Humans Evolving 100 Times Faster Than Ever

John Hawks writes "A new genomics study in PNAS shows that humans have been evolving new adaptive genes during the past 10,000 years much faster than ever before. The study says that evolution has sped up because of population growth, making people adapt faster to new diseases, new diets, and social changes like cities. Oh, and I'm the lead author. I've been reading Slashdot for a long time, and let me just say that our study doesn't necessarily apply to trolls."

Comments

Re:adaptation?

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Hmmm one wonders what religion you're defending ... clearly you're not a muslim ... I noticed a distinct lack of threats in your post ...

http://atheism.about.com/b/2005/05/09/creationist-thugs-in-turkey-allied-with-american-creationists.htm

(that's physical attacks and murders they're talking about, just in case you were wondering)

Is it fun ? Attacking reasonable people irrationally ?

Re:adaptation?

[eebra82]

Is that implying evolution? 10,000 years!! I thought Earth is only 7,000 years old. I declare this article a heresy. Depends on how you interpret it. Most Christians believe horses were introduced sometime during the 17th century. Other believers say horses came a century later - a delay caused by a late introduction of dinosaurs. So you might be off a century or so.

Re:One and the same - nah, I don't buy it.

[petes_PoV]

Mutation is not a "jump in a sequence". It's a new trait.

There is no sequence as there is no "path" that human evolution is following. It's a random selection of those who adapt best to changes in the environment surviving to sexual maturity. Nothing more.

The really interesting question would be: what are we evolving into?

Re:Prof. Hawks, is this evolution evenly distribut

[Henry V .009]

I am sure you are aware of Dr. James Watson's recent controversial assertion that blacks are not as "endowed" intellectually as whites. While the few studies I have seen do not support this conclusion at all I am still curious as to know how evolution has made us different (obviously) in other ways.

You haven't checked out very many studies. Just for grins, why don't you try to find last year's U.S. SAT scores on the internet separated by race (I haven't looked, but I can guess the numbers pretty closely anyway). Or count up the number of black grandmaster chess players, etc., etc. Watson is right, and the people attacking him were jokers. Jason Malloy wrote a great article defending him on GNXP.

Re:Check Out the Sample Size

[alexgieg]

This is what I can't stand about science by press release (and yes, I'm a scientist). Pretty sweeping conclusion drawn from a miniscule sample size.

What I find worse than this is the lack of precision on the terms employed. The word "evolution", for example, usually mean speciation due to genetic variation resulting from adaptation to an environment via natural selection, ant this is what most people understand when they read the word. Thus, if what the article is talking about doesn't have all these characteristics, why employ this word?

Talk all you want about how humans have had lots of genetic variation, show how this is due do adaptive natural selection, if it in fact is, and maybe explain how it can lead to an evolution of the human species by someday causing speciation. But don't say it already is evolution, because it isn't.

Re:No it isn't

[BubFranklin]

How do you determine what a "change" is to include it as an element of rate?

Is there an objective list? Do you vote on it?

It seems that the possibility to determine rate of change over 10,000 years from 270 samples, is a bit far fetched, guess I am a troll.

Re:Check Out the Sample Size

[Plutonite]

You are recording a single event occurance in the flip of a coin. In contrast, you are looking for millions of potentially dependent or conditionally independent occurances when you do a study about something as complex as human DNA changes. 270 people out of billions is not a representative sample size, unless the study is very simplistic. In fact it probably is, and I've RTFA.

it's about the species. GP is right, parent is not

[doug141]

Central to the theory of evolution is speciation. Arguing that changes WITHIN a species is also evolution is a form of, ironically, extrapolation.

The only true measure of rate of evolution is rate of new speciation, like the fossil record shows after mass extinctions.

You might hate the ID argument that scientists haven't documented one species turning into another in real time, but that doesn't make it untrue.

Ow my balls...

[Ralph Spoilsport]

So like, FUCK YOU. Evolution whatever... Where are my glasses? I can't see shit here. Motherfuckers. YEAH!!! MOTHERFUCKERS!!! I want some food. I like money. FUCK YOU!!! It's like all I wanna do is sit in front of the TV and have some bitch suck my cock all day. Yeah yeah - that would fuckin' ROCK! And all that work shit - who cares? Work is for like stupid mexicans and shit. I've more important stuff to do, like watch tonight's episode of "OW MY BALLS!" Yeah. I like Ow My Balls. It's really funny. I think we have opposable thumbs so we can like hold the remote better and open beer cans and stuff.

I grew up in a fuckin trailer 'cuz my parents were fuckin stupid as shit. I used to play with kids like Ricky and Julian. But they went to jail for shoplifting meat and shit like that, and sellin' dope and stuff. Julian's cool - he can like drive a car and drink rum and cokes and shit all day. Ricky's a dick - he's always like going on about how he's smarter than me and shit and that bullshit just fuckin pisses me off. So I moved to the city where life is easier and all I have to do is show up at work and move stuff around on a desk, and I get paid and so I can go home and watch OW MY BALLS and get some chick to suck my cock all day.

And the best part about all this? I get to vote! Not like losers like Julian and Ricky. fuckin jailbirds. HA! losers. HA! Stupid fuckwits! HA! Can't fool me! I got work and I vote! And I watch TV! They say my ancestors like lived in caves and shit - stupid fuckers. Chasing deer and cows and shit all over the place for food. What a bunch of stupids. It's better to like sit at home and watch TV and order pizza. Some fuckin mexican delivers it in less than 30 minutes. HA! Stupid fucker. Workin like that. It's better to do bullshit at some office and make money so I can go home and order pizza and watch OW MY BALLS! Did you see it last week? Man, that was some funny shit.

RS