scipaHumans might be evolving faster than you think
December 9th 2007 18:27
It doesn't seem like we're going anywhere. For all the venomous debates about evolution and Darwin's theories, humans don't seem to be changing into super-humans, as we'd like to imagine.
Oddly enough, researchers from the University of Utah are suggesting that we've come a long way, baby.
Are humans evolving faster?
Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Henry Harpending led the team to discover that our genetic makeup has changed greatly in the past 40 000 years.
And we though we were just humans!
From the article:
It's a terribly fascinating idea... we're so used to pointing at culture for regional behaviours, because it's quite controversial to suspect a genetic link to behaviour.
With the explosion in the global population, this evolutionary process has sped up, causing increased genetic diversity, ultimately making us all further apart, in a genetic sense.
These are the same researchers that came forward with the idea that European Jews had higher intelligence because of natural selection:
Naturally, the researchers vehemently oppose the idea of their research being used for discrimination, but surely there are those that would do just that...
Oddly enough, researchers from the University of Utah are suggesting that we've come a long way, baby.
Are humans evolving faster?
Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Henry Harpending led the team to discover that our genetic makeup has changed greatly in the past 40 000 years.
From the article:
" "We aren't the same as people even 1,000 or 2,000 years ago," he says, which may explain, for example, part of the difference between Viking invaders and their peaceful Swedish descendants. "The dogma has been these are cultural fluctuations, but almost any temperament trait you look at is under strong genetic influence." "
It's a terribly fascinating idea... we're so used to pointing at culture for regional behaviours, because it's quite controversial to suspect a genetic link to behaviour.
With the explosion in the global population, this evolutionary process has sped up, causing increased genetic diversity, ultimately making us all further apart, in a genetic sense.
These are the same researchers that came forward with the idea that European Jews had higher intelligence because of natural selection:
"...above-average intelligence in Ashkenazi Jews - those of northern European heritage - resulted from natural selection in medieval Europe, where they were pressured into jobs as financiers, traders, managers and tax collectors. Those who were smarter succeeded, grew wealthy and had bigger families to pass on their genes."
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