It had been widely assumed until recently that human evolution more or less stopped 50,000 years ago.Oh, no. One dreads reading on. I like to read about brain research and am glad to see we are evolving better brains, but... Well, we all go anti-science at some point, don't we?
The new finding, reported in today's issue of Science by Bruce T. Lahn of the University of Chicago, and colleagues, could raise controversy because of the genes' role in determining brain size. New versions of the genes, or alleles as geneticists call them, appear to have spread because they enhanced brain function in some way, the report suggests, and they are more common in some populations than others.
September 9, 2005
The evolving brain.
The human brain is evolving rapidly, some scientists think:
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4 comments:
I agree with Sebastian. Science (as it should be practiced) is a pursuit of the truth. No doubt it can be used in the wrong way or our understanding of what the truth means can change over time, in any case I don't think we should avoid it.
"In other words, East Asians and Africans probably have other brain-enhancing alleles, not yet discovered..."
They work hard to cover their asses, PC-wise, with this sentence being especially egregious. There are no facts here (in this sentence) at all, just wishful thinking to offset the possible "inequality" suggested by the newly discovered facts.
I suppose that it's a miracle that this was reported at all, rather than being ignored by the non-academic press.
I found this article interesting. One thing that has been bothering me for quite awhile is that civilization, as we know it, is so recent. Probably at most 10,000 years, when we have been "human" for quite a bit longer than that.
The standard answer to this I think is that we (as humans) finally hit a critical mass of inventions and population density.
But, maybe, just maybe, it was because of this genetic mutation or change, some 6,000 or so years ago, and another slightly earlier one. Maybe that was the critical mass that allowed us to all of a sudden create the civilizations that we now have.
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