Category: Human evolution
Did a broken gene improve running and help humans conquer the planet?
| September 20, 2018 | Posted by News under Genetics, Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Mind |
Humans apparently have a broken version of CMP-Neu5Ac Hydroxylase (CMAH), which helps build a sugar molecule that impacts running: Despite our couch potato lifestyles, long-distance running is in our genes. A new study in mice pinpoints how a stretch of DNA likely turned our ancestors into marathoners, giving us the endurance to conquer territory, evade […]
Researchers: Genes cannot “be read like tea leaves”
| September 19, 2018 | Posted by News under Genetics, Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Medicine |
Which make the effects of mutations harder to predict than hoped. Of course, it’s also a blow for genetic determinism. From ScienceDaily: Ever since the decoding of the human genome in 2003, genetic research has been focused heavily on understanding genes so that they could be read like tea leaves to predict an individual’s future […]
Aging has always been with us, say researchers (to no one’s surprise)
| September 16, 2018 | Posted by News under Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Natural selection |
This group somehow links it to natural selection: A new USC Dornsife study indicates that aging may have originated at the very beginning of the evolution of life, at the same time as the evolution of the first genes. … This could be a game changer for research on longevity and aging. It may also […]
Gaia theory is now Gaia 2.0
| September 15, 2018 | Posted by News under Human evolution, Naturalism, Religion |
Yes, everything is going high tech now, it seems. Intro of topic For around half a century, the ‘Gaia’ hypothesis has provided a unique way of understanding how life has persisted on Earth. It champions the idea that living organisms and their inorganic surroundings evolved together as a single, self-regulating system that has kept the […]
Dispute over recent find of tools on Madagascar from 10,500 ya
| September 13, 2018 | Posted by News under Human evolution, Intelligent Design |
Earlier, we wrote about human habitation of Madagascar being pushed back 6000 years. Now that claim is disputed due to lack of evidence besides tools: “These finds of cut-marked bones seem to predate any evidence of humans. Not only is there an absence of human remains [from that time], but there is an absence of […]
Earliest known rock drawing at 73,000 years ago
| September 13, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Mind |
A type of crosshatch etched in ocher: The discovery “helps round out the argument that Homo sapiens [at Blombos Cave] behaved essentially like us before 70,000 years ago,” says archaeologist Christopher Henshilwood of the University of Bergen in Norway. His team noticed the ancient drawing while examining thousands of stone fragments and tools excavated in […]
Humans lived in Madagascar 6000 years earlier than thought
| September 12, 2018 | Posted by News under Ecology, extinction, Human evolution, Intelligent Design |
And probably did not kill off all the elephant birds, as often claimed, say researchers: Analysis of bones, from what was once the world’s largest bird, has revealed that humans arrived on the tropical island of Madagascar more than 6,000 years earlier than previously thought—according to a study published today, 12 September 2018, in the journal […]
Silenced! Selectivity too close to truth?
| September 9, 2018 | Posted by DLH under academic freedom, Culture, Education, Free Speech, Human evolution, Mathematics, Natural selection, Peer review, Popular culture, Probability, Science, Mathematics, Philosophy and (Natural) Theology, Society |
Should science pursue truth regardless of consequences? Or must we succumb to political correctness? Must selectivity of females always equal males? Consider: Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole – by Theodore P. Hill “In the highly controversial area of human intelligence, the ‘Greater Male Variability Hypothesis’ (GMVH) asserts that there are […]
Why we can’t really live forever via advanced technology
| September 9, 2018 | Posted by News under Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Mind, Philosophy |
It wouldn’t really be “us” anyhow. Some thoughts from a political theorist: The moral philosopher Samuel Scheffler at New York University has suggested that the real problem with a fantasy of immortality is that it doesn’t make sense as a coherent desire. Scheffler points out that human life is intimately structured by the fact that […]
In the latest version: Cold climate helped to do in the Neanderthals
| September 3, 2018 | Posted by News under extinction, Human evolution, Intelligent Design |
From ScienceDaily: A team of researchers from a number of European and American research institutions, including Northumbria University, Newcastle, have produced detailed new natural records from stalagmites that highlight changes in the European climate more than 40,000 years ago. They found several cold periods that coincide with the timings of a near complete absence of […]
Humans may have only 19,000 coding genes
| August 31, 2018 | Posted by News under 'Junk DNA', Genomics, Human evolution, Intelligent Design |
And we are not sure which ones they are. From ScienceDaily: Research Centre (CNIO) reveals that up to 20% of genes classified as coding (those that produce the proteins that are the building blocks of all living things) may not be coding after all because they have characteristics that are typical of non-coding or pseudogenes […]
Unique type of cell found in human brain: rosehip neurons
| August 31, 2018 | Posted by News under Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Mind, Neuroscience |
At least, it hasn’t been seen in other life forms. From ScienceDaily: Tamás and University of Szeged doctoral student Eszter Boldog dubbed these new cells “rosehip neurons” — to them, the dense bundle each brain cell’s axon forms around the cell’s center looks just like a rose after it has shed its petals, he said. […]
A physicist looks at biology’s problem of “speciation” in humans
| August 25, 2018 | Posted by News under Human evolution, Intelligent Design, speciation |
Consider this item on the recent find of the remains of a girl from 90,000 years ago: The discovery of the first-known offspring of parents from two different hominin species took scientists by surprise. While evidence has been pointing to interbreeding among the ancestor species of modern humans, the direct link is being hailed as […]
Does DNA testing keep alive ideas that “deserve to die”?
| August 24, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Genetics, Human evolution, Intelligent Design |
An anthropologist asks: Now go even further back in time to the 17th or 18th century. The number of folks on average living then who could have contributed to your genetic endowment is so large (more than 1,000), and their possible genetic contribution so small (about 0.098 percent for 10 generations back), it would be smoke […]
Academic labels media reports calling Homo erectus lazy as “moronic”
| August 23, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Media |
Recently, we reported on one of those Darwinian morality tales, according to which homo erectus died out because he was lazy, compared to the rest of us. Ann Gauger, pointed out that the broader picture (timelines, for example) does not suggest that Homo erectus was lazy. And now we learn, “The inference that laziness typifies […]
Neanderthal woman, Denisovan man
| August 23, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Darwinism, Human evolution, Intelligent Design |
From ScienceDaily: Together with their sister group the Neanderthals, Denisovans are the closest extinct relatives of currently living humans. “We knew from previous studies that Neanderthals and Denisovans must have occasionally had children together,” says Viviane Slon, researcher at the MPI-EVA and one of three first authors of the study. “But I never thought we […]
How the controversy over Darwinism mirrors the wider culture
| August 20, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Darwinism, Human evolution |
While discussing cultural conflicts generally, foreign policy analyst Michael Dran mentioned something that intrigued one of our readers: The most important is the divide between Protestant modernists and fundamentalists, which developed in the early part of the twentieth century. It is my contention that the modernist-fundamentalist controversy did not come and go in the course […]
Researcher: Ancient people were not all dead by 30 years of age
| August 17, 2018 | Posted by News under Human evolution, Intelligent Design |
Human lifespans have not changed over the millennia: People in the past were not all dead by 30. Ancient documents confirm this. In the 24th century B.C., the Egyptian Vizier Ptahhotep wrote verses about the disintegrations of old age. The ancient Greeks classed old age among the divine curses, and their tombstones attest to survival […]
Neanderthals had a sophisticated home life?
| August 16, 2018 | Posted by News under Human evolution, Intelligent Design |
New Scientist is now rehabilitating the Neanderthals. We once thought of Neanderthals as crude and unintelligent – not any more. Archaeological evidence suggests they were capable of symbolic thought, had some capacity for speech, and probably carried out elaborate burial rituals. They may even have taught modern humans new skills when the two species met […]
Ann Gauger: Was Homo erectus really that lazy?
| August 13, 2018 | Posted by News under Human evolution |
Ann Gauger, a senior scientist at the Biologic Institute, writes to defend homo erectus from charges that laziness led to his his extinction. She writes, This anthropologist is not looking at the broader picture. H erectus is estimated to have appeared somewhere in Africa 1.9 mya. By 1.8 mya H erectus is found in Dmanisi, […]
