Evolution

I have felt with micro evolution and I have tackled how an eye could have developed and I have talked about Darwin and I have replied to Evolution Skeptics, but I do not think I have explained what it means.  I have been perusing what Right-wing American Christians believe, right wing is a good description because when they start talking about anything they start flying in circles.  

The most common misconception is that humans evolved from Apes.  And this is not true.  Some also believe that humans are a more evolved species, which is also not true.  Some people also believe that there was an intelligent design in evolution, that if we were to start one hundred Earths we would get a hundred identical Earths, specieswise.  Also very untrue.  Please if you have a question, I will add to this posting or create a separate blog entry to answer your question.

1. Humans evolved from apes.  Wrong.  Humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor that had most of all the traits that we all share.  The accepted time scale we are talking about is about eight or so million years ago. The most human like ape is the Chimpanzee and it's cousin the Bonobo, one might say that we three species are kissing cousins, evolutionarily.  About three million years ago, approximately, there was an ape that resembled neither and all of the three species, it was short and it was hairy (probably).  The population spread over different parts of Africa, then known as a really big place filled with many ecological niches but no actual name.  In these different places some of these Chimpmans or Hupanzees flourished or died out.  Some of them definitely survived though.  The species discovered quite by accident that light shaded furred Chimpmans living in jungles made tasty snacks for proto leopards and they did not reproduce.  Chimpman women thought smaller Chimpman Men were cuter and matted with them over the bigger and uglier ones and the species began to evolve.  At the same time the Hupanzees had different evolutionary pressures and Hupanzee Women liked other types of men, or maybe the Big Hupanzee Male forced Hupanzee females, it does not matter because they evolved differently that the others.  There were also other Hupanzees and Chimpmans that went off and got fossilized and did not leave anything genetically for the future.

The Chimpmans became a separate species called Proto Chimps, and the Hupanzees became a separate species called Australopithecus (they got the cool name because they are our ancestor species and therefore more important to us).  Proto Chimps and Australopithecus could still mate and have children, because they were still very similar and looked almost identical and shared many similar genes, just like a Beagle and a Great Dane can have puppies if they used a stepladder.  

The Australopithecus went through evolutionary pressures and a couple of different versions before resulting in a species that was different enough from where it started that it might be called a different species, say Homo Habilis.  The Proto chimp went through its own selection processes and resulted in its own distinct species that was different enough that we could call it a different species too, say Chimpobo or Bonpanzee.  Since humans are not as interested in Chimp ancestors if we have found this common ancestor, it is not known in the mainstream community, or we have not been looking for it, else-wise it is in some drawer in a university waiting to be classified.  Human archeology is sexy so we know more about it.  We know that Homo Erectus succeeded Habilis and that Homo Erectus journeyed out of Africa in to Asia in the least.  And our ancestors probably thought some proto Chimps were not enough to have sex with but nothing could come out of it.

The Chimpobos lived separately from the Bonpanzees and developed differently occasionally met at social mixers, but the one thought the others were prudes and went back to the Bonpanzee orgies and the Chimpobos were put off by the sexual handshake and just wanted to be friends first, so they went off on their own.  The Homo Erectus was succeeded by Homo Sapiens, actually a few of them, HS modern, HS neanderthal, HS hobbit (or whatever they will call it) and HS eludes-me-right-now.  And we know that they mated, the Africans of today are the pure blooded ones, the others share 10% Neanderthal DNA Filipinos have another bit of common DNA, and who knows if the Hobbit DNA entered some culture, we have yet to get DNA to get a comparison.

Just from three or so million years of sex selection, evolutionary pressures and world wide dispersal we get three distinct species, chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans.  But altogether, we had a common ancestor and ten to twenty intermediary species or stages.  Evolution, it is a little messy.

2. Humans are a more evolved species.  From the above example, you could not conclude that.  All three species have three million or so years of evolutionary differences, we would be equally evolved.  On the other hand, since humans have a longer maturity rate, one might say that we are less evolved than a species that has a shorter maturity rate.  If humans produced new generations every 15-20 years and chimps and bonobos every 3-5 years, or however long it take for them to mature, they would be evolving that much faster than we are and would be more evolved.  If you want to look at it socially, bonobos might beat us out with their 'make love not war' social policies.  Either way, evolutionarily humans are not more evolved.  We are more technical.

3.  Intelligent design.  Even in that short example, three million years is very short when you consider life on this planet may be more than three billion years old, there were so many twists and turns that would not guarantee a Homo Sapiens modern result.  We could have been too curious and wanted to study the mating habits of the Protolion before inventing guns, jeeps and binoculars.and wound up as protolion shit.  Or we could go back even further and fur might never have accidentally evolved and the Proto Mammal froze to death in fall out of the Dinosaur extinction and a subspecies of Raven might be doing all the archeology.  There is too mush chance involved in the history of life on Earth for it to evolve the same way every time, unless there is a god, sorry God, controlling everything.  And then I would ask why all the false starts?  Homo Erectus had at least four successor species, of which we are only one, what would be the purpose of all of those, not to mention all the ones we have not found yet, if we would always evolve?

Any questions?  Post a comment below.