Human intelligence seems to leap and inventivness explodes.

The last great leap forward happened about 40-50 thousands years ago. It started with a small change in the skull shape and then there was an explosion of inventiveness in hunting tools and art and such and then things panned out finishing with towns and cities and horse drawn coaches.

Taking into account that upto 500 years ago the technology and how people lived their lives hadn't changed really for thousand of years.

Then about 500 years ago dentists noticed what at first seemed to be a mild deformity in a few children where the lower jaw was getting smaller and the forehead higher. Then about 300 hundred years ago those mild deformities were so common, 80% European kids and 70% American that it was classed as a mutation so the skull is on the move again. There were no figures given for Asia or Oceana or the Middle east.

It's seems more than coincidence that the industrial revolution kicked off in the 1700's, a couple of hunded years after the mutation was first noticed, If the mutation is the start of a great leap it explains why in such a short time we've gone from a way of life that was thousands of years old to laptops and ipads in a few short hundred years. The explosion of inventiveness again matching the movement of the skull shape.

Oh and the IQ's are getting higher as well.

Another great leap forward has just started and what we've seen in the last few hundred years this is the start. How cool will things be when it pans out in the next thousand years or so then just not alot change until the next great leap forward in about 40 thousand years from now. Who knows we might get stargates.

Seriously though, younger scientists are looking into and believing that this is how it happens. It's the older ones with 100's of books on the shelf that would need removing that are against the concept.

This was shown on BBC documentary but I can't find it on the net so perhaps someone else can.

Though the process of evolution as is understood is still pretty much the same.

Well this is disappointing...You turn me on to an idea I've never heard of before, and then tell me to go find the source!! I joined ATS for one stop shopping. (sigh)

Originally posted by type0civ
Well this is disappointing...You turn me on to an idea I've never heard of before, and then tell me to go find the source!! I joined ATS for one stop shopping. (sigh)

Sorry about that. I've looked but I can't remember that name of the french scientist who's studying it. She's getting support though and it makes sense. Either way it's a good debate.

Seriously you couldn't find a source? It took 2 minutes to google and find one.

www.bioedonline.org...

A mutation 2.4 million years ago

A mutation 2.4 million years ago could have left us unable to produce one of the main proteins in primate jaw muscles, the team reports in this week's Nature1. Lacking the constraints of a bulky chewing apparatus, the human skull may have been free to grow, the researchers say.

Interesting... I wonder how intelligent crocodiles and the likes would become, if their jaw's muscles were making less pressure on their cranium?
Surely a similar effect would occur?

And yes, what of us?

Originally posted by mnmcandiez
Seriously you couldn't find a source? It took 2 minutes to google and find one.

www.bioedonline.org...

A mutation 2.4 million years ago

A mutation 2.4 million years ago could have left us unable to produce one of the main proteins in primate jaw muscles, the team reports in this week's Nature1. Lacking the constraints of a bulky chewing apparatus, the human skull may have been free to grow, the researchers say.

Seriously. The documentary I'm refering was talking about neanderthal turning into us and what was a great leap. You haven't found it which is why it took you 2 minutes. Seriously.

reply to post by steveknows


Neanderthals didn't turn into us. They co-existed with us and non-africans possibly bread with them.

Put a source to your OP or this thread is pointless because no one knows what you're talking about. Seriously.

reply to post by mnmcandiez

Stop being obnoxious. He’s talking about a possible mutation five hundred years ago, not two and a half million.

OP, here are a couple of links to popular articles about recent human evolution. I think you’ll find a lot in there to support what you are saying.

They Don't Make Homo Sapiens Like They Used To at Discover

Human Genome Shows Proof of Recent Evolution, Survey Finds at National Geographic

Adventures in Very Recent Evolution at the New York Times

I imagine that human evolution has been moving at runaway pace ever since the invention of language and technology. After all, the environment has been changing rapidly, and when environments do that they tend to weed out a lot of formerly adaptive traits that have now become deleterious to survival. They also provide opportunities for new traits to evolve.

Culture and civilization are largely the result of status competition among human males. Status competition is, essentially, competition for mating rights. Males compete, females choose the winners. Nowadays, thanks to the work of people like Fisher and Zahavi, biologists who encounter a trait that seems to have developed very quickly or to a degree that goes beyond simple utility are often inclined to suspect that it has formed through ‘runaway’ sexual selection, which works in a kind of positive-feedback loop to create incremental changes in a phenotype very rapidly. If human physical traits are evolving away from the caveman model, that evolution is likely to be driven by human sexual preferences.

You could say that any recent evolutionary changes in humans, then, were probably driven largely by What Women Want. First, because sexual selection is changing the human genome; second, since culture, which is our environment, is also being shaped by the selective influence of women upon the kind of things men are driven to possess and achieve.

It may have been a man’s world once, but the women really are taking over.

From the Discover article linked to earlier:

HIV resistance has appeared due to a genetic mutation now found in 10 percent of Europeans.

How’s that for recent evolution?

By the way, it is quite possible that intelligence, or at least some aspects of it, are also sexually selected. The gift of the gab being one celebrated example (in folklore, at least – remember Cyrano?)

Originally posted by mnmcandiez
reply to post by steveknows

 

Neanderthals didn't turn into us. They co-existed with us and non-africans possibly bread with them.

Put a source to your OP or this thread is pointless because no one knows what you're talking about. Seriously.

edit on 10/23/2011 by mnmcandiez because: (no reason given)

edit on 10/23/2011 by mnmcandiez because: (no reason given)

edit on 10/23/2011 by mnmcandiez because: (no reason given)

The that's the whole point. It's questioning' that concept. Stop being a tool for the sake of being a tool. Your first post was derogative and it seems that's what you're about.

Modern science says we have neanderthal DNA in us and anthropologists can spot neanderthal features in some homo sapien sapien just by walking down the street. It's not possible that it's because they mutated into us?

How can you not know what I'm talking about? Seriously.

Originally posted by steveknows

A mutation 2.4 million years ago could have left us unable to produce one of the main proteins in primate jaw muscles, the team reports in this week's Nature1. Lacking the constraints of a bulky chewing apparatus, the human skull may have been free to grow, the researchers say.

Plus, without our Jaw muscles, we were weak fighters. It became about using tools to ward off attacks, thinking of ways to hunt, and knowing how to stay out of trouble.

Hence, we became the Brain that was vs. Brawn. Causing all mutations that increased intelligence to be highly favorable. That's what set us off in a path of advanced mental abilities instead of advanced physical bodies. That bad mutation of the jaw muscle was a blessing in disguise.

~
At least, that's as far as my understanding of the case goes. I'm not excessively versed in the topic.

~
P.S.
Was it The Human Ape that you saw? It was a good one showing how Apes were much more like us than most people thought, and then at the end went into what caused us to separate.

Originally posted by Astyanax
reply to post by mnmcandiez

 

Stop being obnoxious. He’s talking about a possible mutation five hundred years ago, not two and a half million.

OP, here are a couple of links to popular articles about recent human evolution. I think you’ll find a lot in there to support what you are saying.

They Don't Make Homo Sapiens Like They Used To at Discover

Human Genome Shows Proof of Recent Evolution, Survey Finds at National Geographic

Adventures in Very Recent Evolution at the New York Times

I imagine that human evolution has been moving at runaway pace ever since the invention of language and technology. After all, the environment has been changing rapidly, and when environments do that they tend to weed out a lot of formerly adaptive traits that have now become deleterious to survival. They also provide opportunities for new traits to evolve.

Culture and civilization are largely the result of status competition among human males. Status competition is, essentially, competition for mating rights. Males compete, females choose the winners. Nowadays, thanks to the work of people like Fisher and Zahavi, biologists who encounter a trait that seems to have developed very quickly or to a degree that goes beyond simple utility are often inclined to suspect that it has formed through ‘runaway’ sexual selection, which works in a kind of positive-feedback loop to create incremental changes in a phenotype very rapidly. If human physical traits are evolving away from the caveman model, that evolution is likely to be driven by human sexual preferences.

You could say that any recent evolutionary changes in humans, then, were probably driven largely by What Women Want. First, because sexual selection is changing the human genome; second, since culture, which is our environment, is also being shaped by the selective influence of women upon the kind of things men are driven to possess and achieve.

It may have been a man’s world once, but the women really are taking over.

edit on 23/10/11 by Astyanax because: of not wanting to seem illiterate.

Thanks very much for those links. Infact in the documentary " walking with caveman" they talk about walking upright having two main benefits. 1 was the allocation of more energy for brain use and the other was more energy for reproduction. They key being that the trick to being dominent as a species is that we saved so much energy just by becoming homosapien that we could allocate more to thinking and sex.

Also that's very interesting about the aids thing and it makes sense. It reminds me of something I was reading about mad cow disease and how most of the human population aren't susceptible to it and biologist believe it's because somewhere in human history for some reason we had to feed on each other and a disease broke out which was similar to mad cow and those who survived developed an enzime in the brain which is still with most of the human population today which would stop mad cow disease from having an affect on most of us. Of course those of us who don't have the enzime would be in alot of trouble.

Originally posted by xxsomexpersonxx

Originally posted by steveknows

A mutation 2.4 million years ago could have left us unable to produce one of the main proteins in primate jaw muscles, the team reports in this week's Nature1. Lacking the constraints of a bulky chewing apparatus, the human skull may have been free to grow, the researchers say.

Plus, without our Jaw muscles, we were weak fighters. It became about using tools to ward off attacks, thinking of ways to hunt, and knowing how to stay out of trouble.

Hence, we became the Brain that was vs. Brawn. Causing all mutations that increased intelligence to be highly favorable. That's what set us off in a path of advanced mental abilities instead of advanced physical bodies. That bad mutation of the jaw muscle was a blessing in disguise.

~
At least, that's as far as my understanding of the case goes. I'm not excessively versed in the topic.

~
P.S.
Was it The Human Ape that you saw? It was a good one showing how Apes were much more like us than most people thought, and then at the end went into what caused us to separate.


It might have been i can't for the life of me remember the name. It was before I found ATS or I would have been writing down names and dates. The real star of it was a young French anthropologist and she was questioning the accepted theory in ragards to neanderthal and us and she was getting support from the international dentists and some other areas of science. She's had to work with copies of neanderthal skulls because the "old" school anthropologist won't give her real skulls to work with and as was pointed out by one of the old school who is on her side is that if she's right then they're wrong and they've got books on the shelf in uni's and library. They did a computer model and it shows how the mutation takes place and how technology and abstract thought matches the mutation and the spotting of the movement again right before the industrial revolution just backed it up because there's evidence of the mutation movement right before the leap in technology from the Neanderthal tools to our tools in a very short period. They were saying that there would have been only a few neanderthal children born looking a little bit odd but not alot but then most would have been born looking a bit odd and then eventually we replaced neanderthal and were born of them not competed against them and with the new look of human came the new tools and abstract art and thought. And if she's right it would mean that in perhaps a thousand years or perhaps less from now that we will be looking different yet again as though it started to move again about 500 years ago it would continue to move for about another 500 and then settle It appears to happen fast and though we're the same people as those of 500 years ago we're smarter and not because off knowledge gained but we've gained the knowledge because the mutation made us smarter. That's if she's correct and I for one think she is.

reply to post by steveknows

You’re welcome. And here’s another thought to chew on – one that is, as far as I know, original.

Want an example of an instrument of cultural selection acting on the human genotype? Try the motor car.

Obviously, it is a potent instrument of social and cultural change. We design and build our cities and towns as much for cars as we do for people nowadays, and this has ramifying effects on how we live. And of course, the pattern of our social interactions has changed as hugely as our patterns of settlement due to the ease of personal mobility the automobile confers. I’m sure any of these changes could have a selective effect, causing some people to survive and reproduce in preferential numbers. But I’m talking about something else, here, something a bit redder in tooth and claw: I’m talking about the lethal potential of the automobile.

Here is an manmade device, not a weapon but a simple tool, that has taken millions of human beings out of the gene pool, and caused many more millions – the descendants of these traffic fatalities – never to be born. Now, consider how the victims of the automobile met their ends. They were run over, or ended up in car crashes. Some of them were drivers. How many of these accidents were the result of failures of alertness, or information processing of some specialized type, or an inability to follow rules, or a propensity to take shortcuts? Or a tendency to react aggressively to perceived invasions of one’s personal space? Could people with maladaptive driving styles get weeded out of the gene pool, leaving the world to better drivers and their descendants? Well, why not?

One might argue that this implies there is ‘a gene for’ driving, and that such a thing is ridiculous, since there was no Highway Code on the primeval savannah. I think that’s a specious argument, and that there most certainly can be a gene for driving. Not one, rather, but a whole host of them, generally affecting response to stimuli, information processing speed and quality, response time, etc. in varying degree from person to person. Some combination of traits coded for by these genes makes a bad driver or a careless pedestrian (and even a foolish passenger, perhaps), while other combinations code for better drivers, more vigilant pedestrianism, and so on. Of course, the genes for these traits didn’t evolve in response to the appearance of the motor car; they were there already, well adapted to other, different useful functions. A gene for a trait that helps a fighter in single combat respond to perceived threats faster and more aggressively than his opponent might be highly advantageous in a duel over a woman, yet be absolutely lethal to its possessor behind the wheel of a car.

Start thinking this way, and you’ll find a host of other candidates for the role of ‘instrument of cultural selection’ clamouring to suggest themselves. Alcohol? Tobacco? Firearms?

Originally posted by Astyanax
reply to post by steveknows

 

You’re welcome. And here’s another thought to chew on – one that is, as far as I know, original.

Want an example of an instrument of cultural selection acting on the human genotype? Try the motor car.

Obviously, it is a potent instrument of social and cultural change. We design and build our cities and towns as much for cars as we do for people nowadays, and this has ramifying effects on how we live. And of course, the pattern of our social interactions has changed as hugely as our patterns of settlement due to the ease of personal mobility the automobile confers. I’m sure any of these changes could have a selective effect, causing some people to survive and reproduce in preferential numbers. But I’m talking about something else, here, something a bit redder in tooth and claw: I’m talking about the lethal potential of the automobile.

Here is an manmade device, not a weapon but a simple tool, that has taken millions of human beings out of the gene pool, and caused many more millions – the descendants of these traffic fatalities – never to be born. Now, consider how the victims of the automobile met their ends. They were run over, or ended up in car crashes. Some of them were drivers. How many of these accidents were the result of failures of alertness, or information processing of some specialized type, or an inability to follow rules, or a propensity to take shortcuts? Or a tendency to react aggressively to perceived invasions of one’s personal space? Could people with maladaptive driving styles get weeded out of the gene pool, leaving the world to better drivers and their descendants? Well, why not?

One might argue that this implies there is ‘a gene for’ driving, and that such a thing is ridiculous, since there was no Highway Code on the primeval savannah. I think that’s a specious argument, and that there most certainly can be a gene for driving. Not one, rather, but a whole host of them, generally affecting response to stimuli, information processing speed and quality, response time, etc. in varying degree from person to person. Some combination of traits coded for by these genes makes a bad driver or a careless pedestrian (and even a foolish passenger, perhaps), while other combinations code for better drivers, more vigilant pedestrianism, and so on. Of course, the genes for these traits didn’t evolve in response to the appearance of the motor car; they were there already, well adapted to other, different useful functions. A gene for a trait that helps a fighter in single combat respond to perceived threats faster and more aggressively than his opponent might be highly advantageous in a duel over a woman, yet be absolutely lethal to its possessor behind the wheel of a car.

Start thinking this way, and you’ll find a host of other candidates for the role of ‘instrument of cultural selection’ clamouring to suggest themselves. Alcohol? Tobacco? Firearms?

That's a very intersting point and it has merrit. A gene for driving? I dont' think that is a gene for driving so much but might fall under the gene or genes for machanical apptitude and some people have that but others don't and there really is some people who just shouldn't be on the road. I think it's possible that the people who don't have the apptitude would remove themselves from the gene pool given time but there's two points worth thinking about. 1. They might breed before they get to drive. 2. They also help remove the people with the mechanical apptitude which is good for driving from the gene pool.


I'd say that what makes us the most potent predator on the planet being the hand eye co ordination, abstract thought and observation of our environment second to none is what gives us the skill to drive. I don't doubt that way back when, there were people who were hopeless in trapping a mamoth to kill or might not have been master fire builders. Just because hunter gathering was what they did at the time it wouldn't mean that everyone on the planet was a master hunter. And as today cars are the main mode of transport but it doesn't mean everyone was born for it. But no I don't think it's a driving gene I think that it's a mechanical apptitude gene that allows us to drive and as you say we already had it prior to cars.

I also don't doubt that on some level our inventions have changed our biology in some way. It would be interesting if we could find out if a 10 year old today could manipulate things with their fingers faster than a 10 year old of 200 years ago considoring a 10 year old today uses keyboards and game consoles and if so is it a change in biology itself.

Saying all that I don't think we're the only ones who already had an ability to adapt to modern life. A dog is just at home sitting on the back of a ute as on a cave floor.

reply to post by mnmcandiez


does this jaw mutation mean we are physically less adapted to eating meat now than before the mutation?

Originally posted by ThePeopleParty
reply to post by mnmcandiez

 

does this jaw mutation mean we are physically less adapted to eating meat now than before the mutation?

Weaker chewing power, means it's harder to eat meat. But, the meat we eat modern days is cooked and tenderized. It's not like we care that it'd be harder to take bites out of fresh corpses, since we don't do it anyways.

However, preparing our food for thousands of years has been worse for hindering our ability to eat meat. Our systems no longer are strong enough to handle eating it raw like our primate cousins do. That's applicable to many other things as well(like our immune system).

So, yes, we are far less adapted to eating meat, and even less adapted to handle the bacteria and such that we get with it.

Originally posted by ThePeopleParty
reply to post by mnmcandiez

 

does this jaw mutation mean we are physically less adapted to eating meat now than before the mutation?

I don't think it's so much the jaw bone. According to this documentary it's the sphenoid bone which is on the move and raises the forehead but at the same time pulls the jaw back. As to whether it changes our diets I don't know however our far off ancesters used to dig up and chew on large roots which now we just wouldn't have the strength or jaw structure to be able to do it. In fact is was the lightening of the jaw bone and reshaping of the muscles once used for shewing thick roots that has allowed us to talk. And if this woman is right then that would have been a result of the movement of this bone structure in the skull.

The sphenoid bone is located at the base of the skull and behind the eye socket. This bone is a wedge-like bone located in front of the temporal bone and is one of several bones that form the eye socket (orbit). The sphenoid bone is divided into 6 portions, the body of the bone, two greater wings, two lesser wings, and the pterygoid proccesses. Interestingly, the sphenoid bone’s shape can be compared to the shape of a butterfly or bat.

"from learn bones"

I don't have any statistics or anything, but off the top of my head I would have to disagree with you on the point that IQ's are rising. In my mind they are falling, due to the decline of the educational system, as well as the laziness bred by technology.

I suppose it is possible that they are rising, as the amount of knowledge grows exponentially with time. Also, the school system wasn't really perfected, if you could even call it that, until when? Maybe around 20th century? I don't know for sure though.

Originally posted by JiggyPotamus
I don't have any statistics or anything, but off the top of my head I would have to disagree with you on the point that IQ's are rising. In my mind they are falling, due to the decline of the educational system, as well as the laziness bred by technology.

I suppose it is possible that they are rising, as the amount of knowledge grows exponentially with time. Also, the school system wasn't really perfected, if you could even call it that, until when? Maybe around 20th century? I don't know for sure though.

Hey don't worry about stats as until I can find this documentary I'm talking about I can't really push anything myself but it's worth a debate I'm sure.

There is though plenty of data on the rise of IQ's. And you're right about the school systems but what that means to me is that kids are getting smarter inspite of the system. Here's a link that might interest you.

articles.latimes.com...