Stories tagged human evolution
Three black cats: So that's a triple negative... run! Run!
Courtesy heyjupiterEvolutionary biologists and math wizards have put their minds together to summon a pulsating, glistening packet of truth from the void.
Biting into the fruit of this magnificent spell, the meta-scientists gained the following information: superstitions, it seems, are an evolutionary adaptation.
This isn’t an entirely new train of thought, even here on Science Buzz, but this research takes the notion a little further. It has already been proposed that superstitions—false connections between cause and effect—prepare us for “just in case” scenarios. That is to say, as Gene put it, it won’t actually rain on a particular day just because we forgot our umbrellas, but thinking that that’s true will encourage us to bring our umbrellas just in case. The scientists behind this new study are looking at that idea in a more mathematical way.
They started with a similar premise: that assuming a potentially false connection between cause and effect will sometimes be beneficial. For example, to a prehistoric man, rustling grass might sometimes mean that there’s a lion getting ready to pounce on you. Even though a lion isn’t the only thing that will make grass rustle, treating rustling grass as a sign of danger isn’t a bad idea in the long run; the caveman looses nothing by avoiding grass that is actually being disturbed by the wind, but gains everything by avoiding grass the few times that it actually hides a predator.
The scientists then decided that the theory could be tested mathematically. By weighing the losses of false associations (avoiding wind rustled grass) against the gains from when those associations turn out to be real (hungry lions hiding), we can see if that sort of behavior is beneficial to survival in the long run, and will therefore be selected for evolutionarily. The model gets more complicated when there are multiple potential causes to connect to an effect (is it the rustling grass, the full moon, or the random sneezing that means a lion is on its way?), but it seems that assuming false causes is, in general, a decent survival strategy. Fortune favors the timid, apparently.
In modern times, the scientists say, this behavior can manifest in things like attitudes toward alternative and homeopathic medicines; while most of them may be ineffective, the chance that some work is enough to get people to use them all.
Superstitions like avoiding black cats, paths under ladders, and opening umbrellas indoors, however, may have more to do with evolutionarily superstitious behavior getting mixed up with culture and “modern life.” These days, the researchers point out, superstitions are probably less beneficial than they used to be.
That’s a little bit of a copout, I’d say. Fortune, after all, favors the bold, so why not go out on a limb here?
You don’t want black cats crossing your path, obviously, because a much larger black cat could be chasing them—and you don’t want to mess around with huge black cats (especially if they’re being chased by an even larger cat).
Walking under ladders is an easy one. There’s always the chance that a bucket of paint could fall on your head, and once you’ve got a bucket stuck on your head any number of awful things can and will happen to you. Trust me.
Opening umbrellas indoors—if you’re in a very small house, you could seriously damage your umbrella.
Unlucky number thirteen? Thirteen of anything can’t be divided fairly between friends, leaving you with no other option than to kill one of your friends. That’s how blood feuds start.
I should be a scientist. Or a fortune teller.
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Evolved geek: Are advances in technology dooming humans to become lapdogs with laptops?
Courtesy PipeHave you ever wondered what kind of effect all the recent advances in technology along with our geeky ways of dealing with them will have on the evolution of our species?
For example, two innovations alone – search engines and the Internet – have caused tremendous change in the way we gather, store, and retrieve information. Used to be if I wanted to find a local business address, I’d have to walk to the kitchen, pull open the middle drawer, heft the ten pounds of Yellow Pages up to the counter, then spend at least a couple minutes wracking my brain while paging through it. I was using all sorts of arm and leg and back muscles – not to mention excessive brainpower going through the alphabet – just to accomplish the simple task.
Nowadays, I hardly have to move at all. I remain seated at my computer, type in a couple keywords and click the mouse a couple times. Voila! I get more company information than I’ll ever need plus detailed maps and directions to the exact location.
Or, as pointed out in a recent article, will having all our critical numbers and information stored externally in our iPhones or Blueberries free up some of our brain space for more important tasks? Or will the size and dexterity of the human thumb evolve eventually to produce a race of super text-messagers (I don’t know that this will happen since keyboarding is an old technology that I suspect will someday disappear).
But, it’s kind of an interesting subject to ponder, and a forthcoming book by William Halal, a professor of science, technology and innovation at George Washington University looks into the phenomenon.
"All of the routine things we currently preoccupy ourselves with are going to disappear and people are going to do what? We will move up another notch in the level of evolution," Halal said.
In his book, Technology’s Promise, Halal predicts that advances in new technologies over the next dozen years will relieve our species from the bounds of many of our mundane jobs, allowing us to shift our priorities to more important issues.
But at what cost?
"We are the first humans to outsource jobs to technology, to automate that which is labor intensive or mentally tedious," said Patrick Tucker, senior editor of the Futurist magazine. "In the 21st century, this may result in people that are by and large less capable than we are today. Whether or not we seize all of those opportunities depends on how we mature in the coming decades."
Will this future diminishment of our mental and physical expenditure lead us to evolve into a species of torso-less heads suspended by wires inside bell jars? As long as my jar is within viewing range of the TV, and I can change channels through telepathy, I really don’t care.
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Speaking of geeks, here’s an interesting video of Clifford Stoll that may add some relevance to this subject. But then again, maybe not. Stoll is an astronomer who, if nothing else, is really interesting to watch (although some may say he’s completely nuts). I saw him speak at a conference a few years ago and was really taken by his point of view regarding our reliance on computers in schools and elsewhere. He does have some good points about our dependence on technology. Not that I followed his advice much but he’s worth a listen.
A study in Britain finds that human skulls have grown significantly larger in the last 650 years.
Unfortunately, there is no direct correlation between brain size and intelligence.
Just barely. Whoever performed this study has obviously never spent an afternoon with my nieces and nephews.
On a serious note, it was interesting to learn, down in the last paragraph, that the researchers found evidence of empathy in apes--something long considered a human hallmark.
The next step in evolution: photo by silfverduk on flickr.com.A new study might suggest that a drastic climate change gave human evolution a boost, some 70,000 years ago. Before this time, tropical Africa was subject to periodic “megadroughts,” which could kill off huge numbers of plants and animals, and even dry up whole lakes. Around 70,000 BPE these droughts seemed to stop, and the climate stabilized, perhaps providing the impetus for our ancestors’ populations to grow rapidly and migrate.
I hope our currently shifting climate might do the same. I believe I’ve mentioned it before, but I’ve always wanted some mutant powers. Wait – that’s not how evolution works? Whatever. When I’ve got my adamantium skeleton, we’ll see who’s making the rules of evolution.
It won't be so bad!: A human child enjoys his new home. (photo by sofubared on flickr.com)Evolution has just taken a bold step forward. I hate to be the bearer of grim news, but, if, like me, you are a human being (and I expect that most of you are), I have this to say to you: we have been left behind.
That’s right, if you haven’t guessed it already, the inevitable has finally happened, and a New York woman has given birth to a healthy 12-fingered and 12-toed baby boy. The scientific press hasn’t said so directly yet, but I think I am safe in saying that the boy is expected to be a superb athlete (at least in ball-sports), a concert pianist, and some sort of crime fighter (I’m thinking “Spiderman Jr.”).
So there you have it. All that’s left now is for the rest of us to wait and wonder what we should do now that we are obsolete. If nothing comes to mind, governments across the world will be initiating the long-planned “Troglodyte Protocol,” a voluntary program to assist members of the species homo sapien to our rightful future home – deep below the surface of the earth, where we will cheerfully run factories and power plants for homo sapien superior.
Goodbye surface and sunlight. We know when we aren’t needed.
New fossil provides clues to human family tree
in Diversity of Organisms, Heredity, Biological Populations Change Over Time, and Human Organism
Scientists have uncovered the remains of an early modern human in China. The 40,000-year-old skeleton is important, because there are very few human fossils of that age in this part of the world.
Most scientists believe that modern humans evolved in Africa and spread across the globe about 70,000 years ago. They replaced older forms of humans, such as Neanderthals.
Scientists disagree over whether modern humans interbred with the earlier populations. The new fossil, while clearly of a modern human, does contain some features of other types, thus lending weight to the theory that the various populations did mix.
Long legs, short legs
in Diversity of Organisms, Biological Populations Change Over Time, and Human Organism
Humans have longer legs than gorillas today, but this wasn't always the case.: Photo by Robert Fenton, courtesy National Gallery of Art and Victoria and Albert Museum
Early human ancestors, called Australopithecines (AW-stroh-la-PITH-eh-scenes), had short legs. Scientists have long believed this was a hold-over from even earlier species which had lived in trees. But now biologist David Carrier of the University of Utah argues the short legs were used to help them fight.
Short legs give a body a lower center of gravity, and makes it harder to push over. Living apes with short legs, like gorillas, tend to be more aggressive, while long-legged apes, like gibbons, are more docile.
Of course, humans don’t have such short legs anymore. Herman Potzner of Washington University in St. Louis proposes later human species evolved long legs to save energy. His studies of various animals show that that longer a creature’s legs, the less energy they use. Around 2 million years ago, something happened in human evolution that made the fighting advantage of short legs less important than the energy savings of long legs.
In the field of paleoanthropology, or the scientific study of extinct members of human ancestry, scientists are often asked to stake their reputations on a single claim or hypothesis. The interesting thing about the claims that scholars attempt to make is that they are often based on the very small number of specimens that are available for research. This atmosphere often creates an intense series of lively debates between scholars over the interpretation of their sometimes limited data.
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