Quote:
Originally Posted by razoredge
There is something I dont understand about evolution. You have what it supposed to be the remains of the dinosaurs era, which is crocs, some whales, not sure what else. Then you have the animal families which have basic functions and level of mentality that are pretty much the same amoungst its varieties, with climate and environment adaptations. Then you have humans and apes.... yet we stick out like a sore thumb by comparision. Have they determined how that happened ? Here we are apparently evolved from apes into this highly intellegent, capable and world dominating species. Yet these other apes never evolved beyond being basic furry animals living in the same environment they have always been in. What was it that set us apart to evolve so far beyond the evolution all these other species of mammals ?
|
First, humans didn’t evolve from apes, but we do share common ancestry. Our hominid ancestors cerebellum doubled in 100,000 years. Apes share a completely separate linage from humans, this lineage split at a time estimated to be around 6 or 5 million years ago. The evolution of the hominid cerebellum wasn’t as rapid as other sources of evolutionary chance documented in Philip D. Gingerich study
“Rates of evolution: effects of time and temporal scaling” which is noted as a 0.06 % change per generation. This is the fastest rate in his study, compare this to the increase in the hominid cerebellum, which is 0.02% change per generation at detailed in George Williams “
Natural Selection: Domains, Levels, and Challenges”. Change in an organisms character is dependent on genetic phenomenon, there is no reason why all organisms should change at the same rate with regards to brain size, function, or structure.