What makes us evolve (in terms of thought or activity)?

originally posted by: nonjudgementalist
a reply to: beezzer

Sorry there was a typo.
The question wa supposed to be:

Is there anything in terms of thought or or activity that makes us more evolved as a species, you think of as outstandingly progressive?

Not really.

We've stayed the same as we were thousands of years ago simply because there has been no stress on the human species to force evolution.

Sure, there is spontaneous mutations that have created characteristic differences. But nothing really has changed in several millennia.

We are still tool makers/ tool users.

Our tools have just gotten smaller and shinier is all.

a reply to: beezzer

Tool making. Ok.

a reply to: beezzer

But then again, pre homo sapiens used tools.

a reply to: nonjudgementalist

even after the Headline swap; Nothing, robots next!

originally posted by: nonjudgementalist
a reply to: beezzer

But then again, pre homo sapiens used tools.

We haven't come too far then have we.

a reply to: beezzer

U got a real point, we force evolution, cant balance it, and when we counter balance, we assert to the only tool we know and its destruction. Did human evolve, no, we try to play Gods. Before babylon the world was perfect, in perfect harmony and balance. After Babylon we slowly smashed perfection just so it would fit our needs, we think as long as you provide food to anything, you can declare them as useful for your own needs. Horse, dog, cat, humans. We mastered fear and call it freedom.

originally posted by: nonjudgementalist
What in your opinion makes us and has made us evolve as a species?

Our ability to make mistakes and then learn from them.

a reply to: nerbot

oh wow, i think i just made a face on that comment

Evolutionary pressure can take many different forms - population isolation, food scarcity, population dynamics, even the weather. When a population is forced to adapt or die, the strong will survive. Given enough pressure and enough time, the genetic code changes and the organism passes on the new genetic traits to the next generation.

Human evolution is measured in thousands or millions of years. But organisms like bacteria and viruses can adapt in a matter of days or even hours, changing their genetic code to adapt to new challenges - like bacterial antibiotic resistance. Given rapid changes in the genetic code, speciation is observed more frequently in these organisms:

Speedy speciation in a bacterial microcosm: new species can arise as frequently as adaptations within a species.
Koeppel AF1, Wertheim JO, Barone L, Gentile N, Krizanc D, Cohan FM.

Abstract

Microbiologists are challenged to explain the origins of enormous numbers of bacterial species worldwide. Contributing to this extreme diversity may be a simpler process of speciation in bacteria than in animals and plants, requiring neither sexual nor geographical isolation between nascent species. Here, we propose and test a novel hypothesis for the extreme diversity of bacterial species-that splitting of one population into multiple ecologically distinct populations (cladogenesis) may be as frequent as adaptive improvements within a single population's lineage (anagenesis). We employed a set of experimental microcosms to address the relative rates of adaptive cladogenesis and anagenesis among the descendants of a Bacillus subtilis clone, in the absence of competing species. Analysis of the evolutionary trajectories of genetic markers indicated that in at least 7 of 10 replicate microcosm communities, the original population founded one or more new, ecologically distinct populations (ecotypes) before a single anagenetic event occurred within the original population. We were able to support this inference by identifying putative ecotypes formed in these communities through differences in genetic marker association, colony morphology and microhabitat association; we then confirmed the ecological distinctness of these putative ecotypes in competition experiments. Adaptive mutations leading to new ecotypes appeared to be about as common as those improving fitness within an existing ecotype. These results suggest near parity of anagenesis and cladogenesis rates in natural populations that are depauperate of bacterial diversity.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...

Human evolution is actually speeding up too.

From National Geographic News:
Human Evolution Speeding Up, Study Says

December 11, 2007

Explosive population growth is driving human evolution to speed up around the world, according to a new study.

The pace of change accelerated about 40,000 years ago and then picked up even more with the advent of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, the study says.

news.nationalgeographic.com...

And this from Scientific American:

Culture Speeds Up Human Evolution

Analysis of common patterns of genetic variation reveals that humans have been evolving faster in recent history

By looking for wide swaths of genetic material that vary little from individual to individual within these sections of great variation, the researchers identified regions that both originated recently and conferred some kind of advantage (because they became common rapidly). For example, the gene known as LCT gave adults the ability to digest milk and G6PD offered some protection against the malaria caused by Plasmodium falciparum parasite.

"Ten thousand years ago, no one on planet Earth had blue eyes," Hawks notes, because that gene—OCA2—had not yet developed. "We are different from people who lived only 400 generations ago in ways that are very obvious; that you can see with your eyes."

www.scientificamerican.com...

a reply to: Phantom423

Interesting.

originally posted by: nonjudgementalist
a reply to: Phantom423

If this is the scope of human understanding of evolution, we are going to devolve very quickly as a species.

Interesting.

Can a species devolve?

Or is the "evolution" simply a learned behavior that can be unlearned?

a reply to: beezzer

Judging by the crap on TV, I'd say it's possible. Most of it borders on the stuff on Idiocracy.

a reply to: Skid Mark

Is learned behavior . . . . "evolution"?

You can teach an animal a trick, but because it has learned or even has the capacity to learn, is doesn't necessarily mean that it has evolved.

Perhaps humans have not evolved in the last 200,000 years, but have retained the capability to "learn new tricks" instead.

originally posted by: beezzer

originally posted by: nonjudgementalist
a reply to: Phantom423

If this is the scope of human understanding of evolution, we are going to devolve very quickly as a species.

Interesting.

Can a species devolve?

Or is the "evolution" simply a learned behavior that can be unlearned?

I changed my mind after thoroughly reading the post I hit reply to...
Some great points were made.
But to explain what led me to make that point... Basically if mainstream science keeps bombarding us with the message that only the passing on of good genes is what drives evolution (an abstract concept individuals seem to have no control over ,except in the bedroom) then I think we are sure to end up loosing that edge that made us human in the first place... But perhaps not. Lol.

originally posted by: Skid Mark
a reply to: beezzer

Judging by the crap on TV, I'd say it's possible. Most of it borders on the stuff on Idiocracy.

Bingo.