Posted on 11/20/2005 1:21:49 PM PST by blam
Greta Garbo's gone.
My own definition, which has provoked a fit of red fonting, is that evolution (to most people) means that natural selection is the impetus that makes one species emerge from another, though conditions of geo isolation and lots and lots of geological time. This has proven too primitive a definition for some evos here, can you handle it?
I don't even know if this is 'genetic' as much as it is the change in diet and lifestyle changing the way our bones and teeth develop.
For instance, if at birth we dropped an infant in a culture that rarely cooked and didn't eat farmed food, maybe the jaws and teeth would develop to match the 'old' human structure.
"speach"? :-)
Done.
Getting into definition parsing games has about the appeal to me as parsing Bill Clinton quotes.
The whole effort seems... so.... Trollish to me.
Namecalling, five yard penalty.
But the same argument would hold for my family as well...altho I had wisdom teeth, neither my brother or parents did....and my great grandparents had 12 children that lived to adult hood, and their children had many children, and in my parents generation and in my generation we have had less children...I did not say that people with wisdom teeth had less children...
But it does make sense, that those people who did have wisdom teeth, ,before the advent of modern dentistry, and had those wisdom teeth become impacted and infected, would die earlier, and perhaps die before they had a chance to reproduce...I do know, ,that my wisdom teeth were impacted and were infected, and if a dentist had not removed them, I would have been very ill, due to that infection, and possibly could have died...
So, as was previously pointed out by another poster, this may have had some effect, tho a small one, as to how many with wisdom teeth, or without wisdom teeth went on to reproduce...
I dont believe that anectodal stories about your family or my family matter much in the scheme of things...
Probably the reasons are purely cultural. Africans and Arabs and polygamous Mormons, some with no teeth, have us all beat.
Well, probably not, at least not for many generations. It's like the farmer who selects sheep for twinning (an uncommon thing in nature, but very common now in sheep)--eventually, if sheep are left alone in the wild, twinning will almost disappear. However, we've also bred most sheep not to be able to shed their fleece, so those sheep in the wild would smother before they could stop twinning.
Fat fingers and closed eyes :o)
Evolution is really just about change.
susie
That's quite a yarn.
Gasoline exists because it is refined from oil to power cars.
Oil existed long before cars did, and is not dependent upon cars for its existance.
Natural selection exists in and of itself, it is sufficient and does not need "evolution" to support it. Evolution needs natural selection and hundreds of other factors for its support.
We know that cars run, we do not know that evolution is valid. Your analogy is deeply flawed.
Yes, I understand.
susie
...and the difference would be...?
Back to biology class with you.
Uh, right. Back to biology (and theology) class for YOU my FRiend. "Selection" dictates everything from good looking and intelligent kids coming from good looking and intelligent parents to cat breeding. "Evolution" dictates a "new and improved" SPECIES from a random mutation that is NOT ONLY beneficial to the new species but self-replicating to future generations. The difference between natural or artificial "selection" and "evolution" is enormous.
I am often in awe of my great-grandmother..as I stated, she raised 12 children into adulthood, most of them not dying until they were well into their 90s and a few well over the age of 100...great-grammie herself lived to be well into her 90s...
But what astounds me, is that she also buried 5 other children before they ever reached the age of 6...and had several miscarriages, or babies born dead...the relatives figure that great grammie probably was pregnant about 24 times, during her lifetime...
Even more astounding, is that she made time for all her children, her grandchildren, her great grandchildren, and her great great grandchildren...she loved us all...when she died, the funeral home could not accomodate all those present, in just one viewing room...they had to open up all the other viewing rooms, and pipe in the service via an intercom set up...she was a beloved woman who produced a literal army of descendants...
Huh. Now that surprises me...a little.
Selection for type+geo isolation+beeellions and beeellions of years=emergence of independent species...this was what I was taught. What's wrong with it?
I had wisdom teeth, but they did not become a problem and need removal until after I had had children. They are not a health risk before adolescence.
She sounds wonderful. Today, because most women don't want to be pregnant for half their lives, and marry older, and have the pill, is the reason for less children. That and abortion on demand. Wisdom teeth got nothing to do with it.
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