the apes evolved but we don't!

[charles brough]

During the almost two hundred thousand years we have been Homo Sapiens, anthropologists have been unable to demonstrate any significant further biological evolution.

So, why confuse the issue and claim "human evolution" when the evolution only evolved apes to us and we are not and have not evolved biologically?

In being objective in science it is important to ues terms in precise ways. Why should words be used to claim something that the anthropologists cannot demonstrate?

Oh, yes, they did conclude we are a little smaller in statue and our brain case is a triffle smaller, but if we count that, we imply that it explains "human progress" and it certianly does not, does it?

Its time to concentrate on social evolution to explain what is going on and quit fiddling around grasping for biological evolutionary straws that don't exist.

Why can't social theorists explain it without coming up with four to eight different conflicting theories?

[orbsycli]

...are you blind?

No offense.

[Tormod]

Originally Posted by charles brough

Why can't social theorists explain it without coming up with four to eight different conflicting theories?

Explain what?

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by charles brough

[Title: the apes evolved but we don't!]

A couple of questions:

• Why do you class human being outside of the apes, specifically the great apes? By every scientific biological classification scheme of which I’m aware, humans are considered great apes (hominidae).
• What is your evidence that apes other than humans (eg: chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas) have evolved more than human beings. To the best of my knowledge, there is no such evidence. Hominina, (humans being the only surviving species, but only barely, neanderthal having survived until about 24,000 years ago, and the more recently discovered homo floresiensis until as late as 12,000 years ago) actually showing significantly more genetic variety than other apes, though whether this is due to accelerated evolution, as some have proposed, or a much greater population size, remains, I think, an undecided question of some contraversy.

By best present day theory, humans last branched from their closest non-human primate relatives, the panini (bonobos and chimpanzees), around 7-5 million years ago. Considerable physical and apparent cultural variation existed in the many hominina lines between this split and the somewhat arbitrary point 0.2 million years ago marked as the beginning of “anatomically modern human beings”. Although I’ve not studied it in detail, my impression is that evolutionary changes in physical traits are more dramatic among the Hominina than among the panini.

(source: Evolutionary Trees, a rather nice compilation page by Bob Patterson)

In short, I’m aware of no evidence that non-human primate species have evolved more than humans, and of considerable compelling speculation that humans have evolved more than most non-human primates.

Originally Posted by charles brough

Why can't social theorists explain it without coming up with four to eight different conflicting theories?

IMHO, the absence of the same orthodoxy in the social sciences as are found in the physical ones are due to the inexact and subjective nature of social science experiments. It’s appallingly difficult, in the social sciences, to devise an experiment that will reliably prove a particular theory wrong, allowing many contradictory theories to coexists.

However, this question is less relevant to me than what it suggest to me about the overall nature of Charles’s recent ideas concerning evolution. I’ve been puzzled in this thread, and the similar alternative theories thread, How could we have stopped evolving?, by what seemed to me to be Charles’s strange claims about biological evolution (or the lack thereof). This thread appearing in the social sciences, rather than the biology forum, has provided me a clue toward resolving my puzzlement.

Charles, please confirm, clarify, or correct, but I believe your recent claims amount to suggesting that the rapid transition from roughly anatomically modern humans “living pretty much like the animals” (though with tool use exceeding that of modern non-human primates) to living much like modern humans, which appears to have occurred 60,000 - 12,000 years ago, can’t be explained as resulting from genetic evolution processes only. Though this raises the only speculatively answered question of what caused this dramatic transition, I agree, and think most biologists would agree, with this claim.

What I disagree with, and think most biologists would also disagree with, is the suggestion that this “culture explosion” somehow “switched off” the biochemical mechanism of genetic evolution for humans. Although, with the prospect of our modern understanding of molecular biology allowing us to inspect and alter our genome, it may not remain the case even for the next century, I know of no evidence or sound theory that suggests this. Biologically, we humans appear to be evolving much like any other animal, wild or even domestic (whether humans should be classed as wild or domestic animals is an interesting question, though, I think, one for another thread). The visible changes - particularly those made to the landscape and environment - due to this process are dwarfed, however, by those due to change in human culture.

Another remarkable coincidence relevant to this “epigenetic” (note that this is an archaic use of the term which can be confusing to people familiar with modern biology literature) perspective on evolution is the extinction of non-human hominina species around the same time that we began exhibiting modern behavior – that is, stopped “living much like the animals”. A reasonable and common speculation concerning this coincidence is that a critical trait of modern humans is xenophobia, which lead our distant ancestors to either outright exterminate, or at least aggressively outcompete, our closest relatives.

In long-term evolutionary terms, such an event is dramatic: no longer can a selection event occur via a hominina species going extinct, resulting in all future hominina descending from a more limited pool. If humans go extinct, the hominina line is over, and with it, the particular 7-million-year-old evolutionary “experiment” of which we’re the latest result.

[charles brough]

CraigD, thanks for your response.
You did misread some things. Of course "we" are primates, but I use "we" only in reference to our Home Sapiens species. We are not Neanderthals, gorillas, etc. Also, I have no idea how you gained the impression I think the other great apes evolved biologically more than we! I don't even think there is a way to judge.

During the last seventy thousand years, social evolution among us has developed so fast that we ceased to need any further biological evolution. Instead, we, at an accelerating rate, "culturally" evolved so fast that we are now crowding out the other primates---including, if you will, Neanderthalis and Forenseis.

I would say that the problem with social theory is not a lack of good data but of being unable/unwilling to deal with it objectively and, even claiming that it is impossible to be objective. It is impossible to be objective for anyone who is influenced, and hence biased towards, either our secular ideology or our old religious one--or both.

"XENOPHOBIA" is a word I have never used. Social science cannot solve the growing world affairs problem by ranting against what is clearly instinctive social behavior. We are social primates evolved to live in thirty to fifty individual sized groups. The only way we can function well is for us to have common ideological system that enable the individual to still feel he belongs. There is no way he can have that feeling and hence that sense of security and well-being when his ideologically extended group (society) is rapidly dividing and is telling him his society is no better than the others!

The only "solution" is the eventual replacement of the world's ideological systems with a single one. In my web page, I propose one . . .

[Eclogite]

Originally Posted by charles brough

During the last seventy thousand years, social evolution among us has developed so fast that we ceased to need any further biological evolution.

There are three observations I wish to make in relation to this Charles:

1. Your use of the word need (highlighted above) makes me very uncomfortable. It suggests a basic misunderstanding of the character and mechanisms of evolution. I am more than ready to learn that you were using this in a wholly metaphorical sense, but I should like to hear that directly from you. For the record neither we, nor any other organism on the planet, ever needed any biological evolution: in every instance it just happened.

2. You continue to make the flawed claim that evolution has ceased. (I note in passing some confusion on your part as to whether this evolution ceased 70,000 years ago, or 200,000 years ago. You might wish to clarify that.) There is a cornucopia of research relating to recent human evolution. I recommend you study some of it. If this claim is central to your thesis then your thesis is fatally flawed.

Here are a couple of examples to get you started:
Natural selection on protein-coding genes in the human genome : Nature

In the above, an analysis of selected genes reveals a strong correlation with Darwinian selection.

Convergent adaptation of human lactase persistence in Africa and Europe : Abstract : Nature Genetics
In this example the very recent (within the last 3000 years) convergent evolution of lasctose tolerance in East Africans is demonstrated.

Perhaps most damning for your argument is this example:
PLoS Genetics - Localizing Recent Adaptive Evolution in the Human Genome
This study of genome sequences in African-Americans, European-Americans and Chinese suggests that natural selection has caused as much as 10 percent of the human genome to change in some populations in the last 15,000 to 100,000 years.

3. You remark to Craig, "Also, I have no idea how you gained the impression I think the other great apes evolved biologically more than we!"

I'm going to take a pretty wild stab at it here, but do you think the thread title " the apes evolved but we don't!" might have contributed to that impression?

[InfiniteNow]

My sense, Charles, is that (despite your apparent good intentions) you do not understand basics of evolution by natural selection, and hence you are arguing from a series of false premises and your conclusions are subsequently false.

Here is a wonderful presentation by Richard Dawkins called "Growing up in the Universe" which might help you better understand. It's quite fascinating, informative, and I'd recommend it to anyone (especially those with a faulty understanding of evolution by natural selection).


RichardDawkins.net

Oxford professor Richard Dawkins presents a series of lectures on life, the universe, and our place in it. With brilliance and clarity, Dawkins unravels an educational gem that will mesmerize young and old alike. Illuminating demonstrations, wildlife, virtual reality, and special guests (including Douglas Adams) all combine to make this collection a timeless classic.

The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures for Children were founded by Michael Faraday in 1825, with himself as the inaugural lecturer. The 1991 lecturer was Richard Dawkins whose five one-hour lectures, originally televised by the BBC, are now available free online, courtesy of The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.

[LaurieAG]

Originally Posted by charles brough

During the almost two hundred thousand years we have been Homo Sapiens, anthropologists have been unable to demonstrate any significant further biological evolution.

Hi Charles,

We were given the example of Sickle Cell Anaemia (SCA) in University Biology.

While the normal percentage of SCA in any population is between 1 and 2 percent there are areas in Africa where the percentage is between 20 and 40 percent.

The reason for this is the Tsetse Fly and Sleeping Sickness.

When a person who has SCA gets sleeping sickness their blood cells go sickle shaped and they get very sick. This prevents the disease from spreading and eventually killing them so that they only have to recover from the SCA.

This may not exactly be biological evolution but it is a good example of the basic premise of evolution.

[charles brough]

Eclogite: Is it necessary for your edifaction that I use the word "teleological" when referring to "need"? I assume you know that all natural selection is teleological and that such ungainly terms need not be bothered with here.

When saying human biology has been unchanged, I am not comparing us to the cylocanthe! Nothing stays exactly the same. The changes you mention prove your point to you; but in terms of explaining how the human race accumulated its immense cultural heritage and has crowded the Earth, the little changes you mention are petty and unimportant to the extreme! I don't understand why this point has so much trouble getting across to people.

And Craig clearly misread what I wrote. He made the mistake of not taking what I wrote literally.

[charles brough]

INFINITE LAURIE AND ECLO:

This is a quote from my initial post that started this thread:

"Its time to concentrate on social evolution to explain what is going on and quit fiddling around grasping for biological evolutionary straws that don't exist."

Even the so-called examples of human biological evolution so far presented here are mostly race ones, and surely you are not all implying that the teleological change we call "progress" is due to changes that make one race teleologically (I use this word now for you Eclo) "better" than the other, are you?

We have to have acquired the culture that has enabled us to populate the world through a process of natural selection, but you have shown no evidence that the process that accounts for all that change ("progress") that we see is biological.

What I propose is that the natural selection process is social, that societies are life-like entities bonded by mainstream ideological systems and that there is a natural selection process going on between them.

And I suggest we all avoid being condescending . . .