Humans Evolving 100 Times Faster Than Ever 584
John Hawks writes "A new genomics study in PNAS shows that humans have been evolving new adaptive genes during the past 10,000 years much faster than ever before. The study says that evolution has sped up because of population growth, making people adapt faster to new diseases, new diets, and social changes like cities. Oh, and I'm the lead author. I've been reading Slashdot for a long time, and let me just say that our study doesn't necessarily apply to trolls."
Not anymore (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not anymore (Score:5, Insightful)
Check Out the Sample Size (Score:5, Insightful)
The researchers looked for the appearance of favorable gene mutations over the past 80,000 years of human history by analyzing voluminous DNA information on 270 people from different populations worldwide. (Emphasis mine)
This is what I can't stand about science by press release (and yes, I'm a scientist). Pretty sweeping conclusion drawn from a miniscule sample size.
Quite an opinion... (Score:5, Insightful)
The irony of this statement is overwhelming.
Re:Check Out the Sample Size (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not anymore (Score:5, Insightful)
And what you describe allows lots of evolution to occur. Extremely high selective pressures will punish variability. But when everyone (or almost everyone) can reproduce and selective pressures are low (abundant resources and few dangers) then all those little mutations that would have been selected against get to be passed on to a new generation. Resulting in much faster rates of change over time, as well as much higher variability in the population.
Evolution or mutation? (Score:3, Insightful)
And maybe Chernobyl helped
Evolving OR Mutating faster? (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought evolution, didn't occur until selective environmental pressure, weeded out the non-favorable traits. I really don't *think* that happening at a higher rate. I suspect we just have a giant gene pool with a lot of variability.
So which is it John? Are we mutating faster or evolving faster?
P.S. Fascinating work. Kudos.
Backwards? (Score:4, Insightful)
No it isn't (Score:5, Insightful)
Evolution is how many changes are occuring over a period of time. You can measure a rate of evolution, i.e. whether the number of changes over time is increasing or decreasing.
Bad Science (Score:5, Insightful)
some comments (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Funny (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:adaptation? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Time scales (Score:4, Insightful)
Not evolving faster. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not anymore (Score:3, Insightful)
There's no such thing. Your group either stays as it is because situations don't force a change, or your group undergoes some change and certain traits become more desirable than others. And either way, the group then either prospers or it doesn't, either because of the change or in spite of the change (but in the long run, usually because of the change).
Saying that evolution has a direction indicates you think that there's some end design that evolution is heading for. There isn't.
Re:Not anymore (Score:5, Insightful)
This is perfectly normal, as conditions have changed, so has humankind, and now humans are worse prepared for some conditions, although better for the ones we have now. Thing is, the conditions we have now are created by humans, and not neccesarily in accordance with the real changes outside civilised areas. Therefore, we have evolved, moved by the conditions we have created, so if we cannot maintain these conditions, we will suddenly be far worse off than if they had never been created.
It is some kind of artificial evolution, that is supported on changes made to the environment, which create more changes on the species, that change environment again. I think up until now, on evolution, environment has never been so much under control of the evolving species. I just don't know how good is that.
I don't know if what I wrote is understandable, I'm not too good with long explanations in english.
Re:Not anymore (Score:3, Insightful)
Natural selection (the thinning of the gene pool based on external pressures) is not the same as rapid evolution (the exploding of the gene pool based on the rate of change).
If anything the situation in the last 50 years has meant the human population can support MORE evolution at the genetic level, not less. In some areas this can be visibly obvious (people with physical or mental disabilities who can lead relatively normal lives, or at least... well... live), in most ways its safe to assume its not visible.
Re:Not anymore (Score:4, Insightful)
If you transplanted an indivdual back in time 3000 years ago then yes they may well have a hard time of it but that's nothing to do with evolution.
Re:Not anymore (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not anymore (Score:3, Insightful)
The advance of technology and medicine means that physical fitness is no longer the key survival trait. My -9/-10 vision will not get me eaten (yay). This, in turn, increases diversity and better mental ability, which results in even more technology. This has been the trend since we stopped running after mammoths.
It is true that our civilization now moves at a far faster pace than our gene mutations could ever keep up with. Perhaps this could be analogized to the shift from pure-hardware computers to software - computers are far more adaptable than the single-purpose machines they started as, and so are we.
Re:I dispute your point (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice post.
"The main question is now, is intelligence in any way still being selected for? If it isn't, then it seems likely that there will be a backwards slide in human intelligence until the situation changes."
Yes, human intellingence is still being selected for, by sexual selection. It is the women who do the selecting, and they are more choosy than ever. The proof of this could be the fact that people in rich countries have fewer children.
Most of the posts here simply ignore the "sexual selection" part of the evolution. This doesn't make sense, since this could be the 60% of all the reasons for human evolution. In Darwin's work, sexual selection is side by side with "survival of the fittest", but after that it kind of gets ignored, at least until last 20 years.
Human intelligence is basically shaped by sexual selection. Humas/monkeys survived just fine without super intelligence. Human brain is basically a giant sexual ornament, analog to peacock's tail. Many aspects of human intelligence like humor, music, language are a result of sexual selection. "Survival of the fittest" can explain none of those traits. Women always mention "sense of humor" when they talk about desirable men. Being bold might get you killed, being an arrogant rock star will get you laid like, well, a rock star.
Selection for survival and sexual selection are often in conflict. One selects for a trait that the other selects against. Peacock's tail is a giant handicap. However, surviving despite having such a handicap sends a strong message that can't be faked.
Ah, I guess the point I'm trying to make is that by having more humans, and increasing sexual selection pressure, combined makes for a faster human evolution.
the department (Score:2, Insightful)
(note: the above is neither for or against evolution or intelligent design)
Re:Evolving OR Mutating faster? (Score:3, Insightful)
Recall that evolution is not working towards a goal -- it is merely a consequence of environmental pressure.
I do say now (Score:3, Insightful)
Every time this kind of discussion comes up, people tend to favor, mention, or joke about in frighteningly large numbers what is practically eugenics.
Also, in the last 10,000 years, people have generally not reproduced outside of their own race, due to long distance constraints. As such, some racist groups will obviously use this report to show that their group is "superior" in some fashion, with this "science" to prove it.
It's not that we should curtail research because of those problems, but it's something to think about a little more when we start having ideas that coincide with them.
Re:Not anymore (Score:5, Insightful)
The trouble with your argument is that you are pre supposing that at some point in the future we may no longer be able to manufacture glasses and therefore being shortsighted will be a disadvantage to those individuals affected. Based on that assumption you could implement your plan to guide evolution and prevent short sighted people from reproducing but then when the future turns out to be very different your meddling may well have artificially reduced genetic diversity and impaired our ability to cope with what may be radically different environmental circumstances.
Perhaps global warming will spiral utterly out of control and somehow wreath the world in dense fog eliminating any disadvantage of short sightedness.
Re:adaptation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I'm going to look at this from two different sides to try and be fair, but more then likely I'll just wind up pissing everybody off and being modded down all the same ;)
The obvious PC answer to this is that it's also an "essential" part of Judeo-Christianity to stone adulterers to death. I could also point out the various people that have used Christianity as a justification to deny equal rights to gays. Islam also has no history of being used for racial oppression that I'm aware of. Contrast that to Christianity, where many thought (and some extremists still do) that the African race was cursed with the mark of Ham and destined to be servants to the descendants of Japheth (i.e: Europeans).
All of the above is fair criticism of Christianity. But it's also fair to say that modern Christianity seems to be a lot less violent then modern Islam. Consider the fallout over those Danish cartoons [wikipedia.org]. Yes, Islam says that you can't make idols of Muhammad. But that doesn't give you the right to override free speech and force the rest of us to follow your religious restrictions. That would be like Israel trying to tell the rest of the World that we can't eat pork.
Also consider the various death threats and attacks carried out in the name of Muhammad. Do I think this is representative of the whole faith? Certainly not. But it does happen and a lot more often then similar acts (in modern times) conducted in Jesus' name.
You'd have done better to say "in certain muslim countries...." or even "in most muslim countries..." because I can think of at least a few (Turkey comes to mind) where this isn't the case. One would assume that if the Turks have been able to successfully build a secular representative democracy that the rest of the Muslim World will be able to do so sooner or later.
Then again, I don't know enough about the Muslim World to know if they even have democratic leanings and traditions and Turkey could be the exception rather then the rule. The Turks have certainly been influenced by proximity to Europe and have been heavily influenced by Western culture, going all the way back in time to the ancient Greeks. And Western culture has had democratic traditions and practices going all the way back to ancient Athens. Even during the age of kings there were democratic leanings, such as the Magna Carta, the rise of the Common Law, the French revolution, etc, etc.
I suppose only time will tell if secular democracy is compatible with Islam or not. The Western World (*cough* America *cough*) could certainly help it along by treating them less as a source of oil and more as equals. We could certainly help it along by trying to fairly mediate between the Palestinians and Israelis. We could help it along by adopting a non-interventionist foreign policy. They could help it along by renouncing terrorism and violence. They could help it along by understanding some of the concerns on this side of the fence (like why a nuclear armed Iran scares the hell of everybody). They could help it along by understanding why the Western tradition of free speech allows the publication of things they might deem to be offensive or blasphemous.
Bottom line: There seems to be lots of blame to go around on both sides here.
Speciation (Score:3, Insightful)
"Not all mutations are good, but with our advanced medicine, poor mutations are now survivable."
Don't get me wrong - I'm a big fan of humans. But human arrogance is what makes you think you can identify the difference between a 'poor' mutation and a 'good' one. Way back in the day, as the story goes, some proto-humans started walking upright, causing all sorts of back problems that persist until today. Good or bad?
Or that whole forebrain thing; and certainly the individual relative lack of strength and speed. Hairlessness; it certainly makes winters cold! But the thing is that every mutation has a cost and a benefit, and only the long term will tell whether that mutation is viable - which is a far cry yet from an objective determination of 'good' or 'bad'.
When you have a set of mutations that is viable, regardless of their qualitative comparisons to the status-quo niche of the parent species, that is called speciation. There is a natural division of species over time, as adaptive success leads to less selection pressure, which in turn leads to a wider range of mutations that can, over the short term survive in order to determine long term viability as the niche market shifts.
And the upshot is that there is no good or bad; just different. You can bet that humans will eventually evolve into different species, perhaps sooner than expected. We aren't going 'forward', we're going in all directions - behaving on a genetic level like a gases tend to behave in regards to their physical environment; by spreading out to fill it.
Re:I dispute your point (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, I know that it's "common knowledge" that only the stupid breed, but can you actually source it?
And you have to look more than one generation ahead. If a "stupid" couple have 5 kids can this happen?
- One dies after eating styrofoam
- One ends up in jail
- One ends up on the streets
- One ends up with the slightly-better genes, goes to community college, and scores a reasonably-intelligent wife/husband
- One dumbass knocks up another dumbass and they have 5 more kids
In the end, those 5 kids are a wash - one's genes enter "normal" society, and only one of them carries on the pattern.
I know there are the outlier 15-kid brood-mares out there, but I really do think they are outliers. I'm really not as pessimistic about the future as, say, Idiocracy, because
- Smart people are still having kids, and will continue to have kids. This will not stop (natural selection - the smart people in 20 years will be the offspring of smart people who wanted kids)
- If the pattern does continue to extremes, then the extremely smart will have no problem managing the extremely stupid. Look at how often this happens today (cults, Nigeria scams, televangelists). We may see a decrease in *morals* - particularly towards the dumb - but not in an intelligent caste.
- Carried even further into the future, the extremely-dumb could never take care of themselves on their own. As soon as the extremely-smart decide to stop carrying them, they would be dead by their own incompetence.
Re:Bad example (Score:3, Insightful)
If the environment changes, they may be less well adapted but that could equally apply to many things we would not regard as "defective" currently.
Rich
Re:adaptation? (Score:3, Insightful)
Did you even bother to read what I wrote? Can I say that any Christian who engages in pre-martial sex is not a Christian? Maybe any Christian that charges interest on a loan isn't a Christian. And don't even get me started about all those people working on the sabbath....
You aren't going to isolate extremism by pulling those quotes out of the quran. You isolate extremism by convincing the average Muslim on the street that democracy has more to offer him then the Mullahs. And the way you do that is by treating them more as human beings and less as the people who exist to pump our oil.
Oey! I have my problems with Islam too (religion for that matter...) but I'm not ready yet to call for the war of civilizations that the likes of Osama Bin Ladin so desperately want to see.
Re:I dispute your point (Score:2, Insightful)
What do you want to bet that the smart foster parents will raise a smart kid, and the dumb foster parents will raise a dumb kid?
Also modern education systems educate to a higher level at a younger age than ever, and because of industrialization you need more intelligence to make a typical living, not less, because the most mundane jobs are taken by machines.
These days if you want any sort of job you need to know some algebra or be skilled with some power tools, at least have the ability to manage money to some degree and read. Not too long ago even these basic skills weren't needed, so it's pretty crazy to suggest that the baseline intelligence needed to survive has decreased.
I think this is just
New alleles? (Score:2, Insightful)
Applying it to trolls (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:adaptation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, let's give that a try and see what happens.
Do I really need to go on? The point here isn't to trash Christianity either. I'm attempting to point out that Christianity outgrew most of this stuff. One can hope that Islam will do the same and that a small number of violent extremists don't speak for all one billion of it's followers.
Of course, the more I read your posts, the more I'm starting to think that you are probably just a troll. Feel free to prove me wrong by posting something constructive.
Re:Evolving OR Mutating faster? (Score:3, Insightful)
On some of my anti-social days, I wonder if, as a species, we are really doing ourselves a favour with our support of disabled, mentally and physically ill and others who would be dead in days in the wilderness. Now let's get one thing out of the way: It might be advantageous from a social, moral or any other number of points, I'm not discussing these.
I'm merely asking one question an evolutionary biologist who's not afraid of bad press can possibly answer: Are we breeding disabilities and mental illness this way, or are we not? Yes, not all mental or physical problems are genetically determined, but some are. Yes, I know I'm wandering dangerously close to Eugenics. Still, there's this nagging feeling that helping people with a heritable genetic defect to survive and create offspring might not be terribly nice towards their children.
Unsustainable (Score:2, Insightful)
You also leave unanswered the dual contradiction in belief systems I raised. What is the motivation of atheists/evolutionists who seem to overwhelmingly support the drain on their resources caused by public charity? Is it aesthetic? Because it seems disproportionately costly versus the potential gain to an individual to be had by the otherwise lacking presence of a small percentage of other individuals. If, on the other hand, it is because they are afraid of their own inadequacy to compete and thrive in a free market, then it seems to be a negative sum game, i.e. a downward spiral for society.
Then there's the dual of this problem, which is Christians who are uncharitable. I have my own overly judgmental opinions as to the largest part of this problem, centering around and permutating from church as a social exercise.
But the points underlying those I made before is that the "cushy" environment is artificial, and in a mechanistic evolution such as you espouse would thus yield mutations that are unsustainable absent that cushy environment. If we evolved intelligence as a survival trait, we are certainly not putting it into service to see that our effects on our evolutionary process yield long term positive results, which ought to be part of the point of good adaptations (which we are led to believe our intellect is).
Also, many who have mutations that would never have allowed them to survive childhood to reproduce are today doing so, which means that the power of evolution to produce the utility in the environment at large is diminished. Again, this is purely mechanistic.
Personally, I look at evolutionary and genetic determinists in the same way as I do religions that endorse some form pre-destination, fate, or inevitability: with a great deal of skepticism.
Re:I dispute your point (Score:3, Insightful)
False. While it has been liberally fashionable for the past 50 years to assume a 100% 'nurture' determination of outcome, it's really only about 45%. There have been some studies of measuring the IQs* of high/low socioeconomic-status kids raised by high/low parents. I would like to quote the IQ results, but the frikking publishers are locking up the content of the relevant papers that I can find online. The ranking is as follows:
1. High kids raised by High parents
2. High kids raised by Low parents
3. Low kids raised by High parents
4. Low kids raised by Low parents
(* It's also liberally fashionable to attack IQ tests as being meaningless. However, "imperfect" != "meaningless". People really are not created equal.)
Re:adaptation? (Score:1, Insightful)
this is not true. it is fair criticism of many christian implementations. the version of christianity taught in the bible did not consider stoning adulterers to death as "essential." in fact, the leader of "christianity," you know, the guy who's name is the basis of the word "christianity," risked his life TO PREVENT an adulterous woman from being stoned. he left her with the words, "go and sin no more." in other words, the christian teaching is about forgiveness and encouragement to become a less self centered and selfish person.
there were rules about stoning adulterers in the OLD testament which held sway over carnal israelites. i would like to draw your attention to the word OLD. it applied when god was working with a carnal nation and trying to prop them up as an example for others to follow. it didn't work out too well. not because they were israelites, rather, because they were carnal humans. the NEW covenant is designed to guide spirit led christians. the purpose is different, as are the methods. it is gross error to confuse the OLD covenant with the NEW covenant.
as for modern implementations of christianity being nicer than modern islam, i believe the evidence shows that is more due to circumstance than ideology. christian implementation were several magnitudes beyond ruthless when the stakes were high and life wasn't so great. even now, the professing christian running this nation supports methods of torture to achieve his ends. being christian and all, he tries to make said torture sound all nice and neat, but it is what it is. his implementation is flawed, not the original teachings. the christian slave owners had a flawed implementation, too.
but that doesn't make it christian. to quote jesus himself:
Mt 24:5 - For many will come in My name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many.
claiming to be christian means nothing, in and of itself. in fact, jesus warned his followers not to be deceived by people claiming to be christian b/c they will deceive MANY people.
i don't know much about Islam, so i can't comment on the root teachings. however, one should separate implementations of selfish, greedy people from the actual teachings of the religion.
absolutely.