The 100% Human thing in Prometheus

[happyninja42]

Ok, first off, I'm not a geneticist, and I fully acknowledge that I don't know that much on the subject.

But, I recall one of the many things that people were annoyed about Prometheus, was the bit about the DNA sample from the giant humanoid people as showing up as "100% Human". Now, I haven't seen the movie either, mostly because it seemed like a piece of crap to me. But the majority of complaints on this subject I've heard were "it wouldn't be a giant humanoid if it was 100% human! It couldn't be that drastically different from baseline humans and still be human!!! No way!"

Now, at first this seemed a fair assessment to me, and then I started thinking about dogs.

There are over 500(?) distinct variations on Canis Familiaris, and they can vary from the Chihuahua to the Bull Mastiff in size and features. Yet, all of them (as far as I've ever heard), are all still "100% Dog", and can even cross breed with each other just fine. (assuming a step ladder is involved in some cases xD)

So, isn't it possible, that the giant guy in Prometheus is "100% Human"? I mean, if the only type of dog you ever knew existed was a Chihuahua, and then you see a Great Dane, and some computer tells you "100% Dog", wouldn't you be like "No Way!! It looks nothing like our dogs! It can't be a dog!" ?

Now I'm not using this to try and say the movie is good, as I don't think it is, based on all the things I've heard about it from friends, but perhaps this one particular plot point isn't as far fetched as people think?

Thoughts?

 

[Bobic]

Well yeah, but, speaking as a guy who also has absolutely no biology training, for the computer to recognise a Great Dane as 100% dog it must have some knowledge of what Great Danes are, and that they are part of the larger group 'dog'. There are genetic differences between the different breeds of dogs, presumably, but they all fall under the dog banner. However, if these aliens were still part of whatever could be called human, their genetic differences would not be part of what we knew humans to be, as we have no experience of them. Our 100% definition of what a human is would be based upon the range of humans we have on Earth, and wouldn't include the outlying factors that make giant pale bodybuilders of humans. So it still comes off as a little wrong. Maybe. . . I've got a physics degree, I don't know shit about this, could a resident escapist biologist put me out of my rambling misery?

 

[Flutterguy]

I suggest you watch this movie ASAP. A lot of scary things are about to go down.

Spoiler: Proof

Kind of funny this movie got so much attention for the 100% human remark.. Early on the lead character recites everything the Ancient Aliens show did in the first season as scientific evidence that aliens exist.. and 100% human is far-fetched?

 

[happyninja42]

I suggest you watch this movie ASAP. A lot of scary things are about to go down.

Kind of funny this movie got so much attention for the 100% human remark.. Early on the lead character recites everything the Ancient Aliens show did in the first season as scientific evidence that aliens exist.. and 100% human is far-fetched?

From what I've heard from friends and critics online, the movie got way more flak for the other things wrong with it, aside from the 100% thing.

I'm focusing on this, simply because it's the one thing that seems semi plausible to me, hence my question here.

 

[kurupt87]

Might be talking out my arse, but the way I see it is:

Dog is to Human, as Primate is to Human, as Dog is to Collie.

By that I mean, when we say dog we are a step up the species differentiation web (I forget its actual name) compared to human.

 

[Lazy Kitty]

100% human is quite vague, isn't it?
It all depends on how tight your definition of human is or how far you're willing to stretch it.
I mean if you're gonna have every little mutation or variation detract from your percentage of humanity, then everyone who can drink milk or has some sort of prothesis or enhancement wouldn't be 100% human.

 

[mad825]

Ugh.

This makes as much sense as saying someone ate 110% of the pie. Being "Human" is just a broad category classification that us Humans made-up. It's a consensus made between us to make things more understandable and memorable. The idea has just about the same ideals of money, purely non-existent and only contextual to who can think.

A "100%" Human will be more ape like the Australopithecus, the "first" human that we categorised as being "human". Us Homosapins are watered down mutants compared to them.

Most of the stuff (and all names) in science is shit that we made-up. Also,the idea of there being purity in genetics is retarded.

 

[lechat]

it's up to how they programmed the computer.
far as we know the computer is just programmed to check a couple pieces of genetic code:
double helix? Check!
two legs? Check!
It's human

 

[DeimosMasque]

I suggest you watch this movie ASAP. A lot of scary things are about to go down.

Spoiler: Proof

Kind of funny this movie got so much attention for the 100% human remark.. Early on the lead character recites everything the Ancient Aliens show did in the first season as scientific evidence that aliens exist.. and 100% human is far-fetched?

Well yeah, that part is ridiculous as well but that's the premise of the movie, that Alien's seed our planet and we came from that.

That doesn't excuse some of the other 'huh?' moments though because the movie itself is just working from a fantastical premise. It's just like the new Star Trek movie doesn't get away with 'blowing up a black hole' or 'magical healing blood' even though it's about a future where all the Aliens look like humans with bumpy foreheads and ships can go FTL.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

Might be talking out my arse, but the way I see it is:

Dog is to Human, as Primate is to Human, as Dog is to Collie.

By that I mean, when we say dog we are a step up the species differentiation web (I forget its actual name) compared to human.

Taxonomic classification? Nope, dogs are all of the same species, ie the lowest run on the taxonomic ranking system. Primates are an order, which is the fourth rung on the classification system, above species, genus and family.

Anyway, it's entirely plausible for a creature that is the same species as us Earth humans to be larger and paler and hairless. Things like changes in size and colouration are pretty minor genetic changes that can occur over a matter of a few generations, and can also be affected by differences in environment. Maybe the prometheans are the same species as us, maybe they're a different subspecies of human, maybe they're of the same genus but are a different species. Any of those is reasonable.

What's not plausible is for humans to have been seeded here by aliens when there's so much evidence that humans evolved here. If we didn't evolve here then we wouldn't expect to find creatures that share about 98% of our genome with us, like chimps or bonobos, and there wouldn't be any genetic markers or fossil record confirming we evolved here.
What would be more plausible would be:-
a) aliens seeded the original strands of RNA or DNA here, that gave rise to life on Earth.
b) aliens abducted humans at some point in the past and adapted them for life on other planets, thus when we discover these 'aliens' they're actually of Earth origin.

But neither of these seem to be what prometheus is implying. It shows us the Prometheans seeding their own DNA, ie human DNA, onto the Earth... which by an astounding coincidence happened to evolve over billions of years to get back to the starting point, humans. What the fuck?

 

[Olas]

I'm pretty sure they just meant it essentially has human DNA rather than DNA that's only 98% similar like chimps. I don't think the implication was that it's somehow 'perfectly' human or whatever people are trying to make out of it.

When it comes to Prometheus people seem to care way more about scientific minutia than the actual story, which I think is weird for a movie that's so obviously not interested in being scientifically grounded. Personally I enjoyed the movie for it's mystery and horror elements, even if it wasn't airtight in every regard.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I'm pretty sure they just meant it essentially has human DNA rather than DNA that's only 98% similar like chimps. I don't think the implication was that it's somehow 'perfectly' human or whatever people are trying to make out of it.

Pretty much this. It's really depending on just where you set the baseline- there are species of primates who share a 99% similarity to humans based on DNA comparisons, but obviously that 1% makes one heck of a difference.

When it comes to Prometheus people seem to care way more about scientific minutia than the actual story, which I think is weird for a movie that's so obviously not interested in being scientifically grounded.

I think throwing around the number "100%" starts setting off peoples' brains somehow.

 

[happyninja42]

Update: Ok, just to clarify something else here, based on some of the comments. I'm not trying to propose that "Aliens are uhmungus erhmagurd!" , or proposing the Chariots of the Gods bullshit. I'm well aware this entire movie, and all the stuff in it is fictional, and complete shit.

I'm simply asking the direct question of "could it be possible that a creature significantly different from us, like the giant albinos could show up genetically the same as a human?" That despite their marked differences in appearance, on a genetic level, could they be the same species. I used the dog example simply for comparison, to show how a large number of significantly different looking animals could all be the same species. Hence the Chihuahua (Human) to Bull Mastiff (Giant Albino) comparison.

Some people have made good comments, like even if it is possible, the fact that our equipment might not be able to register them as human, since we've never seen them before. That's a pretty good one, though if the genetic variances are minor enough, it still might show up in our systems.

I'm pretty sure they just meant it essentially has human DNA rather than DNA that's only 98% similar like chimps. I don't think the implication was that it's somehow 'perfectly' human or whatever people are trying to make out of it.

I'm just using the terms in the movie, which were 100% human. And the reason I bring it up, is because this was something that people kept harping on in the movie. That there was no way it could be human, because it was so drastically different from us.

When it comes to Prometheus people seem to care way more about scientific minutia than the actual story, which I think is weird for a movie that's so obviously not interested in being scientifically grounded. Personally I enjoyed the movie for it's mystery and horror elements, even if it wasn't airtight in every regard.

I'm not worried about it's story, because it was very dumb, and had giant plotholes that you could drive a starship through. I'm simply curious about this one bit of the movie, that after further thought, seemed more plausible then when I first considered it, and was curious if anyone more knowledgable about genetics could shed some light on it.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well it depends how the 100% human thing is defined, much like the dog analogy we are probably talking about them rounding it up for dramatic effect. And yes someone shaped that closely to humans is very feasibly 99.999% DNA compatible, hell even dolphins are only off in DNA by 2%.