Uncle Al <UncleAl0@hate.spam.net> wrote in message news:<3EE3462D.E474C36E@hate.spam.net>...

<snip usual politically incorrect rant>

I'm still marvelling at the idea that 70,000 years ago the human
species may have almost become extinct.  Of course the idea is
probably based on misinterpretation of the genetic data and a tendency
to sensationalize -- that goes without saying -- but one want it to be
true.  So would liberals ... do I have closet liberalism?  ;)

If we passed through such a restrictive bottleneck so recently, we are
even more all brothers than we thought.  It's such an incredible
thought ... takes the sting out of worries about nuclear annihiliation
-- it was a complete coin toss whether the seemingly inevitable human
investation of the planet, the culmination of nature and 5 billion
years of blind evolution, would have happened or whether we would have
become yet another insignificant blip in the then unexamuined fossil
record, next to paleohomoeohipicus.

Ahh.... there is the misinterpretation/distortion!  In saying that
"humans" almost become extinct, meanS direct ancestors of the dominant
talking primate -- the fossil record _is_ littered with extinguished
humanoids.  So big deal ... if our little band had joined them, there
would have been some other essentially human looking primate ready to
try again: essentially, only broadening "human" a little ways down the
branched genetic tree, human domination of the planet was almost
inevitable after all.  It's just that, like infant hyenas, having once
gained the upper hand we quickly cleaned up the immediate competition.

Note to Maleki: I never thought I'd be glad to see _you_!  Educated
curmudgea welcomed in vacant intellectual sea, abandoned by squeamish
academics in high dudgeon.  You are insulting, but insulting with
class.  ;-)