Grandparents!
A lovely posting on talk.origins which gives some idea ot the timescales involved in evolutionary processes.
A few days ago, "Joe Cool", joecool1986@hotmail.com wrote the
following;
>man, if you want to believe your great^100 grandpa was a rock, be my
>guest...but it's STUPID!
(Great x 100?) Well yes, that would be pretty stupid. Clearly you
don't have an adequate grasp of either the actual concept of
evolutionary ancestry or of the significant time factors involved. I
think you need a whole lot more zeros as well as a more realistic
ultimate original entity.
I figure at 20 years per generation, 100 generations of grandfathers
would equate to twenty centuries. That means the grandpa you're
talking about was a contemporary of rabba Yeshua bar Yosseff just
2,000 years ago. Not quite an adequate evolutionary time-scale and
certainly far from the mark when talking about the origin of life on
Earth. But even 100 years ago, 16 years per generation was more the
norm as it was with my grandparents and many of their ancestors. That
would have put your great^100 grandpa in the time of another wildly
exaggerated hero, King Arthur, the other "once and future king" in
about the 5th century of the common era.
Increasing the multiple, your great^1,000 grandpa would have had even
shorter generation gaps, being about 14 or 15 years apart on average.
He would have been a Paleolithic nomad in about 13,000 BCE, just
shortly before the foundation of the most ancient cities like Jericho
and Damascus. He still would have been fully human and already a
member of the only surviving human species, Homo sapiens.
Your great^10,000 grandpa would have been everyone else's great
grandpa too. (Everyone alive today that is) He would still have been
definitely human and visibly different from his Neanderthal neighbors.
Whether he would be considered Homo sapiens yet 140,000 years ago or
still classified as Homo, antessesor or heidelbergensis doesn't really
matter. All are still obviously people and no more ape-like than any
of the more isolated aboriginal primatives still around today.
Your great^100,000 grandpa might now be called Homo ergaster or
erectus having lived some 1.3 million years ago. And his great^10,000
grandfathers would have been called Homo habilis or rudolfensis. Any
or all of them would have appeared to be a bit more ape-like than the
most monkey-faced modern guy, but he still would have been definitely
human, especially when compared to the other fully bi-pedal apes that
were wandering around a million and-a-half to a couple million years
ago. If you were to put your erectine or habiline grandpa on a
crowded pew in your church, he would have looked like an ape-man. But
if you saw him amongst his natural neighbors, the paranthropines, you
would have seen him as nothing less than a man. However, the
generations would be shorter, now being something like 13 or 12 years
apart on average.
Your great^1 million grandpa on the other hand is quite a leap away
from Homo erectus. A lot can happen in 900,000 generations and the
world was much different 10 million years ago. There were no definite
humans yet, but there were other hominids even though none of them
could walk on two legs for very long. There were creatures similar to
modern gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans, but they were different
than the ones we have today. One of the orangs for example stood as
much as 8 feet tall. And the space between generations would have
been only eight to ten years and much less as time goes on in reverse.
At six or seven years between generations, your great^10 million
grandpa would have been barely recognizable as a primate, looking
almost as much like a squirrel. And he might have witnessed the
demise of the dinosaurs, or he would have grown up in the harsh
wasteland that was the wake of the KT impact for so many years. Now
the generation gap really begins to close. For most of the Mesozoic
era and a long time before that, the age difference between father and
son would only be about a year.
Your great^100 million grandpa was a shrew-like mammal darting through
the Jurassic underbrush 170 million years ago. The amniotic sacs his
children were born in didn't have quite the same integrity that his
grandfather's birth-sacs had. Although leathery and easily torn, they
would still have been considered egg "shells" much like some snakes
are born in today. This grandpa would have been mammalian, but not
yet placental.
Your great^1 billion grandpa would have lived under water along with
everything else, including trilobites and some really alien beasties a
few hundred million years ago and at least a couple hundred million
years before the first dinosaur. The generation gap is now a monthy
rather than yearly division. But for most of the last half-billion
years of our geneology, that wasn't the case. In 400 million years,
your ancestors went from toothy swimming worms like conodonts and
pikia and became crossopterygiian fish and then tetrapoidal
amphibians, synapsid reptiles and even amniotic proto-mammalian
cynodonts. But the generations before that were infinitely less
interesting.
The world of your great^10 billion grandfather wasn't much different
than that which was already discribed, although there were a lot fewer
trilobites then. And he wasn't a swimming worm yet. He would have
been a roundworm, if he would have been considered a worm at all. He
may have looked more like a jellyfish with a sense of direction.
Before that, he may have been something even simpler, like a microbial
sponge, but still definitely a metazoic animal even if he wasn't
really a "he" in the sense of discernable gender anymore.
Your great^100 billion grandfather may not have been an animal yet,
but a kind of slime-mould, which is still a eukaryotic organism.
Your great^1 trillion grandfather would have been bacteria and your
great^10 trillion grandfather would have been bacterial too. Your
great^100 trillion grandfather may have been an even simpler
replicative protien in an inhospitable world unrecognizeable as Earth,
but none of your ancestry would ever have been rocks. Rocks tend not
to reproduce for some reason and therefore cannot evolve.
Aron-Ra
A few days ago, "Joe Cool", joecool1986@hotmail.com wrote the
following;
>man, if you want to believe your great^100 grandpa was a rock, be my
>guest...but it's STUPID!
(Great x 100?) Well yes, that would be pretty stupid. Clearly you
don't have an adequate grasp of either the actual concept of
evolutionary ancestry or of the significant time factors involved. I
think you need a whole lot more zeros as well as a more realistic
ultimate original entity.
I figure at 20 years per generation, 100 generations of grandfathers
would equate to twenty centuries. That means the grandpa you're
talking about was a contemporary of rabba Yeshua bar Yosseff just
2,000 years ago. Not quite an adequate evolutionary time-scale and
certainly far from the mark when talking about the origin of life on
Earth. But even 100 years ago, 16 years per generation was more the
norm as it was with my grandparents and many of their ancestors. That
would have put your great^100 grandpa in the time of another wildly
exaggerated hero, King Arthur, the other "once and future king" in
about the 5th century of the common era.
Increasing the multiple, your great^1,000 grandpa would have had even
shorter generation gaps, being about 14 or 15 years apart on average.
He would have been a Paleolithic nomad in about 13,000 BCE, just
shortly before the foundation of the most ancient cities like Jericho
and Damascus. He still would have been fully human and already a
member of the only surviving human species, Homo sapiens.
Your great^10,000 grandpa would have been everyone else's great
grandpa too. (Everyone alive today that is) He would still have been
definitely human and visibly different from his Neanderthal neighbors.
Whether he would be considered Homo sapiens yet 140,000 years ago or
still classified as Homo, antessesor or heidelbergensis doesn't really
matter. All are still obviously people and no more ape-like than any
of the more isolated aboriginal primatives still around today.
Your great^100,000 grandpa might now be called Homo ergaster or
erectus having lived some 1.3 million years ago. And his great^10,000
grandfathers would have been called Homo habilis or rudolfensis. Any
or all of them would have appeared to be a bit more ape-like than the
most monkey-faced modern guy, but he still would have been definitely
human, especially when compared to the other fully bi-pedal apes that
were wandering around a million and-a-half to a couple million years
ago. If you were to put your erectine or habiline grandpa on a
crowded pew in your church, he would have looked like an ape-man. But
if you saw him amongst his natural neighbors, the paranthropines, you
would have seen him as nothing less than a man. However, the
generations would be shorter, now being something like 13 or 12 years
apart on average.
Your great^1 million grandpa on the other hand is quite a leap away
from Homo erectus. A lot can happen in 900,000 generations and the
world was much different 10 million years ago. There were no definite
humans yet, but there were other hominids even though none of them
could walk on two legs for very long. There were creatures similar to
modern gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans, but they were different
than the ones we have today. One of the orangs for example stood as
much as 8 feet tall. And the space between generations would have
been only eight to ten years and much less as time goes on in reverse.
At six or seven years between generations, your great^10 million
grandpa would have been barely recognizable as a primate, looking
almost as much like a squirrel. And he might have witnessed the
demise of the dinosaurs, or he would have grown up in the harsh
wasteland that was the wake of the KT impact for so many years. Now
the generation gap really begins to close. For most of the Mesozoic
era and a long time before that, the age difference between father and
son would only be about a year.
Your great^100 million grandpa was a shrew-like mammal darting through
the Jurassic underbrush 170 million years ago. The amniotic sacs his
children were born in didn't have quite the same integrity that his
grandfather's birth-sacs had. Although leathery and easily torn, they
would still have been considered egg "shells" much like some snakes
are born in today. This grandpa would have been mammalian, but not
yet placental.
Your great^1 billion grandpa would have lived under water along with
everything else, including trilobites and some really alien beasties a
few hundred million years ago and at least a couple hundred million
years before the first dinosaur. The generation gap is now a monthy
rather than yearly division. But for most of the last half-billion
years of our geneology, that wasn't the case. In 400 million years,
your ancestors went from toothy swimming worms like conodonts and
pikia and became crossopterygiian fish and then tetrapoidal
amphibians, synapsid reptiles and even amniotic proto-mammalian
cynodonts. But the generations before that were infinitely less
interesting.
The world of your great^10 billion grandfather wasn't much different
than that which was already discribed, although there were a lot fewer
trilobites then. And he wasn't a swimming worm yet. He would have
been a roundworm, if he would have been considered a worm at all. He
may have looked more like a jellyfish with a sense of direction.
Before that, he may have been something even simpler, like a microbial
sponge, but still definitely a metazoic animal even if he wasn't
really a "he" in the sense of discernable gender anymore.
Your great^100 billion grandfather may not have been an animal yet,
but a kind of slime-mould, which is still a eukaryotic organism.
Your great^1 trillion grandfather would have been bacteria and your
great^10 trillion grandfather would have been bacterial too. Your
great^100 trillion grandfather may have been an even simpler
replicative protien in an inhospitable world unrecognizeable as Earth,
but none of your ancestry would ever have been rocks. Rocks tend not
to reproduce for some reason and therefore cannot evolve.
Aron-Ra