Q:What is the single most advantageous human trait?
Nathan Levesque
species in our extant ancestral lineage. I won't be a stickler about
something being absolutely exclusively human, because then there are
no traits to consider. And I'll largely leave it up to the readers
own discretion to determine what constitutes a human trait.
Bipedalism for example would not count, but our adaptations for
bipedalism could.
I'll wager a guess though I can't think of anything else. And I'll
take into consideration that the strength of the argument for a
particular trait will be an area of contention of equal importance to
the actual trait in question.
Sweat glands. We were distance hunters after all. The fact that we
could cool ourselves down without slowing our pace would eventually
allow us to catch faster more agile prey that would need to stop
moving or die on their feet.
What do you think? What other human traits are contenders?
Darwin123
Respiration. Our lifespans would be much shorter if we lost the
ability to breath.
James Beck
Mimesis
Frank J
Photosynthesis. Oh wait, we can't do that. ;-)
The first thing that comes to mind to this non-expert is something
that is exclusive to our species, in degree if not "kind." That's the
ability to remember so many cause-and-effect events. That way we can
go over several options in our minds before choosing one to act on.
One would think that it would help us avoid bad choices. At least more
often than if we didn't have the ability. Then again, all I have to do
is think of 9/11, and get the sickening feeling that that "advantage"
might eventually be fatal to our species.
Randy C
> that is exclusive to our species, in degree if not "kind." That's the
> ability to remember so many cause-and-effect events.
I think that ability is the root cause of religion.
Once our ancestors started to recognize cause-and-effect events they
became uncomfortable when events seemed to have no cause. Things like
rain. Lightning. Earthquakes. Eclipses. The diversity of life on
Earth.
So hypothesizing a "god" as the cause solved that problem.
Putting it another way, the "God of the Gaps" argument is one that has
fundamental appeal for all of us.
Inez
It's either the ability to make ice cream or orgasms.
Frank J
> > The first thing that comes to mind to this non-expert is something
> > that is exclusive to our species, in degree if not "kind." That's the
> > ability to remember so many cause-and-effect events.
>
> I think that ability is the root cause of religion.
>
> Once our ancestors started to recognize cause-and-effect events they
> became uncomfortable when events seemed to have no cause. Things like
> rain. Lightning. Earthquakes. Eclipses. The diversity of life on
> Earth.
Actually I was referring only to effects of things *they* caused. E.g.
"I rubbed the sticks tis way and it made a fire, and rubbed it another
way and it didn't. I better go with the way that worked, because it's
getting cold."
>
> So hypothesizing a "god" as the cause solved that problem.
>
> Putting it another way, the "God of the Gaps" argument is one that has
> fundamental appeal for all of us.
Though it loses appeal to those who become interested in science. But
we are few and far between, so most people can fall for some "God of
the Gaps" argument.
Randy C
> "I rubbed the sticks tis way and it made a fire, and rubbed it another
> way and it didn't. I better go with the way that worked, because it's
> getting cold."
But that is what I'm saying too.
Maybe 2 million years ago an ancestor of ours noticed that if you put
a seed into the ground, in the next year you would see a plant growing
there.
Cause --> seed in the ground
Effect --> a plant growing in that spot.
Great.
But some effects didn't have causes that were easily understood.
Examples: rain. lightning. eclipses.
What to do?
Imagine a "cause" that is a being who can create rain and lightning
and eclipses.
Such a being can possibly be persuaded. So if it doesn't rain as much
as we want it to, we can try ways to convince that being to make it
rain. Maybe the sacrifice of a goat will convince that being to make
it rain. You sacrifice a few goats and - voila - it rains. The cause
and effect has been found again,
Moreover we have now invented "religion".
David Hare-Scott
Excellent examples of applications of thermoregulation that are more fun
than running down an antelope.
D
Greg G.
The big brain.
In the earliest proto-humans, the brain was twice the size of
chimpanzees.
For a million years, the brain gradually increased in size by 200 cc.
From about 250,000 to 50,000 years ago, the brain increased by 250 cc
simultaneously in two different species of humans. Some reports show
that the brain of the remaining species has decreased in size since
the other went extinct.
William Morse
also ties in with Frank J's discussion of cause and effect (the symbolic
processing helps us tie together different instances of cause and effect
into an overall framework, making it easier to remember many different
cases).
Nathan Levesque
Do elaborate.
Nathan Levesque
And what were the advantages that resulted from the increased brain
size?
Nathan Levesque
Well, the ability to make or have orgasms as it were is not a human
trait, it's more of a trait that we humans have. As do many other
species of various relatedness.
Nathan Levesque
> On 04/16/2011 04:28 PM, Nathan Levesque wrote:
>
> > By human I suppose I'll include proto-humans, and the more recent
> > something being absolutely exclusively human, because then there are
> > own discretion to determine what constitutes a human trait.
> > Bipedalism for example would not count, but our adaptations for
> > bipedalism could.
>
> > take into consideration that the strength of the argument for a
> > particular trait will be an area of contention of equal importance to
> > the actual trait in question.
>
> > could cool ourselves down without slowing our pace would eventually
> > allow us to catch faster more agile prey that would need to stop
> > moving or die on their feet.
>
> > What do you think? What other human traits are contenders?
>
> Symbolic thinking. This is intertwined with both language and trade, and
> also ties in with Frank J's discussion of cause and effect (the symbolic
> processing helps us tie together different instances of cause and effect
> into an overall framework, making it easier to remember many different
> cases).
That's a good one! The ability to communicate, to convey meaning must
have been integral to our social structure. To our ability to act as
a group, to cooperate as it were.
chris thompson
I believe female orgasms are pretty rare.
<insert sexist comments here>
Chris
chris thompson
> On Apr 16, 9:05 pm, William Morse <wdNOSPAMMo...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On 04/16/2011 04:28 PM, Nathan Levesque wrote:
>
> > > By human I suppose I'll include proto-humans, and the more recent
> > > something being absolutely exclusively human, because then there are
> > > own discretion to determine what constitutes a human trait.
> > > Bipedalism for example would not count, but our adaptations for
> > > bipedalism could.
>
> > > take into consideration that the strength of the argument for a
> > > particular trait will be an area of contention of equal importance to
> > > the actual trait in question.
>
> > > could cool ourselves down without slowing our pace would eventually
> > > allow us to catch faster more agile prey that would need to stop
> > > moving or die on their feet.
>
> > > What do you think? What other human traits are contenders?
>
> > Symbolic thinking. This is intertwined with both language and trade, and
> > also ties in with Frank J's discussion of cause and effect (the symbolic
> > processing helps us tie together different instances of cause and effect
> > into an overall framework, making it easier to remember many different
> > cases).
>
> That's a good one! The ability to communicate, to convey meaning must
> have been integral to our social structure. To our ability to act as
> a group, to cooperate as it were.
Vervet monkeys use symbols.
Does that disqualify it?
Chris
chris thompson
Better tools, for one, I would imagine.
Chris
r norman
Perhaps if you improved your technique this wouldn't happen???
jillery
Hats fit better?
SortingItOut
Our hands. The ability to make tools for use in hunting and making
clothing and shelter.
chris thompson
Sexist, not personal!!!
chris thompson
Burkhard
Symbolic reasoning - it allowed collective storage of information and
reasoning about mere possibilities/hypotheticals
richardal...@gmail.com
Our extraordinary degree of sociability.
We live in vast communities, and have extended networks of
relationships which span the globe. I can walk down a street in Beijng
without the fear of being killed by another human for infringing their
territory - something which would be unthinkable for our closest
relative, the chimpanzee. No other animal comes close to this extreme
cooperative behaviour. If a male chimp strays into the wrong
territory, it will be ganged up on and killed by other chimps. If a
female chimp strays into the wrong territory, she will be raped.
We like to paint ourselves as the baddest, most aggressive and
dangerous animal around. We aren't, and although we do sometimes
engage in warfare on the huge scale, it's only the fact that we are
extremely sociable that makes such warfare possible. We don't view our
normal state of affairs as being at war with other populations of
humans, and we have ritualised warfare to the extent that in general
it's only a select warrior caste who engage in warfare. Most humans,
throughout most of our history, have never been directly involved in
warfare.
Nashton
> By human I suppose I'll include proto-humans, and the more recent
> species in our extant ancestral lineage.
Aw, the glorified monkeys.
The ones that are continuously shuffled around taxonomically in order to
confirm their role as being ancestors of humans.
I won't be a stickler about
> something being absolutely exclusively human, because then there are
> no traits to consider. And I'll largely leave it up to the readers
> own discretion to determine what constitutes a human trait.
> Bipedalism for example would not count, but our adaptations for
> bipedalism could.
>
> I'll wager a guess though I can't think of anything else. And I'll
> take into consideration that the strength of the argument for a
> particular trait will be an area of contention of equal importance to
> the actual trait in question.
>
> Sweat glands. We were distance hunters after all. The fact that we
> could cool ourselves down without slowing our pace would eventually
> allow us to catch faster more agile prey that would need to stop
> moving or die on their feet.
>
> What do you think? What other human traits are contenders?
>
There are simply too many attributes to enumerate. Abstraction, symbolic
thinking, memory, dexterity. The list goes on and on.
In fact, the differences are so profound that only a fool, would believe
that these traits evolved, especially in the absence of any tangible proof.
But of course, believing anything else is a great impediment to learning
<chuckles>.
Greg G.
wrote:
We know that brains use a large portion of a creature's energy budget
so a larger brain would have to benefit the creature in some way,
either for an ability to acquire more or better food or to enhance
reproduction opportunities.
What the advantages of a bigger brain for humans might be I couldn't
*say*. I haven't the foggiest *idea*. A person would *think* the
advantages would be obvious. Chimpanzees use their brains for complex
social interactions and to create simple tools. Proto-humans had
brains twice the size of chimpanzees and modern humans have brains
four times the size. One would expect humans to have a more complex
society and more complex tools. But I can't find anything like that on
the internet.
Walter Bushell
<0fa24f63-231f-4ecd...@cu4g2000vbb.googlegroups.com>,
chris thompson <chris.li...@gmail.com> wrote:
Why do women fake orgasms?
They believe men care.
( In some cases the belief is justified, and in some cases men fake
orgasms because of the same belief.)
>
> Chris
--
The Chinese pretend their goods are good and we pretend our money
is good, or is it the reverse?
Walter Bushell
<9f20e877-3202-4568...@c26g2000vbq.googlegroups.com>,
"Greg G." <ggw...@gmail.com> wrote:
Or not being food so soon. Of course, that comes under better
reproductive opportunities, but so does acquiring more or better food.
>
> What the advantages of a bigger brain for humans might be I couldn't
> *say*. I haven't the foggiest *idea*. A person would *think* the
> advantages would be obvious. Chimpanzees use their brains for complex
> social interactio s and to create simple tools. Proto-humans had
> brains twice the size of chimpanzees and modern humans have brains
> four times the size. One would expect humans to have a more complex
> society and more complex tools. But I can't find anything like that on
> the internet.
Non-human cimps not got internet.
Or should I take that as a satire of only looking for information on the
internet?
Greg G.
> In article
> <9f20e877-3202-4568-9574-d89587f16...@c26g2000vbq.googlegroups.com>,
My cheek is still sore from sticking my tongue in it while posting
that reply.
Ron O
> By human I suppose I'll include proto-humans, and the more recent
> species in our extant ancestral lineage. I won't be a stickler about
> something being absolutely exclusively human, because then there are
> no traits to consider. And I'll largely leave it up to the readers
> own discretion to determine what constitutes a human trait.
> Bipedalism for example would not count, but our adaptations for
> bipedalism could.
>
> I'll wager a guess though I can't think of anything else. And I'll
> take into consideration that the strength of the argument for a
> particular trait will be an area of contention of equal importance to
> the actual trait in question.
>
> Sweat glands. We were distance hunters after all. The fact that we
> could cool ourselves down without slowing our pace would eventually
> allow us to catch faster more agile prey that would need to stop
> moving or die on their feet.
>
> What do you think? What other human traits are contenders?
My two cents is that it is the large brain compared to body weight.
There have been and are other bipeds and grasping hands aren't
unique. There is also the fact that the human species has compromised
their physical abilities in order to have babies with these large
brains. Women have to be stuck with a sub optimal pelvis in order to
pass the large head of the human baby and humans require an extended
rearing period and further brain development after birth.
We probably didn't need brains as large as they have become because
you can look at animals such as birds and understand that we could
have gotten by with a lot less, but that isn't how mammalian brains
seem to work. Increasing brain size has been the hallmark of the
hominid lineage. It eventually allowed the human species to develop a
sophisticated culture that allows adaptation much more quickly than
genetics would allow. Humans are no longer the slaves of their
genetic make up as much as other animals are. They can make tools
instead of evolving stronger limbs and teeth. They can make clothing
instead of evolving a heavy coat of fur. They can pass on knowledge
instead of relying on instinct.
The brain that we have is likely the single greatest advantage that
the human species has.
Ron Okimoto
Walter Bushell
<55330b69-a89b-4da2...@r4g2000prm.googlegroups.com>,
Ron O <roki...@cox.net> wrote:
> The brain that we have is likely the single greatest advantage that
> the human species has.
But relatively inutile without hands and vocal apparatus, which I think
were part of the feedback mechanism that lead to the big brain.
jillery
It's more likely that men fake they care.
Steven L.
news:beb07ad6-091e-4f64...@22g2000prx.googlegroups.com:
> By human I suppose I'll include proto-humans, and the more recent
> species in our extant ancestral lineage. I won't be a stickler about
> something being absolutely exclusively human, because then there are
> no traits to consider. And I'll largely leave it up to the readers
> own discretion to determine what constitutes a human trait.
> Bipedalism for example would not count, but our adaptations for
> bipedalism could.
>
> I'll wager a guess though I can't think of anything else. And I'll
> take into consideration that the strength of the argument for a
> particular trait will be an area of contention of equal importance to
> the actual trait in question.
>
> Sweat glands. We were distance hunters after all. The fact that we
> could cool ourselves down without slowing our pace would eventually
> allow us to catch faster more agile prey that would need to stop
> moving or die on their feet.
>
> What do you think? What other human traits are contenders?
Imagination. Among all species, we seem to be the only ones who can
imagine a different, better world than the one we were born into.
All species have to cope with their environment as best they can. Some
even use tools to get food. But only humans consciously decide they
won't tolerate the current environment and plan how to change the entire
environment for their benefit--with or without the help of friendly
gods.
On Earth, only humans could take an entire forested
wilderness--Manhattan Island--and completely pave it over with concrete
and steel from one end to the other (save Central Park and a few
cemeteries). Because humans imagined a better life for that way, not
the way they had traditionally lived as farmers and trappers.
If there are intelligent aliens on exoplanets somewhere, they may not be
bipedal. They may not perspire. They may not breathe oxygen as we do.
They probably won't even be DNA-based.
But if they can't imagine a different environment than the one they were
born into, they will never develop religion or metaphysics or
technology--or civilization.
-- Steven L.
Ron O
> Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > The brain that we have is likely the single greatest advantage that
> > the human species has.
>
> But relatively inutile without hands and vocal apparatus, which I think
> were part of the feedback mechanism that lead to the big brain.
>
> --
> The Chinese pretend their goods are good and we pretend our money
> is good, or is it the reverse?
Like I said other species have grasping hands.
Ron Okimoto
Walter Bushell
<7e3211ed-d9c3-4ddf...@l30g2000vbn.googlegroups.com>,
Ron O <roki...@cox.net> wrote:
Opposable thumbs? Of course other hominoids have those, but they were in
our evolutionary line. But I think that human have the best hands in the
crown group.
Ron O
> Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Apr 17, 9:38 am, Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
> > > In article
> > > <55330b69-a89b-4da2-b2fe-02f456468...@r4g2000prm.googlegroups.com>,
> > > Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > > > The brain that we have is likely the single greatest advantage that
> > > > the human species has.
>
> > > But relatively inutile without hands and vocal apparatus, which I think
> > > were part of the feedback mechanism that lead to the big brain.
>
> > > --
> > > The Chinese pretend their goods are good and we pretend our money
> > > is good, or is it the reverse?
>
> > Like I said other species have grasping hands.
>
> > Ron Okimoto
>
> Opposable thumbs? Of course other hominoids have those, but they were in
> our evolutionary line. But I think that human have the best hands in the
> crown group.
>
> --
> The Chinese pretend their goods are good and we pretend our money
> is good, or is it the reverse?
Grasping hands that could evolve opposable thumbs if you develop the
brain th use them.
Ron Okimoto
jillery
> Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Apr 17, 9:38 am, Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
> > > In article
> > > <55330b69-a89b-4da2-b2fe-02f456468...@r4g2000prm.googlegroups.com>,
> > > Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > > > The brain that we have is likely the single greatest advantage that
> > > > the human species has.
>
> > > But relatively inutile without hands and vocal apparatus, which I think
> > > were part of the feedback mechanism that lead to the big brain.
>
> > > --
> > > The Chinese pretend their goods are good and we pretend our money
> > > is good, or is it the reverse?
>
> > Like I said other species have grasping hands.
>
> > Ron Okimoto
>
> Opposable thumbs? Of course other hominoids have those, but they were in
> our evolutionary line. But I think that human have the best hands in the
> crown group.
IIUC humans use their opposable thumbs in at least two ways. First,
there is the power grip, where an object is held in direct contact
with the palm. Second, there is the precision grip, where an object
is held between the tips of the thumbs and fingers. I don't know if
the precision grip is unique to H. sapiens.
Bob Casanova
appeared in talk.origins, posted by Nathan Levesque
<nathanm...@gmail.com>:
>By human I suppose I'll include proto-humans, and the more recent
>species in our extant ancestral lineage. I won't be a stickler about
>something being absolutely exclusively human, because then there are
>no traits to consider. And I'll largely leave it up to the readers
>own discretion to determine what constitutes a human trait.
>Bipedalism for example would not count, but our adaptations for
>bipedalism could.
>
>I'll wager a guess though I can't think of anything else. And I'll
>take into consideration that the strength of the argument for a
>particular trait will be an area of contention of equal importance to
>the actual trait in question.
>
>Sweat glands. We were distance hunters after all. The fact that we
>could cool ourselves down without slowing our pace would eventually
>allow us to catch faster more agile prey that would need to stop
>moving or die on their feet.
>
>What do you think? What other human traits are contenders?
Rabid paranoia and insane aggressiveness. The last one
standing gets to breed.
--
Bob C.
"Evidence confirming an observation is
evidence that the observation is wrong."
- McNameless
r norman
wrote:
>On Apr 17, 12:16 pm, Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
>> In article
>> <7e3211ed-d9c3-4ddf-afc8-55e3a88a5...@l30g2000vbn.googlegroups.com>,
>> Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>> > On Apr 17, 9:38 am, Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
>> > > In article
>> > > <55330b69-a89b-4da2-b2fe-02f456468...@r4g2000prm.googlegroups.com>,
>> > > Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>>
>> > > > The brain that we have is likely the single greatest advantage that
>> > > > the human species has.
>>
>> > > But relatively inutile without hands and vocal apparatus, which I think
>> > > were part of the feedback mechanism that lead to the big brain.
>>
>> > > --
>> > > The Chinese pretend their goods are good and we pretend our money
>> > > is good, or is it the reverse?
>>
>> > Like I said other species have grasping hands.
>>
>> > Ron Okimoto
>>
>> Opposable thumbs? Of course other hominoids have those, but they were in
>> our evolutionary line. But I think that human have the best hands in the
>> crown group.
>>
>
>Grasping hands that could evolve opposable thumbs if you develop the
>brain th use them.
I think there is a fundamental flaw in this whole thread: the
assumption that there does exist a single most advantageous human
trait in the first place. In my view, there is a large complex of
coevolved traits that must combine with synergistic effects to produce
the result. You start with a few seemingly innocuous factors shared
with other animals but each new step opens up new avenues that can be
used to advantage and the resulting package of positive feedback
between the many factors results in an explosive (at least in the
stodgy time frame of evolutionary time) package that is us.
My impression is that most people think it started with bipedalism
that freed the hands. Opposable thumbs and manipulation of objects
allowed for the development of tools. Of course all this requires more
brain capacity both to manipulate the objects and to contemplate found
things as objects that can be manipulated and then even altered.
Increased brain capacity involves brain size and special metabolic
needs to feed both the energy and specific chemical requirements of
brain. Social organization in feeding and the use of tools and even
fire in food acquisition and preparation became part of the package as
did communication to maintain social groups and coordinate behavior
but this, too, required even larger brains. No doubt hairlessness
plus sweat glands and the ability to do long-distance running played a
role in the package -- you can't leave out pieces if they all combine
into an integrated whole. I won't mention the "emergence" of new
abilities from the complex organization within the package lest that
introduce irrelevant side arguments. So forget I just said that! So
all these little pieces, possibly individually shared with other
lineages, allowed a trajectory of evolutionary development that
quickly became unique. Each piece fed on the others; each was
necessary to produce the package. Yet it could develop piecewise --
no irreducible complexity here!
The ultimate result -- my suggestion for the "single most advantageous
human trait -- is best described by the Bible! Seriously! The
creators of the original creation myths were exceptionally intelligent
and observant people keenly observant of human nature. The single
feature in the story they built that separated animalistic humans (pre
Fall) from true almost godlike humans (post Fall) was eating of the
Tree of Knowledge. But not simply of knowledge; specifically
Knowledge of Good and Evil. In this way humans became like gods, and
would have attained that level but for mortality and so needed to be
expelled from the Garden. So goes the legend and a good legend it is.
So what is required to attain Knowledge of Good and Evil? It needs,
first of all, language that is capable of expressing abstract ideas.
It requires consciousness of oneself and of others and an
understanding that we all as actors in the physical world have inner
motives as do others. It involves understanding that actions have
consequences and that some consequences can be favorable for the group
while others are detrimental to group activity. It involves knowing
that desirable behavior must be encouraged and harmful behavior
outlawed with a social organization that is capable of enforcing these
rules of civilized life. In other words, it is the development of a
brain capable of managing this extremely involved complex package of
ideas that sets us apart. I tend to think this all is the natural
result of the development of language (and social organization) that
is capable of storing culture and transmitting it from generation to
generation and between groups. Once that happens, evolution can
quickly pull behavior from the genes (instinct) so that culture can
dominate as it is far more malleable by environmental needs. And all
that is an "emergent" property of the way the particular way the brain
grew.
Now I will let those of you familiar with actual facts in physical
anthropology tear apart my imagined and purely hypothetical scenario.
jillery
> On Sun, 17 Apr 2011 13:00:21 -0700 (PDT), Ron O <rokim...@cox.net>
Nominated for POTM
Burkhard
seconded
Nathan Levesque
But there are numerous other species with incredibly similar if not
nearly exactly the same hands.
Nathan Levesque
wrote:
> On Apr 17, 1:18 am, Nathan Levesque <nathanmleves...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Apr 16, 5:47 pm, Inez <savagemouse...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> > > > By human I suppose I'll include proto-humans, and the more recent
> > > > species in our extant ancestral lineage. I won't be a stickler about
> > > > something being absolutely exclusively human, because then there are
> > > > no traits to consider. And I'll largely leave it up to the readers
> > > > own discretion to determine what constitutes a human trait.
> > > > Bipedalism for example would not count, but our adaptations for
> > > > bipedalism could.
>
> > > > I'll wager a guess though I can't think of anything else. And I'll
> > > > take into consideration that the strength of the argument for a
> > > > particular trait will be an area of contention of equal importance to
> > > > the actual trait in question.
>
> > > > Sweat glands. We were distance hunters after all. The fact that we
> > > > could cool ourselves down without slowing our pace would eventually
> > > > allow us to catch faster more agile prey that would need to stop
> > > > moving or die on their feet.
>
> > > > What do you think? What other human traits are contenders?
>
>
> > Well, the ability to make or have orgasms as it were is not a human
> > trait, it's more of a trait that we humans have. As do many other
> > species of various relatedness.
>
> I believe female orgasms are pretty rare.
>
> <insert sexist comments here>
>
Or are human males just more skilled than the males of most species!
Nathan Levesque
wrote:
> On Apr 17, 1:23 am, Nathan Levesque <nathanmleves...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Apr 16, 9:05 pm, William Morse <wdNOSPAMMo...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > > On 04/16/2011 04:28 PM, Nathan Levesque wrote:
>
> > > > By human I suppose I'll include proto-humans, and the more recent
> > > > species in our extant ancestral lineage. I won't be a stickler about
> > > > something being absolutely exclusively human, because then there are
> > > > no traits to consider. And I'll largely leave it up to the readers
> > > > own discretion to determine what constitutes a human trait.
> > > > Bipedalism for example would not count, but our adaptations for
> > > > bipedalism could.
>
> > > > I'll wager a guess though I can't think of anything else. And I'll
> > > > take into consideration that the strength of the argument for a
> > > > particular trait will be an area of contention of equal importance to
> > > > the actual trait in question.
>
> > > > Sweat glands. We were distance hunters after all. The fact that we
> > > > could cool ourselves down without slowing our pace would eventually
> > > > allow us to catch faster more agile prey that would need to stop
> > > > moving or die on their feet.
>
> > > > What do you think? What other human traits are contenders?
>
> > > also ties in with Frank J's discussion of cause and effect (the symbolic
> > > processing helps us tie together different instances of cause and effect
> > > into an overall framework, making it easier to remember many different
> > > cases).
>
> > That's a good one! The ability to communicate, to convey meaning must
> > have been integral to our social structure. To our ability to act as
> > a group, to cooperate as it were.
>
> Vervet monkeys use symbols.
>
> Does that disqualify it?
>
> Chris
That depends on the specifics. I think it's clear though that the
degree to which humans use symbols is unique to us, and potentially
our close relatives among apes.
Nathan Levesque
Bonobos?
Also it's a specific kind of cooperative behavior not necessarily the
extreme degree to which it is practiced. Otherwise bees, ants, and
naked mole rats have us beat.
Nathan Levesque
> On 4/16/11 5:28 PM, Nathan Levesque wrote:
>
> > By human I suppose I'll include proto-humans, and the more recent
> > species in our extant ancestral lineage.
>
> Aw, the glorified monkeys.
> The ones that are continuously shuffled around taxonomically in order to
> confirm their role as being ancestors of humans.
The established order hasn't been significantly reshuffled. It's only
the more recently introduced fossil hominids that are shuffled about,
but that is of course part of peer review and follow up and is not
whimsical. Nor is it done in order to qualify them as human
ancestors, it's the evidence and understanding of it that leads us to
that conclusion. It becomes clear after peer review chews up the
relevant work and spits it out whether or not a species is part of our
extant line, their specific order is what is the point of contention.
The fact remains that we have more then we know what to do with, and
that we aren't going to see a strict dichotomous tree of life
arrangement. We now know there was most likely some degree of
adaptive radiation, and interbreeding amongst closely related
varieties of what are essentially the same species.
> I won't be a stickler about
>
>
>
> > something being absolutely exclusively human, because then there are
> > no traits to consider. And I'll largely leave it up to the readers
> > own discretion to determine what constitutes a human trait.
> > Bipedalism for example would not count, but our adaptations for
> > bipedalism could.
>
> > I'll wager a guess though I can't think of anything else. And I'll
> > take into consideration that the strength of the argument for a
> > particular trait will be an area of contention of equal importance to
> > the actual trait in question.
>
> > Sweat glands. We were distance hunters after all. The fact that we
> > could cool ourselves down without slowing our pace would eventually
> > allow us to catch faster more agile prey that would need to stop
> > moving or die on their feet.
>
> > What do you think? What other human traits are contenders?
>
> There are simply too many attributes to enumerate. Abstraction, symbolic
> thinking, memory, dexterity. The list goes on and on.
>
> In fact, the differences are so profound
The differences are relatively insignificant. They are all mere
modification with few exceptions.
> that only a fool, would believe
> that these traits evolved
It is completely plausible, backed by an understanding of natural
mechanisms, and substantiated by evidence and accurate testable
predictions. Not only that but it is the only model that can explain
all of the data we have.
>, especially in the absence of any tangible proof.
There is no such absence.
> But of course, believing anything else is a great impediment to learning
> <chuckles>.
How's that?
Llanzlan Klazmon
> By human I suppose I'll include proto-humans, and the more recent
> something being absolutely exclusively human, because then there are
> no traits to consider. And I'll largely leave it up to the readers
> own discretion to determine what constitutes a human trait.
> Bipedalism for example would not count, but our adaptations for
> bipedalism could.
>
> I'll wager a guess though I can't think of anything else. And I'll
> take into consideration that the strength of the argument for a
> particular trait will be an area of contention of equal importance to
> the actual trait in question.
>
> Sweat glands. We were distance hunters after all. The fact that we
> could cool ourselves down without slowing our pace would eventually
> allow us to catch faster more agile prey that would need to stop
> moving or die on their feet.
>
> What do you think? What other human traits are contenders?
Throwing ability. The other apes are very awkward at this.
David Hare-Scott
>>>>>> What do you think? What other human traits are contenders?
>>
>>>>> It's either the ability to make ice cream or orgasms.
>>
>>>> Well, the ability to make or have orgasms as it were is not a human
>>>> trait, it's more of a trait that we humans have. As do many other
>>>> species of various relatedness.
>>
>>> I believe female orgasms are pretty rare.
>>
>>> <insert sexist comments here>
>>
>> Why do women fake orgasms?
>>
>> They believe men care.
>>
>> ( In some cases the belief is justified, and in some cases men fake
>> orgasms because of the same belief.)
>
>
> It's more likely that men fake they care.
Immature males fake affection to get sex, immature females fake sex to get
affection. Adults don't fake either.
D
Nathan Levesque
> On Sun, 17 Apr 2011 13:00:21 -0700 (PDT), Ron O <rokim...@cox.net>
Well yeah, if you want to play it like that. For the sake of
argument, or discussion as it were though the premise usually has to
be granted. But I get what you mean. The only thing though is that
in a broader sense yes there is no single adaptation...in general, not
just on that is most advantageous I mean there is no single
adaptation. There isn't gene 1 for trait 1, at least not for humans,
and at least not with the kind of definition of trait that engenders
discussion on the internet.
> In my view, there is a large complex of
> coevolved traits that must combine with synergistic effects to produce
> the result. You start with a few seemingly innocuous factors shared
> with other animals but each new step opens up new avenues that can be
> used to advantage and the resulting package of positive feedback
> between the many factors results in an explosive (at least in the
> stodgy time frame of evolutionary time) package that is us.
Right, we aren't bacteria evolving a new protein that short of
explaining all the intermediary steps, allows us to digest some new
source of nutrition. You can't just point to one thing and say there,
that's the trait that makes this organism unlike it's predecessors.
Our traits are necessarily modifications on past models figuratively
speaking.
> My impression is that most people think it started with bipedalism
> that freed the hands. Opposable thumbs and manipulation of objects
> allowed for the development of tools. Of course all this requires more
> brain capacity both to manipulate the objects and to contemplate found
> things as objects that can be manipulated and then even altered.
> Increased brain capacity involves brain size and special metabolic
> needs to feed both the energy and specific chemical requirements of
> brain. Social organization in feeding and the use of tools and even
> fire in food acquisition and preparation became part of the package as
> did communication to maintain social groups and coordinate behavior
> but this, too, required even larger brains. No doubt hairlessness
> plus sweat glands and the ability to do long-distance running played a
> role in the package -- you can't leave out pieces if they all combine
> into an integrated whole. I won't mention the "emergence" of new
> abilities from the complex organization within the package lest that
> introduce irrelevant side arguments. So forget I just said that! So
> all these little pieces, possibly individually shared with other
> lineages, allowed a trajectory of evolutionary development that
> quickly became unique. Each piece fed on the others; each was
> necessary to produce the package. Yet it could develop piecewise --
> no irreducible complexity here!
And yet which of those was most advantageous. Which allowed us to
survive to reproduce the most with respect to the other traits. If
we're going to go along the lines that if trait 1 was required for
trait 2 etc etc...then we'd go backwards without end, which is why I
had the qualifier 'human'.
I don't quite understand how that last part was a trait so to speak.
r norman
I think your whole approach is wrong in several counts.
First, there is no one single "most important" trait even though you
want to put numbers on the importance -- this one is 5.773, that one
is only 5.772 so it is less important and gets thrown out. OK, you
didn't say numbers but how else do you compare "which of those was
most advantageous" without some quantitative notion of advantage? When
I talk about a package, I mean a package.
Second, you insist on the qualifier "human". The traits that
initially set us apart and put us on the evolutionary trajectory I
described were not "human" and, for the most part, are not even
exclusive to humans plus our pre-human ancestors. Suppose you go
back to the last common ancestor of, say, chimps and humans. That
would have been an ape that we probably would think of as mostly
"chimplike". One offspring was destined to found the chimp line and
another was destined to found the human line. But these two offspring
were essentially identical! And their offpsring and theirs and theirs
for dozens or hundreds or thousands of generations were essentially
identical. yet one line led to humans and the other did not. So what
was The Critical Element that separated the lines? There was no such
thing, not yet. The Critical Element was a package that gradually
developed over time in one line but, for some unknown and possibly
quite circumstantial and accidental reason, did not in the other.
Finally, You set the rules of the game and I disobeyed them. You are
correct, I am playing a very different game. I don't think yours is
very interesting or useful as a tool to understanding evolution even
though some players seem to find it fun. So give me a low score.
William Morse
> On Apr 17, 1:23 am, Nathan Levesque<nathanmleves...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Apr 16, 9:05 pm, William Morse<wdNOSPAMMo...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>> By human I suppose I'll include proto-humans, and the more recent
>>>> species in our extant ancestral lineage. I won't be a stickler about
>>>> something being absolutely exclusively human, because then there are
>>>> no traits to consider. And I'll largely leave it up to the readers
>>>> own discretion to determine what constitutes a human trait.
>>>> Bipedalism for example would not count, but our adaptations for
>>>> bipedalism could.
>>
>>>> I'll wager a guess though I can't think of anything else. And I'll
>>>> take into consideration that the strength of the argument for a
>>>> particular trait will be an area of contention of equal importance to
>>>> the actual trait in question.
>>
>>>> Sweat glands. We were distance hunters after all. The fact that we
>>>> could cool ourselves down without slowing our pace would eventually
>>>> allow us to catch faster more agile prey that would need to stop
>>>> moving or die on their feet.
>>
>>
>>> also ties in with Frank J's discussion of cause and effect (the symbolic
>>> processing helps us tie together different instances of cause and effect
>>> into an overall framework, making it easier to remember many different
>>> cases).
>>
>> That's a good one! The ability to communicate, to convey meaning must
>> have been integral to our social structure. To our ability to act as
>> a group, to cooperate as it were.
>
> Vervet monkeys use symbols.
>
> Does that disqualify it?
>
> Chris
>
understand it.
chris thompson
I am unclear as to the difference. Please explain.
Chris
Free Lunch
<bill.m...@gmail.com> wrote in talk.origins:
Takes practice. That's why folks who have not spent a lot of time
throwing look very clumsy (or as they said when I was a kid "throw like
a girl").
James Beck
<nathanm...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Apr 16, 4:07 pm, James Beck <jdbeck11...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> On Sat, 16 Apr 2011 13:28:38 -0700 (PDT), Nathan Levesque
>>
>>
>>
>> <nathanmleves...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >By human I suppose I'll include proto-humans, and the more recent
>> >species in our extant ancestral lineage. I won't be a stickler about
>> >something being absolutely exclusively human, because then there are
>> >no traits to consider. And I'll largely leave it up to the readers
>> >own discretion to determine what constitutes a human trait.
>> >Bipedalism for example would not count, but our adaptations for
>> >bipedalism could.
>>
>> >I'll wager a guess though I can't think of anything else. And I'll
>> >take into consideration that the strength of the argument for a
>> >particular trait will be an area of contention of equal importance to
>> >the actual trait in question.
>>
>> >Sweat glands. We were distance hunters after all. The fact that we
>> >could cool ourselves down without slowing our pace would eventually
>> >allow us to catch faster more agile prey that would need to stop
>> >moving or die on their feet.
>>
>> >What do you think? What other human traits are contenders?
>>
>> Mimesis
>
>Do elaborate.
Mimesis is a very old word that means 'imitation in particular.' You
may have seen this video before:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIAoJsS9Ix8
As it suggests, humans will repeat what they're taught, at least as
long as it is successful, and we will do it the same way pretty much
the same way indefinitely, even if we can see that our ritual doesn't
mean anything.
When asked this question, someone will usually say 'symbolic
reasoning,' or something like it, but the chimp evidence suggests that
humans aren't particularly inclined to do that. Similarly, I doubt
that any but the most logical members of the group (if any), would
consistently beat seals at symbolic logic games. Chimps beat us easily
in short term memory. Squirrels defeat our most clever birdfeeders,
and birds seem to beat us a pattern recognition and experimental
probability.
On the other hand, if you tell a few humans how to beat the 'gorilla
in the room' scenario or the Monty Hall game, very quickly almost
everyone knows how to beat it, even if they still don't understand it.
Imitation in particular is a very nice talent, especially if you don't
happen to be very bright. You could be smarter or more rational--like
the chimps--but your civilization would quickly collapse without
mimesis. Any culture that lacks it will tend to look more like a troop
of chimps, and (I assume) will likewise tend lose its technology.
Depending on the circumstances, that can be fatal; it might take
another thousand or ten thousand years for someone to accidentally
reinvent fire or fish hooks. That is, civiliation depends on people
following learned patterns.
More precisely, that last should be 'learned success patterns;' you
have to have something useful to imitate, but that can be almost
anything. Some surviving cultures take direct advantage of their
upright posture and sweat glands, and still do persistence hunting.
Others use horticulture, herding, agriculture, fishing, or
manufacturing, etc., but as far as I know, none of them innovates more
than a small amount (and much less than it ritualizes), and then
mostly by accident, or at need. Hence, necessity mothers invention,
though I suppose that sometimes, someone discovers something on
purpose, too, albeit usually by standing on the mountains of bones of
those who went before them.
This is also known as 'standing on the shoulders of giants,' but
having known several of them, I think that that is a
mischaracterization. The 'giants' are just successful mimeticists with
a bit of randomness at the margin. They're not very different from
their peers, but you can tell them apart. As Confucius (or Mencius)
said, the best are those able to do the work and willing to do it.
They're followed by the brilliant but erratic, and the ubiquitous
mediocrities.
Then too, just as disadvantages can be turned to advantage, the
reverse is also true. In this case, that means that unsuccessful
patterns can also be learned. For example, too much randomness
combined with too much mimesis might yield a Unabomber, a sort of
vicious Luddite, but different recipes might give you a pointy-haired
boss, or a Mordac (Preventer of Information Services).
Of course, you might also get an Eistein, Darwin, or Hepburn, not that
it's ever safe to assume that because they're brilliant, that they're
not also mad as hatters. These are extremes. Regression to the mean
suggests that you'll get mostly drones and garden variety loons that
survive by being drones in one compartment or another. Whether they're
doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, bricklayers, or plumbers,
most people survive by keeping their day job.
Still, I don't see compartmentalization so much as an ability as it is
an inevitability. Among other things, it's difficult to control which
examples you'll be exposed to, and those with a high signal-to-noise
ratio are particularly important. If you guessed that I would, in most
cases, opposed home schooling for that reason, you'd be right; it's
risky to reinforce the wrong patterns. OTOH, given
compartmentalization, bad software doesn't imply a parallyzing loss of
function. Ironically however, while the unexamined life may not be
worth living, the examined life may not be livable.
In any event, if the main function of the brain were symbolic
reasoning, we should observe humans beating seals, chimps, birds and
squirrels, especially at games of our own devising. What our brain has
evolved to do is learn, store, and repeat complex behavioral roles.
Our main advantage lies in their accumulation via imitation. One
smart, individualistic chimp doesn't stand much of a chance against a
village of idiots who all know how to copy spears, arrows, and nets,
though he'll do pretty well against one village idiot who has
forgotten (or never learned) how to make them.
jillery
Then it depends on how you define mature. If you mean something
that's a matter of emotional development, my impression is most
people, both males and females, do not reliably go beyond this stage.
Richard Harter
wrote:
As far as I know, the full opposable thumb and the precision grip are
unique to H. Sapiens. Also, AFAIK, our style of bipedalism is unique.
Bipdeal birds, other dinosaurs, and kangaroos carry their body more or
less horizontal. Many mammals, e.g., bears, chimpanzees, and my cat
will stand upright. However they are not obligatory bipeds - we are.
It is all very well to point out that there is an entire trajectory of
development that led to us. However the fact remains that nothing
like our lineage had developed in the history of life. It is natural
to ask why no others and why us.
The obvious critical factor is that our distant ancestors were tree
dwelling social primates. Tree dwellers need good brains; animals
with complex social arrangements need good brains. They need good
grasping hands. And they aren't obligatory quadrupeds.
We may never know why Lucy and company started walking upright around
the grasslands. Maybe the just so story is right and it was a
response to the drying out of the jungle. Then again, it might simply
have started out as a freak accident of development that turned out to
be advantageous. Whatever the reason, australopithicene bipedalism
opened up a new niche.
From then on the trajectory opened up. With upright posture the hands
could specialize, making it easier to use and make tools - and thow
things. Chimpanzees cannot play baseball; we can. Our hands are the
difference. We replaced grooming with verbal noises which may or may
not have been speech. In primate groups the social structure is
maintained by mutual grooming; this places strong limits on the size
of the group. Using verbal noise for bonding makes larger groups
possible.
One thing that should be appreciated is that we definitely were not
the kings of creation until quite recently. We may have had clothing
and speech and some rather nice tools, but we were just another
predator eking out a living.
Richard Harter
The terms go back to Pierce who distinguished between three
categories of referential association, icons, indices, and symbols.
Deacon (author of The Symbolic Species) explains it thusly:
"Icons are mediated by a similarity between sign and object, indices
are mediated by some physical or temporal connection between sign and
object, and symbols are mediated by some formal or merely agreed-upon
link irrespective of any physical characteristics of either sign or
object."
A vervet monkey's warning cry says "snake here now". It is the
necessity of the here and now that make it an indice. Or so I
understand.
chris thompson
Thank you. But I have to ask: how can you tell the difference between
"snake here now" as an indice and "harpy eagle over there" as a
symbol?
Chris
Ron O
> wrote:
This is all a given for any extant organism.
>
> My impression is that most people think it started with bipedalism
> that freed the hands.
If humans were not alive that would be very bad. If we could not
replicate accurately, but imperfectly that would have been really
bad. If we were not eukaryotes we would not have gotten past the
biofilm and colony stage of multicellularism. Just think what we
would be without bilateral symmetry or bones etc. The fact is that we
are the sum of our whole. It can even matter in the direction of our
future evolution. The concept of canalization should not be lost on
anyone. What you currently are may dictate or limit the number of
options that your species has for change in the immediate future.
Flies are still going to be flies. Humans are still brachiating
apes. When is a penguin going to be not a bird? Are whales still
quadrapedal terrestrial vertebrate mammals? No one considers
themselves to be a sponge, but they are multicellular eukaryotes. How
could we be humans without those characteristics?
This is just how evolution works. Anything new has to work with what
has already happened. It has pretty much been that way since the
genetic code has been fixed.
Ron Okimoto
jillery
> On Sun, 17 Apr 2011 13:33:37 -0700 (PDT), jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com>
To add to your comments, I looked up this:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1571064/
It makes some statements I find remarkable. First, the power and
precision grip are also described as the throwing and clubbing grip,
respectively, neither of which the modern chimpanzee is capable of.
Second, the anatomical differences between modern human and chimpanzee
hands are more than superficial variations; ex. the largest human
thumb muscle is entirely lacking in chimpanzees. Third, tool-use by
our non-human ancestors, such as throwing and clubbing, helped to pre-
adapt the hand for the making of stone tools. Fourth, the use of
flaked stone tools is documented to have occured millions of years
before the appearance of H. sapiens. So, IIUC all hominid species,
not just us, had hands and brains capable of throwing and clubbing and
making stone tools.
John S. Wilkins
> On Apr 18, 12:42 am, c...@tiac.net (Richard Harter) wrote:
> > On Sun, 17 Apr 2011 13:33:37 -0700 (PDT), jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > >On Apr 17, 1:16 pm, Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
> > >> In article
> > >> <7e3211ed-d9c3-4ddf-afc8-55e3a88a5...@l30g2000vbn.googlegroups.com>,
> > >> Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
> >
> > >> > On Apr 17, 9:38 am, Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
> > >> > > In article
> > >> > > <55330b69-a89b-4da2-b2fe-02f456468...@r4g2000prm.googlegroups.com>,
> > >> > > Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
> >
> > >> > > > The brain that we have is likely the single greatest advantage
> > >> > > > that the human species has.
> >
> > >> > > But relatively inutile without hands and vocal apparatus, which I
> > >> > > think were part of the feedback mechanism that lead to the big
> > >> > > brain.
> >
> >
This also goes to undercutting Comway Morris' rather strange assertion
that all intelligent species will be something like us. Massive
affirmation of the consequent. Every species is special, and unique
(which is what "species" means, logically). None are more unique than
any others, and each one has an individual evolutionary trajectory that
is unlikely - vanishingly unlikely - to be repeated by unrelated
species. One can confidentaly say that the likelihood that an ET
intelligent species will be humanoid is effectively zero. They don't
share the animal, metazoan, chordate, vertebrate, therapsid, mammalian,
primate and hominid heritage from which you can evolve a human being. If
we found Vulcans, and they weren't evolved from a terrestrial hominid,
that would be an excellent argument for the existence of a creator god.
--
John S. Wilkins, Associate, Philosophy, University of Sydney
http://evolvingthoughts.net
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre
Richard Harter
wrote:
>On Apr 18, 12:42 am, c...@tiac.net (Richard Harter) wrote:
Thanks for the reference.
Kermit
> On Apr 17, 12:21 am, Nathan Levesque <nathanmleves...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Apr 16, 8:33 pm, "Greg G." <ggw...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Apr 16, 3:28 pm, Nathan Levesque <nathanmleves...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > By human I suppose I'll include proto-humans, and the more recent
> > > > species in our extant ancestral lineage. I won't be a stickler about
> > > > something being absolutely exclusively human, because then there are
> > > > no traits to consider. And I'll largely leave it up to the readers
> > > > own discretion to determine what constitutes a human trait.
> > > > Bipedalism for example would not count, but our adaptations for
> > > > bipedalism could.
>
> > > > I'll wager a guess though I can't think of anything else. And I'll
> > > > take into consideration that the strength of the argument for a
> > > > particular trait will be an area of contention of equal importance to
> > > > the actual trait in question.
>
> > > > Sweat glands. We were distance hunters after all. The fact that we
> > > > could cool ourselves down without slowing our pace would eventually
> > > > allow us to catch faster more agile prey that would need to stop
> > > > moving or die on their feet.
>
> > > > What do you think? What other human traits are contenders?
>
>
> > > In the earliest proto-humans, the brain was twice the size of
> > > chimpanzees.
>
> > > For a million years, the brain gradually increased in size by 200 cc.
> > > From about 250,000 to 50,000 years ago, the brain increased by 250 cc
> > > simultaneously in two different species of humans. Some reports show
> > > that the brain of the remaining species has decreased in size since
> > > the other went extinct.
>
> > And what were the advantages that resulted from the increased brain
> > size?
>
> We know that brains use a large portion of a creature's energy budget
> so a larger brain would have to benefit the creature in some way,
> either for an ability to acquire more or better food or to enhance
> reproduction opportunities.
>
> What the advantages of a bigger brain for humans might be I couldn't
> *say*. I haven't the foggiest *idea*. A person would *think* the
> advantages would be obvious. Chimpanzees use their brains for complex
> social interactions and to create simple tools. Proto-humans had
> brains twice the size of chimpanzees and modern humans have brains
> four times the size. One would expect humans to have a more complex
> society and more complex tools. But I can't find anything like that on
> the internet.
Snark aside, human females are much more likely to die in childbirth -
those big heads cause problems. So we have two distinct disadvantages
of big brains - increased caloric needs and risky birth. Clearly,
there must be some serious advantages to them. If one comes to mind,
I'll post it...
Ooh! And another disadvantage - we are more prone to head injuries.
Big heads combined with our "bobble-head" necks (necessary for
efficient running) make us more prone to brain damage when we fall.
Kermit
Nathan Levesque
When did I mention numbers?
Also, I made it clear that the strength of the argument would be an
point of contention, as in, make interesting arguments for a
particular trait. I didn't actually say there was one either.
> -- this one is 5.773, that one
> is only 5.772 so it is less important and gets thrown out. OK, you
> didn't say numbers but how else do you compare "which of those was
> most advantageous" without some quantitative notion of advantage?
Through written argument?
> When
> I talk about a package, I mean a package.
>
> Second, you insist on the qualifier "human". The traits that
> initially set us apart and put us on the evolutionary trajectory I
> described were not "human"
Then they aren't contenders now are they?
> and, for the most part, are not even
> exclusive to humans plus our pre-human ancestors.
I also indicated that I won't be a stickler about a trait being
exclusively human, otherwise there would be no traits to discuss.
Suggesting the reader use their own discretion.
> Suppose you go
> back to the last common ancestor of, say, chimps and humans. That
> would have been an ape that we probably would think of as mostly
> "chimplike".
I thought it would be basal to both.
> One offspring was destined to found the chimp line and
> another was destined to found the human line.
No...No one single offspring would found an extant line. Populations
evolve, and it's possible that geographic isolation played a role.
> But these two offspring
> were essentially identical! And their offpsring and theirs and theirs
> for dozens or hundreds or thousands of generations were essentially
> identical. yet one line led to humans and the other did not. So what
> was The Critical Element that separated the lines?
The readers discretion? Also if "more recent
species in our extant ancestral lineage" is any indication I would be
fine with including our most recent common ancestor.
> There was no such
> thing, not yet. The Critical Element was a package that gradually
> developed over time in one line but, for some unknown and possibly
> quite circumstantial and accidental reason, did not in the other.
>
> Finally, You set the rules of the game and I disobeyed them. You are
> correct, I am playing a very different game. I don't think yours is
> very interesting or useful as a tool to understanding evolution even
> though some players seem to find it fun. So give me a low score.
haha! I was more or less hoping for entertaining discussion with some
minor argumentation over various traits, but if you want to rain on
the parade so be it.
Nathan Levesque
I think you've got something there. We are after all creatures of
habit as the saying goes.
Nathan Levesque
> that would be an excellent argument for the existence of a creator god.
How so?
Nathan Levesque
> On Sun, 17 Apr 2011 13:33:37 -0700 (PDT), jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com>
We also have larger bums than our fellow apes, a requirement for our
particular form of movement; running/sprinting, particularly sustained
or marathon running/sprinting.
Good point. Our kind of bipedalism is fairly unique and apparently
integral to our particular evolutionary development.
r norman
They say "on the internet, nobody can tell you're a dog." Actually I
suspect that the two of you are not hominids because you don't have
brains big enough to see the advantage of having a brain. It is not
useful to think in terms like "what use is a brain capable of
composing a sonnet to an early hominid just down from the trees?" I
outlined a trajectory of changes and advantages in a different post
but apparently it needs some sketching out. So, in case you were even
a little serious about this...
As Jillery indicated in her excellent summary of the paper she cited,
start with the human hand grip, an outgrowth of bipedalism that freed
the hands for manipulation. You need motor skills to do the
manipulation, then hand-eye coordination to be able to throw well. Of
course other primates can pick up objects and throw them, but the
change started as a quantitative improvement, a selective advantage.
The development of two separate grips was a qualitative step -- a leap
requiring a certain level of brain function. That led to beiing able
to modify objects -- the making of tools. Again there are, of course,
tool using precursors. Still a larger brain allows the selection of
objects for the potential at being suitable for modification. There
are primates that store objects for future use throwing at obnoxious
zoo visitors so the ability to plan for the future was again at first
only a quantitative improvement -- another selective advantage. But
the ability to make, for example, a "tool making tool" like a hammer
stone for flaking or an awl for hole making or a knife used as a tool
to carve other tools rather than as an end in itself is really rather
a qualitative leap -- a leap requiring a certain level of brain
function.
At the same time there was social organization and the development of
a communication system to coordinate behavior and control social
relations. Again this is not a new invention of hominids, but a
larger brain allows for quantitative increases in this ability.
Combine that with the ability to identify other individuals as
independent actors in the social arena and that they, too, have
motives and moods that can be interpreted from their behavior and you
get truly impressive social organization. Again, these are not new
features but again a larger brain produces quantitative selective
advantages. This can lead to qualitative changes in the organization
of society producing enormously more effective food gathering and
preparation and child care systems as well as methods to coordinate
efforts and control behavior to isolate and punish malfeasance and
even specialization of roles and tasks.
Now introduce improved communication methods that can start with
signals related to "here" and "now" (something, of course, many
animals do) to signal more abstract features -- "do this so that later
we get something good" or "what if we do this instead of that". The
ability to communicate abstract ideas would be a qualitative leap that
could arise from the mere quantitative improvement of communication
skills. All of these require more and more brain function; first to
produce the quantitative improvement which is, itself, a selective
advantage but then so that the qualitative change (for which I choose
the word "emergence") can arise which would produce a selective leap
forward (directional in the sense of improved fitness, not in the
direction of perfection). Another truly major qualitative change is
the ability to use language to communicate knowledge between
individuals and across generations. This would allow the spread of
ideas between small relatively isolated groups so that cultural
development could spread quickly and widely. I think this was a truly
phenomenal evolutionary step because it means that evolution could
remove a tremendous amount of behavioral control from the genes
(instinct) to the culture (learning). Again, it takes brain power to
do all this.
My two-phased scenario would fit with the history of development of
brain size. The initial but relatively small growth of brain would be
associated with the development of manipulative abilities and the
production of tools and, probably, fire. The later rapid and enormous
growth of brain would be associated with the social and communicative
functions of brain associated with social organization of groups and
the development of culture that can be transmitted outside the gene
pool.
But of course you knew all that and were merely playing games at
failing to find reasons for large brains. On the internet nobody can
tell whether you are serious or silly.
Leopoldo Perdomo
> By human I suppose I'll include proto-humans, and the more recent
> species in our extant ancestral lineage. I won't be a stickler about
> something being absolutely exclusively human, because then there are
> no traits to consider. And I'll largely leave it up to the readers
> own discretion to determine what constitutes a human trait.
> Bipedalism for example would not count, but our adaptations for
> bipedalism could.
>
> I'll wager a guess though I can't think of anything else. And I'll
> take into consideration that the strength of the argument for a
> particular trait will be an area of contention of equal importance to
> the actual trait in question.
>
> Sweat glands. We were distance hunters after all. The fact that we
> could cool ourselves down without slowing our pace would eventually
> allow us to catch faster more agile prey that would need to stop
> moving or die on their feet.
>
> What do you think? What other human traits are contenders?
they found a way to crush bones to eat the marrow. This had to be an
important point also. And to end the whole set, man was able to make
fire, to cook meat, and other hard vegetables. Some experiments prove
that eating the meat cooked in a fire saved about a 30% of energy when
compared to digest the food raw.
Leopoldo Perdomo
> On Apr 16, 4:28 pm, Nathan Levesque <nathanmleves...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > By human I suppose I'll include proto-humans, and the more recent
> > species in our extant ancestral lineage. I won't be a stickler about
> > something being absolutely exclusively human, because then there are
> > no traits to consider. And I'll largely leave it up to the readers
> > own discretion to determine what constitutes a human trait.
> > Bipedalism for example would not count, but our adaptations for
> > bipedalism could.
>
> > I'll wager a guess though I can't think of anything else. And I'll
> > take into consideration that the strength of the argument for a
> > particular trait will be an area of contention of equal importance to
> > the actual trait in question.
>
> > Sweat glands. We were distance hunters after all. The fact that we
> > could cool ourselves down without slowing our pace would eventually
> > allow us to catch faster more agile prey that would need to stop
> > moving or die on their feet.
>
> > What do you think? What other human traits are contenders?
>
>
> The first thing that comes to mind to this non-expert is something
> that is exclusive to our species, in degree if not "kind." That's the
> ability to remember so many cause-and-effect events. That way we can
> go over several options in our minds before choosing one to act on.
> One would think that it would help us avoid bad choices. At least more
> often than if we didn't have the ability. Then again, all I have to do
> is think of 9/11, and get the sickening feeling that that "advantage"
> might eventually be fatal to our species.
most animals had this capacity to remember the past experience. In
any case the capacity of human memory would be greater. The question
is how greater it was when humans started to have this memory?
Leopoldo Perdomo
> On Apr 16, 5:50 pm, Randy C <randyec...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > The first thing that comes to mind to this non-expert is something
> > > that is exclusive to our species, in degree if not "kind." That's the
> > > ability to remember so many cause-and-effect events.
>
>
> > Once our ancestors started to recognize cause-and-effect events they
> > became uncomfortable when events seemed to have no cause. Things like
> > rain. Lightning. Earthquakes. Eclipses. The diversity of life on
> > Earth.
>
> Actually I was referring only to effects of things *they* caused. E.g.
> "I rubbed the sticks tis way and it made a fire, and rubbed it another
> way and it didn't. I better go with the way that worked, because it's
> getting cold."
>
>
>
> > So hypothesizing a "god" as the cause solved that problem.
>
> > Putting it another way, the "God of the Gaps" argument is one that has
> > fundamental appeal for all of us.
>
> Though it loses appeal to those who become interested in science. But
> we are few and far between, so most people can fall for some "God of
> the Gaps" argument.
yeah there was a god thunder, a god of lightning, a good of the storms
in the sea, a god for the floods, a god for the rain, and a god to
fuck us all of epidemics and sickness.
Geode
Leopoldo Perdomo
> On Apr 16, 3:28 pm, Nathan Levesque <nathanmleves...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > By human I suppose I'll include proto-humans, and the more recent
> > species in our extant ancestral lineage. I won't be a stickler about
> > something being absolutely exclusively human, because then there are
> > no traits to consider. And I'll largely leave it up to the readers
> > own discretion to determine what constitutes a human trait.
> > Bipedalism for example would not count, but our adaptations for
> > bipedalism could.
>
> > I'll wager a guess though I can't think of anything else. And I'll
> > take into consideration that the strength of the argument for a
> > particular trait will be an area of contention of equal importance to
> > the actual trait in question.
>
> > Sweat glands. We were distance hunters after all. The fact that we
> > could cool ourselves down without slowing our pace would eventually
> > allow us to catch faster more agile prey that would need to stop
> > moving or die on their feet.
>
> > What do you think? What other human traits are contenders?
>
> clothing and shelter.
yeah, our increase ability with our hands, several magnitudes higher
than in chimps, could explain human capacity.
Leopoldo Perdomo
> On Apr 16, 9:05 pm, William Morse <wdNOSPAMMo...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>
> > > By human I suppose I'll include proto-humans, and the more recent
> > > species in our extant ancestral lineage. I won't be a stickler about
> > > something being absolutely exclusively human, because then there are
> > > no traits to consider. And I'll largely leave it up to the readers
> > > own discretion to determine what constitutes a human trait.
> > > Bipedalism for example would not count, but our adaptations for
> > > bipedalism could.
>
> > > I'll wager a guess though I can't think of anything else. And I'll
> > > take into consideration that the strength of the argument for a
> > > particular trait will be an area of contention of equal importance to
> > > the actual trait in question.
>
> > > Sweat glands. We were distance hunters after all. The fact that we
> > > could cool ourselves down without slowing our pace would eventually
> > > allow us to catch faster more agile prey that would need to stop
> > > moving or die on their feet.
>
> > > What do you think? What other human traits are contenders?
>
> > also ties in with Frank J's discussion of cause and effect (the symbolic
> > processing helps us tie together different instances of cause and effect
> > into an overall framework, making it easier to remember many different
> > cases).
>
> That's a good one! The ability to communicate, to convey meaning must
> have been integral to our social structure. To our ability to act as
> a group, to cooperate as it were.
this morning I was watching a video on hens. They have an cry of
alarm for dangers that are flying over the hens. And a different sign
for dangers that are on the ground. Then, depending on the type of
danger announced, the reaction is different. Dangers for the sky make
hens to hide in a thicket of underbush, while dangers on the ground
made the hens to fly up to some tree branches.
Geode
Leopoldo Perdomo
wrote:
> On Apr 17, 1:18 am, Nathan Levesque <nathanmleves...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Apr 16, 5:47 pm, Inez <savagemouse...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Apr 16, 1:28 pm, Nathan Levesque <nathanmleves...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > By human I suppose I'll include proto-humans, and the more recent
> > > > species in our extant ancestral lineage. I won't be a stickler about
> > > > something being absolutely exclusively human, because then there are
> > > > no traits to consider. And I'll largely leave it up to the readers
> > > > own discretion to determine what constitutes a human trait.
> > > > Bipedalism for example would not count, but our adaptations for
> > > > bipedalism could.
>
> > > > I'll wager a guess though I can't think of anything else. And I'll
> > > > take into consideration that the strength of the argument for a
> > > > particular trait will be an area of contention of equal importance to
> > > > the actual trait in question.
>
> > > > Sweat glands. We were distance hunters after all. The fact that we
> > > > could cool ourselves down without slowing our pace would eventually
> > > > allow us to catch faster more agile prey that would need to stop
> > > > moving or die on their feet.
>
> > > > What do you think? What other human traits are contenders?
>
>
> > Well, the ability to make or have orgasms as it were is not a human
> > trait, it's more of a trait that we humans have. As do many other
> > species of various relatedness.
>
> I believe female orgasms are pretty rare.
>
> <insert sexist comments here>
>
it would be due to clitoris-hysterectomy?
Geode
.
Bob Casanova
appeared in talk.origins, posted by Llanzlan Klazmon
<bill.m...@gmail.com>:
>On Apr 17, 8:28 am, Nathan Levesque <nathanmleves...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> By human I suppose I'll include proto-humans, and the more recent
>> species in our extant ancestral lineage. I won't be a stickler about
>> something being absolutely exclusively human, because then there are
>> no traits to consider. And I'll largely leave it up to the readers
>> own discretion to determine what constitutes a human trait.
>> Bipedalism for example would not count, but our adaptations for
>> bipedalism could.
>>
>> I'll wager a guess though I can't think of anything else. And I'll
>> take into consideration that the strength of the argument for a
>> particular trait will be an area of contention of equal importance to
>> the actual trait in question.
>>
>> Sweat glands. We were distance hunters after all. The fact that we
>> could cool ourselves down without slowing our pace would eventually
>> allow us to catch faster more agile prey that would need to stop
>> moving or die on their feet.
>>
>> What do you think? What other human traits are contenders?
>
>Throwing ability. The other apes are very awkward at this.
Awkward but frequently accurate, especially the bored ones
in zoos.
--
Bob C.
"Evidence confirming an observation is
evidence that the observation is wrong."
- McNameless
Bob Casanova
appeared in talk.origins, posted by Leopoldo Perdomo
<leopo...@gmail.com>:
And cereal grains, IIRC, *cannot* be digested without
cooking.
Bob Casanova
appeared in talk.origins, posted by jillery
<69jp...@gmail.com>:
<snip>
>...I looked up this:
>
>http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1571064/
>
>It makes some statements I find remarkable. First, the power and
>precision grip are also described as the throwing and clubbing grip,
>respectively
Pedant point: I believe you have that backward. From the
article...
"...first identified by J. R. Napier, and named by him the
‘precision grip’ and ‘power grip’, represent a throwing grip
and a clubbing grip..."
....which accords with what i've read in the past; the power
(or clubbing) grip is basically a fist, while the precision
(or throwing) grip utilizes the dexterity of the fingers.
<snip>
John S. Wilkins
Otherwise it would be inexplicable. The genome alone is too unlikely to
have occurred by convergence. The state space of possibilities for
hereditary materials is so vast that two cases occupying nearly the same
coordinate would be less likely than a designer. Whereas for terrestrial
evolved genomes, that would be quite feasible.
Bob Berger
>
>Nathan Levesque <nathanm...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> > we found Vulcans, and they weren't evolved from a terrestrial hominid,
>> > that would be an excellent argument for the existence of a creator god.
>>
>> How so?
>
>Otherwise it would be inexplicable. The genome alone is too unlikely to
>have occurred by convergence. The state space of possibilities for
>hereditary materials is so vast that two cases occupying nearly the same
>coordinate would be less likely than a designer. Whereas for terrestrial
>evolved genomes, that would be quite feasible.
Keep in mind that the first Vulcans migrated from here to their (now) home
planet on June 17th, 1261.
William Morse
I would suggest that the concept of "danger" is a symbol - it is a
concept that is independent of either the type of immediacy or the
particular danger. Now danger can also be simply an index - the slap of
a beaver's tail tells you that there is trouble - but for humans a
number of the danger symbols (such as the skull and crossbones for
poison) tell you that there is trouble, invoke some general information
about the kind of trouble, but also suggest that you can find other
links about the details of the trouble.
And it wouldn't hurt to read _The Symbolic Species_, even if it doesn't
for you (as it didn't for me) completely clarify the distinction. It did
make my head hurt (because it dealt with thinking about how we think)
and it also had a lot of interesting information about language
processing. This included the fundamental point that language requires
conscious control of breathing. Birds and cetaceans need conscious
control of breathing for other reasons, but this probably gives them a
big step up in using sounds for language - and this is what we actually
see in terms of the (albeit highly limited) language abilities of gray
parrots and dolphins.
John S. Wilkins
I was not aware of that. This explains why a Vulcan was the author of
Shakespeare...
r norman
Wilkins) wrote:
>Bob Berger <Bob_m...@newsguy.com> wrote:
>
>> In article <1jzyviv.1q7rh721lgumvkN%jo...@wilkins.id.au>, John S. Wilkins
>> says... >
>> >Nathan Levesque <nathanm...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> > we found Vulcans, and they weren't evolved from a terrestrial hominid,
>> >> > that would be an excellent argument for the existence of a creator god.
>> >>
>> >> How so?
>> >
>> >Otherwise it would be inexplicable. The genome alone is too unlikely to
>> >have occurred by convergence. The state space of possibilities for
>> >hereditary materials is so vast that two cases occupying nearly the same
>> >coordinate would be less likely than a designer. Whereas for terrestrial
>> >evolved genomes, that would be quite feasible.
>>
>> Keep in mind that the first Vulcans migrated from here to their (now) home
>> planet on June 17th, 1261.
>
>I was not aware of that. This explains why a Vulcan was the author of
>Shakespeare...
You mean those chimpanzees typing away were really Vulcans?
John S. Wilkins
No, I meant the 17th Earl of Oxford was a Vulcan, of course. But I got
it wrong. Shakespeare was written by a Klingon.
William Morse
> development that led to us. However the fact remains that nothing
> like our lineage had developed in the history of life. It is natural
> to ask why no others and why us.
>
> The obvious critical factor is that our distant ancestors were tree
> dwelling social primates. Tree dwellers need good brains; animals
> with complex social arrangements need good brains. They need good
> grasping hands. And they aren't obligatory quadrupeds.
>
> We may never know why Lucy and company started walking upright around
> the grasslands. Maybe the just so story is right and it was a
> response to the drying out of the jungle. Then again, it might simply
> have started out as a freak accident of development that turned out to
> be advantageous. Whatever the reason, australopithicene bipedalism
> opened up a new niche.
From what I have read about Ardipithecus ramidus, they didn't
originally knuckle-walk and switch to bipedalism, they were bipedal in
the trees and kept it when they moved to the ground. No response, no
freak accident. The line that led to chimps went to knuckle-walking,
another obvious possibility for a bipedal tree dweller with long arms
switching to locomotion on the ground.
Walter Bushell
Naw, it was just a Klingon who translated it from Yiddish.
jillery
> On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 06:58:53 -0700 (PDT), the following
> appeared in talk.origins, posted by jillery
>
> <snip>
>
> >...I looked up this:
>
> >http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1571064/
>
> >It makes some statements I find remarkable. First, the power and
> >precision grip are also described as the throwing and clubbing grip,
> >respectively
>
> Pedant point: I believe you have that backward.
Yes I do and yes it is :)
Michael Siemon
> > >I was not aware of that. This explains why a Vulcan was the author of
> > >Shakespeare...
> >
> > You mean those chimpanzees typing away were really Vulcans?
>
> No, I meant the 17th Earl of Oxford was a Vulcan, of course. But I got
> it wrong. Shakespeare was written by a Klingon.
I thought that was a Vogon?
John S. Wilkins
No, that's the guy who writes Andrew Lloyd Webber's librettos.
Ron O
> Nathan Levesque <nathanmleves...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > we found Vulcans, and they weren't evolved from a terrestrial hominid,
> > > that would be an excellent argument for the existence of a creator god.
>
> > How so?
>
> Otherwise it would be inexplicable. The genome alone is too unlikely to
> have occurred by convergence. The state space of possibilities for
> hereditary materials is so vast that two cases occupying nearly the same
> coordinate would be less likely than a designer. Whereas for terrestrial
> evolved genomes, that would be quite feasible.
> --
> But al be that he was a philosophre,
> Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre
I made this point in an English essay back in the 1970's on the story
"A rose for Ecclesiastes."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rose_for_Ecclesiastes
Such an example would be evidence for a creator god.
For Star Trek it wasn't about a creator god, but a progenitor race
that seeded the galaxy with life so the next generation of intelligent
beings wouldn't be as lonely as they were. It was still a stretch
that even though life shared the same DNA that a Vulcan genome would
be compatible with a human genome over 3 billion years later, but
there was supposed to be front loading in that the progenitors gave
the future their humanoid body form. Such genetic compatibility would
only be slightly more probable than evolving something similar but not
homologous to the human genome. Creator would be an option if Vulcans
were as similar in DNA sequence as chimps are to humans or even your
cat is to humans. Something like that just wouldn't happen after 3
billion years of change unless there had been descent with
modification.
Ron Okimoto
Paul J Gans
Nonsense. Shakespeare was in reality a Mensch. They are a quiet,
unassuming group little known in the modern world, hence the
confusion.
History tells us that there have been very few of them over the
years and basically none left today, which is why they are so
little known.
--
--- Paul J. Gans
r norman
Nor should we forget striving beyond that to attain the status of
Ubermensch. Zoroaster was the last known example.
Michael Siemon
jo...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
> Michael Siemon <mlsi...@sonic.net> wrote:
>
> > In article <1jzz2px.13g4ck76yq9ndN%jo...@wilkins.id.au>,
> > jo...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
> > ...
> >
> > > > >I was not aware of that. This explains why a Vulcan was the author of
> > > > >Shakespeare...
> > > >
> > > > You mean those chimpanzees typing away were really Vulcans?
> > >
> > > No, I meant the 17th Earl of Oxford was a Vulcan, of course. But I got
> > > it wrong. Shakespeare was written by a Klingon.
> >
> > I thought that was a Vogon?
>
> No, that's the guy who writes Andrew Lloyd Webber's librettos.
Of course -- explains a lot!
Nathan Levesque
Yeah apparently cooking food increases the nutritional value of just
about anything. It also makes things easier to digest which may have
increased the variety of our diet, along with the tools that allow us
to get at new food sources.
I don't know how to word those into a trait outside of 'tool making',
which would be directly linked to our brain size.
Nathan Levesque
Yeah, people seem to get surprised whenever some form of primitive
communication among anything that isn't human is understood. It's
still not a language as we have it though.
Kermit
> On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 09:27:46 -0700 (PDT), Kermit
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> <unrestrained_h...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >On Apr 17, 5:31 am, "Greg G." <ggw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On Apr 17, 12:21 am, Nathan Levesque <nathanmleves...@gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
>
> >> > On Apr 16, 8:33 pm, "Greg G." <ggw...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> > > On Apr 16, 3:28 pm, Nathan Levesque <nathanmleves...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> > > > By human I suppose I'll include proto-humans, and the more recent
> >> > > > species in our extant ancestral lineage. I won't be a stickler about
> >> > > > something being absolutely exclusively human, because then there are
> >> > > > no traits to consider. And I'll largely leave it up to the readers
> >> > > > own discretion to determine what constitutes a human trait.
> >> > > > Bipedalism for example would not count, but our adaptations for
> >> > > > bipedalism could.
>
> >> > > > I'll wager a guess though I can't think of anything else. And I'll
> >> > > > take into consideration that the strength of the argument for a
> >> > > > particular trait will be an area of contention of equal importance to
> >> > > > the actual trait in question.
>
> >> > > > Sweat glands. We were distance hunters after all. The fact that we
> >> > > > could cool ourselves down without slowing our pace would eventually
> >> > > > allow us to catch faster more agile prey that would need to stop
> >> > > > moving or die on their feet.
>
> >> > > > What do you think? What other human traits are contenders?
>
>
> >> > > In the earliest proto-humans, the brain was twice the size of
> >> > > chimpanzees.
>
> >> > > For a million years, the brain gradually increased in size by 200 cc.
> >> > > From about 250,000 to 50,000 years ago, the brain increased by 250 cc
> >> > > simultaneously in two different species of humans. Some reports show
> >> > > that the brain of the remaining species has decreased in size since
> >> > > the other went extinct.
>
> >> > And what were the advantages that resulted from the increased brain
> >> > size?
>
> >> We know that brains use a large portion of a creature's energy budget
> >> so a larger brain would have to benefit the creature in some way,
> >> either for an ability to acquire more or better food or to enhance
> >> reproduction opportunities.
>
> >> What the advantages of a bigger brain for humans might be I couldn't
> >> *say*. I haven't the foggiest *idea*. A person would *think* the
> >> advantages would be obvious. Chimpanzees use their brains for complex
> >> social interactions and to create simple tools. Proto-humans had
> >> brains twice the size of chimpanzees and modern humans have brains
> >> four times the size. One would expect humans to have a more complex
> >> society and more complex tools. But I can't find anything like that on
> >> the internet.
>
> >Snark aside, human females are much more likely to die in childbirth -
> >those big heads cause problems. So we have two distinct disadvantages
> >of big brains - increased caloric needs and risky birth. Clearly,
> >there must be some serious advantages to them. If one comes to mind,
> >I'll post it...
>
> >Ooh! And another disadvantage - we are more prone to head injuries.
> >Big heads combined with our "bobble-head" necks (necessary for
> >efficient running) make us more prone to brain damage when we fall.
>
> They say "on the internet, nobody can tell you're a dog." Actually I
> suspect that the two of you are not hominids because you don't have
> brains big enough to see the advantage of having a brain. It is not
> useful to think in terms like "what use is a brain capable of
> composing a sonnet to an early hominid just down from the trees?" I
> outlined a trajectory of changes and advantages in a different post
> but apparently it needs some sketching out. So, in case you were even
> a little serious about this...
>
> As Jillery indicated in her excellent summary of the paper she cited,
> start with the human hand grip, an outgrowth of bipedalism that freed
> the hands for manipulation. You need motor skills to do the
> manipulation, then hand-eye coordination to be able to throw well. Of
> course other primates can pick up objects and throw them, but the
> change started as a quantitative improvement, a selective advantage.
> The development of two separate grips was a qualitative step -- a leap
> requiring a certain level of brain function. That led to beiing able
> to modify objects -- the making of tools. Again there are, of course,
> tool using precursors. Still a larger brain allows the selection of
> objects for the potential at being suitable for modification. There
> are primates that store objects for future use throwing at obnoxious
> zoo visitors so the ability to plan for the future was again at first
> only a quantitative improvement -- another selective advantage. But
> the ability to make, for example, a "tool making tool" like a hammer
> stone for flaking or an awl for hole making or a knife used as a tool
> to carve other tools rather than as an end in itself is really rather
> a qualitative leap -- a leap requiring a certain level of brain
> function.
>
> At the same time there was social organization and the development of
> a communication system to coordinate behavior and control social
> relations. Again this is not a new invention of hominids, but a
> larger brain allows for quantitative increases in this ability.
> Combine that with the ability to identify other individuals as
> independent actors in the social arena and that they, too, have
> motives and moods that can be interpreted from their behavior and you
> get truly impressive social organization. Again, these are not new
> features but again a larger brain produces quantitative selective
> advantages. This can lead to qualitative changes in the organization
> of society producing enormously more effective food gathering and
> preparation and child care systems as well as methods to coordinate
> efforts and control behavior to isolate and punish malfeasance and
> even specialization of roles and tasks.
More effective food gathering was not merely a survival advantage; it
allowed the selection of individuals who could grow bigger brains.
Gorillas can't eat enough in a day to feed a brain the size of ours.
>
> Now introduce improved communication methods that can start with
> signals related to "here" and "now" (something, of course, many
> animals do) to signal more abstract features -- "do this so that later
> we get something good" or "what if we do this instead of that". The
> ability to communicate abstract ideas would be a qualitative leap that
> could arise from the mere quantitative improvement of communication
> skills. All of these require more and more brain function; first to
> produce the quantitative improvement which is, itself, a selective
> advantage but then so that the qualitative change (for which I choose
> the word "emergence") can arise which would produce a selective leap
> forward (directional in the sense of improved fitness, not in the
> direction of perfection). Another truly major qualitative change is
> the ability to use language to communicate knowledge between
> individuals and across generations. This would allow the spread of
> ideas between small relatively isolated groups so that cultural
> development could spread quickly and widely. I think this was a truly
> phenomenal evolutionary step because it means that evolution could
> remove a tremendous amount of behavioral control from the genes
> (instinct) to the culture (learning). Again, it takes brain power to
> do all this.
>
> My two-phased scenario would fit with the history of development of
> brain size. The initial but relatively small growth of brain would be
> associated with the development of manipulative abilities and the
> production of tools and, probably, fire. The later rapid and enormous
> growth of brain would be associated with the social and communicative
> functions of brain associated with social organization of groups and
> the development of culture that can be transmitted outside the gene
> pool.
>
> But of course you knew all that and were merely playing games at
> failing to find reasons for large brains.
Oh, I can give some reasons for big brains. I was pointing out that
because big brains have disadvantages (surely you're not denying the
ones listed?), one could reasonably conclude that they served *some
reproductive purpose, or they would not have evolved. I suppose one
could argue that they were a sexy organ, like the bird of paradise
tails, but really - from your experience, how many high school girls
were turned on by big brains? (As opposed to musical talent, or the
ability to look sincere while lying?)
Fire was not merely a desirable outcome of brains; it enabled yet
bigger brains by allowing cooked food. We've been able to control fire
for over half a million years, maybe up to a couple of million. Cooked
food provides more nutrition (especially those yummy calories). Some
lab monkeys in a study, I forget which species, worked harder for
cooked fruit than raw. And chimps in the field were observed
preferentially gathering some of their favorite nuts that had been
cooked by a forest fire, and passing over the uncooked ones. Assuming
we share their preference for at least some of our food cooked, and
the likelihood that somebody would have dropped food into the fire
sooner or later, we can see that fire eased the transition from big
brain to honkin' big brain; one big enough, perhaps, to do ourselves
in with.
> On the internet nobody can tell whether you are serious or silly.
Surely these are not mutually exclusive states?
Kermit
Nathan Levesque
> > > we found Vulcans, and they weren't evolved from a terrestrial hominid,
> > > that would be an excellent argument for the existence of a creator god.
>
> > How so?
>
> Otherwise it would be inexplicable. The genome alone is too unlikely to
> have occurred by convergence.
Nothing is too unlikely, nor is it necessarily unlikely. We see
convergence on earth all the time among unrelated species.
>The state space of possibilities for
> hereditary materials is so vast that two cases occupying nearly the same
> coordinate would be less likely than a designer. Whereas for terrestrial
> evolved genomes, that would be quite feasible.
Unless you're suggesting that the similarities are such that
interbreeding could occur. So similar that most of their coding DNA
would suggest common ancestry?
> John S. Wilkins, Associate, Philosophy, University of Sydneyhttp://evolvingthoughts.net
Bob Casanova
appeared in talk.origins, posted by jillery
;-)
Bob Casanova
in talk.origins, posted by Michael Siemon
<mlsi...@sonic.net>:
Check out the mortality rate in "Hamlet"; obviously written
by a Klingon. Or maybe a Kzin...
John S. Wilkins
> On Apr 18, 7:28 pm, j...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
> > Nathan Levesque <nathanmleves...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > we found Vulcans, and they weren't evolved from a terrestrial hominid,
> > > > that would be an excellent argument for the existence of a creator god.
> >
> > > How so?
> >
> > Otherwise it would be inexplicable. The genome alone is too unlikely to
> > have occurred by convergence.
>
> Nothing is too unlikely, nor is it necessarily unlikely. We see
> convergence on earth all the time among unrelated species.
No we do not. All species on earth are, ex hypothesi, related. They
share the same basic gene set.
>
> >The state space of possibilities for
> > hereditary materials is so vast that two cases occupying nearly the same
> > coordinate would be less likely than a designer. Whereas for terrestrial
> > evolved genomes, that would be quite feasible.
>
> Unless you're suggesting that the similarities are such that
> interbreeding could occur. So similar that most of their coding DNA
> would suggest common ancestry?
I do not understand your point. Similarity may be evidence of similar
selective pressures, but genetic identities are the result overall of
common ancestry, since genes are usually multiple realisations of ways
to achieve similar traits, and we presume on theoretical grounds there
are a vast number of unrealised genes.
--