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“Several actually. Most dont stick around, some do. But 2000 years is a relatively short time, so any useful mutation that stuck around for 2000 years would not have spread very far yet since it requires everyone to have one common ancestor with that one beneficial mutation. How many common ancestors do you have with your average fellow countryman? One example of a mutation os the FADS gene in inuit people, first appeared about 1000 years ago based on the amount of people that have it around the area and older local skeletons not having it. It helps with getting much more energy from fat than most would. Its simply very useful when your main food sources are fatty fish, seals and whales. Lactase persistence is about 5-7000 years old. These mutations are always really small, so this doesnt seem like much. But now image millions of years, by that i mean count grains of sand, for every thousand take one step forward on the beach. For every 1000 steps take one drop of water from the ocean. For every 1000 drops of water collect one shell. Once you can make a necklace of a thousand shells youre at a million. Now take tens of hundreds of millions of years, and see how much more can change. Look at the chimpanzee, we are not that different looking from it. We both lack the gene to make vitamin C which no other non-ape mammals do. We have hairy body, very pronoucned facial muscles. Slight changes in muscle distribution to walk better, slightly less hair to sweat (and therefore cool off) better, slight changes in posture for faster walking, flatter molars to better eat tough roots and vegetables, slowly but surely more and more changes add up. Almost always several at the same time, the mutations do not take turns. One person had a slightly larger frontal cortex for our language center (very useful on the ground to alarm for predators), another one had slightly more resilient knees for walking long distances without issue. Stronger members, more useful members of the population get favored in mating and are less likely to die. They have more offspring than anyone else. And the genes are useful so anyone who doesn't have them is ever so slightly disadvantaged.”

“One of the most didactic explanations I’ve ever seen”

“I just wanted to say thank you for your videos. I grew up in a very conservative, evangelical circle, and only ever learned about young earth creationism. Now that I've gotten older and have spent the last couple of years deconstructing from a ton of harmful beliefs, I found myself in a place where I no longer believed in "God", but am stuck knowing nothing other than God created the world 6,000 years ago. I appreciate you explaining things without making me feel stupid or ignorant as I continue my deconstruction journey, and the painful process of having to rebuild my life. 🫶 If you would be willing or able to make videos on a few things, I still have so many questions about things I was taught growing up, like how I was told you cannot ever create new genetic information through natural selection, you can only remove or mutate it in a negative way. I was also taught the idea that certain animal systems HAD to have bee put together all at the same time - for example the tiny sponge at the top of the giraffes neck that absorbs blood when it bends down so its brain doesn't explode. (Basically you can't have a long neck without the sponge, but you wouldnt have a sponge if you didnt have a long neck - if that makes sense)”

“The biggest question I’d like you to tackle next, as someone who is probably your age is, how do you have such great F’n hair?!”

“I was the lucky one to see Lucy and Selam in an exposition in the National Museum at Prague, Czechia. A once in a lifetime opportunity. It will probably never, never repeat. It was the second time Lucy was "out of Africa". As a retired palaeontologist, I do especially appreciate this generous deed. If someone in my lifetime told me I will once see her in person, I would think (s)he's a lunatic. Crazy. And it happened. A big "thank you", Ethiopia!! Peter.”

“I learned this in elementary school, at 11-12. Except for the part with fossils. We were taught biology starting from the simplest organisms and evolution was self evident before I knew the meaning of the word "evolution". But I guess it's thanks to the fact I was born and raised in a socialist country, plus I had no perception of God and religion whatsoever growing up. (For those who think those two go hand in hand automatically, no they don't. I later found out that many friends of mine were actually from religious families, but they never talked about it.) I'm not an atheist at this point tho, but that doesn't change my understanding of the evolution.”

“Although I have a doubt about the cactus finch being a different species from the indigenous finch (they still could make offspring), the explanation is sound. A good example of evolution over a very short period decades) is the evolution of new species in the Victoria Lake in Africa. Biologist Tijs Goldschmidt describes how, under predatory pressure from introduced Nile Perch, the indigenous chiclid species adapted to new niches in the eco-system of the lake, resulting in new species. Read ‘Darwin’s hofvijver’ - don’t know the English title right away.”

“I'm a young earth creationist but I still hate when people spread miss information about evolution. Its just not fair. If your going to argue against something you have to get your facts right about the thing your arguing about or else your not going to make a strong argument. As a young earth creationist I am not in the atheistic circles. I want to ask someone who really knows what they're talking about. How do you guys explain the moon getting further from the earth or the salinity levels in the ocean or human footprints with dinosaur ones or (my favorite example) helium diffusion rates of zircon crystals. I'm simply trying to understand.”