Slashdot Mirror
Genetic Mutations Allowed Humans To Be Artistic
Makarand writes "Most anthropologists believe that the transformations which allowed
humans to think and behave in a recognisably modern fashion happened
gradually and were a result of demographic and cultural changes.
However, according to an expert on human origins at Stanford University
these transformations have a biological explanation and were not gradual.
According to his
theory 50,000 years ago
genetic mutations resulted in a creativity
gene that led to the development of the modern mind and started
a cultural revolution by triggering biological changes in the brain and
vastly improving the human ability to communicate.
Evidence in support of such a theory has been found in the form of FOXP2, a
gene proven to affect the ability of learning and processing language and which in its
mutated form can result in speech and language impediments. Also, the
human FOXP2 differs only slightly from similar genes in chimpanzees, mice
and other animals."
A guy goes to a zoo and sees a gorilla with two books. The gorilla looks confused. One of the books is the Bible, the other Darwin. The guy asks the gorilla why he looks confused. The gorilla says "I can't figure out if I'm my brother's keeper or my keeper's brother!"
I cannot believe that this has been modded up to 5, Informative. Our ancestors ate magic mushrooms and so developed a capacity for language and sophisticated technology?! Please!
I didn't go to grad school, but I did get a bachelors degree in Anthropology - and I like to think that I am pretty well read in the field. I can guarantee that there is absolutely no archaeological evidence linking proto-humans, or physically modern humans, to any sort of psychedelic chemical that facilitated brain development. The material evidence does not exist.
Further, I don't see how a single class of substances can be linked to brain development. There are a whole host of chemicals in the human body, the consumption of which is evolutionarily invisible. Why should magic mushrooms be so special?
This post, and this theory, sound more like an attempt to fit any Associated-Press level ideas to a world-view that embraces drug use. Anthropology has been littered with things like this for generations (e.g. social darwinism, innate criminality, race, skull volume=intelligence, aquatic evolution, and the list goes on). I say, take your agenda elsewhere.
Way too many Star Trek episodes not withstanding, messing with an adult's genes is not going to restructure existing tissues. For example, a gene for longer bones won't make you grow taller, because your bones have already stopped growing. A gene for more body hair won't make you hairier, because what the gene really does is controls the development of follicles in the fetus.
Some gene therapies for diseases, such as cystic fibrosis, work (or will work) because the tissues involved - lung tissue - have substantial continuous growth. Others work at the single protein level, sometimes creating a de facto extra organ in the form of altered cells or symbiotic bacteria. Some can be reapplied to active or inactivate existing structures. (Some male pattern baldness could be treated.)
Recently, we've seen that the brain retains stem cells, but to upgrade your brain (or mine), we'd need to:
There's a couple of good SF novels in that ... of course, Bruce Sterling's Holy Fire has already covered a good deal of this territory.
Actually, the motivation for the bias may be what you claim, but the error seems to a rather common, and completely unconscious, misunderstanding of causal relationships. The same kind that makes people believe in astrology, telepathy or what-have-you because of a single unrepeated coincidence in their life.
It's rather likely that psychedelics were present, and influential, in the birth of culture.
After all, currently the main use of our advanced and transgenerational communication skills is to communicate pleasurable, strong, preferably ecstatic sensorial experiences (in either the mystical sense or as an epiphany): we spend more time and effort discussing about movies, books, music, computer games than the technology that makes them possible. Religion is a major part of our culture, and separate (if complementary) of government mainly because of its capacity to induce altered states of mind.
Without the infrastructure that permits these in their modern forms, other extreme experiences have to take their place or support their primitive equivalents. Psycheledics seem to provide one hell of an interesting experience, since drug-induced altered states of mind so commonly an integral part of religions and traditions of cultures with simpler infrastructure (and depending on how integral you consider the Happy Hour, modern ones too).
So it's very likely, and there's apparently evidence, of a close relationship between increasing complexity of culture and use of psychedelics if they're available in the same area. It's not like they could get excited about neoplatonistic philosophy right off the bat.
But unless there's an experiment showing sign-language-skilled primates developing new cultural infrastructure when they're stoned, it's remarkably idiotic to see a causal connection.
It's a much simpler hypothesis that once humans could develop a culture and talk about interesting things, and drug consumption being an available and much more interesting thing than watching the grass grow, they would do it a lot, talk about it a lot, and use it a lot as an element in their cultures.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...