All white people have 4% Neanderthal DNA.

[Face of the Golden Falcon]

Because the Earth is made up of different levels of rock from different eras of the Earth, and depending in which layer the fossil is found is enough for you to know from which time it existed. Pretty basic stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_time_scale

Seems pretty basic but what happens when you throw something like the explosion of Mt St. Helens (May 18 1980) into the mix?

The explosion deposited around 400 feet of strata which look millions of years old but which were formed in 1980 in a matter of days possibly even hours.

A mud flow caused by Mt St. Helens also eroded a canyon system 140 feet deep, a one-fortieth scale model of the Grand Canyon which is said have been created over millions of years.

If such things can happen in the space of days doesn't that put doubt in the geographic time scale?

Could you answer the rest of my questions as well if this is pretty basic stuff to you.

[Face of the Golden Falcon]

up...for the answers to pretty basic stuff.

[food for thought]

The Little Bit of Neanderthal in All of Us
JAN. 29, 2014

Ever since the discovery in 2010 that Neanderthals interbred with the ancestors of living humans, scientists have been trying to determine how their DNA affects people today. Now two new studies have traced the history of Neanderthal DNA, and have pinpointed a number of genes that may have medical importance today.

Among the findings, the studies have found clues to the evolution of skin and fertility, as well as susceptibility to diseases like diabetes. More broadly, they show how the legacy of Neanderthals has endured 30,000 years after their extinction.

“It’s something that everyone wanted to know,” said Laurent Excoffier, a geneticist at the University of Bern in Switzerland who was not involved in the research.

Neanderthals, who became extinct about 30,000 years ago, were among the closest relatives of modern humans. They shared a common ancestor with us that lived about 600,000 years ago.

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In the 1990s, researchers began finding fragments of Neanderthal DNA in fossils. By 2010 they had reconstructed most of the Neanderthal genome. When they compared it with the genomes of five living humans, they found similarities to small portions of the DNA in the Europeans and Asians.

The researchers concluded that Neanderthals and modern humans must have interbred. Modern humans evolved in Africa and then expanded out into Asia and Europe, where Neanderthals lived. In a 2012 study, the researchers estimated that this interbreeding took place between 37,000 and 85,000 years ago.

Sir Paul A. Mellars, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge and the University of Edinburgh, who was not involved in the research, said the archaeological evidence suggested the opportunity for modern humans to mate with Neanderthals would have been common once they expanded out of Africa. “They’d be bumping into Neanderthals at every street corner,” he joked.

The first draft of the Neanderthal genome was too rough to allow scientists to draw further conclusions. But recently, researchers sequenced a far more accurate genome from a Neanderthal toe bone.

Scientists at Harvard Medical School and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany compared this high-quality Neanderthal genome to the genomes of 1,004 living people. They were able to identify specific segments of Neanderthal DNA from each person’s genome.

“It’s a personal map of Neanderthal ancestry,” said David Reich of Harvard Medical School, who led the research team. He and his colleagues published their results in the journal Nature.

Living humans do not have a lot of Neanderthal DNA, Dr. Reich and his colleagues found, but some Neanderthal genes have become very common. That’s because, with natural selection, useful genes survive as species evolve. “What this proves is that these genes were helpful for non-Africans in adapting to the environment,” said Dr. Reich.

In a separate study published in Science, Benjamin Vernot and Joshua M. Akey of the University of Washington came to a similar conclusion, using a different method.

Mr. Vernot and Dr. Akey looked for unusual mutations in the genomes of 379 Europeans and 286 Asians. The segments of DNA that contained these mutations turned out to be from Neanderthals.

Both studies suggest that Neanderthal genes involved in skin and hair were favored by natural selection in humans. Today, they’re very common in living non-Africans.

The fact that two independent studies pinpointed these genes lends support to their importance, said Sriram Sankararaman of Harvard Medical School, a co-author on the Nature paper. “The two methods seem to be converging on the same results.”

It’s possible, Dr. Akey speculated, that the genes developed to help Neanderthal skin adapt to the cold climate of Europe and Asia.

But Dr. Akey pointed out that skin performs other important jobs, like shielding us from pathogens. “We don’t understand enough about the biology of those particular genes yet,” he said. “It makes it hard to pinpoint a reason why they’re beneficial.”

Both teams of scientists also found long stretches of the living human genomes where Neanderthal DNA was glaringly absent. This pattern could be produced if modern humans with certain Neanderthal genes couldn’t have as many children on average as people without them. For example, living humans have very few genes from Neanderthals involved in making sperm. That suggests that male human-Neanderthal hybrids might have had lower fertility or were even sterile.

Overall, said Dr. Reich, “most of the Neanderthal genetic material was more bad than good.”

Some of the Neanderthal genes that have endured until today may be influencing people’s health. Dr. Reich and his colleagues identified nine Neanderthal genes in living humans that are known to raise or reduce the risk of various diseases, including diabetes and lupus.

To better understand the legacy of Neanderthals, Dr. Reich and his colleagues are collaborating with the UK Biobank, which collects genetic information from hundreds of thousands of volunteers. The scientists will search for Neanderthal genetic markers, and investigate whether Neanderthal genes cause any noticeable differences in anything from weight to blood pressure to scores on memory tests.

“This experiment of nature has been done,” said Dr. Reich, “and we can study it.”

Correction: January 29, 2014
An earlier version of this article misstated the living groups in which Neanderthal genes involved in skin and hair are very common. They are very common in non-Africans, not non-Asians.

[GhettoGnom]

This is rather interesting tbf, and to answer op's question, I don't really feel one way or another. I don't see how anyone would be upset with the knowledge, considering that through natural selection these neanderthal genomes should, all in all, only serve to make us a stronger, more resistant race.

Humans never interbred with Neanderthals, no matter what some lieing heathen/atheist calling himself a "scientist" spouts. God made humans as per Genesis, long after previous humanoids were made extinct. You think Genesis is crap. Fine. I'm confident it is true. Have a nice day. JP

Lol, leave it to the radical christian man to disprove anything and everything scientifically proven..

But back to Jasjit good point, considering 99.9% of our genes are shared with Neanderthals, I'm also confused as to what meaning this 1-4% has to anything, other than highlighting the fact that homo sapiens from that left Africa had sex with neanderthals and homo sapiens who stayed in Africa didnt. What significance that has, idk.

Interesting question.