One such hint I've noticed recently is the notion that the human brain has been evolving, at an accelerated rate, for the last ten thousand years or so. This qualifies as a "hint" because, by all accounts, racial distinctions have been around for at least ten thousand years and probably for as long as thirty or forty thousand years.
Here is an excerpt from a reputable scientific journal:
Modern life's pressures may be hastening human evolution
By Robert S. Boyd, McClatchy Newspapers – Wed Apr 8, 1:49 pm ET
WASHINGTON — We're not finished yet. Even today, scientists say that human beings are continuing to evolve as our genes respond to rapid changes in the world around us.
In fact, the pressures of modern life may be speeding up the pace of human evolution, some anthropologists think.
Their view contradicts the widespread 20th-century assumption that modern medical practice, antibiotics, better diet and other advances would protect people from the perils and stresses that drive evolutionary change.
Nowadays, the idea that "human evolution is a continuing process is widely accepted among anthropologists,'' said Robert Wald Sussman , the editor of the Yearbook of Physical Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis ...
It's also the topic of a new book, "The 10,000 Year Explosion,'' by anthropologists Henry Harpending and Gregory Cochran of the University of Utah , Salt Lake City .
"For most of the last century, the received wisdom in the social sciences has been that human evolution stopped a long time ago,'' Harpending said. "Clearly, received wisdom is wrong, and human evolution has continued.''
In their book, the Utah anthropologists contend that "human evolution has accelerated in the past 10,000 years, rather than slowing or stopping. . . . The pace has been so rapid that humans have changed significantly in body and mind over recorded history.''...
Another anthropologist, John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison , said, "Our evolution has recently accelerated by around 100-fold.''
A key reason, Hawks said, is the enormous growth of the world's population, which multiplies the size of the gene pool available to launch new varieties...
The American Association of Physical Anthropologists
So, if civilization has been a catalyst for evolution - and it is obvious that various human populations experienced widely different levels/types of civilizations, including none at all - then it stands to reason that different human populations (races) have evolved differently over the last ten thousand years. Of course, a cursory glance at a Bantu versus a Swede should tell any sensible person that this is the case but the novelty here is the focus on the brain.
Of course, try to get one of those scientists to openly admit what he was hinting at and you'll get silence... or worse.
Thge way the word evolution is used and interpreted is very wrong. There is no evolutionary ladder where one species or race is objectively superior to another. Evolution means change and valuing change for its own sake is the reason for cultural chaos in America. Evolution would be more accurately described as being similar to a bush where each species is represented by a branch and the tip is its present situation and the rest of the branch is its history. Ando ya the races have gone through different experiences in their past, and hence have evolved/changed in different ways... but that doesn't mean one is more advanced than another because there is no objective criteria for which to determine how advanced one race is. The only criteria for making such a judgement would be a criteria that would have to be invented and a criteria could be made to support the position that any race is more advanced than any other race. In terms of evolution all species and races are at the same level, theyre all on planet earth.
ReplyDeleteI am dumbfounded that "scientists" ever had the notion that human evolution was not happening any more. Did they think that time had stopped? The worst thing about living in a civilized society where freedom of speech is respected is I have to be subject to hearing people say extremely uninformed opinions. If people stopped believing they have a right to an opinion and instead believed they only had a right to be accurate with what they are saying then maybe scientists would go through a more careful process of reasoning before opening their mouths.
This is why I wrote "different human populations (races) have evolved DIFFERENTLY over the last ten thousand years" instead of "...have evolved MORE/LESS over the last ten thousand years". It is not my position that there is a "superior" or "inferior" race overall. Or that one is "more evolved" than another, only that they have evolved differently - and each of us is entitled to prefer the company of one over the other.
ReplyDeleteMy earlier statement that "the human brain has been evolving, at an accelerated rate, for the last ten thousand years" was to imply that this accelerated rate of evolution would increase the differences between various populations. Had evolution been slow, the differences would be fewer.
That being said, I think we can look at certain aspects of evolution as more, or less, advanced. For example, if we look at the evolution of cheetahs, surely their speed got better over time. So it would be accurate to say that an earlier, slower, cheetah was "less advanced" than a later, faster, one (when it comes to speed). So, if we focus on intellect for humans, it would be fair to say that some races are "more advanced" than others. Not that evolution had higher intelligence as some kind of goal, but rather we can look at it that way for our own purposes and within that context.
Well I disagree that any race can claim a higher intellect than another race. From my experience each race has an intellect with its own strong and weak points. You could devise intelligence tests that show any race as being superior or inferior to any other race depending on what's being tested for.
ReplyDeleteIf you put a computer geek in a loin cloth and dropped him or her in the middle of african countryside away from civilisaation I'm not sure that person would be able to survive.
I do agree though that we have the right to prefer the company of whoever we wish to prefer.
I have a hard time believing that evolution is happening in a useful direction today, because theres little correlation between genetic superiority and reproductivity. The world's most advanced societies (Japan, Anglo-America and Western Europe) aren't even naturally replacing, and in America there's a clear negative correlation between educational attainment (proxy for intelligence) and births to individual women.
ReplyDeleteDo not interpret this as a recommendation for eugenics; evolution is not and never was a moral process.
Yes, there is little doubt that the last 50 years or so have seen a lot of dysgenic policies as you say. I think Mr. Boyd was probably referring to modern life as it normally is - not including the last 50 years of dysgenics. Even in time of rapid evolution, there will be ups and downs (regarding any particular trait) and right now we're probably in a "down" when it comes to intelligence. But this does not negate the overall trend over the last 10,000 years.
ReplyDelete