Discoveries made about human evolution in 2022(smithsonianmag.com)
smithsonianmag.com
Discoveries made about human evolution in 2022
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/fourteen-discoveries-made-about-human-evolution-in-2022-180981344/
42 comments
I'd add to the list of 'reasons why homo sapiens developed longer lifespans' the reason that grandparents sitting around the fire could teach young children. It's a social adaptation perhaps.
"it takes a village" - younger adults who would give birth to children, then must go back to work and hunt/gather - leaving the older, less physically able to raise the children who are defenseless.
> leaving the older, less physically able
At a guess, just out of interest, how old do you reckon Paen and Tawan are here [1] as they drop a tree and process it to make Sago?
That's physically demanding work with a lot of prep (weaving mats, strainers etc).
Hunter/gathers/agrarians typically work until they drop and take care of children through extended overlapping family, not to mention taking children out to gather and dig from the get go from being carried before they can walk to having them follow along and help as soon as they are upright.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VomE4GN9Z6I
At a guess, just out of interest, how old do you reckon Paen and Tawan are here [1] as they drop a tree and process it to make Sago?
That's physically demanding work with a lot of prep (weaving mats, strainers etc).
Hunter/gathers/agrarians typically work until they drop and take care of children through extended overlapping family, not to mention taking children out to gather and dig from the get go from being carried before they can walk to having them follow along and help as soon as they are upright.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VomE4GN9Z6I
This is just the two of them, and they are making flour to be sold to other people to fund things that they need. I think a better representation is to look to certain African tribes for a better insight on how family structures may have looked in terms of child rearing.
The 'nuclear' family structure is quite a recent development (in terms of human existence), and although far less common now, family structures typically included uncles and aunts and their children.
> It is a cohesive unit which ideally provides economic, social and psychological security to all its members. Adinlofu (2009) made mentioned that the extended family ensures procreation of children and provides for the early care and training of children. Degbey (2012) also added that this same family system defines “social and moral norms and safeguards both material and spiritual customs and traditions as well as providing a variety of role models preparing the way for adulthood”. Degbey (2012) emphasized that the dominance of the elders/aged has a relatively high degree of social control on the individual especially, the youth.
> https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/45760
The 'nuclear' family structure is quite a recent development (in terms of human existence), and although far less common now, family structures typically included uncles and aunts and their children.
> It is a cohesive unit which ideally provides economic, social and psychological security to all its members. Adinlofu (2009) made mentioned that the extended family ensures procreation of children and provides for the early care and training of children. Degbey (2012) also added that this same family system defines “social and moral norms and safeguards both material and spiritual customs and traditions as well as providing a variety of role models preparing the way for adulthood”. Degbey (2012) emphasized that the dominance of the elders/aged has a relatively high degree of social control on the individual especially, the youth.
> https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/45760
I realise it's just the two of them .. I was pointing out the work they were doing on a regular basis as "older, less physically able" people.
As for H-G family structure, I don't know much but most of what I know came from growing up in the Western Desert, Kimberley, and PNG talking to folk like the P-9 [1] and supply runs to Mike Alpers [2].
This, of course, is over 40 years back so <shrug>.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30500591
[2] https://royalsociety.org/people/michael-alpers-10987/
As for H-G family structure, I don't know much but most of what I know came from growing up in the Western Desert, Kimberley, and PNG talking to folk like the P-9 [1] and supply runs to Mike Alpers [2].
This, of course, is over 40 years back so <shrug>.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30500591
[2] https://royalsociety.org/people/michael-alpers-10987/
> I was pointing out the work they were doing on a regular basis as "older, less physically able" people.
I never said they were disabled. I just meant, they'd be less motile and likely to work on clothing, crafts, homesteading, care of the children, maybe even cooking and leading the tribe/group in religion and/or study. Given they'd have more experience and wisdom, it makes sense the elder of the family structure would be more closer at home to lead the way.
I never said they were disabled. I just meant, they'd be less motile and likely to work on clothing, crafts, homesteading, care of the children, maybe even cooking and leading the tribe/group in religion and/or study. Given they'd have more experience and wisdom, it makes sense the elder of the family structure would be more closer at home to lead the way.
I just can't help but comment on the strange notion of a "list of reasons why".
The few correlations our feeble minds just happen to notice are not mystical decisions whereby nature slowly yields to the will of its creatures over many generations. Asking "why" is just anthropomorphizing for the sake of it.
The few correlations our feeble minds just happen to notice are not mystical decisions whereby nature slowly yields to the will of its creatures over many generations. Asking "why" is just anthropomorphizing for the sake of it.
Um, we are talking about people, right? So 'anthropomorphising' is maybe not the word we wanted here?
"List of reasons why" isn't meaningfully different from "list of factors causing X". To ask "why" is to ask for an explanation, and doesn't imply any anthropomorphizing.
This isn’t absolutely obvious, because reason has two different characteristic uses: asking agents their reasons for acting, and asking the reason some event happened. Philosophers have spent a lot of time asking how those two uses are related.
This isn’t absolutely obvious, because reason has two different characteristic uses: asking agents their reasons for acting, and asking the reason some event happened. Philosophers have spent a lot of time asking how those two uses are related.
One is called "intentional" explanation; the other, "causal" explanation.
"Why" is shorthand for the minutae of actual selection pressures that take much longer to type out than "why".
>The few correlations our feeble minds just happen to notice are not mystical decisions
This is not an objective fact, it’s your interpretation. People are allowed to believe reality is divine and “anthropomorphism” is a strawman. Something you’re doing in your head and projecting onto others.
This is not an objective fact, it’s your interpretation. People are allowed to believe reality is divine and “anthropomorphism” is a strawman. Something you’re doing in your head and projecting onto others.
why would grandpa be having sex then.
This is a false premise.
That's fairly unlikely since it relies mostly on group selection, which is mostly a defunct theory.
Since when is group selection a defunct theory?
Since we understood that it is the individual gene that is the unit of selection. Even Wikipedia reads: "The vast majority of behavioural biologists have not been convinced by renewed attempts to revisit group selection as a plausible mechanism of evolution."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_selection#Criticism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_selection#Criticism
Group selection is as obvious as the nose on your face. So many, many animal populations have non-breeding members that benefit the community. Individual selection cannot possibly be used to support that.
Name one where the system is not contingent on immediate family helping immediate family, or to be more precise, one which is not explained by Hamilton's Law.
There is no individual selection either, by the way, that's another commmon misconception. You don't push out copies of yourself. There is only the selection of individual genes.
There is no individual selection either, by the way, that's another commmon misconception. You don't push out copies of yourself. There is only the selection of individual genes.
And the genes are in a population pool, not standing by themselves. So the only selection is group selection, that is, the survival of that part of the group that contains advantageous genes.
Maybe to take care for grandkids if their daughter dies in childbirth. The chance of that happening is very high when you have many kids and each daughter have many kids, so having old people around to care for their orphan grandkids seems like a very advantageous evolution.
Wouldn't the same effect be in play with family-living animals that aren't nearly as long lived? Like wolves for example. In fact all the other great apes only hit about 40 years before succumbing to old age, whereas humans are nearly double that.
Four-legged animals don't have the same degree of birthing challenges as two-legged ones because of the way the birth canal is shaped. Consider for example how horses are able to be up and walking (both baby and mother) of some number of minutes of birth. That's because the baby comes out more developed, which is possible because of the larger birth canal (in relative proportions). Human have to come out underdeveloped because otherwise we wouldn't be able to give birth at all, and then that makes human infants especially helpless out of the womb.
OT, but.. How can you discuss beer without mentioning cats, as guardians of stored grain ? And then at what point did the cats begin giving us toxoplasmosis, possibly distorting aggregate human behavior ?
> And then at what point did the cats begin giving us toxoplasmosis, possibly distorting aggregate human behavior ?
The earlier that happened, the less distortion it would be able to cause in the present.
The earlier that happened, the less distortion it would be able to cause in the present.
Just as a side note on the article, which has many cool bits (but indeed sparse and not well organized), the pictures of the teeth of the ancient human, and the bits about diet and how it shaped evolution got me to really appreciate how teeth have evolved.
With different teeth having different functions, the incisors for tearing apart food, to the molars that are flatter with different grooves in them for chewing food. Evolution, really is amazing.
With different teeth having different functions, the incisors for tearing apart food, to the molars that are flatter with different grooves in them for chewing food. Evolution, really is amazing.
not a side note even I guess. It is about the same topic.
I can't get past the feeling that all these discoveries are 'convenient'.
Ok - so meat eating wasn't a big deal in the dim and distant past (scientists say).
But beer was. And cooked food.
Despite not eating all that much meat, humans still exterminated the megafauna. We're always doing this apparently.
Dogs weren't related to wolves, but they want to find that connection.
So, our ancestors were almost vegan, beer guzzling, dog loving folk, who went around killing all the animals anyway. We've always been a cancer on this planet, apparently.
Ok - so meat eating wasn't a big deal in the dim and distant past (scientists say).
But beer was. And cooked food.
Despite not eating all that much meat, humans still exterminated the megafauna. We're always doing this apparently.
Dogs weren't related to wolves, but they want to find that connection.
So, our ancestors were almost vegan, beer guzzling, dog loving folk, who went around killing all the animals anyway. We've always been a cancer on this planet, apparently.
I'd suspect that research (and especially pop culture summaries of research) always conveniently reflects current trends. The way to get mass attention is to be in line with some message that is popular or advantageous to promulgate. The research is probably legit, it's just never the whole story, and so we get the summary that tells us are ancestors lived in alme hipster paradise until somehow modern Europeans screwed it all up. 50 years from now it will be some different version.
yes - I understand that could be it.
But, I have come to think it is the other way. That the historical/scientific research is provided to steer the desired trends in the right way.
But, I have come to think it is the other way. That the historical/scientific research is provided to steer the desired trends in the right way.
There most likely isn't anyone to tell researchers what to publish in order to steer the "desired trend". Suggesting otherwise is frankly ridiculous.
A theory of evolution in conscious experience:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/enigmas/enigma-of-mind-...
It's 2022 and it's time we give really look into why teeth are crooked, jawlines are receding and the number of people with obstructive sleep apnea is rising. Google Orthotropics|Mike Mew|Mewing. Evolutionary Dentistry is a thing.
Did Google. Found this:
> Exiled from academia, John and Mike have taken to spreading orthotropics online, particularly on their YouTube channel. In the process, they’ve become popular among incels, the “involuntary celibate” young men who congregate online and who explain their lack of romantic success through a toxic and misogynistic ideology.
> Exiled from academia, John and Mike have taken to spreading orthotropics online, particularly on their YouTube channel. In the process, they’ve become popular among incels, the “involuntary celibate” young men who congregate online and who explain their lack of romantic success through a toxic and misogynistic ideology.
Watch him talk with Bret Weinstein who is an Evolutionary Biologist. It might give the ideas a lot more justice than that.
Even the Smithsonian seems to have succumbed to "internet writing." Poorly edited, many concepts not well developed, etc. I guess I'm officially a grumpy old man.
Had the same thought while reading. Kept checking to make sure I wasn’t reading BuzzFeed by mistake.
Well I agree, this was poorly developed. Maybe I am getting old too
at least we're not alone in our antiquity and grumpiness
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Pretty broad definition of evolution in the article