Counting generations in one's family tree

[Eloi]

Thinking about the genetic inheritance from my earliest ancestors to me ... it occurs to me that if my family had recorded ancestors with the same care that Jews and other ancients did from the beginning of humanity, I might find many interesting details about who they were and where my relatively distant ancestors lived, before I was born on an island in the Cuban archipelago.

I could calculate with some degree of accuracy and objectivity how many generations I would have to go back in my family tree until I reached the creation of the first human couple. As far as I know no known human civilization (for all that that word entails in the sense of human development) has been dated with certainty before the year of the Biblical creation of Adam and Eve, around 4025 BC.

Evolutionist friend, tell me: what would be the number of generations that you would have to go back in your family tree, until your ancestor is no longer an intelligent human being but a simple ape that can be considered as a common animal?

[Eloi]

We've all heard from evolutionists about the scenario where apes of one class had relationships with apes of another class, let's say it like an orangutan* falling in love with a chimpanzee*, and a gorilla* with a baboon*, until at some point later they all became in a large family of humans.

Do evolutionists imagine their remote family past that way? Do they imagine a planet full of families of apes exchanging fluids and producing new species of apes that are slightly more intelligent than the previous ones?

Can any objectivity be attributed to this imaginary scenario, or does it continue to be the myth that it has always been since the origin of the theory of evolution?

PS: * some names have been changed for privacy of the more advanced ape families.

[Miles]

Thinking about the genetic inheritance from my earliest ancestors to me ... it occurs to me that if my family had recorded ancestors with the same care that Jews and other ancients did from the beginning of humanity, I might find many interesting details about who they were and where my relatively distant ancestors lived, before I was born on an island in the Cuban archipelago.

Possibly.

I could calculate with some degree of accuracy and objectivity how many generations I would have to go back in my family tree until I reached the creation of the first human couple.

As long as you knew what constituted the "first human couple." Do you? Could you tell the difference between Homo sapiens and their closest known predecessor Homo heidelbergensis? And this split occurred some 300,000 years ago in Africa. So forgive me if I doubt your ability to do so, even hypothetically.

As far as I know no known human civilization (for all that that word entails in the sense of human development) has been dated with certainty before the year of the Biblical creation of Adam and Eve, around 4025 BC.

So what? But just as a matter of FYI . . . .

"While modern civilizations extend to every continent except Antarctica, most scholars place the earliest cradles of civilizations—in other words, where civilizations first emerged—in modern-day Iraq, Egypt, India, China, Peru and Mexico, beginning between approximately 4000 and 3000 B.C."

Mesopotamia, 4000-3500 B.C.
Ancient Egypt, 3100 B.C.
Ancient India, 3300 B.C.
Ancient China, 2000 B.C.
Ancient Peru, 1200 B.C.
Ancient Mesoamerica, 1200 B.C.
source

Evolutionist friend, tell me: what would be the number of generations that you would have to go back in your family tree, until your ancestor is no longer an intelligent human being but a simple ape that can be considered as a common animal?

Not knowing what you consider not to be an "intelligent human being," but going back to the oldest human ancestors who were first to use tools we pretty much have to stop with Homo habilis which date from 2.6 million years ago. So, considering that analyses of whole-genome data reveal an average generation time of 26.9 years, a generous guess of the generations that go back in my family tree would be about 100,000. As for being a "simple ape" you have to go back at least 4 to 8 million years (154,000 - 300,000 generations).

.

[Miles]

We've all heard from evolutionists about the scenario where apes of one class had relationships with apes of another class, let's say it like an orangutan* falling in love with a chimpanzee*, and a gorilla* with a baboon*, until at some point later they all became in a large family of humans.

Being somewhat familiar with physical anthropology I'm pretty darn sure no Physical anthropologist has ever said anything close to the above. Why? Because they understand how evolution works, which apparently you do not.

Do evolutionists imagine their remote family past that way?

Absolutely not.

Do they imagine a planet full of families of apes exchanging fluids and producing new species of apes that are slightly more intelligent than the previous ones?

Bless their educated souls, hopefully not.

Can any objectivity be attributed to this imaginary scenario,

In as much as it is imaginary I don't see how.

or does it continue to be the myth that it has always been since the origin of the theory of evolution?

Never having heard of it before, I have to say it does not.

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[Eloi]

Thinking about the genetic inheritance from my earliest ancestors to me ... it occurs to me that if my family had recorded ancestors with the same care that Jews and other ancients did from the beginning of humanity, I might find many interesting details about who they were and where my relatively distant ancestors lived, before I was born on an island in the Cuban archipelago.

Possibly.

I could calculate with some degree of accuracy and objectivity how many generations I would have to go back in my family tree until I reached the creation of the first human couple.

As long as you knew what constituted the "first human couple." Do you? Could you tell the difference between Homo sapiens and their closest known predecessor Homo heidelbergensis? And this split occurred some 300,000 years ago in Africa. So forgive me if I doubt your ability to do so, even hypothetically.

As far as I know no known human civilization (for all that that word entails in the sense of human development) has been dated with certainty before the year of the Biblical creation of Adam and Eve, around 4025 BC.

So what? But just as a matter of FYI . . . .

"While modern civilizations extend to every continent except Antarctica, most scholars place the earliest cradles of civilizations—in other words, where civilizations first emerged—in modern-day Iraq, Egypt, India, China, Peru and Mexico, beginning between approximately 4000 and 3000 B.C."

Mesopotamia, 4000-3500 B.C.
Ancient Egypt, 3100 B.C.
Ancient India, 3300 B.C.
Ancient China, 2000 B.C.
Ancient Peru, 1200 B.C.
Ancient Mesoamerica, 1200 B.C.
source

Evolutionist friend, tell me: what would be the number of generations that you would have to go back in your family tree, until your ancestor is no longer an intelligent human being but a simple ape that can be considered as a common animal?

Not knowing what you consider not to be an "intelligent human being," but going back to the oldest human ancestors who were first to use tools we pretty much have to stop with Homo habilis which date from 2.6 million years ago. So, considering that analyses of whole-genome data reveal an average generation time of 26.9 years, a generous guess of the generations that go back in my family tree would be about 100,000. As for being a "simple ape" you have to go back at least 4 to 8 million years (154,000 - 300,000 generations).

.

Interesting, that the known civilizations do not exceed the fourth millennium BC, just as the Bible shows us. So YES we can trust Biblical chronology after all... , and that information dates back 35 centuries!!!!! when modern science did not exist, much less atheism.

On the other hand, it seems obvious to me that in the story of the apes becoming humans, no community of them appears from this beginning of human civilizations back to all those hundreds of thousands of years that say that such a supposed transformation was taking place. There is NOTHING in evolutionary theory since the apes until suddenly fully developed civilizations appear on the terrestrial scene ... Evolutionists tell us a story that was supposedly taking place many hundred of thousands years before... and what happened in the interval? Between all those hundred of thousands years and the fourth millenium B.C.???? And I'm not talking about missing links, but entire long chains.

PS: The Bible teaches that humans appeared long after animals, as they were God's last terrestrial creation. That implies that before the fourth millennium BC, all that will be found is non-human ... as the discoveries show, because in reality every ape is an animal.

[Miles]

Thinking about the genetic inheritance from my earliest ancestors to me ... it occurs to me that if my family had recorded ancestors with the same care that Jews and other ancients did from the beginning of humanity, I might find many interesting details about who they were and where my relatively distant ancestors lived, before I was born on an island in the Cuban archipelago.

Possibly.

I could calculate with some degree of accuracy and objectivity how many generations I would have to go back in my family tree until I reached the creation of the first human couple.

As long as you knew what constituted the "first human couple." Do you? Could you tell the difference between Homo sapiens and their closest known predecessor Homo heidelbergensis? And this split occurred some 300,000 years ago in Africa. So forgive me if I doubt your ability to do so, even hypothetically.

As far as I know no known human civilization (for all that that word entails in the sense of human development) has been dated with certainty before the year of the Biblical creation of Adam and Eve, around 4025 BC.

So what? But just as a matter of FYI . . . .

"While modern civilizations extend to every continent except Antarctica, most scholars place the earliest cradles of civilizations—in other words, where civilizations first emerged—in modern-day Iraq, Egypt, India, China, Peru and Mexico, beginning between approximately 4000 and 3000 B.C."

Mesopotamia, 4000-3500 B.C.
Ancient Egypt, 3100 B.C.
Ancient India, 3300 B.C.
Ancient China, 2000 B.C.
Ancient Peru, 1200 B.C.
Ancient Mesoamerica, 1200 B.C.
source

Evolutionist friend, tell me: what would be the number of generations that you would have to go back in your family tree, until your ancestor is no longer an intelligent human being but a simple ape that can be considered as a common animal?

Not knowing what you consider not to be an "intelligent human being," but going back to the oldest human ancestors who were first to use tools we pretty much have to stop with Homo habilis which date from 2.6 million years ago. So, considering that analyses of whole-genome data reveal an average generation time of 26.9 years, a generous guess of the generations that go back in my family tree would be about 100,000. As for being a "simple ape" you have to go back at least 4 to 8 million years (154,000 - 300,000 generations).

.

PS: The Bible teaches that humans appeared long after animals, as they were God's last terrestrial creation. That implies that before the fourth millennium BC, all that will be found is non-human ... as the discoveries show, because in reality every ape is an animal.

"Long" after? I don't know where you got that from because the Bible certainly says no such thing. You're letting your imagination run astray again, Eloi.

Genesis 1: 24-27
24 Then God said, “Let the earth produce many kinds of living things. Let there be many different kinds of animals. Let there be large animals and small crawling animals of every kind. And let all these animals produce more animals.” And all these things happened.

25 So God made every kind of animal. He made the wild animals, the tame animals, and all the small crawling things. And God saw that this was good.

26 Then God said, “Now let’s make humans[f] who will be like us. They will rule over all the fish in the sea and the birds in the air. They will rule over all the large animals and all the little things that crawl on the earth.”

27 So God created humans in his own image. He created them to be like himself. He created them male and female.

As far as anyone knows god could have created humans the very next day or even the very next minute after having made "every kind of animal." It's exaggerations like this that really hurt one's credibility. I'd try to reign it in if I were you, and just stick to the facts and what's actually written in the Bible.

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[Eloi]

... The Bible teaches that humans appeared long after animals, as they were God's last terrestrial creation. That implies that before the fourth millennium BC, all that will be found is non-human ... as the discoveries show, because in reality every ape is an animal.

"Long" after? I don't know where you got that from because the Bible certainly says no such thing. You're letting your imagination run astray again, Eloi.

Genesis 1: 24-27
24 Then God said, “Let the earth produce many kinds of living things. Let there be many different kinds of animals. Let there be large animals and small crawling animals of every kind. And let all these animals produce more animals.” And all these things happened.

25 So God made every kind of animal. He made the wild animals, the tame animals, and all the small crawling things. And God saw that this was good.

26 Then God said, “Now let’s make humans[f] who will be like us. They will rule over all the fish in the sea and the birds in the air. They will rule over all the large animals and all the little things that crawl on the earth.”

27 So God created humans in his own image. He created them to be like himself. He created them male and female.

As far as anyone knows god could have created humans the very next day or even the very next minute after having made "every kind of animal." It's exaggerations like this that really hurt one's credibility. I'd try to reign it in if I were you, and just stick to the facts and what's actually written in the Bible.

.

Thanks for your interest on why I said: "humans appeared long after animals". The Bible teaches that the first human couple was created on the sixth creative day, while the animals appeared on the previous ones.

We, Jehovah's Witnesses, do not believe that each creative day of Genesis lasted 24 hours, like some creationists. We believe that each creative day may have lasted for thousands of years or even much longer, even what is described as being created in one period may have continued into the next. We believe that those "days" are more or less consecutive phases.

I find it very suspicious that the bone finds supposedly attributed to apes becoming humans are all dated hundreds of thousands of years ago, and none of them appeared, say for example, only a few thousand years before the fourth millennium BC, when even human civilizations did not exist.

Can you tell me if it is not logical that I find that fact suspicious?

[Miles]

... The Bible teaches that humans appeared long after animals, as they were God's last terrestrial creation. That implies that before the fourth millennium BC, all that will be found is non-human ... as the discoveries show, because in reality every ape is an animal.

"Long" after? I don't know where you got that from because the Bible certainly says no such thing. You're letting your imagination run astray again, Eloi.

Genesis 1: 24-27
24 Then God said, “Let the earth produce many kinds of living things. Let there be many different kinds of animals. Let there be large animals and small crawling animals of every kind. And let all these animals produce more animals.” And all these things happened.

25 So God made every kind of animal. He made the wild animals, the tame animals, and all the small crawling things. And God saw that this was good.

26 Then God said, “Now let’s make humans[f] who will be like us. They will rule over all the fish in the sea and the birds in the air. They will rule over all the large animals and all the little things that crawl on the earth.”

27 So God created humans in his own image. He created them to be like himself. He created them male and female.

As far as anyone knows god could have created humans the very next day or even the very next minute after having made "every kind of animal." It's exaggerations like this that really hurt one's credibility. I'd try to reign it in if I were you, and just stick to the facts and what's actually written in the Bible.

.

Thanks for your interest on why I said: "humans appeared long after animals". The Bible teaches that the first human couple was created on the sixth creative day, while the animals appeared on the previous ones.

REALLY! Because not even your own Bible says humans were created on a different day than the animals.

Genesis 1:23-27 (New World Translation (2013 Revision))
23 And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day. 24 Then God said: “Let the earth bring forth living creatures* according to their kinds, domestic animals and creeping animals* and wild animals of the earth according to their kinds.”+ And it was so. 25 And God went on to make the wild animals of the earth according to their kinds and the domestic animals according to their kinds and all the creeping animals of the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 26 Then God said: “Let us+ make man in our image,+ according to our likeness,+ and let them have in subjection the fish of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens and the domestic animals and all the earth and every creeping animal that is moving on the earth.”+ 27 And God went on to create the man in his image, in God’s image he created him; male and female he created them.+

And The sixth day doesn't appear until Genesis 1:31

Genesis 1:31
31 After that God saw everything he had made, and look! it was very good.+ And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.

Back to Sunday School for a refresher course.

I find it very suspicious that the bone finds supposedly attributed to apes becoming humans are all dated hundreds of thousands of years ago, and none of them appeared, say for example, only a few thousand years before the fourth millennium BC, when even human civilizations did not exist.

Can you tell me if it is not logical that I find that fact suspicious?

It's not illogical, because of what you've said it's very apparent you know next to nothing about evolution or physical anthropology.

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[Eloi]

Yes, some animals were created on the sixth creative day BEFORE humans were created. Other animals were created on the fifth creative day.

Gen. 1:20 Then God said: “Let the waters swarm with living creatures, and let flying creatures fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” 21 And God created the great sea creatures and all living creatures that move and swarm in the waters according to their kinds and every winged flying creature according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 With that God blessed them, saying: “Be fruitful and become many and fill the waters of the sea, and let the flying creatures become many in the earth.” 23 And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.

According to evolutionists, insects enter a certain evolutionary chain that leads to humans. So before apes, they believe they were insects.

Again: if you don't have data on apes becoming humans for hundreds of thousands of years, how come you feel capable of calculating the number of generations that passed between you and them?

[Miles]

Yes, some animals were created on the sixth creative day BEFORE humans were created. Other animals were created on the fifth creative day.

Gen. 1:20 Then God said: “Let the waters swarm with living creatures, and let flying creatures fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” 21 And God created the great sea creatures and all living creatures that move and swarm in the waters according to their kinds and every winged flying creature according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 With that God blessed them, saying: “Be fruitful and become many and fill the waters of the sea, and let the flying creatures become many in the earth.” 23 And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.

According to evolutionists, insects enter a certain evolutionary chain that leads to humans. So before apes, they believe they were insects.

Again: if you don't have data on apes becoming humans for hundreds of thousands of years, how come you feel capable of calculating the number of generations that passed between you and them?

Have a good day.


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