On evolution

[chani]

"Evolution is an exception, extinction is the rule", that's what Dr Tobias said in a documentary on Homo Sapiens I've just seen on ARTE (French-German channel). But the question underneath was:

Is that exception the result of a happy hasard making us happy few or is it some kind of choice making us chosen ones? And choice means choser...

Fortunately there was a debate afterwards with Scientists pointing out all the films' flaws.

According to the film, there would be also a law of increasing complexity that rules the universe form the beginning of life. Teilhard de Chardin wasn't far...

 Sapiens is still evolving. Ok. How? Why? To what?

 There are controversaries on evolution nowadays and the East Side Story (the australopithecus stood up because of living in savana) might be losing, but does it mean that there would be an inner logic guiding evolution? So far it's a Myth but the film kinda presented it as a discovery.

Basically the documentary supported only one theory, that of Anne Dambricourt, rejecting the idea of evolution through an adaption to environment, ignoring natural selection and focusing only on the various mutations of the sphenoid bone (as if Anne Dambricourt found this!). And of course the next question is why did that bone bend several times to lead to the hominidae and to Sapiens Sapiens? There would be an inner motor, hidden in architect-genes...and to make its point the film cheerfully mixed up the development of organisms and evolution of species.

Mmmm. The theme of an Intelligent Design (and Designer!)was not mentioned of course, that would have been too obvious, but I bet that Anne Dambricourt and the author of the documentary had religious beliefs and that screwed up any scientist rigour in that sneaky documentary. A certain message had to be spread and ARTE swallowed it up! 

That "documentary" was a sign of the times...

 

 

 

Comments

[candlelightfrot.livejournal.com]

Ever hear of the FOXP2 gene? The following is from an article on The Scientist Website (http://www.the-scientist.com/2005/10/24/14/1). You may not be able to read the entire article without being registered on the Scientist site as I am.

Four years ago, a finding that defects in a single gene could severely impair language set off a race to learn what the gene, FOXP2, could reveal about language's neural basis. After the gene was made known through studies of the so-called KE family, half of whom had the defect and could barely speak, analyses showed that gene expression corresponded in surprising ways with development in language-linked brain areas.

Other enticing clues emerged. The human version of the gene differs by just a few base pairs from that of chimps. More recently still, researchers found that FoxP2-knockout mice are unable to produce certain vocalizations, suggesting to some that the gene holds a primal place in the development of communication. But results are as puzzling as they are beguiling, dredging up debates about the nature of language and the ability of a single gene to affect it so greatly. Molecular studies can clarify "a lot of the bits of the pathway" of language, including which proteins FoxP2 interacts with and which genes it regulates, says Simon Fisher, Royal Society research fellow at Oxford University's Wellcome Trust Center for Human Genetics in Oxford, UK.


Mutations are random, most are actually neutral, some are for the good, and some for the bad. Natural selection, in the form of the physical environment is a limiting factor on biological change. Change can happen ... bears could loose their fur, but it would be for sure that they wouldn't be living north of the Rio Grande any more. I'm not sure that within one bone the whole of human evolutions lies; although it might be a distinguishing feature between various of the genus Homo.

Sphenoid shortening and the evolution of modern human cranial shape (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9603517&dopt=Abstract)

Lieberman D.E.

Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08903-0270, USA. danlieb@rci.rutgers.edu

Crania of 'anatomically modern' Homo sapiens from the Holocene and Upper Pleistocene epochs differ from those of other Homo taxa, including Neanderthals, by only a few features. These include a globular braincase, a vertical forehead, a dimunitive browridge, a canine fossa and a pronounced chin. Humans are also unique among mammals in lacking facial projection: the face of the adult H. sapiens lies almost entirely beneath the anterior cranial fossa, whereas the face in all other adult mammals, including Neanderthals, projects to some extent in front of the braincase. Here I use radiographs and computed tomography to show that many of these unique human features stem partly from a single, ontogenetically early reduction in the length of the sphenoid, the central bone of the cranial base from which the face grows forward. Sphenoid reduction, through its effects on facial projection and cranial shape, may account for the apparently rapid evolution of modern human cranial form, and suggests that Neanderthals and other archaic Homo should be excluded from H. sapiens.