Biological organisms are [i]primarily[/i] Software Defined Lifeforms. - Yes or No?

Hey, what does everybody make of the 73,000 YO stone flake with nine straight lines drawn on it. Just found in S. Africa. Pushes back the date of earliest artwork by 30,000 years.

Amazing I tell ya. 9 straight lines on a rock and there is no question that its origin is intelligent. And I agree.

Is that what the archaeologists have said, or is that what journalists have said? This is the Venus of Holefels.



It is dated to between 35,000 and 40,000 ybp. It is considered the oldest work of representational art. Could you provide us with a link?

Published in Nature.
Here is the abstract link. They want $ to see the whole article.
The picture is said to resemble a hashtag symbol.
Stone Age Tic Tac Toe board?

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0514-3

Excellent--a good source, too, to rely on. The earliest cuneiform tablets appear to have been "bookkeeping" records. Linear A and B have long been touted as the earliest writing systems, but recently some paleoanthropologists have suggested that they derive from an earlier set of symbols found in European Upper Paleolithic sites. This is hotly disputed in academic circles, which is all too common because people base their careers on narratives which they don't want to see challenged. I've got a good book on the late Upper Paleolithic (if it hasn't grown legs and walked off) which I'll try to dig out. According to (younger) scholars, those symbols, or variations on them, have been found in Gozo and Melite on the island of Malta. The temple at Gozo is the oldest surviving free-standing building in the world, and considered by almost all scholars to be the oldest free-standing building.

These scholars (the young ones) allege that Linear A and B derive from that symbology. Linear A has never been deciphered, although established scholars continue to assert that it is in Proto-Greek. Linear B has been largely deciphered because of proper names which have been identified, and which definitely are in Greek. The older symbology would likely never be deciphered precisely because we don't know the language(s) it represents. Furthermore, another controversial topic for academics is the contention that the people of Egypt were writing before the time of Narmer, considered the first Pharaoh, and the dawning reliazation that the first and second Scorpion kings were actually kings or chieftains in pre-dynastic Egypt.

I love **** like this--I live for it.

Linear A and B came thousands of years after the first hieroglyphic engraving (and cuneiform tablet) so they can't possibly be seen as "the earliest writing systems".

Yes, I ought to have written one of the oldest--but cunieform writing only predates Linear A by a thousand years at most, not thousands of years. So your claim is certainly not precise. Linear A is thought to have been developed circa 2500 BCE, and cuneiform circa 3300 to 3500 BCE.

Oh silly me . . . you just want to argue, don't you? Have fun.

Just correcting the facts...

If Lynn Margulis hadnt been a 9/11 nutter I think her hypotheses re absorption of genomes would have been widespread. The evolution of the mitochondria from free living and possibly parasitic purple non sulfitic bacteria would have better defined the issue re mitochondrial and chloroplastid evolution.

If youre speaking of Blombos artifact its not like a # sign its actully more like a

X\X\X\
very similar to a series of ivory hunting effegies found in the STetten cave complex (and are about 32K ybp)

No you weren't, you stated that cuneiform was invented thousands of years before Linear A. That's bullshit. Don't try to claim that facts matter to you. When you first got here, you said the evidence for the extermination of all other hominins by h.s.s. was the invention of the spear-thrower. You'll just throw up any old bullshit you can find online.

Have you got a link for that? I'd be interested to see it, but I don't intend to pay Nature to look at it.

Interesting things about Blombos and other Klasies River caves, they were being excavated since the 1960's so these "recent" finds have a huge history of collection but a mere recent history of interpretation.
Im not so culturally enamored about stuff like this. We have evidence of tool making that goes waaay back, so manipulating and carving of "artwork" is a WHY NOT issue.

There are anywhere from a half million to two million cuneiform tablets in collections--no one is really sure. At most, 100,000 have been examined and translated into modern languages. Far fewer than that have been published. That's a major issue with all forms of archaeology.

Still far more correct than to say that Linear A and B were "the earliest writing systems".

I acknowledged that error which is something you never do. You said cuneiform is thousands of years older, but you're unwilling to acknowledge that that is bullshit.

That's because you only come online to argue.

The new find is interesting but the age and classification as art is not what is significant to the subject of the OP.

It is the methods we use to determine whether an object is a result of natural causes or not. It actually takes very little to differentiate the two. As far as I know, no one (including me) questions that these lines were made by sentient humans - an intelligent source.

What fascinates me here is how we can instantly tell that these simple lines were not due to natural causes and yet not question the idea that the infinitely more unlikely DNA based mechanism of life is ‘completely natural'. And that’s still true even if you don’t know enough to see the many parallels between DNA and software defined systems.

Such complex functional systems simply do not happen by any known process other than by intelligent sources. Since science says all life had a common ancestor, we are artificial life forms.

Can you explain why anyone should consider DNA to be infinitely more unlikely?

Okay so cuneiform precedes Linear A by 'only' one (1) thousand years and Linear B by two (2) thousand years. I was thus technically incorrect in stating: "Linear A and B came thousands of years after the first hieroglyphic engraving (and cuneiform tablet)".

Gime a smile now.

We are not currently able to show that functional RNA did result from natural causes.

From Wikipedia:
The origin of DNA is even harder to explain.

It’s not the molecule itself that is so unlikely. It is the information encoded in the DNA that isn’t plausible. But the truly implausible thing is that the system built around/for that information is compatible with it, that is the show stopper for me. Far too many things had to require forethought and planning.

That system (the complex hardware DNA runs on) has not changed or evolved in these billions of years. Functional systems like that just do not emerge by natural causes. I’m just surprised that this isn’t obvious to everyone.

The DNA software the system is running has changed greatly but not the basic design of DNA based Lifeforms. That is the basic premise behind calling all living organisms Software Defined Lifeforms.

The next best example of self organizing system sometimes cited by natural abiogenesis advocates is the 'eddy', either in air or fluid. If all natural self organization of function is possible, shouldn’t there be countless examples between an eddy in a stream and 'life'? But we don’t see that. Ever. (The oft quoted crystal or snowflake do not qualify as functional systems) That’s why we know that the lines drawn on a piece of rock came from an intelligent source, nature does not organize things with 'intention' to quote the Nature article.
But I digress.