I don't know if I find him to be an authority, British or not.
Posted on 10/06/2008 5:31:41 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Human evolution is grinding to a halt because of a shortage of older fathers in the West, according to a leading genetics expert.
Fathers over the age of 35 are more likely to pass on mutations, according to Professor Steve Jones, of University College London.
Speaking today at a UCL lecture entitled “Human evolution is over” Professor Jones will argue that there were three components to evolution – natural selection, mutation and random change. “Quite unexpectedly, we have dropped the human mutation rate because of a change in reproductive patterns,” Professor Jones told The Times.
“Human social change often changes our genetic future,” he said, citing marriage patterns and contraception as examples. Although chemicals and radioactive pollution could alter genetics, one of the most important mutation triggers is advanced age in men.
This is because cell divisions in males increase with age. “Every time there is a cell division, there is a chance of a mistake, a mutation, an error,” he said. “For a 29-year old father [the mean age of reproduction in the West] there are around 300 divisions between the sperm that made him and the one he passes on – each one with an opportunity to make mistakes.
“For a 50-year-old father, the figure is well over a thousand. A drop in the number of older fathers will thus have a major effect on the rate of mutation.”
Professor Jones added: “In the old days, you would find one powerful man having hundreds of children.” He cites the fecund Moulay Ismail of Morocco, who died in the 18th century, and is reputed to have fathered 888 children. To achieve this feat, Ismail is thought to have copulated with an average of about 1.2 women a day over 60 years.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Well. Isn’t that...conveeeenient?
I don’t think this guy is correct..
Most elderly animals don’t breed. It’s the young and robust animals that do.
I can’t comment authoritatively but it sounds pretty crackpot to me.
I had been wondering what the former Sex Pistols lead guitarist had been up to.
I’ve often wondered if evolution created brains that were smart enough to beat natural extinction.
By the way, natural selection is all about the genes, and they don’t care what machine they’re inside of. The survival of the species is a curiosity to us, not “evolution.”
Human evolution is over... hmmm... Did they note that Barack Obama and Barney Frank are proof that we are regressing? Or did they claim that Barack Obama is evidence that we can evolve no further?
Humans never evolved in the first place.
I know that I’m done evolving. Some people say I am set in my ways.
I don’t get this. It seems like in the past 30 years older and older men have been being fathers, and that for most of human history men didn’t make it to 35.
*snert*
Historically, of course (not to mention prehistorically), the evidence suggests that most men over 50 were dead, so how’d we evolve until now?
Anyway, wait until the female-shortage goes global, and then rich old guys will start making up a larger percentage of fathers.
GEEZ! Ismail must've had one heck of a marathon libido, not to mention extraordinary stamina ....
Oh please...what a load-
So is global warming.
Complete and utter nonsense!
1: The reproduction patterns of this generation are not an indicator of future patterns.
2: Isolated mutations (the mathematical equivalent of zero) are washed out by the massive population.
Ismail is thought to have copulated with an average of about 1.2 women a day over 60 years.
GEEZ! Ismail must’ve had one heck of a marathon libido, not to mention extraordinary stamina ....”
I find that 0.2 of a woman kinda icky.
I don't know if I find him to be an authority, British or not.
no, it stopped. but it will come back. after all Al gore can’t be wrong.
Noah was 500 years old when his sons were born. His children must have had a wide diversity.
We’re not talking elderly, we’re talking those in their prime who can still beat down the young toughs. In Human, it’s mostly done with money. I’ve held for some time that young women find success just as attractive as they do youth and beauty.
That said, I think this is a ridiculous statement to make. This culture is a passing thing. It will be gone in a blink of the planetary eye. This fellow should know that. It makes him suspect that he wouldn’t recognize it.
Imagine the convo going on: "Sorry babe, could only do 1/5th tonight, but if ya come back tomorrow I promise the other 4/5th and then some .... NEXXXXXTTTTTT!"
he’s absolutely right - and also one of the world’s brightest scientists.
I really don’t understand why the evolution nuts and creation nuts see each other as a threat.
Human evolution is grinding to a halt because of a shortage of American citizens that understand how / why this country came into existance and what it takes to make it work.
Human evolution is grinding to a halt because of too many freaking' Democrats........
...and Friday is only four days away..........
Even assuming the 888 children were all his (yeah, right ...), that’s less than three years of activity, assuming the ladies were fertile. Heck, round it to ten years if you want - 3,650 day. Whoever made up that 1.2 x 365 x 60 must have thinking of more modern female fertility rates - or wishful thinking.
Human evolution has important unnatural selection components: war, murder, jail. We're not natural and neither is the food we prefer to eat. Apples and oranges the size of softballs are not from natural selection. We're as man-made as our food is.
Also the rise of safe C-sections had opened up the viability of large brain size surviving the birthing process.
Either the mechanism for evolution works or it doesn't....so far it looks like it doesn't work. If interested here is more:
I volunteer on a daily basis with no takers yet.
Dysgenic welfare-state cradle-to-grave nanny-socialism, on the other hand, is what will end human evolution (by ending natural selection - the definition of modern liberalism seems to be the ferreting out of all selective mechanisms for elimination..."everything is equal, nothing should be punished or rewarded". Bad genes, bad culture? NO PROBLEM! Compulsory parasitic subsidization will get you that food, car, home, watered-down "liberalized" education, health-care, and one day even reproductive assistance - all so you can pass down your failed genes and lifestyle. Dysgenics is just as bad, if not worse, for long-term genetic fitness than eugenics.
As always, the "free market" is superior to all alternatives. It is how economics works, how science works, how natural selection works. To go against the invisible hand is the road to ruin in every context.
“Leading geneticist Steve Jones says human evolution is over”
One look at Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid could’ve told us that!
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Furthermore, look at the Arab. That has always been their way - one strongman reproduces enormously, and the betas and gammas can eat sand. Hasn’t done them much good. Inbreeding isn’t all its cracked up to be.
Hef must be jealous ...... /chuckle
ping
I’ll bet he wished he was an Ottoman emperor or a Morrocan sheik. Not even close, loser.
Yes Sir!
False. That may be your religious belief, but the facts contradict it completely. (See tagline.)
Yah, but Hef helped launch Gloria Steinem's 'career', so give him *some* credit ;)
He had to try again to succeed.
Cheers!
Your religion forces you to accept fairy tale of evolution.
Macro Evolution has no fact in evidence or process.
Whatever. I'll have the curry duck with mango salsa, please.
Unnngh.
BTW, the premise is in error. For the most part when it comes to mammals there really haven't been any serious genetic additions since the first critter with a uterus and breasts came into being. It's just variations on a theme (by the millions, of course).
What we seem to have is variation brought about by methylation (which is performed on the OUTSIDE of the DNA strands). Otherwise, there's not all that much difference between, let's say, a gorilla, and a vole, at the genetic level.
Science is only now figuring how how methylation works, how it's controlled, and where the data base is processed in some manner to make it happen.
No doubt once we figure that out we'll take conscious control of our full genetic heritage.
"Unnngh" was one of the greatest posts *ever* on FR! Late last year, IIRC ... have been searching the archives for it ever since in order to bookmark, but have come up empty every time.
Any FReepers out there have a link to the famous "UNNNGH" thread?
Thanks,
MM
I don’t know how it originated. It turned up in so many places that everyone picked up. I suppose I learned to use it on the Undead Thread.
It’s such a useful thing to post!
Yes, yer right :)
democrats are living proof that human evolution is grinding to a halt, and actually is in reverse.
Scenario 1: Idiocracy
Scenario 2: Robert Heinlein’s “The Family” - the human eugenics by choice
Scenario 3: Bene Gesserit of “Dune” universe - involuntary eugenics
The evidence is why I accept the theory of evolution.
And I have studied that evidence (to the Ph.D. level). Have you studied that evidence or are you just believing what you are told to believe?
How about one simple question for you. Everyone accepts micro-evolution, right? Please specify for us then the mechanism that prevents hundreds or thousands of micro-evolutionary events from adding up to a macro-evolution event (speciation). What mechanism forces the micro-evolutionary events to stop at a given point, and to go no further?
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I knew that evolution had stopped when my father's words started coming out of my mouth.