Dating Homo Sapiens

Reporting on an article in the online November Public Library of Science (PloS) Biology, "Evolution's Buggy Ride: Lice leap boldly into human-origins fray" (Science News v. 166, Oct. 9, 2004, p. 230) describes a study of human body/head lice that the researchers say indicates that "Physical contact occurred between H. erectus and H. sapiens, probably in eastern Asia between 50,000 and 25,000 years ago.

This is because their study of mitochondrial DNA has led them to believe that the two lineages of lice that infest our heads "diverged about 1.18 million years ago." They also believe their data "indicated that the louse lineage with the global distribution experienced a population decline around 100,000 years ago. That roughly coincided with a population decline of modern H. sapiens..."

The lesser lineage that had jumped ship from the extinct line "now lives only in the Americas, apparently after having been transported by Asian migrants during the late Stone Age." Interesting, but even other evolutionists question the validity of "dating" things by assuming random changes in mitochondrial DNA, and an earlier analysis didn't come up with the two separate lineages.

Until Next Time,

David Bump
Philippians 3: 13 Brethren, I
count not myself to have
apprehended: but [this] one thing
[I do], forgetting those things
which are behind, and reaching
forth unto those things which are
before, 14 I press toward the
mark for the prize of the high
calling of God in Christ Jesus.

http://home.att.net/~david.bump