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Ten Things We Still Don't Understand About Humans
ParticleGirl writes "New Scientist has an article examining 10 human features (bugs?) that we still don't understand, like blushing, laughing, and nose-picking. There are some interesting, speculative evolutionary explanations listed for each. '[Psychologist Robert R. Provine] thinks laughing began in our pre-human ancestors as a physiological response to tickling. Modern apes maintain the ancestral 'pant-pant' laugh when they are tickled during play, and this evolved into the human 'ha-ha.' Then, he argues, as our brains got bigger, laughter acquired a powerful social function — to bond people. Indeed, Robin Dunbar at the University of Oxford has found that laughing increases levels of endorphins, our body's natural opiates, which he believes helps to strengthen social relationships.'"
Does anyone else just immediately stop listening when they see words like 'meme'?
Perhaps 'meme' is a fnord.
Kurt Vonnegut sort of agrees (about the reduced defenses) : "Jokes can be noble. Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward â" and since I can start thinking and striving again that much sooner."
Laughter is certainly not always pleasant, as anyone who's laughed to much will tell you. You know the laughter that borders on hysteria and sometimes ends in tears. It IS a cleansing experience though, your body's safety valve for letting out stored up emotion and frustration.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Personally I think the nose and the nasal passages are undergoing some of the fastest evolution of any part of the body right now. You see a huge variation in nose shape around the world, and I don't know about you but personally my nose is one of the most annoying parts of my body, not allowing enough air through and often getting clogged, sometimes running, sometimes bleeding for no reason, and getting boogers (there must be a technical term, please enlighten me). I often wonder if people with different-shaped noses have the same problems I do, or if these problems are solved in the nose designs of other races.
Damn forgot to mention, ofcourse there's the whole "mutual aid" as an evolutionary advantage thing. But that's a REALLY old idea, I mean 1890's old. People just ignore it though, doesn't fit in with the ideology and the travesty they've made of the whole "survival of the fittest" thing.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Laughter, art, pubic hair and kissing are the only things that stand out on the list as possibly unknown. Art is probably the most complex and "advanced" of all human behaviors so it will only have a highly complex answer. I have this feeling that laughter is not unique to humans and is probably based at some level on a physiological/neurological response to a number of mental states such as relief, happiness, perception of incongruity (irony), and a few others (for some people pain which is where we will probably have the best shot at figuring out that actual mechanisms...). At least in males and probably females this would probably be the product of the overlapping expression of two (maybe more) genes, one receptor that triggers localized hair growth when it receives a signal from another molecule (probably testosterone?), thus, when humans hit puberty and start developing secondary sexual features high concentrations of pubes form in the crotch because the signaling molecule is in such high abundance there (just a guess...). Kissing? Hell if I know, maybe a delaying tactic developed by females to see just how committed and patient a male was.
Nose picking? DUH??!!?? Ever seen a fly groom itself or a monkey in the mirror? The monkey always checks its teeth. No one likes boogers, they are irritating, thus, remove the irritant. Same as picking at scabs.
Puberty? Tons of animals have it, its just another stage in development which just so happens to involve major rewiring of their neural circuitry and reformatting of their bodies. Not surprisingly, they tend to get a bit testy during this phase.
Blushing? Vasodialation caused by a hormonal release triggered by embarrassment AKA a type of fear.
Altruism? Pretty good explanations out there based on group selection theories and group size + competition.
Supersition? Our brains continually look for causes by default and when they don't find an obvious one they will make the next best connection based on the associations available in the brain. Very hand if someone comes up with a single universal cause for everything (god anyone?).
Dreams. Ok maybe not very well understood experimentally, but lots of animals dream. Neurons have to keep firing or they loose their connections, at some point during the evolutionary process a state developed for neural networks at rest were they started to replay their most recently experiences and integrate them in to the structure of the brain. Basically dreams are the time when the brain does upkeep and integrates its most recent experiences and solidifies the most memorable ones. Probably where we do most of our associational learning.
(Full disclosure: NON EXPERT, but this is /. so you know that already)
...to incest, which is bad for the gene pool.
When our primate ancestors stopped leaving the cave as soon as they could and started staying home with their parents until later in life, what better way to avoid interbreeding between offspring and parents than to make teenagers hate/piss off their parents, and do whatever they could to impregnate/get impregnated by someone else?
That's nature saying: "Get away from these same-gene carriers. Get out, and get wild. Multiply now!". And when they do, that's positive feedback for the evolutionary push. Interbreeding would reduce the probability of survival of the group in the long term (and short term, if <disgusting attempt to joke about people locked in basements removed>).
There was a really good story not too long about about a theory of why dreams evolved. Basically, it says that it's practice for real-life situations. I know, sometimes they're crazy, how is dreaming that you've managed to go to school in just your underwear practice for real life? Although you may never actually go to school in your underwear, you do experience the same sensations in real life--embarrassment, fear, love (and lust), terror, and so on--that you experience in these crazy dreams. They prepare you for the real life stuff that happens to you.
Sounds pretty reasonable to me.
I recently discovered a general list of unsolved problems, which I find fascinating. It's like a summary of the current limits of science and human knowledge and understanding.
TFA was ridiculous.
You have the "Adults and Children" up at dawn. For numbers, let's say 6 AM. They stay up until just after sunset, say 9 - 10 PM. Then the young adults take their shift, and stay up until about 3 or 4 AM, when the ancient ones (who folded at sunset around 7.30 PM) get up.
WHY would this work? To keep the fire going and guard against predators.
The old folks get things rolling, Adults and kids get up later and organise the days events. By the time they're ready to roll, it's getting on toward mid-day and the young adults are finally up and moving to supply the horse power.
It makes sense from a neolithic point of view...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.