Re: News: Human Evolution - Why People Think Life Is a Beach

On Apr 6, 5:41 am, Ye Old One <use...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Human Evolution: Why People Think Life Is a Beach
By Mariette DiChristina in 60-Second Science Blog  http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=human-evoluti...

CAREFREE, ARIZ.— What does it mean to be human? A panel of
anthropologists at the inaugural Origins Symposium organized by
Arizona State University yesterday presented several perspectives—from
genetic to cultural to environmental—on where and how the birth of our
species occurred.

The weekend meeting brings together 70 leading scientists, including
eight Nobel laureates, in origins studies across all disciplines, to
explore major questions in their fields. Live webcasts continue today;
presentations open to the public will follow on Monday.

Anthropologist Alan Rodgers of the University of Utah spoke of the new
insights from genetics and how fast-evolving areas of the human genome
provided new traits, such as the ability to digest milk into
adulthood, contributed to survival success. “Current evidence suggests
that we are a rapidly evolving species,” he added. “We have changed a
lot in a few tens of thousands of years.” (An upcoming report from
Scientific American will detail many of these changing regions.)

Adaptability was a key factor in our species’ emergence, agreed Don
Johanson, the founding director of the Institute of Human Origins at
Arizona State and discoverer of the 3.18-million-year-old fossil
skeleton “Lucy.” “Our success is a combination of classical biological
evolution and human cultural evolution,” he added. The influence of
culture was swift and powerful. “Ten thousand years ago, at the start
of the agricultural revolution, the biomass of humans was only one
tenth of a percent of the entire mammalian biomass,” said Johanson.
“Within just 500 generations of time, we have grown to 98 percent of
mammalian biomass.”

I doubt that 98% is correct. Someone else have another figure? Where
do all those quarter pounders come from? Worms! I knew it was worms!

Wiki claims that there are 1.5 billion cattle in the world and since
single individuals are much larger than humans Don has to rethink his
biomass numbers.

Ron Okimoto

SNIP:

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: News: Human Evolution - Why People Think Life Is a Beach
    ... anthropologists at the inaugural Origins Symposium organized by ... eight Nobel laureates, in origins studies across all disciplines, to ... culture was swift and powerful. ... I knew it was worms! ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: News: Human Evolution - Why People Think Life Is a Beach
    ... eight Nobel laureates, in origins studies across all disciplines, to ... insights from genetics and how fast-evolving areas of the human genome ... Arizona State and discoverer of the 3.18-million-year-old fossil ... culture was swift and powerful. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Earliest farmers in central Europe
    ... they presented new research on the origins of the first ... DNA from early Bandkeramik ... bones was taken and compared with the Near East and the local ... becoming a singular culture that appeared on the greeks doorstep. ...
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  • Re: The n-word was Be nice to me..
    ... saying that its origins go back ... I recall when I started teaching that someone said that I should watch children's TV to keep up with the culture. ... That proved to be useful advice, and I have wasted many hours watching Grange Hill and Byker Grove. ... I suspect that if we have anything to accuse the 'dog' species of, it might be occasional killing of small persons by deviant individuals, but a lot more common would be the depositing of smelly packages on the pavement. ...
    (uk.rec.humour)
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