Did humans descend from other primates?

[McCulloch]

Man did not descend from the primates.

Did humans descend from other primates?
Are humans primates or should there be special biological taxonomy for humanity?
Please cite evidence.

[BlackCat13]

Radiometric dating cannot be done on a rock. Which your biface, however old it may or may not be, is. It would have to be done on traces of organic material, ie coal, burnt wood, bone that is not fossilized, etc.

Beyond that, as an anthropology major with archaeological experience, without the context that surrounded your biface, if it was dug up from under ground, is useless, worthless. A shiny (or not so shiny, since it is a normal rock) bauble. If it is old, it would be a good find, pretty good quality, but without historical context...nadda. It can't be dated and no good data can be gathered from it.

Of course, in some areas, arrow heads and bifaces are a dime a dozen, and fragments even more so. They're so frequent, without their historical context produced from the soil levels they're dug up from...whoopdeedo. Just another little smooth rock.

[Grumpy]

All the Carbon 14 will not be gone in 50,000 years. It's just that the level of C14 is too low to accurately measure. There will still be trace amounts of C14 after a million years.

Water carries C14 down into coal fields, this is so variable as to be useless in determining ages. It is considered contamination.

Bacteria exist in the rocks MILES below the surface.

Radioactive elements can form C14 as a biproduct of breakdown.

Grumpy

[nygreenguy]

Radiometric dating cannot be done on a rock. Which your biface, however old it may or may not be, is. It would have to be done on traces of organic material, ie coal, burnt wood, bone that is not fossilized, etc.

Actually, you are talking about radiocarbon dating. Other forms of radiometric dating are done on rocks!

[flitzerbiest]

Radiometric dating cannot be done on a rock. Which your biface, however old it may or may not be, is. It would have to be done on traces of organic material, ie coal, burnt wood, bone that is not fossilized, etc.

Actually, you are talking about radiocarbon dating. Other forms of radiometric dating are done on rocks!

Beat me to it. K-Ar (Potassium-Argon) dating is exclusively done on rocks.

[BlackCat13]

Radiometric dating cannot be done on a rock. Which your biface, however old it may or may not be, is. It would have to be done on traces of organic material, ie coal, burnt wood, bone that is not fossilized, etc.

Actually, you are talking about radiocarbon dating. Other forms of radiometric dating are done on rocks!

Beat me to it. K-Ar (Potassium-Argon) dating is exclusively done on rocks.

I apologize. You are right, I used the wrong term. Carbon dating was referred to as radiometric dating earlier in the thread, of which it is a variety of. My brain's somewhat frazzled by the semester, and isn't always working entirely correctly, lol.

All forms of radiometric dating are extremely expensive, and therefore only used on very good samples, that are guaranteed (as guaranteed as anything can get) to produce a result. Therefore, in archaeology, the method of studying the soil strata and guess-timating (within a surprisingly accurate time period) the time.

[otseng]

Jeez man, do your research before making outlandish claims.

Responses to you will wait until you can make civil responses.

Well its this thing, you may or may not have heard of it, its called water. It moves. Mostly in a downward direction.

A little sarcasm there?

Please present evidence that water saturated with bacteria can travel down hundreds/thousands feet deep of rock and infuse coal, oil, and diamonds. And do it within a single bacterial lifespan.

Also, here is test. All rocks above coal and oil deposits should contain such bacteria with C14. And it should be detectable. As a matter of fact, if it is tested for C14, the concentration of C14 would be higher than those found in the coal and oil deposits since there would be fewer C12 in the rocks above it. Here's my prediction, rather than C14 concentration being higher, C14 will be negligible in rocks above coal and oil deposits.

Beyond that, as an anthropology major with archaeological experience, without the context that surrounded your biface, if it was dug up from under ground, is useless, worthless. A shiny (or not so shiny, since it is a normal rock) bauble. If it is old, it would be a good find, pretty good quality, but without historical context...nadda. It can't be dated and no good data can be gathered from it.

I did not come up with a date for the biface that I bought. It came with the rock from the dealer that I bought it from. I don't claim to be able to date anything just by looking at it.

All the Carbon 14 will not be gone in 50,000 years. It's just that the level of C14 is too low to accurately measure. There will still be trace amounts of C14 after a million years.

There could be trace amounts after millions of years, but it would be undetectable. Goat stated "The theoretical limit of carbon dating is 50,000 years, although very few labs will give a result if it's older than 30,000." I've seen other dates for the theoretical limit, but all are on the order of tens of thousands of years.

[blueandwhite]

"Please present evidence that water saturated with bacteria can travel down hundreds/thousands feet deep of rock and infuse coal, oil, and diamonds. And do it within a single bacterial lifespan."

Ok see, water seeps downward. It formes underground channels and things like that, in some cases down great distances.

Also, consiser that one culture of bacteria can continue to suvive for an infinite amount of time in proper conditions. So there is no "life span" issue to worry about.

"All rocks above coal and oil deposits should contain such bacteria with C14. And it should be detectable. As a matter of fact, if it is tested for C14, the concentration of C14 would be higher than those found in the coal and oil deposits since there would be fewer C12 in the rocks above it. Here's my prediction, rather than C14 concentration being higher, C14 will be negligible in rocks above coal and oil deposits."

Well that may or may not be the case. If the oil and coal deposits are better environments for bacterial growth then you may be right, but not for the reasons you suspect.

On a sidenote, I have been studying science for quite some time, and know a few geological engineers, and I have never heard of a phenomena where there is an abundance of C14 in coal and oil deposits. Are we talking about a regular phenomena or a chance occurance that was found once at one period of time?

[Grumpy]

otseng

There could be trace amounts after millions of years, but it would be undetectable. Goat stated "The theoretical limit of carbon dating is 50,000 years, although very few labs will give a result if it's older than 30,000." I've seen other dates for the theoretical limit, but all are on the order of tens of thousands of years.

It's called "half life" in that half will deteriorate in a certain time. The C14 is still detectable after a million years, but with so few atoms it is not distinguishable with enough accuracy to be valid for determining age.

And cosmic rays are not the only form of radiation that can form C14 from normal carbon, so there is always a "background" C14 count that the cosmic ray formed type disappears into over time. "Noise" such as this is what limits the effective period of time for carbon dating.

And bacteria do not have to trickle down from the surface, water will carry dissolved CO2 down to where the bacteria live.

[nygreenguy]

Jeez man, do your research before making outlandish claims.

Responses to you will wait until you can make civil responses.

You don't think its a bit insulting to us that you don't even bother to put in some effort to learn about the stuff you are debating?

For example:

Please present evidence that water saturated with bacteria can travel down hundreds/thousands feet deep of rock and infuse coal, oil, and diamonds. And do it within a single bacterial lifespan.

More than one of us said that bacteria naturally occur miles beneath the surface.

In addition, we said that other radioactive elements in the surrounding rocks contaminate the oil.

Also, here is test. All rocks above coal and oil deposits should contain such bacteria with C14. And it should be detectable. As a matter of fact, if it is tested for C14, the concentration of C14 would be higher than those found in the coal and oil deposits since there would be fewer C12 in the rocks above it. Here's my prediction, rather than C14 concentration being higher, C14 will be negligible in rocks above coal and oil deposits.

And here you go making geological predictions.

You cant be upset at me for being uncivil when you dont bother to read (or dont care to acknowledge) the points we make that prove you wrong and when you talk like you are an expert on this stuff and start making predictions.

[otseng]

"Please present evidence that water saturated with bacteria can travel down hundreds/thousands feet deep of rock and infuse coal, oil, and diamonds. And do it within a single bacterial lifespan."

Ok see, water seeps downward. It formes underground channels and things like that, in some cases down great distances.

You still did not present any evidence that this can happen.

Also, if water can seep into oil deposits, oil can also likewise seep out. And so after a period of time, no oil deposit would exist there.

Also, consiser that one culture of bacteria can continue to suvive for an infinite amount of time in proper conditions. So there is no "life span" issue to worry about.

For it to survive beyond a generation, it would require a food source. What food source would be available in these rocks?

On a sidenote, I have been studying science for quite some time, and know a few geological engineers, and I have never heard of a phenomena where there is an abundance of C14 in coal and oil deposits. Are we talking about a regular phenomena or a chance occurance that was found once at one period of time?

Nobody is claiming that there is an "abundance" of C14. Only thing claimed is that there are detectable levels.

No, I do not get the impression that it is just found once at one period of time.

It's called "half life" in that half will deteriorate in a certain time. The C14 is still detectable after a million years, but with so few atoms it is not distinguishable with enough accuracy to be valid for determining age.

The half life of C14 is 5730 years. From my calculations, one mole of C14 would completely disappear in half a million years. Given that Carboniferous coal is at least 300 million years old, there cannot even theoretically be one atom of C14 present.

And cosmic rays are not the only form of radiation that can form C14 from normal carbon, so there is always a "background" C14 count that the cosmic ray formed type disappears into over time.

The only other source of C14 mentioned in Wikipedia is: "Carbon-14 can also be produced in ice by fast neutrons causing spallation reactions in oxygen."

And bacteria do not have to trickle down from the surface, water will carry dissolved CO2 down to where the bacteria live.

If this is the case, why posit bacteria then at all?