I read an article this week which went on to say that they have proof now that humans are still evolving. From the article: "University of Chicago researchers say they've found approximately 700 regions of the human genome where genes appear to have been reshaped by natural selection within the past 5,000 to 15,000 years!". What surprises me is that until recently it was believed by many that humans stopped evolving 50,000 years ago (this of course doesn't include the people who think it went down with some dust, a rib, an apple and a talking snake). I naturally assumed that it was commonly believed that we have never stopped evolving. This brings me to a few questions...Why would we have stopped evolving 50, 000 years ago and what would have been the last major step for us?
If that was the case and you took the DNA of a 50,000 year old person cloned them and raised them in today's society would they have no problem living like the rest of us? I guess that would be the ultimate test of nature vs. nurture but I find that it hardly makes sense. 50, 000 years ago is soooooo long ago. Think about how long ago the bible was written, that was only about 2 000 years. WE'RE TALKING 50, 000 HERE.
I bet (certain) humans have evolved in the past 2, 000 years I think it only makes sense that its a constant process. Its not as if we've reached some sort of plateau of perfection.
the guy in the pic looks eerily similar to George Carlin.
ReplyDeletethere are more than a few things that puzzle me about this theory of evolution. although i am not a creationist by any stretch of the imagination, i just cannot make sense of the environmental conditions that would require a monkey to need human characteristics to survive. i can't think of one human trait that would make surviving in the jungle easier and therefore more appealing to the opposite sex. it really does puzzle me.
ReplyDeletealso, i can't understand how there would be just one missing link between apes and humans. if evolution occurs the way they say it does then every generation born is just slightly different than it's parents. meaning that to get to us there would be pretty much a million missing links.
i want to understand and accept, but i just can't.
maybe my brain hasn't evolved enough to grasp evolution.
What?!? You don't think plumbers, unemployed artists, and politicians are the pinnacle of evolution? What more could there possibly be?
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, 50,000 years and 2,000 years are, in terms of evolution, practically the same thing. Evolution works over millions of years, not thousands. Go read a biology text book.
ReplyDeleteLove the blog. Couple thoughts on the evolution topic... I also thought evolution was constant. The bible, or the first five books as handed down to Moses, were first written somewhere between 5000 and 3000 BC so that would actually be 5000 to 7000 years ago not 2000. Historically, bible speaking, 2000 years ago would have been the time when Jesus was alive. some 15000 to 11000 years ago was the end of the Pleistocene Epoch and would have been a period of extreme flooding due to rapid glacial melting, this was also the era when man first ventured from Africa and began to dominate the world as the top species. It is very likely that some major genetic evolutionary change came along with this revolution, and this is reflected in the rise of agriculture and communities becoming the beginnings of civilizations. I personally believe the there are many secrets hidden in the words of the bible that could help mankind understand their infancy on this planet. Unfortunately there will always be the two sides of the isle: one unable to ever except that anything could not be explained by science and the other side that feels the bible is to be taken literally at every word. ahhhh just a thought.
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