Comments on: Scientists Cite Fastest Case of Human Evolution

By: Minister

Minister — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 19:23:39 +0000

Evolution can be very fast. I wonder if being at higher altitudes exposed them to more DNA altering radiation?

By: sonofsam

sonofsam — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 11:39:52 +0000

@Scott – Genetically, im afraid we are just as close to the Romans as we have always been… and def. much closer than they are with neanderthals… thats not to say we are that different though. There is a major debate surrounding the speciation of neanderthals from humans, which i cant really fit here…

but as berber anna points out… evolution doesn’t work overnight… its loads of small adaptive changes, mutations that might give an individual a slight edge over others – that drives changes in future generations. we are constantly evolving, we never stopped! it is even thought that the reason for the neanderthal extinction is that they weren’t able to adapt THAT quickly to a faster changing environment and therefore could not sustain a reproductively viable population

By: Berber Anna

Berber Anna — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 11:20:30 +0000

Scott: I find that highly unlikely, as neanderthals were a seperate species and there was relatively little interbreeding between them and H. sapiens. Also, I don’t recall any Greek or Roman statues with eyebrow ridges.

By: Scott

Scott — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 05:05:50 +0000

apparently evolution is speeding up and a study showed that humans 2000 years ago were more similar to neanderthals than to us. Also orangutans have recently been seen hunting and fishing with sticks!

By: Berber Anna

Berber Anna — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 20:34:06 +0000

iHD: Well, maybe those people should look up what evolution is, then, because they are apparently associating it with events that don’t happen outside of comic books. Monkeys never turned into humans — some of an ape-like creature’s offspring slowly adapted to a different environment and eventually, over the course of millennia, became our species. Fish never grew limbs, but some fish developed pectoral fins that they could walk with, and over many generations the fish became amphibian and the fins became limb-like. That’s how evolution works — by a lot of little steps, not by magical giant leaps.

By: iHeartDerren

iHeartDerren — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 18:09:09 +0000

Yeah, granted it is a change from the regular human being, but it isn’t much of a change really. Usually people accosiate the word ‘evolution’ with something like monkeys turning into humans or a fish growing another limb, but not just a few changes in some genes…

By: roz

roz — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 14:50:05 +0000

well, it makes sense. but…we are devo.

By: Rob

Rob — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 13:28:31 +0000

If we combine this info with the recently discovered ‘fact’ that life experiences seem to affect the genes in sperm and therefore offspring, we have a model of evolution that is facilitated not just by random mutations but by active adaptation to an environment.
Survival of the fittest + children with rapid adaptations = evolution and survival of the population.
Wow, wow, wow.

By: Raoul

Raoul — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 10:08:45 +0000

Hm, I wonder whether those tibetan people would start to suffer from sea altitude sickness if they need to live there for a while?
And what if you would raise a non tibetan child up there .. wouldn’t it adapt just as easy even though it would not have these altered genes. Can genes alter during life itself so not only over generations. I myself would not find that so weird.
Are the red blood cells enlarged of the Tibetans instead of higher in number? I myself we can trigger a simular state in our body, although we mostly wont trigger that from full conscious. Tibetan’s/chinese already have a different body systems than us e.g., we seem to be different attached to our bases, more direct. As if we should not be on top of all our body systems to cope with the climate. Can be seen in eyes.