The Trouble with Human Evolution: Part Two

When it comes to the standard model of how modern humans evolved from our primate ancestors, be prepared to ask the tough questions and see if they get answered to your satisfaction. Questions like can you really go from primates to what makes you, the reader, you, via natural selection in 6 to 7 million years. So, if you think the standard model is unlikely, and you reject any supernatural explanation that leaves but two alternatives: artificial selection or we’re simulated beings.

Modern humans have evolved over the past six to seven million years a number of traits that make us, Homo sapiens, a very unique species indeed. Here are some more of them.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

A VOCAL LANGUAGE

* Is an anomaly in that only humans vocalise not only everyday, routine, survival ‘language’ (all manner of animals do that) but abstract concepts (which no other animals do).

* A vocal or spoken language required to communicate abstract ideas, as apart from just making sounds, requires an evolutionary rearrangement of the relevant internal organs required; lips, teeth, tongue, hard and soft palate, larynx, etc.

C - Cats meow, lions roar, but their meow (or the lion’s roar) has nothing to do with communicating abstract concepts like basic mathematics.

TOOL USE

* Is an anomaly in that while a few other animals can make and use tools, that relative degree of sophistication relative to what humans have achieved is akin to comparing the survival skills of a day-old infant with that of an adult.

* Tool use requires an evolutionary rearrangement of the finger-hand-wrist-arm-shoulder configuration, as well as that extra-large brain thingy to figure out that a tool is required, what resources are required to make that tool, and how to manufacture the necessary implement from those resources. A lot of just-so conditions have to be met to accommodate even the most basic of tool technologies. 

* Tool use could ultimately prove our undoing as tool use, or technology, is a double-edged sword. A gun can put food on your table; it can also exterminate humans.

C - Cats are not adapted at using tools. If they could use a can opener and a spoon they could get their own meals! That would suit me just fine, but alas.

BREEDS or ETHNIC/RACIAL DISTINCTIONS

* Are anomalous in that when taking into consideration the rest of the animal and plant kingdom, breeds (groupings that look different but can still breed and produce non-sterile offspring) tend to be associated with artificial, not natural selection. Are human breeds therefore a product of artificial selection, and if so, by whom? 

* Human breeds cannot be adequately explained in the just 70,000 or some odd years since that one unique racial type of Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa and spread throughout the globe diverging into numerous racial types. Even if there were several migrations out of Africa, a wave of migrations, all those migrant waves were of one race or breed. The 70,000 year time period is very short, the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms, to achieve this uniqueness of going from a local African uni-race to a multiracial global society. Further, the evolutionary (survival of the fittest) advantage or reason(s) for ethnic distinctions are lacking any rational natural explanation, apart from in some selected races, skin colour.

C - Your standard pussycat comes in various breeds. That’s artificial selection at work, albeit the whodunit in this case is well known.

UNIQUE FACIAL FEATURES

* Are a relatively human anomaly. Apart from identical twins, no two humans from the neck up look the same, and thus this is how we tell human identities, once seen, apart. We tend to tell animals of the same species or breed (if applicable) apart by size, colour, skin/fur patterns, abnormalities, or else we don’t distinguish who’s who at all. To me, all magpie faces look the same. The question is, why humans have unique facial features and not the rest of the animal kingdom?

C - If you took 100 pure short-hair black cats, same size, same sex, same eye colour, could you tell them apart by looking at just their face? I doubt if I could.

THE WHITES-OF-YOUR-EYES

* Are anomalous in that apparently no other animal show them, and based on all the animals and birds I see around my local environment, that certainly seems to be the case.  So why do we show the whites-of-our-eyes? There would appear to be no rhyme or reason for this natural human evolutionary (if it was a natural selection) trait. The whites-of-our-eyes: how very, very odd.

C - Cats have whites-of-their-eyes, only you have to peel back the skin surrounding their eyeballs to see the whites-of-their-eyes. Looking at a standard cat, you’ll fail to see the whites-of-their-eyes.

EARLOBES

* Are anomalous in that apparently no other mammal (and certainly not any fish, amphibian, reptile or bird) have them. So why do we have them?

* Earlobes? WTF you ask? Well we all know that our earlobes serve a cultural purpose or function as a prime site as an accessory to fashion – pierced ears and earrings. However, earlobes serve no actual biological function. You could exist, survive and thrive without them. Because we alone have earlobes, and because they serve no biological purpose, they are anomalous.

* On the other hand, earlobes apparently don’t do us any harm. But, biological evolution tends to select for the positive benefit, not the neutral. Why would Mother Nature evolve them if they serve no biological purpose? WTF indeed!

C - Cats have ears; cats do not have earlobes.

RISK TAKING

* Is anomalous in that if done just for the sake of doing it, serves no positive evolutionary purpose or outcome while accenting a negative one, giving oneself a ‘Darwin Award’ for eliminating yourself from further contributions to the evolution of the human species. 

* No animal will engage in any hazardous activity that doesn’t have some connection towards its own, its immediate family brood, its community or its species survival. An animal doesn’t take risks just for the sake of taking risks and just for the thrill of it all. Humans however will often engage in extreme risky activities, without any benefit to anyone, including themselves, except to perhaps remove themselves from the gene pool. Risky behaviour might include right up to and including suicide which most decidedly removes you from the gene pool. Suicide is not a trait that tends to be shared by our animal relations, and apparent exceptions, like whales stranding themselves in shallow water, have a physiological explanation. 

C - Cats are not known to take risks above and beyond the call of their feline duty, even if they do occasionally get stuck up a tree!

PRIVACY AND EMBARRASSMENT

* Is anomalous in that no animal species, outside of the human species, seems to be the slightest bit concerned with privacy (not to be confused with territoriality or personal space, rather just privacy from being observed under certain conditions or in certain situations usually of a sexual or bodily function nature). Nor do animals, unlike humans, suffer any form of embarrassment. That suggests that there is no evolutionary or survival aspect to the need for privacy or the suffering of being embarrassed. Somehow, in humans alone (but not yet in babies or infants), these concepts have been imprinted onto our collective psyche. Imprinted by whom? What is the ultimate origin and how far back does it go? Why is it so? Who knows! But the upshot is that this has to be a cultural quirk; it’s certainly not a biological one.

* There are apparently two real taboo places in human society where intruders are not welcome: the bedroom and the bathroom, or put another way, sex and bodily functions, where privacy is paramount and when violated, embarrassment ensues. The latter especially is puzzling in that bodily functions are universal. Every human has to go to the bathroom, all women have ‘that time of the month’, so why these should be embarrassments if witnessed by others is anomalous. That’s also highlighted in that sex and bodily functions are not biological events which animals find requires privacy or causes embarrassment to them if witnessed by others.

* Nudity per se doesn’t seem to be the root cause, as people seem to be way less shy of appearing nude in fairly standard social situations than when engaged in more personal bedroom/bathroom matters that require exposure.

* Embarrassment in humans can be caused by many other oops events, maybe comical, like wearing mismatched socks, maybe somewhat more serious like splitting your pants in public. But if an equivalent event happens to an animal, no such reaction comes to the fore. For example, if you stumble and fall down, piss your pants, or vomit in public, you’re embarrassed. If an animal does the equivalent, it just picks itself up and acts like nothing unusual transpired. Animals don’t blush.

C - Cats don’t care if you or another cat sees them mate or go to the litter box. They don’t suffer embarrassment and they don’t blush.

CATS

C - Its only fair to ask in regards to my feline comparison, does a cat have any anatomical or physiological or behavioural feature unique to them and only them? The surprising answer is yes. Cats purr, and the reasons why and how are still not well understood. Humans don’t purr. No other animal purrs. Their big cat relatives don’t purr, but then again lions and tigers, etc. roar, and your pet pussy cat doesn’t. So perhaps the two vocalizations are related from way back when they all had a common ancestor! But purr or roar, there appears to be no evolutionary drawbacks, just positive survival benefits like warning off rival lions (my roar is louder than your roar) or mother/kitten bonding in cats.

CONCLUSIONS

* There are four possible explanations for the various anomalies associated with the existence of the modern human species relative to our alleged ancestral stock which goes right back to the chimpanzees. In descending order of probability, IMHO, there’s the simulated universe scenario inhabited by us as virtual entities (created by ‘persons’ or things unknown and probably forever unknowable); there’s artificial selection (the ancient astronaut theory); there’s natural selection (the Darwinian biological evolution concept); and way, way last, by a wide, wide margin, there’s supernatural creation (the dust-and-rib theory and variations thereof).

* Why this ordering of probabilities? There are many paths to a simulated universe, from wetware to software, via extraterrestrials or maybe a future ‘human’ society, that it borders on the near inevitable. There’s but one pathway to the artificial selection scenario, though that too is just about inevitable. There are many issues to be had with natural selection as this essay demonstrates, though that’s the standard model. Lastly, the concept of an all-perfect supernatural deity who would screw up things so royally is laughable – as is the concept of a supernatural deity in the first place.

* The interesting bit is that a virtual reality simulation could easily be a simulation of an ‘ancient astronaut’ generated artificial selection, or Darwinian natural selection, or even a supernatural creator deity! Truth be known, only the simulated universe scenario makes any real sense, IMHO, because therein, “anything goes”, and when it comes to the problems with human evolution, one needs an “anything goes” explanation.

Whodunit: What Killed Off Our Ancestors? Part One

“Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?” was one of those top-notch mystery comedies from 1978. Who killed the ancestors of modern day humans isn’t quite so funny, but it’s still a top-notch mystery. I propose one rather unconventional answer, our creator ‘gods’, the extraterrestrials.

Modern humans (Homo sapiens) evolved from other primates, most probably from chimpanzee stock in Africa when DNA relationships are analysed. We have a 98% compatibility with chimpanzee DNA. However, there was a long chain of in-betweens twixt chimpanzees and modern humans, the two key transitions being a bipedal gait (Australopithecus) and tool use (Homo). The interesting things are that while all the in-betweens have gone extinct, the ancestral primate stock didn’t; the transition to modern humans was so fast that it reeks of artificial selection, not natural. Are the in-between extinctions and the extremely rapid transition to modern humans linked? 

Review: 4.5 billion to 5 million years ago.

Divide the roughly 4.5 billion year history of Planet Earth into say five million year segments. Now imagine yourself 4.5 billion years ago jumping from one segment to the next. Even given a five million year leap, would you notice much change per leap? No, you wouldn’t. You’d notice a little change, yes, but hardly anything drastic or major. That applies as you jump from segment to segment – a little change, a little more change, even a little more change as you get further and further removed from your starting point. The composition of the atmosphere slowly, ever so slowly changes; life begins and single celled critters emerge. After many, many segment leaps, these evolve simple multi-celled critters, etc. But change is so gradual that it’s hardly perceptible from one segment to the next. The exception would be when there’s been a mass extinction event, so if you jump from 70 million years ago to 65 million years ago, yes you’d notice that, oops, where are the dinosaurs? Then things settle back down again to very slow but very sure rate of change.

Now about 90 leaps of five million years each will bring you to roughly a time five million years ago. Observe carefully the landscape, atmospheric composition, and the various life forms. If you’re in Africa you just might notice the early stirrings of the hominoid branch that will ultimately lead to us. Now do that final leap. Jump that final segment. Is the resulting change major or minor? If you answered yet again ‘minor’, put on your dunce cap. That change is the most major of all the incremental five million year leaps. Now doesn’t that strike you as odd? It’s always been a relatively slight incline of change, now all of the sudden the slope skyrockets.

Review: 5 million to 500,000 years ago.

Now divide that final five million year segment into say ten parts of 500,000 years each. Perform that same incremental jump. Not all that much changes from one 500,000 year block to the next one to the next one. But that last leap from 500,000 years ago to the present – well, there’s that exponential slope again. There a huge change from that final 500,000 years ago to the present. At the start, there were no Homo sapiens. At the end, well just look around you – billions of Homo sapiens all around you.

Review: 500,000 to 50,000 years ago.

Divide that final 500,000 year block into ten segments of 50,000 years each. By the time you reach the last of those 50,000 year blocks, a lot of Homo species have come and gone, with only a couple left - Homo neanderthalensis and of course Homo sapiens, and in isolated Java, Homo floresiensis.

Review: 50,000 to 10,000 years ago.

Consider that final 50,000 year block. At the start, Homo sapiens exist, but there’s no civilization to speak of. But we do have the first of two relative sudden advances. 50,000 years ago, give or take, modern humans ‘invented’ culture. Cave art and rock paintings appear; also carved figurines; humans began to bury the dead along with grave goods.

Now divide that final 50,000 block into five parts of 10,000 years each. At the end, with only 10,000 years left to go, we now have only one hominoid species left, Homo sapiens. In just that final 10,000 year period, you’ll see the transition, in that relative short period of time, in diverse parts of the world; humans go from a nomadic hunter-gatherer existence to domestic settlements.

Review: 10,000 to 1000 years ago.

If you divide that final 10,000 year block into ten parts, then you go from civilization to a technological civilization.

Review: 1000 to 200 years ago.

Divide that final 1000 block into say five parts, and you go from a technological civilization to a high-tech civilization, and the progress is still undergoing an exponential expansion.

Okay, let’s return back to roughly 5 million or so years ago, perhaps a shade more.

Somewhere around 8 to 6 million years ago, our lineage split off from the chimpanzee lineage. Our lineage is composed of lots of links, about 20 species known so far, some direct (like your grandparents and parents); some just branches off the main and aren’t direct (like your cousins, aunts and uncles). 

Here are the starting links in that chain that we know about.

Sahelanthropus tchadensis came on the African scene about 7 to 6 million years ago. We’re not sure if this hominoid species was a parent or a cousin.

Orrorin tugenensis was slightly more recent, dating to roughly 5.8 million years ago. Again, parent or cousin isn’t clear.

Ardipithecus ramidus and Ardipithecus kadabba were known to strut their stuff 5.8 to 4.3 million years ago and are credited with being in a direct linear chain to ourselves.

Here are the next links in the chain starting with the advent of the bipedal gait.

AUSTRALOPITHECUS (hominoids with an undoubted bipedal gait) had their origins from roughly that 4 to 3 million years ago era, give or take.

*Australopithecus anamersis existed down Africa way some 4.2 to 3.8 million years ago, an apparent ancestor to Australopithecus afarensis.

*Australopithecus afarensis is well known thanks to Lucy (of “in the sky with diamonds” fame). Australopithecus afarensis were around from roughly 3.6 to 3 million years ago though it seems there’s a gap in the fossil evidence of some 200,000 years twixt Australopithecus afarensis and Australopithecus anamersis. When hominoid fossils are as few and far between as they are, such gaps aren’t surprising.

*Australopithecus bahrelghazali has been documented from about 3.5 million years before the present.

*Kenyanthropus (or Australopithecus) platyops (depending on who you talk to) was a contemporary of Australopithecus bahrelghazali and Australopithecus afarensis dated again to 3.5 million years ago.

*Australopithecus africanus: If Australopithecus afarensis faded out of the picture some 3 million years ago, they were replaced by this mob, who reigned from about 3 million to 2.5 million years ago.

*Australopithecus garhi comes upon the scene just as Australopithecus africanus fades away in turn at about 2.5 million years before today.

Our Paranthropus cousins branch off around that 2.5 million year mark. First up was Paranthropus aethiopicus at 2.5 million years ago. Now there is some dispute about names.

*Australopithecus boisei or Paranthropus boisei? Whether parent or cousin, they were around from about 2.3 to 1.4 million years ago, and thus evolved before, and went kaput after, Australopithecus robustus or Paranthropus robustus.

*Australopithecus robustus or Paranthropus robustus? What’s in a name anyway, The fact of the matter is that this African species is dated to 2 to 1.5 million years ago.

HOMO (tool makers) had their origin somewhere from 2.5 to 2 million years ago.

*Homo Rudolfensis (species akin to Homo habilis) inhabited Africa 2.5 to 1.9 million years ago.

*Homo habilis hit the scenes about 2.3 million years ago and lasted until roughly 1.6 million years ago.

*Homo ergaster: In one telling of the tale, Homo ergaster was post Homo habilis but pre Homo erectus and existed from about 2 million years ago to 1 million years ago. Other anthropologists assign the name Homo ergaster just to the African version of Homo erectus. That’s because a hominoid species was about to flee the coup!

*Homo erectus was that species that flew the African coup. It was the first such ancestor of ours to migrate out of Africa (though not all did of course). They ended up in western, eastern, and South-Eastern Asia. Fossil remains have been found in Java for example. Homo erectus survived and thrived more as an Asian species than an African one, surviving until roughly 200,000 years ago in Asia after their 2 million years ago origins in Africa, and as Homo ergaster, died out 800,000 years before their Asian equivalents.

*Homo floresiensis (Java only) was an isolated offshoot of Homo erectus who has the distinction of being our most recent ancestor to go extinct. Homo erectus did so 200,000 years ago, but that isolated community hung on until a very short 12,000 years ago. That’s nearly modern times!

*Homo heidelbergensis: Homo erectus also spawned another out-of-Africa species, Homo heidelbergensis who spread out over Europe from 700,000 to 300,000 years ago, presumably via migration from their ancestors in western Asia.  

*Homo antecessor is the Homo erectus species who colonized Europe, sometimes known as another European version of Homo heidelbergensis. Homo antecessor lived in Europe from about 1 million years ago to roughly 300,000 years ago.

*Homo rhodesiensis is the same as Homo heidelbergensis, only the African version. So, presumably Homo ergaster gave rise to Homo rhodesiensis just as the out-of-Africa version of Homo erectus gave rise to Homo heidelbergensis. Like Homo antecessor, Homo rhodesiensis hung around for only 700,000 years – 1 million years ago to 300,000 years past.

*Homo neanderthalensis, being a west Asian and European species is the obvious descendant of those other European hominoids, Homo antecessor and Homo heidelbergensis. Of all our extinct ancestors (600,000 to 35,000 years ago), Neanderthals are the most famous, but we still don’t the exact degree of interaction, even breeding (if possible) between them and the last and final species on the list – us.

*Homo sapiens (takes shape 400,000 to 200,000 years ago, but probably closer to 200,000 than 400,000, at least that’s the consensus. Another consensus is that Homo sapiens were only the second African native to migrate out of Africa after Homo erectus, some 60,000 to 50,000 years ago.

There are probably still lots of undiscovered species that form additional links and branches in the chimp – modern human chain, but the above are enough to illustrate the point. A heck of a lot of our ancestors went extinct – cause or causes unknown.

To be continued…