Posted on 04/10/2009 1:57:18 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Human beings are not just evolving, the whole process has been put on the fast track by our genes responding to rapid changes in the world around us.
The pressures of modern life may be speeding up the pace of human evolution, some anthropologists think. Nowadays, the idea that “human evolution is a continuing process is widely accepted among anthropologists”, said Robert Wald Sussman, the editor of the Yearbook of Physical Anthropology at Washington University in St Louis.
It’s even conceivable, he said, that our genes eventually will change enough to create an entirely new human species, one no longer able to breed with our own species, Homo sapiens, report McClatchy Newspapers. The still-controversial concept of “ongoing evolution” was much discussed last week at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Chicago. It’s also the topic of a new book, ‘The 10,000 Year Explosion’, by anthropologists Henry Harpending and Gregory Cochran of the University of Utah, Salt Lake City.
In their book, the Utah anthropologists contend that “human evolution has accelerated in the past 10,000 years, rather than slowing or stopping. “The pace has been so rapid that humans have changed significantly in body and mind over recorded history.”
Evolutionary changes result when random mutations or damage to DNA from such factors as radiation, smoking or toxic chemicals create new varieties of genes. Some gene changes are harmful, most have no effect and a few provide advantages that are passed on to future generations. If they’re particularly beneficial, they spread throughout the population.
“Any gene variant that increases your chance of having children early and often should be favored,” Cochran said.
Despite modern medical and technological advances, the pressures that lead to evolution by natural selection have continued. The massive AIDS epidemic that’s raging in southern Africa, for example, is “almost certainly” causing gene variants that protect against HIV to accumulate in the African population, Harpending said.
Another anthropologist, John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said, “Our evolution has recently accelerated by around 100-fold.” A key reason, Hawks said, is the enormous growth of the world’s population, which multiplies the size of the gene pool available to launch new varieties.
A few asides.
It has been noted that adaptation happens most in lifeforms with the most parasites, diseases, and predators. However, humans have eliminated so many parasites that we are getting immune disorders because of the *lack* of parasites. Human use of antibiotics is creating impressive resistance in some kinds of bacteria. And humans greatest predators are other humans.
Go figure.
There is only one known case of (almost) superior human mutation, which was discovered in Suffolk, England in the early 19th Century.
They were “the hedgehog men of Suffolk”, a family with several sons, all of whom were generally stronger, smarter, faster, and otherwise more capable than the typical person of the time. Unfortunately, from the knees to the navel, they were covered with very rough skin, like that of a hedgehog.
This made mating so difficult that none of them produced offspring and so their line died out.
Maybe you should actually answer the person that made the post you were attacking there Mr. Holmes... as is Sherlock.
LLS
I guess that’s how near-sightedness was passed on, all that gathering of nuts and berries.
alas / additional:
Modern life’s pressures may be hastening human evolution
(Human Evolution Speeding Up)
McClatchy | April 8, 2009 | Robert S. Boyd
Posted on 04/08/2009 6:19:32 PM PDT by GOPGuide
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2225282/posts
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Thanks nickcarraway. |
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THEY TOOK YER JORB!
...and a really big ear to accomodate the cell phone.
Genetic engineering could cause this.
It was pooferization.
You can wax pontific and emanatize the poofterverse. I’ll take Genesis, personally. We’ll just have to agree to disagree.
LoL!
Thanks for the ping!
Stop that or you’ll go blind.
I’ve become a salamander.
Not sure if that was an evolutionary step up or down.
[but I did once regenerate the entire tip of my left thumb]
And if they are on the same planet then a war will start to the extinction of the other competitor.
Can a black man breath through a Doris Day nose?
Hmmm. Those guys are put together just like me...about thirty years ago.
Is that old “Cobra Head”, or Yoda...
That pic is too scary, take it down.
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