Evolution.

[Seditious]

Originally Posted by razoredge

I appreaciate that BMWG, I'll have to read it a few more times. Im not really sure it explains why we are... what we are and why chimps are still just chimps.

I forget who, unfortunately, but I recall one proposition that it's because we got our asses handed to us: that man didn't decide 'hey, the savannah, that looks nice, fuck the plentiful jungle, lets wander about' but instead got kicked the fuck out of the jungle by the superior adapted species of primates which remain there to this day. such evolutionary pressures as new challenges of a new environment may well be responsible for our misfortune (or fortune, if that's how you regard the human condition)... we have religion, cocaine, science...they don't need it.

Originally Posted by razoredge

I just read today they have discovered other important large differences between human and chimps, not that the terms used meant much to me. So in there somewhere there has to be more to the story than 98% DNA because the difference between man and a chimp is large.

a twenty year old and a 60 year old have brains of comparative grey-matter structure... but the distinction is in the details, the fine complexity of the neuronal networks which sets individuals of relatively equal brain capacity apart in their actual character and intellect.

about 20,300 genes in our genome have been discovered... so extremely roughly and incompletely we could say the chimps then might have 400 different genes to us... how many letters in the alphabet? 26...how many words?---more than 26, or 52... single genes alone are scarcely responsible for any recognizable trait in an organism, it's all in the combinations... flour and water is fuckin papermache glue, but with sugar and heat it's delicious bread, and with egg and butter and some chocolate chips you can get some biscuits... there is a world of complexity of end results from a very simple few differences, whether in DNA or a recipe.

Originally Posted by razoredge

I would guess its a by chance evolution thing but I cant understand why it has not reoccured then.

evolution is the opposite of chance.
Dawkins' Climbing Mount Improbable is worth reading if you're interested in understanding this.

Originally Posted by razoredge

It would appear that the chimp theory indicates a select few or even a single pair were just a bit smarter and set out as the foundation of homo sapiens, yet its assumed to have been 5 million years ago. But has it reocurred and if not how come ?

it's unlikely there was an Adam and Eve who created the rest of humanity. 'Species' definitions are difficult, essentially demarcating on who can breed with who. if X has a child, Y, and Y has Z, and Y can breed with Z's kids and X's kids, but Z can't breed with X...one wants to say they're a different species, though they're the same species as Y, which, for Y is the same species as X...which makes it all a subjective label. It's more likely there was a whole breeding pool slowly changing as it did ultimately into what we are at present, of which it would be impossible to say of each individual who gets to be counted as someone who'll be contributing to the human race 300,000 years from now, than that two individuals who couldn't any longer breed with any others just inbred their way to the whole human population as Christianity would have it.

Originally Posted by razoredge

were just a bit smarter and set out as the foundation of homo sapiens

as I proposed earlier, it's more likely that evolutionary pressures like bipedalism and environmental change facilitated and caused our increased brain size, longer infancy, and other traits unique of man, as opposed to us getting smarter out of nowhere and beginning to do things differently as if out of inspiration and volition rather than the same lack of genius which has one house cat submissive to the other in his house...you kinda do what seem to improve the pleasure/pain ratio.

Originally Posted by razoredge

It also appears to me that pyhsically man is still changing where as the rest of the animals may remain the same, not that I would know maybe they are changing as well.

how so?
There was recently an article about some lizards who've adapted massively in just the span of thirty years... and influenza seems to do a bang up job surpassing our technology to immunize against it, while we and our immune system remain rather stationary. You may just be making an observation bias.

[Patrick R.]

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.

[Patrick R.]

Originally Posted by BlackMetalWhiteGuy

Humans and apes don't really stand out that much if you're at all familiar with primate evolution. Humans evolved from chimps, which are genetically almost identical to us with the exception of one missing set of chromosomes, which I am very curious about.

Humans did not evolve from chimpanzees…where on earth did you get this information from? Perhaps you meant to say we have common ancestry? Also, we aren’t even close to being “genetically identical”, we have a 2% difference between our genomes which is an enormous amount of genetic information. As far as a “missing chromosome”, this is related to an ancestral fusion, which created chromosome 2 in humans. This also answers “German asshole”.

http://www.evolutionpages.com/chromosome_2.htm

Originally Posted by panzerfaust666

As far as my knowledge goes in regards to Evolution, it is failry limited.I also ask, evolution as in "coming from apes" etc? I know enough to say that THAT theory is bullshit, mainly because we have 23 chromosones(46) and apes etc have 24( 48)

[razoredge]

Ok thanks... lol. For a change I will need some time to reread more of this so it sinks in and I can gather my thoughts... lol. Much of what has been said I knew, some is beyond my immeadiate comprenhension due to less fimiliar terminology.

I was asked what was so important about flight ? I could ask what was so important about biped, but I know better. Same as the answer to flight would be mobility. Slithering on the ground seems to have some advantages as well but I was never jelous. However it surely appears that man has been intrigued by flight... no ? So obviously birds just never hit the lottery in the brain development department. Its seems this thought ability is what has set humans apart. Surely there are advantages involved with having our arms to put to work for our thoughts and has led to continued advanced evolutionary development. However excluding this mechanical option, by comparision to other mammals I do believe we are physically inferior and survived by resourcefullness alone. I believe there has been much said about other species of animals, for lack of a better term "holding us in awe" so perhaps our upright mobility and flapping of arms has had an intimidation factor, then increased by weapons and of course fire. So it seems to always lead back to the brain capacity and its continued development.

But what a jackpot that has seemed to excape other species... double edge sword that it is.

I can believe the idea of being run out of the forests to be true, by similiar example, the Inuit a peaceful, physically smaller branch of humans inhabited the extreme climate of the far north... happily no less. Possibly until the past century were one of the most primitive or at least mind boggling examples of humans left.

I am also wondering, there was once what was refered to as "the missing link". I realize this has possibly become a dated idea but has archaeology uncovered all the examples of homo sapien evolution yet?

[BlackMetalWhiteGuy]

Originally Posted by Seditious

evolution is the opposite of chance.
Dawkins' Climbing Mount Improbable is worth reading if you're interested in understanding this.

Originally Posted by BlackMetalWhiteGuy

Everything in evolution is by chance. However...

To avoid confusion about this, I want to point out that I'm stating that all mutations occur by chance, while the factors determining which mutations survive are based on probability.

Originally Posted by Patrick R.

Humans did not evolve from chimpanzees…where on earth did you get this information from? Perhaps you meant to say we have common ancestry? Also, we aren’t even close to being “genetically identical”, we have a 2% difference between our genomes which is an enormous amount of genetic information. As far as a “missing chromosome”, this is related to an ancestral fusion, which created chromosome 2 in humans. This also answers “German asshole”.

http://www.evolutionpages.com/chromosome_2.htm

Yes, I caught this and stated correctly in another post that humans simply share an ancestor with chimps and didn't evolve from them. I didn't realize that I left such a glaring error in my other post though, so thank you for pointing it out, it's correct now

With regards to genetic identity, I'm aware of the 2% difference and my word choice "identical" is an over exaggeration that I used simply to explain to razoredge that chimps are our closest extant relatives.

Also, thanks for explaining the chromosome issue, I've been wondering about this for quite some time now.

Originally Posted by razoredge

I was asked what was so important about flight ? I could ask what was so important about biped, but I know better. Same as the answer to flight would be mobility. Slithering on the ground seems to have some advantages as well but I was never jelous. However it surely appears that man has been intrigued by flight... no ? So obviously birds just never hit the lottery in the brain development department.

Bipedalism has advantages other than those related to mobility, especially in a savannah. For starters, there are fewer trees to escape to, so being able to stand bipedally would allow us to see predators from much further away, enabling us to get a head start when escape is necessary. More limited food sources also means that bipedal walking would free our arms, allowing us to carry food with us as we migrated, rather than huddling around a dwindling resource.

With regard to bird intelligence, I believe I stated earlier that the type of intelligence that humans are primarily concerned with is an adaptation to social group size. In addition to primates, we can see the same correlation in canines, felines, other terrestrial predatory mammals and whales, which evolved from a terrestrial species. Even some bird species, particularly parrots and macaws, demonstrate this phenomenon. In fact, African Greys, which are considered to be the geniuses of the bird world have been estimated to possess the cognitive processing power of a five year old child, and the emotional equivalence of a three year old human.

Originally Posted by razoredge

I am also wondering, there was once what was refered to as "the missing link". I realize this has possibly become a dated idea but has archaeology uncovered all the examples of homo sapien evolution yet?

We discussed the "missing link" in my evolutionary psychology class a few years ago and the guy who made the discovery was ridiculed for it, because he admitted to sculpting the hips of the fossil into what he imagined an intermediary stage would look like.

[Opethian666]

I don't believe in evolution, that would be silly, but I do accept it as a fact. I also accept the current theory of evolution as the most accurate (and also the only) existing scientific theory that explains the diversity of lifeforms on this planet today. There's really not much more that needs to be said, we might as well start debating whether the earth revolves around the sun.

[Patrick R.]

Originally Posted by Opethian666

I don't believe in evolution, that would be silly, but I do accept it as a fact. I also accept the current theory of evolution as the most accurate (and also the only) existing scientific theory that explains the diversity of lifeforms on this planet today. There's really not much more that needs to be said, we might as well start debating whether the earth revolves around the sun.

It is clear that you believe in evolution then.

[razoredge]

In a way he's had the best answer

I believe the earth has evolved but I propose the human race came from another dying planet, but only the uneducated youth survived climate adaptation, thus explaining why all former knowledge was lost

[Patrick R.]

Originally Posted by razoredge

In a way he's had the best answer

I believe the earth has evolved but I propose the human race came from another dying planet, but only the uneducated youth survived climate adaptation, thus explaining why all former knowledge was lost

What?