

[puff]

Puff. I just found this link on religioustolerance.org

http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_disp.htm

which was interesting...

I was recommended a really good book about some refutations to popular science on just how long humans have lived on the earth. (nothing to do with creationism)

(I have forgotten its name and will have to go on a hunt)

When you think about it, (I think Helemon posted a clever piece about it) everything we are made of is just re-used matter. Every rock and material we see has been here since the creation of the earth in one form or another, and even the tons of stardust that accumulate on the planet each year get re-cycled and re-used.

The thing I love about evolution is that it actually argues for stability and continuity with the occassional catastrophe to upset the status quo a little.

It's fascinating stuff.thanx for that , so the plot thickens , dinosaurs could have survived until quite recent times but left no fossil remains , i also wonder , being sort of dumb , how much weight can be really attached to carbon dating or whatever other measurments they use to measure time , along with this ,biology has traced human ancestory to just two people about 10,000 years ago , i would think that if modern humans really existed 200,000 years ago they would have left far more traces of civilisation than are presently evident , for that reason i surmise that present day humans have an ancestry no older than 12000 years , to my mind also , the fossil record of dinosaurs is coming to light far to easily for it to really be 70 m years old whatever , would they not be buried under tons of cosmic dust and be literaly miles underground , i also remeber reading in the paper about a saur find in utah which was well preserved enough to extract dna , as this article reads , dna can,t last more than 2000 years , now i,m trying to think , why would a dinosaur evole feathers , why not just get thicker skin , or blubber like a whale , and why have some species evolved like birds lay eggs , but others like frogs continued on with spawn , aparently a primitive method of recreation , all this is giving me a headache and i might soon need a puff .

[bobcat]

When thinking about the past, be sure to think of it in context, not necessarily in terms of what first comes to mind.

For example, with ancient civilizations. Yes, it's true that not much has survived from civilizations over 12,000 years ago. But, you must remember that these were often people that roamed around a lot, did a lot of hunting and gathering, etc. At best, they had wood and stone tools (no metal whatsoever). Wood decays easily, and stone tools are easily destroyed, both by nature and by normal use. These people lived in structures (made of animal/plant materials) that wouldn't likely survive the ravages of time.

And with dinosaurs and other fossils: you should consider the forces that uncover them. 70 million years of sediment and deposits would bury things deep, but fossils are often found in areas where earthquakes and volcanoes have pushed ancient rocks to the surface. That's why you find a lot of dinosaurs in mountainous regions, and not so often in plains or grasslands.

Now, this isn't to say that either of these things are completely proven. It's just to illustrate that it's important to consider what forces are at work, and what things might have contributed to our discoveries of things past.

As far as reading goes, Wikipedia's article on Evolution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution) might not be a bad place to start. It's full of good information, plenty of references, plus links to thousands of other relevant articles.

Good luck in your searches!

[miss taken]

Puff, It's been a long time, and there are those on this board who are more up with current thinking than me, but I took a course on evolution and prehistory at Uni.

Carbon dating is pretty good, and dendrochronology can also be used to date things quite accurately, as well as looking at ice samples over time.

It may be that Spielberg got it right and that the remnant of dinosaurs can be found today in birds, and there are certainly creatures around who have survived from that period. I think the shark is pretty early as is the alligator...??? (I'm not expert on this so someone would have to clarify)

The first evidence of civilisations come from places like Catayl Huyuk in Turkey, but there is evidence of human habitation in the form of hunter gatherers far earlier than that.

The fossil evidence suggests along with Neanderthal, that there were hominids roming this earth for millions of years...before modern humans make their appearance.

The evidence we don't have far exceeds the evidence that we do have. I guess we are looking only at the tip of the ice berg.

If my memory serves me right the DNA evidence also points to a small group of modern humans as the base group for many modern (but perhaps not all) humans.

Here's a link...

http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/ingman.html

Mary

[puff]

When thinking about the past, be sure to think of it in context, not necessarily in terms of what first comes to mind.

For example, with ancient civilizations. Yes, it's true that not much has survived from civilizations over 12,000 years ago. But, you must remember that these were often people that roamed around a lot, did a lot of hunting and gathering, etc. At best, they had wood and stone tools (no metal whatsoever). Wood decays easily, and stone tools are easily destroyed, both by nature and by normal use. These people lived in structures (made of animal/plant materials) that wouldn't likely survive the ravages of time.

And with dinosaurs and other fossils: you should consider the forces that uncover them. 70 million years of sediment and deposits would bury things deep, but fossils are often found in areas where earthquakes and volcanoes have pushed ancient rocks to the surface. That's why you find a lot of dinosaurs in mountainous regions, and not so often in plains or grasslands.

Now, this isn't to say that either of these things are completely proven. It's just to illustrate that it's important to consider what forces are at work, and what things might have contributed to our discoveries of things past.

As far as reading goes, Wikipedia's article on Evolution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution) might not be a bad place to start. It's full of good information, plenty of references, plus links to thousands of other relevant articles.

Good luck in your searches!200 , 000 years is a long time for people like us to be wandering around and produce nothing , look what has happened in the last 6000 years , to cut a long story short i think something has come along and either bumped up the intelligence rate of existing humans or introduced a new species , such as is depicted in genesis , the other intresting thing about genesis is how much of it seems to have advanced tech connections ,

the woman is created from dna samples of the man

the bodies are corupted through biological contamination

possibilities of restoring the body to imortality are seen (the tree of life, genetic engineering ) but are barred by cherubim and a flaming sword ( this knowledge shall not be revealed on earth until the apropriate time , the technological know how to make the body exist indefinetly )
to my mind theres all these links to some kind of advanced civilisation

[bobcat]

Puff, you're right, we have made a lot of progress in the last 6,000 to 12,000 years. It is entirely possible that "something" came along and accelerated the speed of development, whether that be God, aliens, some advanced civilization, or whatever. This is probably something that we'll never know for sure.

But, I find it more likely to think that humanity just languished in the stone age for so long because it took forever to stumble upon discoveries such as agriculture, pottery, and especially metalworking.

Agriculture may seem like common sense to us, but to Stone Age man, it probably wasn't a very attractive option when compared to hunting and gathering. In the latter system, he could just go FIND stuff. It was pretty straightforward work. And if the food ran out, he could just move on. This works for small populations, but as populations grew, hunting and gahtering becomes unfeaseable. Agriculture, which took a long time to be developed, is VERY difficult work. You have to stay in one place for months and months on end, necessitating strong dwellings and even defenses. You have to prepare fields, plant seeds, harvest the crops, process them into flour and other useful food stuffs, and then cook your food. It takes thousands upon thousands of hours a year. To me, it makes perfect sense that people didn't want to adopt agriculture until they absolutely had to.

Pottery, as I see it, would have been entirely useless until people actually settled down in one place. You can't lug giant pots around very easily. So we don't see pottery in the records until after people started settling down and practicing agriculture.

And metalworking... it's amazing it was ever discovered in the first place. Take bronze, for example. It requires a mixture of about 90% copper, and 10% tin. Copper is useless as a tool or weapon. Who would have ever thought to add tin to the mixture, since tin is in short supply throughout much of the ancient world? Discoveries like metalworking probably required a lot of luck to discover, which is why I don't doubt it took a couple hundred thousand years to stumble upon it.

The other evidene I see for these theories is that agriculture, pottery, and metalworking all spread from where they were developed (in the Middle East), slowly to the rest of the old world. For example, the Bronze Age in Greece started about 1300 years before the Bronze Age in Britain. At the time of Athens and Troy and Sparta, with huge bronze-clad armies, the Britons were still using rocks and sticks. Most of the great civlization-changing disoveries came from one, or at most a very few places, and slowly were taken to the rest of the world.

Anyway, this isn't an attempt to say you're wrong, puff. Just stating what I think about the whole thing. I'm not ruling out that something supernatural or spiritual happened to change the course of history, but rather stating that I think that there could be a very non-religious explanation too.

[helemon]

Anyway, this isn't an attempt to say you're wrong, puff. Just stating what I think about the whole thing. I'm not ruling out that something supernatural or spiritual happened to change the course of history, but rather stating that I think that there could be a very non-religious explanation too.

Another gift of agriculture that you failed to mention is writing. The large amounts of grain produced by agriculture and the trade that developed around it required a form of documenting how much grain had been produced and who had produced it. It is the discovery of writing which in my opinion has been the most profound discovery of human kind. With out writing people can only learn from those that they immediately come in contact with. Once language was converted into written form humans could learn from people who lived thousands of years ago or lived thousands of miles away. This ability to preserve and build upon the discoveries of others is what allows humanity to continue to advance and why the internet is having such a profound effect on our societies. I don't think humans are necessarily a lot smarter than before because of biological changes so much as the fact that we are able to learn so much from past research that we are able to achieve amazing things. But if we didn't have the knowledge passed down to us from our ancestors we would quickly revert to the hunter gatherer lifestyle of prehistory.

[bobcat]

Yeah, writing is another great example. Thanks for pointing that one out. Here's something trippy though. The Incas, a high culture up until the 16th Century, never invented writing. They used a system of knotted thread to keep track of numbers and commercial transactions, but they never wrote down any words. Just a bit of odd history trivia :D

[miss taken]

Yeah, writing is another great example. Thanks for pointing that one out. Here's something trippy though. The Incas, a high culture up until the 16th Century, never invented writing. They used a system of knotted thread to keep track of numbers and commercial transactions, but they never wrote down any words. Just a bit of odd history trivia :D


Which doesn't fit in with Book of Mormon history and culture...which suggests that they did have writing, since Lehi had brought it over with him in 600bc. I do agree with Thomas Murphy on this. (buy hey,....what do I know)

Mary

[helemon]

Yeah, writing is another great example. Thanks for pointing that one out. Here's something trippy though. The Incas, a high culture up until the 16th Century, never invented writing. They used a system of knotted thread to keep track of numbers and commercial transactions, but they never wrote down any words. Just a bit of odd history trivia :D

Those knots could still be considered a form of writing. There is no reason why all writing has to be done with a stylus on clay, stone, or fiber. The main point is that information was documented and could be passed on. This is not to say that complex society could not develop in societies with only an oral tradition, but I think writing facilitates advancement considerably when it is developed.

[helemon]

Which doesn't fit in with Book of Mormon history and culture...which suggests that they did have writing, since Lehi had brought it over with him in 600bc. I do agree with Thomas Murphy on this. (buy hey,....what do I know)

Mary

Putting on FARMS hat :D , the Hebrews had a tradition of tying knots on the skirts of their garments. These knots had various religious meaning. Thus it is clear that the knot writing of the Incas is strong evidence of Hebrew culture being demonstrated in the Americas.

[bobcat]

The knots were indicitive of numbers, though, and weren't of much use besides counting how many of something you had. You couldn't write a letter or record history using the knots. That's why it's not considered by most historians to be "writing".

But either way, the connection between the knots of the Hebrews and of the Incas is striking. Maybe I'll start going to church again because of that :P

[puff]

Puff, you're right, we have made a lot of progress in the last 6,000 to 12,000 years. It is entirely possible that "something" came along and accelerated the speed of development, whether that be God, aliens, some advanced civilization, or whatever. This is probably something that we'll never know for sure.

But, I find it more likely to think that humanity just languished in the stone age for so long because it took forever to stumble upon discoveries such as agriculture, pottery, and especially metalworking.

Agriculture may seem like common sense to us, but to Stone Age man, it probably wasn't a very attractive option when compared to hunting and gathering. In the latter system, he could just go FIND stuff. It was pretty straightforward work. And if the food ran out, he could just move on. This works for small populations, but as populations grew, hunting and gahtering becomes unfeaseable. Agriculture, which took a long time to be developed, is VERY difficult work. You have to stay in one place for months and months on end, necessitating strong dwellings and even defenses. You have to prepare fields, plant seeds, harvest the crops, process them into flour and other useful food stuffs, and then cook your food. It takes thousands upon thousands of hours a year. To me, it makes perfect sense that people didn't want to adopt agriculture until they absolutely had to.

Pottery, as I see it, would have been entirely useless until people actually settled down in one place. You can't lug giant pots around very easily. So we don't see pottery in the records until after people started settling down and practicing agriculture.

And metalworking... it's amazing it was ever discovered in the first place. Take bronze, for example. It requires a mixture of about 90% copper, and 10% tin. Copper is useless as a tool or weapon. Who would have ever thought to add tin to the mixture, since tin is in short supply throughout much of the ancient world? Discoveries like metalworking probably required a lot of luck to discover, which is why I don't doubt it took a couple hundred thousand years to stumble upon it.

The other evidene I see for these theories is that agriculture, pottery, and metalworking all spread from where they were developed (in the Middle East), slowly to the rest of the old world. For example, the Bronze Age in Greece started about 1300 years before the Bronze Age in Britain. At the time of Athens and Troy and Sparta, with huge bronze-clad armies, the Britons were still using rocks and sticks. Most of the great civlization-changing disoveries came from one, or at most a very few places, and slowly were taken to the rest of the world.

Anyway, this isn't an attempt to say you're wrong, puff. Just stating what I think about the whole thing. I'm not ruling out that something supernatural or spiritual happened to change the course of history, but rather stating that I think that there could be a very non-religious explanation too.well you have obviously done lots of study on it , which is good cause i,m learning from it , but your right , smelting metals would have been a hard thing to learn from scratch , even thinking that something like that exists in the earth , extracting it , making fire hot enough to melt it and like you say tin was rare .
another interesting angle is the ancient book of enoch that was found in ethiopia in the 1830,s , it has quite an interesting story , angels were sent to be watchers over the earth , they saw how beautiful the women were and ended up mating with them therby comiting an unpardonable sin ( upsetting the genetic code ) , the descendant of these unlawful connection were way superior to the original inhabitants and were called giants , along with this they taught all kinds of arts to the children of men , metalurgy and use of herbs were two of them , after this there began to be great violence and wars , eventually god sent a great flood , killing of all the descendants of the angels and cleansing the earth , perhaps the most interesting thing about this story was that the angels were physical beings and capable of pro recreation with mortals , quite a change from usual mystical spiritualism