>if anything, recent discoveries of Neanderthal DNA in
>Non-African lineages kinda points towards the other
>direction.

I agree totally but don't say that to a politically correct crowd they will be calling you a racist.

>Either way though, if someone were to claim that the changes
>that led to a range of pale skin types is a huge leap forward
>in evolution, it would suggest that they have a deep
>misunderstanding of how evolution works, and more importantly
>human genetics.

Indeed.

>On to the second point, I don't think the 200K~ date was meant
>to be the definitive appearance of humans, just the first
>appearance of anatomical humans in the fossil record that
>we've seen...so far. People use that date without giving it
>the proper context, so that DNA discovery isn't as shocking on
>its face as it seems.

I though popular science uses genetics to corrolate this theory with genetic drift and diversity? (see Bryan Sykes). This is what I also thought they used to prove the out of Africa theory?

>How do you feel about evolution as a mechanism for the
>propagation of life period?

Man I don't know my wildest educated guess is that of course it takes time to diversify and specialize anything we see that with dying stars, nebula, news stars planets to plants, cells multi cellular organisms etc. etc. My particular gripe is with the concept that Monkeys and Humans have a common ancestor that was not human first.

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