your question is a topic of populational genetics . there is currently a growing databas on short tandem repeat alleles (STR) functional codon groups. The journal I read about most of this work is the American Journal of Forensic SCiences from the American Academy of Forensic Sciences.
The patterns of codons (triplets) on the DNA line become unique to a population . The normal trend plotted has argued that somewhere around 20000 years is needed to cement an STR pattern.
Im no expert, I only use DNA in bacteria to do aging and patterning of subsurface mineralized waters , so I just keep up along the periphery of the research.However, the concep of island dwarfism is fairly well developed in Quammens book "The Song of the Dodo" . In thatt book he argues for elephantids hhaving swum the Malacca straightt to gett to Java and all tthe way through Komodo and finally Flores , supposedly humans had the same drive to get going by raft. BUT since only the final fossil has been found, the migration could have been by small people who were already dwarfed by the long trek through islands of Sumatra and Java. Id like to see the entire suite of fossils for this whole stretch. This area has been studied by all kinds of paleo guys and cryptobiologists so Im never surprised at any new find , but am hard nosed about conclusions
Thanks, Farmerman. In hasten to correct any impression I may inadvertently have created that I know anything about alleles - the work I do deals with financial data mostly. As far as people on islands getting smaller, if that's an interest of yours, the Viking graves in early Greenland do show the people got smaller in each succeeding generation until finally that early population died out - however this corresponds with a marked cooling in the northern hemisphere over those centuries, so malnutrition could account for it.
Unrelated remark - never understood why we claim Columbus discovered America when the Vikings were in Maine centuries before him.
I'll throw in my two cents worth of undeducated guesses.
I have considered myself a Christian for +25 years. I have always had a fascination with science. Not sure where or when it happened, but when the cognitive dissonance set in over Creation / Evolution I ended up rationalizing that God could do whatever He wanted. Perhaps He set us up to evolve, sort of as a way to test our faith. I don't know.
It makes sense to me to think that both can exist. The evolution of life into a gazillion life forms, with all starting from a couple of atoms is too far fetched for me. Until someone can explain that in a way I can grasp, I'm stuck with believing there was a grand plan and evolution was and is part of it.
To me, the "littles" are a fascinating find, but in no way rule out creation. It's no different to me than say the various skin colors that have evolved due to climates around the world, or that even only a couple of hundred years ago most beds were shorter than they are now because people were, in general, shorter.
The fact that evolution takes any opportunity to allow or disallow adaptation to any new environment is what makes the grand plan argument sort of fade. Now, in a conversaion I had with ican many months ago, I asked for an explanation of how opportunism coincides with "directed evolution". It could happen if the creator was also the guy who was messing with the environment at the same time.
That's sorta where I am, farmerman. I don't have any problem believing what appears to be opporunistic to actually be guided. Since we also have "free will" we somewhat create our own oppurtunities with environmental changes. But, would He allow those changes to take place if it wasn't the direction in which He wanted us to go? I have no idea.
My faith isn't as strong today as it was five years ago, but as I stated previously the evolutionary beginning is way too much for me to comprehend.
