Current Events > Human Evolution: how much do you know?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I find all of biology fascinating. As fascinating as I find human evolution I am even more fascinated and impressed with the way savants collaborate from all over the globe and from different disciplines. I had biology 101 and I read. I can follow it but I have no particular gift for it.

I wanted to have a discussion on CE as some members of the board have an interest and even a knowledge.

Encyclopedia Britanica https://tinyurl.com/34u2x824
We are animals. There is a fossil trail from modern man back to an ancestral great ape. Current thought is that all of us trace our matrilineal line back to the animal originally found in East Africa dated 200,000 years ago or the apparently same animal found in Morocco dated 315,000 years ago. Current thought is that there is a trail back to a great ape.

Human ingenuity is boundless. We can collect genetic material from fossils and we can sequence it with a supervising AI. We gain more insight constantly but the experts are uncertain about when the human vocal cords appeared. I wondered about something else but ...

So what is offensive? You have my permission to be willfully ignorant. Why can't I be willfully educated?

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


I prefer to think of us as "pretty good apes".

CobraGT posted...

So what is offensive?

Nothing unless you're a hardcore Creationist.

Esrac posted...

I prefer to think of us as "pretty good apes".

I skipped right past mediocre ape and I'm actively worse than the alternative apes.

CobraGT posted...

There is a fossil trail from modern man back to an ancestral great ape. Current thought is that all of us trace our matrilineal line back to the animal originally found in East Africa dated 200,000 years ago or the apparently same animal found in Morocco dated 315,000 years ago. Current thought is that there is a trail back to a great ape.

Fake. Everyone knows God created humans separately from the other animals. Some, perhaps many, people just dont want to admit it because they dont want to be held accountable to a Higher Power.

Health posted...

Fake. Everyone knows God created humans separately from the other animals. Some, perhaps many, people just dont want to admit it because they dont want to be held accountable to a Higher Power.

You got me there. I do not want to be held accountable to a Higher Power. I just never realized this implication.

CobraGT posted...

You got me there. I do not want to be held accountable to a Higher Power. I just never realized this implication.

You better mend your ways. All youve got to do is figure out which religion is the correct one and start praying.

Human evolution doesn't particularly interest me, but animal evolution definitely does. There have been so many wacky creatures throughout history that I'd really want to know how they came about.

We are the sweatiest ape. https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-releases/2021/april/the-chillest-ape-how-humans-evolved-a-super-high-cooling-capacity

This is a cool article because they found a gene in mice then found the corresponding gene in humans and other apes, and then rolled back the human version of the gene, reversing evolutionary changes to the chimp version.

Humans are super cooled apes. (Now I know when and why humans became furless).

It's a mystery... Full of change that no one sees

CobraGT posted...

We are the sweatiest ape. https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-releases/2021/april/the-chillest-ape-how-humans-evolved-a-super-high-cooling-capacity

This is a cool article because they found a gene in mice then found the corresponding gene in humans and other apes, and then rolled back the human version of the gene, reversing evolutionary changes to the chimp version.

Humans are super cooled apes. (Now I know when and why humans became furless).

What a coincidence. Im a chill ape.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


Rolling back to the chimp version does not logically imply that we were chimps. Using typical human reasoning one would infer that this implies that we were chimps. Got it?

CobraGT posted...

Rolling back to the chimp version does not logically imply that we were chimps. Using typical human reasoning one would infer that this implies that we were chimps. Got it?

He's not wrong in that imprecise terminology contributes to the "if we evolved from monkeys why are there still monkeys" bullshit.

Could chill a little bit though, we're not writing a paper, we don't need perfect precision.

What if it is the abundance of our super-cooling sweat-glands which gives our species its edge? Other animals like elephants have community, gray parrots and dolphins have intelligence and speech and all humans have is uber sweat glands?

CobraGT posted...

What if it is the abundance of our super-cooling sweat-glands which gives our species its edge?

We're possibly the number one pursuit predator on the planet.

Prehistoric humans would just follow you until you literally couldn't run anymore, then stabstab time.

We have insane endurance compared to most animals, coupled with being far more capable of recovering from injury.