Slashdot Mirror
Evolving Humans on the Menu
Ant writes "BBC News is reporting that a popular view of our ancient ancestors as hunters who conquered all in their way could be incorrect. This was according to researchers who told a major United States (U.S.) science conference. They argued that early humans were on the menu for predatory beasts. From the article: 'This may have driven humans to evolve increased levels of co-operation, according to their theory. Despite humankind's considerable capacity for war and violence, we/humans are highly sociable animals, according to anthropologists.'"
Thats how I read it. So what we basically need is some huge interdimenionsal squid to be teleported into a large populated city, killing nearly everyone and the whole world will be united (at least until people read Rorschach's Journal).
we humans are highly sociable animals, according to anthropologists.
Anthropologists don't hang out with the /. crowd, I guess...
What the hell's a "gewie?"
As previously discussed
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
Don't mind the fact that mass extinction of megafauna occurred simultaneously with the introduction of humans into any geographic area... No, magical fairies terrorized prehistoric humans and ate their flesh.
The argument simply holds no water. Sure, sometimes man bites dog, but usually it's the other way around.
So I'm not the only one who thinks supermodels are tasty.
Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
So if a lion entered a restaurant say about 10,000 years ago he would find menu entries like: ... 35.99"
"Roasted Human Family...29.95"
"Baby Humans with Cashews and Potatoes...24.50"
"Human a-la-carte - create your own dish out of fresh human body parts and side dishes
Was there anyone who actually thought that the human line(s) immediately dominated the hunting scene the instant they became geneticly distinct from the other primates?
If it ain't broke, it needs more features!
It would be clearer to say that humans were not always apex predators. Many predators are themselves the prey of other creatures, and it is not exactly revolutionary to suggest that this may have been the case for humans and our proto-human ancestors for a long time.
A-Bomb
This concept:
"... also discovered that his subjects seemed to have enhanced memory for those people that did not reciprocate in the experiment."
Could explain this:
"... humankind's considerable capacity for war and violence..."
Someone mentioned to me several years ago, that nearly all human societies have customs for disposing of dead bodies that would tend to prevent predators from knowing that humans were something to eat. Burying someone six feet deep, for example, makes it rather unlikely that a lion or a bear would smell the body and dig it up.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It's clear we've evolved to get our fix of food at fast food restaurants.
*Fire in the hole!* die you son of a... *GO GO GO!* got your camping n00b ass.... *Storm the Front!*.. huh? what? oh, I beg to differ
"Despite humankind's considerable capacity for war and violence, we/humans are highly sociable animals, according to anthropologists"
war and violence are contradictory to being sociable? war and violence are social activities. nonsocial animals would have nothing to do with one another, including violence. there is love, hate, and then not caring. not caring is considerably different than hating
reminds me of an old saying:
"Diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means." Zhou En Lai
in other words, being social is simply a way of resolving disputes without drawing blood... althought there is also "social intercourse," which is human social behavior as courtship. so at its psychological root, all human social effort is really just violent or sexual in nature
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Stuff was bigger back then. We were smaller, and weve always been naked squishy monkeys. Something interesting along these lines, the universal dragon myth, in which similar creatures (dragons) exist independently in different cultures (asian, european, even native american), is thought to stem from an amalgamation of early human predators left over in some sort of instinctive memory. Lions' jaws and claws, body of a snake, wings of an eagle (yes, eagles were big enough to prey on humans), and fire.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Will Durant (I think) suggested civilization began when, instead of eating our vanquished enemy, we enslaved him. AANAAnthropologist but what are the preditors back before agriculture? My guess, the big cats. My other guess, tribalism was probably based on banding together for protection against the really big hungry guy - who was a fellow early human.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
It's quite usual for future violent domination to start as an effective defence against the current violent domination.
Trust me, I work for the government.
> humans are highly sociable animals, according to anthropologists.
Aristotle said this in another form (Man is by nature a political animal) in about 300 BC.
Hey submitter, way to just quote part of the article. Lazy bum. Now, all we need is a sociable way to wage war. Why don't we all sit down for a massive multiplayer game of Stratego? It seems that even now, we're pack hunters.
Slackmaster K Proprietor, DamnedNice Blog
It would be clearer to say that humans were not always apex predators. Many predators are themselves the prey of other creatures, and it is not exactly revolutionary to suggest that this may have been the case for humans and our proto-human ancestors for a long time.
May have been the case??? Make no mistake about it there are still critters on this earth that look at a human and think "mmmmmm... FOOD!" Well knonw examples are polarbears tigers and bullsharks. All of these animals regularly hunt humans for food. When I got my weapons license the instructor in the class on hunting ethics started out by telling us that there are three valid reasons to kill an animal:
1) The animal is sick so you kill it to prevent the disease from spreading.
2) You want to eat the animal.
3) The animal wants to eat you.
That list may seem a bit funny at first glance but basically those rules are as true today as they were during the stoneage.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Even today with all our "technomology" and "do-hickies", things still have an appetite for the occasional human.
:)
This typed while eating cow AND pig in front of my laptop
"Despite"? Try fighting a war someday without a high degree of organization and cooperation. War requires society, it does not occur in spite of it.
And the brethren went away edified.
I would like to know if humans were also the most important human "predator" yet.
Organisms cannot be driven to evolve. They can either have the trait that is advantageous for survival or they can die. Humans had the trait, probably for adaptation (perhaps through creative thinking) and developed sociability as a means of survival. They were not driven to evolve sociability and cooperation. They were driven to use these traits that they already had.
In other words, they were driven to adapt.
[semi-offtopic rant]It is statements like these that make some people think that intelligent design is a plausible scientific theory. These kinds of statements give people the idea that evolution has a goal and because of this it must have been designed. Evolution is a combination of natural selection, genetic (in)stability and mutations, environmental factors, and random chance (like natural disasters) all acting together to dictate that the organisms with the best traits for a given environment will have the best chance of survival and pass those traits on to their offspring. It is a number of simple rules and factors working together to make intricate (and beautiful, if I may say so) complexity. No designers needed. Sorry for the off-topic rant.[/semi-offtopic rant]
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Not to be harsh, but this theory is around since at least middle '80s. They taught it to me at primary school, here in Italy.
42.
Since evolution is the success of the successful, we must compete to cooperate. This must be why the world is so hard on those who don't cooperate to compete.
They found a book written by prehistoric birds called "How to Serve Man"
Honestly, has anything really changed? I bet ya that if we dropped slashdotters in the African wilderness, they would still be on the menus of some of natures meanest beasts... add to that the fact that many here devolved and lost their sociable characteristics and BAM!.. bottom of the food chain.
Evolution is a combination of natural selection, genetic (in)stability and mutations, environmental factors, and random chance (like natural disasters) all acting together to dictate that the organisms with the best traits for a given environment will have the best chance of survival and pass those traits on to their offspring.
Once humans developed language you also get evolution operating through mechanisms other than genetics. Since accumulated knowlage can be relevent to survival. Including knowlage of things which have not been seen firsthand by any member of a given group.
The Japanese restaurant had several human sashimi selections -- most were quite good, though the supermodel toro was considered stringy and overpriced. For those on a budget there's also Raw Men noodles and another noodle soup with freshly killed human called "U-done." The Indian restaurant had a spicy cheese dish made with unionized actors called the SAG paneer. They also had a really tasty stockbroker vindaloo. Mexican tacos de cabeza del hombre was all the rage among early predators. The Greek place on the corner had some great grilled heroes.... OK, OK, I'll stop. No, it's OK, really, I'll stop. What? OK, OK, I'm leaving.
We are a community animal. We really can do more working together than sepearately. I think that radical individualism (libertarians, ayn randies) as a broad philosophy is a recent aberration. If we were really clever we'd resist those who try to divide and conquer. Now if I can just get the idiots on the other side to see it my way we'll all be much better off united under my enlightened ruleleadership.
Start Running Better Polls
" The Pleistocene Holocene transition took place about 11,000 years ago and caused the extinction of a large number of animal species including mammoths, mastodons and ground sloths. The Holocene looked very different from the Pleistocene."
Firstly, evolution is not entirely encompassed by natural selection. The mechanisms outside of natural selection do not require that things die. Take, for instance, any form of acquired behavior.
Secondly, even in the case of natural selection, death is by no means required. The reproductive rate of the advantaged group just has to be (at least) marginally higher than that of the disadvantaged species.
Thirdly, organisms can't be driven to evolve. Populations, however, can, which is, you know, what people are talking about when they say "humans" in this context. The only reason you have a problem the statement is because you're purposefully misinterpreting the statement (for the express purpose of having something to be pissed about, I might add).
Normally I don't feed the trolls, but I was bored today.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Isn't this bleeding obvious?
I mean, evolution is based on adaptation to environment. If early humans were sufficiently well-adapted to their environment that they dominated it, what forces would be acting on them to propel evolution?
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Ok, so humans were supposed to be different back then how? We still die to lions and snakes and sharks and bears etc. When that happens we don't get a new evolved "power" we just keep going. Why then and not now? And another thing if we evolved with the thought of survival of the fittest how did we get an appreciation of art music and beautiful scenery? Animal don't sit and stare and enjoy only humans.
The length of a
You mean the sabre-tooth tiger, and it's descendants, crocodiles, and all the other flesh-eating machines ACTUALLY ATE PEOPLE?
OH, MY GOD! What a stunning turn of events!
(Once again, the intellectuals dazzle me with their stupidity. EVEN TODAY with all the guns, traps, laser beams, humans are still on the menu. Do these guys ever get outta the lab?)
How much did we have to pay for such obvious things? Where can I go to sign up to do a study? I'm thinking about proving the clitoris has something to do with female orgasms. That should be worth enough to get a new car, house, and slick new ride....and I'll take notes along the way.
Ya gotta stop believing everything these people say.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
...FOOD EATS YOU!
It's statements like that which make some people think Darwin's evolutionary theory and intelligent design are the only two plausible explanations for the population of living creatures on the planet.
If someone wants to believe that some sentient being guided the course of existence, you're not going to convince them otherwise; that line of thought is based on an entirely different set of principles (faith) which science cannot prove or disprove. However, that should not dissuade us from being skeptical of Darwin. His theories are not predictive when it comes to natural selection; they take a result and assume the action that led to it which is a questionable approach.
Darwin being wrong does not prove that God made the world. It's just as likely the truth has not yet been discovered.
Check this:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427312/
Some of us are still on the menu. By their own will.
Plenty of other animals do this as well. At its most basic level a shoal of fish is merely a group of prey banding together so that they are less likely to be eaten, similar to herds of gazelle on land. In neither case does this lead to mor3 advanced social systems. More likely is that we had the intelligence to see the results of such co-operation more quickly and improve upon this. You see high levels of co-operation among elephants and dolphins for example, even to the extent of routinely raising each other's offspring. If a group of early humans figured out how to kill or scare off all the large predators that group will have a higher survival rate than groups which couldn't co-operate. It doesn't take much smarts to see the benefits of a good night's sleep compared to keeping watch waiting for footfalls in the night...
That's if Dick Cheney walks into the restaurant.
Join Tor today!
The making of on the DVD Walking with [Prehistoric] Beasts for the BBC showed the evidence that Austrolopithacines were hunted by dinofelis and other cats (sabretooth and not) 3.4 million years ago. The markings on the human skulls, when put next to the cat skulls, are unmistakably teeth.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
So let me get this logic straight ...
.. looked at each other and said ....
.. whats your name bro ?'
.. but I much prefer my theory instead.
- Human likes to hang out on his own (assumption)
- Lion eats solitary human, easy prey.
- Human invents cooperation, and evolves to become social, making it harder for Lion to pick off human
Just wonderful.
I thought everyone already knew that ants, termites, bees and wasps 'invented' cooperative societies and specialisation of roles millions of years before we ever came along.
AFAIK, there is no evidence to suggest that ants were ever anything but a social colony from the beginning of their existence. But then, its all speculation really - did ants start off as a social colony, or did they evolve to form them ? Coming up with a test case to positively falsify either claim is impossible.
So the published ramblings of a group of anthropologists isnt exactly what you would call 'good science'.
Its equally possible (and equally un-provable), that a couple of solitary pre-humans sat down in the bush one day and observed a column of ants together
'Hey dude, you know if we got together like that, maybe one day WE could form a city-state, farm crops, knock up some pyramids, write a bunch of laws, build ships to cross the oceans, and run out cable broadband to every home, what do you reckon ?'
To which the other replied :
'yeah cool, I reckon its worth a shot. Besides, this whole tear-assing around the scrub like a bad muthafucker is getting a bit old. I wanna find me a good reliable pre-human woman, settle down and you know - just enjoy some quality time together, raise some kids, and maybe even build a white picket fence out of these dry twigs. Its not much I know, but hell, Ill do my best for her.'
A tear welling in his pre-human eye. And so the other extended his hand to shake it
'You know dude, your a good man
And so it was that pre-humans evolved an opposing thumb so that they could shake hands, form lasting friendships, and go on to build cooperative civilisations that rival those of the ants.
Maybe we did 'evolve' socialisation out a fear of being eaten by Lions
vocal chords... if the theory of evolution is correct, vocal chords could have been the key to our survival (if we were once filet minon)
Pay back is in our genes. The Megafauna deserved it.
Damn, that was... well, lucid. Waking up to a rational, articulate, informed slashdot comment is just completely unsettling in a bracing sort of way. Thanks! Must... get... bad... coffee... to... counter... effects.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Yes. I've only taken one philosophy class, but the one fact that I couldn't quite cope is that it is commonly believed that we only get a long out of self interest. This includes the view that says "if there are no laws, I would be killing you now and stealing your X". I would like to think we're further along than this, but think of any situation of mass panic in the state of emergency (Katrina?).
sig: Playfully doing something difficult, whether useful or not
What? Are you some kind of commie? Everyone knows that the only road to success is through competition! War! Metaphorically or literally, War is the only method of relation. Cooperation? Are you kidding? Cooperation is for self-defeated fools and hippies!
Cooperation is down right Un'Merican!
nothing to see here, please move along
Right. We were CUSTOM BRED by an INTELLIGENT DESIGNER!
For food...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You might try distinguishing between "Want to eat" and "Need to eat" in your ethics. If I "Want" to eat a blue whale, say to see how it tastes, that doesn't necessarily make it a sound and ethical decision to go off killing such a large and rare beast.
Now, If I'm living in Norway and it's 200 years ago, and it's but cold and me and me bros go out on a big ass boat to go kill one and use every ounce of blubber, meat, to improve our lives..... then I'd say my desire was part of a deeper "Need", and that it's totally justified.
Of course, anyone can use wild examples and edge-cases to argue a "Need" down to a "Want" and vice-versa. But I think we all have a sense of what's "reasonable" here (arguable need for protien in diets), and what's at the edge of reason (wanting to eat whale meat).
Certainly, regardless of your particular views, the ethics of killing and eating things changes as our power as a species changes over time.
IMHO, our desire to kill and eat animals is based more on childish whimsy today than on any sort of reasonably argued "Need".
There is also some evidence, I believe, that far from being repurposed wolves dogs are the descendants of a scavenging ancestor. By disposing of rubbish, dogs helped the evolution of stable human settlements - because without dogs, primitive man had to move on before the surroundings got too smelly. At a later stage dogs were tamed, and all of a sudden the human race had two forms of projected power to use against predators - ballistic weapons, and dogs. The rest is history (or herstory if you believe that women create civilisations and men try to destroy them)
Pining for the fjords
This is totally obvious. Of course we weren't hugely bad-ass solo hunters! We lack the natural tools for it, and weapons are an outgrowth of a society that has enough surplus food to allow time to develop technology. Therefore, we'd managed to carve ourselves out a niche in the food chain before we started developing the advantages that allowed us to dominate.
And even today individuals are occasionally killed by wild animal attacks. Why the hell would they imagine it was any different in the past?
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Well, maybe not. We reproduce at such an incredibly slow rate ... I'd think we'd be extinct quite fast if someone were using us a major food source.
Pass the salt. These are those free-range humans that haven't been stuffed full of corn and made to watch "Three's Company" reruns till their livers explode.
Apparently we're tasty to aliens as well.
"Organisms cannot be driven to evolve." This is completely wrong. Introducing a stressor (such as radiation) that can cause mutations is one way to drive evolution in an organism. In that way a trait can be introduced that the organism didn't have, but that could be beneficial.
If humans had evolved as predaters we would have claws instead of fingernails, and a snout like a dog or a cat, and teeth with real canines instead of the little wimpy things we have. Humans only became successful predaters after they had developed intelligence and devised tools to compensate for the lack of claws, fangs and so on.
How else could we have defeated the dinosaurs?
One reads quotes like this all the time in stories about evolution. It's Lamarckianism all over again: the giraffe "evolved" a long neck by stretching for higher tree branches over many generations.
Slightly later humans were hunters who conquered all that stood in their way.
i'm dying to hear your 2 cents concerning this...
Hottentots, carrot-tops,grammer-cops, and of course spambots.
"Oh drat these computers, they're so naughty and so complex, I could pinch them." --Marvin the Martian
We, meaning mankind, have done little hunting over the course of our evolution. It's only been the past couple of millenia that we've hunted. Most of the time, we were merely scavengers. Are these people really "discovering" this now?
/underneath/ the marks left by our stone tools.
I've discussed it with professors at my old university nearly a decade ago.
Basically, we can tell that humans often waited for large predators (usually cats) to kill and get their fill. Then, we would go over and scavenge what (if any) extrnal meat there was. Then we would saw/chop open the bone to get to the high protein bone marrow.
We can tell we weren't there first because of teeth marks and pieces of teeth being
Groovy, isn't it?
something to think about ... ...animals tend not to think to much. more ... human. what a bon. ..."
the mean "i.q" without humans in nature
is like less then 20.
so this animal evolves (how?) that has
all this excess mental processing capacity.
it's freaking disney land for these mammals.
ur regular animal is like sooo dumb and
predictable.
imagine ureself in a building with other mammals
and they all got a avergae "i.q" of 20.
ure in freaking zombie land. it's freaking scary.
or less just do what they need to do, eat and
multiply.
so still in this really scary low i.q. zombie
building u meet another
my guess is u'd make friends with this dude
instantly.
A: "dude have u seen that big "cat" overthere?
it keeps coming to this stream to drink around
8 p.m." etc.
B: " i know it's all so scary. it's all so
predictable. it's like in a "computer game" and
they're just biggo scary automatons
i hope u can see my point.
the world is a scary place 'cause its a dumb place.
we keep forgeting this 'cause 200'000 there are so many
"intelligent" beings around.
try to imagine a just a bit dumber version of u living
20'000 years ago.
scary man!!! co-cop my ass, it was just a freaking
dreadfull place to be. "down of the dead"-situation.
Humans are pack hunters, what a stunning revelation.
Seriously, don't look too close at the eye and mouth on that thing, or else go blind!
http://liquidben.com - Aspiring to an 'under construction' gif
Like the GP, I also think TF conclusions in the original story are not mutually exclusive, although for more benign reasons. Being social promotes community, which in turn gives a being the sense of a wider existence, belonging, or, perhaps basely, "property". Community can be as close as a family or as wide as a country. Because we are social, any minor confrontation from outside with any part of a community (or within) that one feels they are a member of tends to provoke at least some members of that community, even if they weren't initially involved.
The fact that violence is a vehicle that humans deal with that conflict seems to me to be fairly independent from the fact that their social tendencies enable violence on more grand scales than any of the rest of life on earth.
According to some show on PBS/Discovery/BBC not that long ago (sorry, don't recall which or what show), they made the seemingly plausible statement that dragon myths were supported by the findings of Cave Bear skeletons, at least for the European dragon myths. These skeletons must have looked ferocious to those that found them after their extinction 15000 years ago, being up to 20 feet long. They certainly bore little resemblance to the current bear population in Europe.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I don't disagree with your second point.
Your third point, however is as wrong as your first. Populations cannot be driven to evolve. They either evolve or they don't, i.e. they either have the traits for survival and/or advantageous reproduction or they don't. Saying that they are driven indicates that they have a choice. There is pressure from the environmental circumstances, but the organism really has NO choice. Either it has the traits necessary for survival (and can pass them on to its offspring) or it does not. This is not Douglas Adams talking about Haggunennon evolving over the course of a meal. This is reality as evolutionary biology has shown it thus far.
The ONLY way acquired traits get passed on is through teaching and learning, and the only organisms that manage that are those genetically predispositioned to teach their offspring (and have offspring that learn).
Humans have (obviously) had these advantages, so here we are today able to contemplate these things.
Perhaps I am misinterpretting the statement (from TFA), but that is because it leaves too many incorrect points open to interpretation (of which my may well be included).
As I said, organisms cannot choose to evolve, so they cannot be driven to evolve. For an off the wall example, if various hypotheses/theories of global climate change are correct and the worst case scenario comes about (think "Day After Tomorrow" only over say a century), humans will not have the choice to evolve to fit the new world. That takes too much time. We (or at least some of us) will have either already evolved the adaptability to survive or we will die out. Personally, I think many of us have already evolved this ability, and those that do survive the possible catastrophes will (hopefully) be able to pass on those traits (of adaptability, NOT the adapted traits) to their offspring.
THAT is evolution as I have come to understand it.
Again, as a semi-offtopic ranting sidenote, the reason many people have trouble accepting they theory of evolution is that they cannot comprehend the timeframes involved. It takes many many many generations of slowly reproducing organisms (like humans) to evolve. We are not driven to it. We either do it or we don't (and perhaps die out). That is life. It maybe a tautology, but everything that happens happens. Everything that doesn't disappears.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Cancer is caused by a number of things, many of which occur in times of high stress, poor food, or poor living conditions. (Some of these things are self-inflicted because we don't have to care about living well since we have TV to take away the pain)
Cancer is an alteration of DNA, which causes super-cells to out-produce, out-perform, and out-consume normal cells which will be fatal to the host.
Cancer can cause evolution, what if this super-cell was not a harmful cell but a super-immunity cell.
So in this way, many factors that would occur from being poorly fitted to an environment can cause evolution... not just adaption.
No designer needed, no karma-whoring rant needed.
a popular view of our ancient ancestors as hunters who conquered all in their way could be incorrect
I knew the Republicans were wrong!
Does the /. crowd hang out with anyone?
Hart, Donna.
Subjects
# Primates -- Behavior.
# Predation (Biology)
# Primates -- Evolution.
# Human evolution.
# Hart, Donna. by title: #
Man the hunted : primates, predators, and human evolution / Donna L. Hart and Robert Wald Sussman.
Organisms cannot be driven to evolve. They can either have the trait that is advantageous for survival or they can die. Humans had the trait, probably for adaptation (perhaps through creative thinking) and developed sociability as a means of survival. They were not driven to evolve sociability and cooperation. They were driven to use these traits that they already had.
I don't get it. Are you saying that no new traits ever appear in evolving populations ?
Organisms don't evolve, period. Lineages do. And lineages can certainly be "driven" to evolve. The difference between teosinte and maize is (human-)driven evolution. Would you say that teosinte "already had" all the traits of maize ?
Same thing here. A selection pressure (big ugly predators) is applied. At some point, a mutation appears which induces better sociability. Because of the selective pressure, this mutation is favoured and takes over the population. Had the selective pressure been different, this mutation could have disappeared immediately and a different evolution would have taken place.
In other words, they were driven to adapt.
When the adaptation is fundamentally genetic (and hopefully you're not denying that the specific abilities of humans in sociability and cooperation have a strong genetic component) how is "being driven to adapt" different from "being driven to evolve" ?
Thomas-
From the article:
2 02513-6289443?v=glance&n=283155
> By contrast, our closest relatives - chimpanzees - have been shown
> not to come to the aid of others, even when it would pose no cost to themselves.
I guess the authors have not read the book "Out Inner Ape" published in 2005:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1573223123/103-0
The book talks about empathy displayed by bonobos. I highly recommend it.
I will go one better on that. I read a comment in a recent Archaeology Magazine something to the effect that, when archaeologists find stone tools thousands of years old, they automatically, without the slightest hesitation, jump to the conclusion they were made by humans...just something to think about...
this is loaner...my sig is in the shop
"Take, for instance, any form of acquired behavior.
Wrong. Thank you for playing. Features aquired while alive (not counting genetic mutations in the sperm/egg or genome of an asexually reproducing organism) do NOT get passed on."
Well, not genetically, but they might go out the same way that they came in. Vocation, for example--I'm an X, as my father before me who taught me the way as did his before him. Or religious traditions, for another: I know plenty of people who were taught to celebrate christmast by their parents, and those parents by their parents, and so on. Religious tradition is another one: are christmast-lights transfered genetically? No. Do they transfer? Yes. Consider also, as, as he wrote, just about any other form of acquired behaviour.
-rozzin.
I would feel that A. Afarenis was probably hunted by something. Hell, throw a modern human, any human in savannah- next to a pride of lions or swamp full of crocs and you will see that at that moment we not sitting on the top of the food chain. So, it stands to reason that our ancestors were probably hunted by their ancestors. The premise that this lead to more social behavior is equally obvious. Look at most animals that are prey. They run in packs from birds to zebras to fish. That is one way to ensure survival. Look at history, we seem to be most united when we are under attack. 911, Pearl Harbor, 1812 all illustrate humans work better together when there is a pernicious threat hanging over our head. So, I surprise no one has written a paper about this earlier.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
Your point is well-taken, and I'm sure it reflects the reporter's inability to understand what's going on. I took a class from Bob Sussman (the guy that presented this theory) a couple years ago on the biological basis of human behavior--evolution, neurotransmitters, etc.--and he would never be caught dead saying that humans are driven to evolve. He would agree 100% with your semi-offtopic rant; one of his pet peeves was people talking about evolution like it was purposeful or designing. I think once he called evolution the scientific God because it gave some otherwise rational and scientifically-minded people meaning in their lives.
Of course, the original alien 'Intelligently Designed' humans died out a long time ago.
See the original genetically engineered Super Humans here.
Despite humankind's considerable capacity for war and violence, we/humans are highly sociable animals, according to anthropologists.
Really... because I've never started a war. I have been sociable. Besides isn't war a perfect example of a large number of organisms working together for a common goal? The fact there are usually only two over-riding goals is a testament to our social structure. Imagine anarchy.
Someone mentioned to me several years ago, that nearly all human societies have customs for disposing of dead bodies that would tend to prevent predators from knowing that humans were something to eat.
Well perhaps we all did do this to protect ourselves from predatory species but not all of us fear scavengers. Zoroastrianism has an interesting set of funerary rites that come from their beliefs and setting. Dead bodies are considered horribly unclean due to their belief that death is the work of Evil, so you don't want to bury them in the earth where your food comes from. Fire is a sacred symbol of God, so they do not defile fires with the bodies of the dead. They are not exclusively a coastal culture, so water burial is not viable and would be considered tainting the water and making it unusable.
So you can't bury, submerge, or burn a body. What's left? Well, there's this:
The Parsi community in Iran and India are actually under stress from environmental problems right now. They depend on vultures to handle the burial of their dead, but 98% of vultures in Asia have died due to the use of a controversial cattle drug. The Parsi have been forced to install solar collectors on the Towers of Silence to speed the decomposition of the bodies.
Zoroastrianism is an unbelievably beautiful religion with truly amazing religious rites that you honestly wouldn't believe didn't come out of some lurid fantasy novel if you didn't read about it in the real world. It is dying out due to the fact that you must be born a member of the religion to practice it, and there is no conversion to it. It will be a great cultural loss when it is gone.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
It would be interesting to read the actual study, rather than a dumbed-down article like this. Whoever is reporting this is likely not a scientist, and not reporting it for scientists but for general people. Most science articles I read in the newspaper, for example, appear to be obvious research, or that which had been done 10 years ago. Before condemning the people doing the study, I would actually read what they did rather than this article geared toward the lowest common denominator.
These researchers apparently attained physical evidence (not just guessing, like one does when one is sure that sabre-tooth cats ate people, but actually have no evidence to back it up) that being prey allowed us to adapt to being sociable animals. Anyone can say it, but it can be hard to find evidence. Also, just because something "makes sense" in science doesn't mean it's true. There are things about evolution, ecology, etc. that made sense and people believed it simply because of that, and after a formal study was actually done they found out that what they believed simply wasn't true. Ample evidence must always be found in order to say anything in science - sometimes it's not a surprising conclusion, but sometimes it is.
Not to mention the fact that we are not supposed to "believe everything" these people say - I'm sorry, but science doesn't work like this. Why don't you read the actual paper and critique it seriously rather than making ridiculous sarcastic comments about a system and method you obviously don't know anything about?
You see unaware of, or to be ignoring, the many extremely powerful predictions evolution has made. Just as one example evolution makes predicts an extremely strict tree pattern in genetic analysis. This prediction has been overwhelmingly confirmed, and confirmed to a probablity of several hundred nines decimal places to be a real tree structure not randomly or arbitrarily produced. It is wither a positive confirmation of common decent evolution, or positive confirmation of some other mechanism essentially indistinguishable from common decent evolution.
So far no one on the planet has been able to come up with any credible alternative to evolution which would produce this strict common decent tree pattern. No alternative at all other than possible to suggest maybe God is a practical joker and deliberately fabricated and planted this false evidence to deleiberately deceive us. However I do not consider that a reasonable or credible suggestion, which puts us back at no known alternative to common decent evolution.
If you are really stuck on evolution not making certain kinds of predictions, well that is not a valid criticism. Science does not predict exactly when and where earth qakes will occurr or exactly how big they will be. Meteorologists can predict an 80% chance of rain in New York City, but can't make a 100% prediction and can't predict the exact amout of rainfal and can't predict that it will only rain above 8th Avenue and not below 8th Avenue. Engineers can predict approximately how much weight a bridge can bear, but not exactly how much and not exactly where the failure will occurr. Science can predict the average outcome or most probable outcome of all sorts of unpredictable processes, such as radioactive decay, without being able to predict ANY of the specifics.
Darwin being wrong does not prove that God made the world.
True. And God making the world does not prove Darwin being wrong.
But at this point there is no reason to think Darwin was fundamentally wrong. I think you understimate just how much evidence there is. I think you are making invalid criticisms, criticisms that would invalidate every field of science from criminal forensics (for trying to reconstructed prove historical events you haven't witnessed) to seismology (for not making exact earthquake predictions).
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I used to attend school at UT Austin, and there were some trees in front of the anthropology building. Something in those trees drew in grackels from miles around. It was the only building on campus haunted like that.
There must've been 150 or 200 grackels roosted, spewing a cacaphony of vulgar bird chirps and bird-caca under those few trees. MAN, how it stank.
Every year they'd scare em off with shotguns and rock salt, but year after year those grackels just kept coming back to the front of the anthropology building.
Well I was an atheist at the time, and an evolutionist. I thought anthropolgy was a neat field, and an honest one.
Decide for yourself, but since then I've learned to recognize a clear sign from God.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
OK, but the key is assimilating enough evidence to be sure rather than just making up a "just so" story, and publishing it. Can you do that? You're probably right, there is a pattern, but it takes more than that. The problem with people is they think that scientists just say shit, and make everyone else believe it, when actually they often pool together loads of data in order to say something that may not be revolutionary, but is likely a good explanation. Read the actual paper before you critique the study too harshly - as I commented above, there's probably a lot more info in it than you realize. This article has been dumbed-down immensely, and probably been written by a journalist attempting to disseminate info to the general public. Please keep that in mind whenever "science" is reported. Many of us get really embarrassed by what newspapers and the like write about our research, for the reason you illustrated - it is obviously grossly misunderstood by the general public :c (
...when people present their findings at a meeting rather than in a journal. Well, forget about reading it then, but it'll be published at some point; they usually present at meetings first and then publish. I'll be waiting to read it to see what they actually say. Like I said to someone else, scientists often hate it when their stuff is written about in a newspaper or whatever, because it's usually butchered past the point of recognition, so don't blame the simplicity on the researchers. However, I usually love the BBC for this... but it's still not a fair assessment, just a lazy judgement call.
You're hung up on *genetic* evolution, while the quote in question deals as much with *social* evolution as genetic. Humans can evolve new behaviour, as they find that those behaviours help them to survive, and that behaviour spreads via learning, not via breeding.
Well, a few things just take a bit longer in the US. Making noise about well known facts is part of the business in the US, even in science. In the rest of the world we keep calm. Unfortunately the BBC writers and editors still have not figured out how the business science works in the US. Therefore we will see in the future more BBC articles beginning with the usual phrase "US researchers found...". BTW the media in the US are worse. If someone in the world outside the US discovers something, then there is a 99% chance that the US media interview some remotely connected person in the US instead of the person who made the discovery, leaving it to the naïve audience to find out what actually happened.
There is strong evidence (through similarities in larval development and bodily structures) that ants are decended from wasps and bees... which also have similar social structures.
There are, however, some solitary bees and wasps who only come together for breeding and then go off again to do their own thing and don't live in a colony. Obviously you are going to notice the colonial groups more than the solitary ones simply due to raw numbers, and the fact that a hive is usually quite prominent and doesn't move around (at least too much).
Now what the evoluationary mechanisms were to cause this socialization... or for that matter even multi-cellular organisms to develop, it would be mostly speculation.
I do like you theory of human evolution tho. It is as good as any I've see from supposed respected biological theoriticians, and just as provable.
One of the sources for the ledgends of huge monsters, at least with Native American groups, was some of the exposed Dinosaur bones that were discovered on the Great Plains of North America. Indeed the Louis & Clarke expedition jotted down some of the discussion about these stories about huge monsters that were buried in the ground.
Many of these dinosaur remains have been extracted from many places throughout the world, and it seems to be a plausable explanation for a "universal myth", especially as many of the dinosaurs did live on a common continent at one point in time.
As far as being truly universal, there are some huge differences in the behavior of dragons from European ledgends and those of ancient China. The Chinese dragons tend to be more lizzard and snake like often without even flight and offer protection, while the European dragons (in ledgend) tend to be more flying monsters that are evil incarnate, with sometimes bat-like features (at least for wings). American creatures were even more bizzare in legend, but those stories are not as well recorded.
I'm not a big fan of the idea of "survival of the fittest" because most death doesn't strike the most opportune target, the target is typically overwhelmed, and selected by chance. I do have an opinion however or the evolution of sociatal functions of man.
There are obvious requirements that humans co-habitate. Our children are weak and defenseless for years. It is necessary that we rely on other humans. As our organization increases in size, specialization increases to increase the capacity, and efficiency of the society. Individuals perform more specific tasks to serve the society and as their focus increases on their specific tasks, knowledge is gained. What we've really seen is a diversification of ability and the rising potential for human endeavours as we've increased our reliance on functional society. The potential for two humans who have to provide everything for themselves is far less than the cooperative efforts of billions of humans living in an inter-connected society that breeds in specialization where everyone performs an important task to the world community.. be it building brooms in Argentina to influencing global economics at the WTO.
Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain, and most fools do. - Benjamin Franklin
If someone in the world outside the US discovers something, then there is a 99% chance that the US media interview some remotely connected person in the US instead of the person who made the discovery
Like the Meucci-Bell affair. US officially admitted only some years ago that the Italian inventor originally came up with the idea, 113 years after the litigation began.
US has a great thing that's called "national pride", a thing many Europeans unfortunately lack. But sometimes it seems to us that this pride goes all the way up to jingoism.
42.
.... what else should they assume?
There is no toehr animal ever recorded to make complex tools in the las few thusends of years (I would say ever).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.