(Lack of) Human Evolution.

Guybrush · 06-05-2010, 05:19 PM

Oh well Neapolitan, I suspect you're arguing with yourself. Mirror tests have been used and results between species like chimps and gorillas can be compared. If you can think of a better way to do it, feel free to design an experiment then have lots of people test various species so that we get comparable results and then figure out if that somehow helps us better answer when our ancestors became self-aware.

edit :

By the way, yes - I did see Idiocracy. Not super, but it had it's moments I thought

CaptainAwesome · 07-02-2010, 02:51 PM

with evolution, the strongest survive. we are surviving all too well..with all our technology and tools we have no need to adapt to help survival. so instead of us it is our society and technology and such that evolves.

midnight rain · 07-02-2010, 10:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sljslj

It seems to me that humans just don't evolve physically anymore (mentally maybe, possibly even "devolving" mentally at this point). I have a feeling if you were to hop in your time machine (you can borrow mine if you don't have your own) and travel 40,000 years into the past, you would encounter beings physically identical or nearly so.
So is our understanding of evolution completely off? Or is it that we have no need to evolve anymore? If the latter is true, what might bring us to the point that evolution is once again necessary?
It's an interesting thought and I just wanted to see what the great mind at MB (all three of them) have to say about it.

Umm so wrong on so many levels dude. You obviously have not gauged how slow the process of evolution is.

You know Lucy right? The earliest hominid found, the first examples of primates going bipedal. Well Lucy was very different from how we are to say the least. Lots of hair, small skull and small brain, no opposable thumbs etc. It took millions of years for one's like Lucy to start looking like we do now. Tore can fact check me on this one, I'm going off memory of an anthro class I took.

Guybrush · 07-03-2010, 06:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tuna

Umm so wrong on so many levels dude. You obviously have not gauged how slow the process of evolution is.

You know Lucy right? The earliest hominid found, the first examples of primates going bipedal. Well Lucy was very different from how we are to say the least. Lots of hair, small skull and small brain, no opposable thumbs etc. It took millions of years for one's like Lucy to start looking like we do now. Tore can fact check me on this one, I'm going off memory of an anthro class I took.

Hm, fact check? A lot happens in our understanding of human evolution and anthropology these days

Any facts I think I know could already be outdated since I don't try superhard to stay on top of this and stuff happens so fast, but .. At least I can say that Lucy at a bit more than 3 million years age is no longer the oldest reasonably "complete" hominid fossil anymore. She's been thoroughly beaten by Ardi whose estimated age is about 4,4 million years!

Note that it's not certain that Ardi's lineage is the one that gave rise to modern humans though. Many hominid lineages have gone extinct. However, interesting for some europeans is that some of the european (Homo sapien) lineages mixed with neanderthals some many thousand years ago. There are europeans who have about 4% of their genes coming from Homo neanderthalis. So then neanderthals are not completely gone, but live on in some of us .. I think that's pretty cool!

06-05-2010, 05:19 PM	#1 (permalink)
Guybrush Juicious Maximus III Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Scabb Island Posts: 6,525	Oh well Neapolitan, I suspect you're arguing with yourself. Mirror tests have been used and results between species like chimps and gorillas can be compared. If you can think of a better way to do it, feel free to design an experiment then have lots of people test various species so that we get comparable results and then figure out if that somehow helps us better answer when our ancestors became self-aware. edit : By the way, yes - I did see Idiocracy. Not super, but it had it's moments I thought __________________ Something Completely Different

07-02-2010, 02:51 PM	#2 (permalink)
CaptainAwesome Music Addict Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: Scotland Posts: 49	with evolution, the strongest survive. we are surviving all too well..with all our technology and tools we have no need to adapt to help survival. so instead of us it is our society and technology and such that evolves. __________________ Jesus could walk on water...BUT I CAN SWIM THROUGH LAND. http://imagegen.last.fm/basicrt10/re...awesome666.gif There are some who say that life's a bitch, well I'm not one of those: It's what you make of it.