Permalink Reply by crestofwaves on July 15, 2013 at 8:28pm

I think we did evolve from Apes. There was a branching off at one point,( Clan of the

Cave Bears describes it, lol --but it's also scientific thought) and there is an amazing similarity between human DNA and chimpanzee DNA.

The oldest human remains were found in Africa--Lucy. So it's a good guess we were all black to begin with, but if not, after all those invasions-the Goths and Visigoths and Vandals and Moors and all those guys, we are all EVERYTHING.

I had a boyfriend who was somewhat of a white supremacist ( he had his good points--tolerance wasn't one of them, however) and he would ask me, since I am Sicilian (he was Teutonic--6'2", blonde, Hitler would have been proud), if I considered myself black or white. I answered,"I consider myself a citizen of the world."

Permalink Reply by Shadowman on July 15, 2013 at 8:46pm

It would be more accurate to say we all evolved from a common ancestor or creature. In other words we all went different directions and so Monkeys, Apes and Us are still around. And if one goes back a couple of hundered thousand years the modern Genome project does trace us to Africa. As far as I know fossil records do not tell us skin color but the melanin does provide protection from the sun.

There is over a century and a half of observation and sound science in evolution whereas no observation of creation and all of our domestication of plants and animals and much that goes into vaccines, etc. is based on evolution happening.

Permalink Reply by frenchy on July 15, 2013 at 10:10pm

i guess we all have to believe somethin .. and i can believe in selective breedin .. such as if you breed brown pigs with white pigs you'll probably get some white pigs and some brown pigs and maybe even some pigs that are both brown and white .. but you won't get a duck .. and while the theory of evolution is quite popular its still a theory .. meanin they never could prove it .. i do believe in the survival of the fittest or the ones that are the most adaptable .. so some species will prosper and others will die out . and most of the time if they do die out you can bet humans are probably behind it in some way .. either on purpose or just plain not payin attention .. one wrong move in one place can effect another species someplace else .. but if we discover it soon enough we can sometimes fix it in time .. if we care enough , or if its in our best interest to do so in some kinda financial way . case in point he bald eagle .. almost wiped out till we figured out it was the ddt that made their eggshells so fragile and banned it .. now they're on their way back to an amazin comeback .. one of the success stories .. unlike the passenger pidgeon which is gone for good .. or the american buffalo which is hangin in but will never reach the numbers it once did .. but then if we didn't kill all the buffalo how could we starve out all the indians and steal their land ?? manifest destiny and all that ..

Permalink Reply by Snagg on July 16, 2013 at 12:37pm

98% of every species that ever existed HAS died out...It IS a crap shoot, and the adaptable survive to pass their adapted traits on to the next generation - Which is THE definition of "evolution". No "theory" about it - We see it every time a germ or other infectious agent develops immunity to an antibiotic, which happens in labs all around the world about once a week..

Permalink Reply by ProblemAgain on July 15, 2013 at 10:17pm

there in fact were other forms of human beings in the past as well as our ancestors. the cro-magnon man who evolved into homo sapiens sapiens was preceded by the neandrethals and they existed at the same time and place in some cases (i can hear it now..."look! cro-magnons are moving in...there goes the neighborhood!")

Permalink Reply by blithe spirit on July 16, 2013 at 6:24am

Some of y'all might enjoy reading some information about evolution and human biology and anthropology and scientific theory and the difference between just a "theory" and what that entails.
Lots and lots of books and many schools of thought over the years.
Scientific theories really have a much higher standard than what most people believe.
Might be a nice way to while away some hours.

Permalink Reply by Wayne Goodwin on July 16, 2013 at 10:38am

I agree evolution is overwhelming . But for us that do believe in a religious connection . Where does that come into the scheme of things . I don't believe you can rule it out whether you believe or not ....

Permalink Reply by crestofwaves on July 16, 2013 at 11:35am

Easy. For me, God or a Supreme Being or the Universe made it all happen and holds it all together. I believe as Jefferson and Franklin did--the whole thing is set in motion, it's our responsibility to keep it in working order, but something greater than us started the motion.

Permalink Reply by Snagg on July 16, 2013 at 12:41pm

"I don't believe you can rule it out whether you believe or not ...."

Ooooh, Yes You Can. And you DO do it, every time you casually dismiss a different culture's religious beliefs about "Where It All Came From".

After all, I bet you've never lost a minute's sleep, worrying that you disbelieved a Native American's Great Spirit "theory" about how we all got here...

Permalink Reply by Lifesighs on July 16, 2013 at 11:40am

I can easily rule out any organized religion belief in how we got here and developed. Written by men who had no clue only passed down info from ignorance and no information about science.

I do believe there is/was a great intelligence behind it which has nothing to do with religion. The universe is awesome.

Permalink Reply by Shadowman on July 16, 2013 at 1:02pm

I am reminded of an old Kurt Vonnegut novel in which a scene takes place where a god is busy creating a man. When the god gets done the man sits up and says, "What is the purpose of this?"

The god says, "Purpose?"

Yes Rose, your comments on the use of theory are quite true. Creationists do not have even a scientific hypothosis let alone a competing theory. Science is open ended and much based on induction and inference which does not give 100% certainty like deduction or mathematics but modern science uses a mix of these and through testing for falsifiabilty and probability, it is the best we have.

This reminds me, I have vowed to stop calling my Congressman a Neanderthal. It is insulting to the Neanderthal.

Permalink Reply by ProblemAgain on July 18, 2013 at 8:37pm

thought this might be a little enlightening... you have to remember that genetically you don't just get to choose one from column a and one from column b...there are crossover results from genetics...select for one thing and something else shows up as well

Darwin’s Dark Knight: Scientist Risked Execution for Fox Study (Op-Ed)

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Brian Hare is an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University and the founder of Dognition, a website that helps you find the genius in your dog. This post was an adaptation from his book "The Genius of Dogs," co-authored with Vanessa Woods (Dutton, 2013). He contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Today (July 17) is the birthday of one of the most important scientists you've probably never heard of — Dmitri Konstantinovich Belyaev. In the chokehold of Stalin's Russia, where being a geneticist was likely to get you imprisoned, shot or both, Belyaev conducted perhaps the greatest genetics experiment of the 20th century and finally solved the puzzle of how the wolf turned into the dog.

For almost a century, Darwin's biggest idea had a hole in it. To illustrate natural selection, Darwin did not directly suggest that humans shared a common ancestor with apes. Instead, he used a concept that everyone was familiar with — domestication. Everyone knew that you could selectively breed dogs for certain physical characteristics, like size or coat color. Darwin wanted to stretch this idea a little further and suggest that instead of a human hand, it was natural selection that drove evolution.

The problem was that Darwin could not say how domestication started in the first place. No one was taking notes while the first wolf changed into a dog, or a wild boar into a pig. This is where Belyaev stepped in and quietly began a Herculean task that no one would have thought possible — he domesticated a species from scratch.

After World War II was not a good time to be a geneticist in Russia. Darwinism was seen as a justification that capitalists should have millions and workers live in poverty because the capitalists had superior strength or intelligence. In 1948, genetics was banned in Russia. Genetic institutions were closed and information on genetics was removed from textbooks. Punishment for carrying on genetic work was swift and severe. Belyaev's own brother, a geneticist, was arrested by the secret police and shot without trial.

Belyaev began his experiment with the silver fox, because he could disguise his work as a commercial endeavor. Silver foxes were prized in Russia for their fur, and Belyaev's official research objective was trying to breed foxes for better fur. [Adopt a Pet Fox, for Science's Sake]

Instead of trying to create a domesticated species by selecting for each physical trait, Belyaev selected for one simple behavioral trait — whether the foxes would approach a human hand.

After only 45 generations, the experimental foxes began to change in ways that might take thousands if not millions of years in the wild. By the time I arrived years later to see the ongoing work, Belyaev's experimental foxes were radically different from their control population. They had smaller skulls and canine teeth. Their coats were splotchy and their tails were curled. They also had floppy ears and barked.

When I met the bred foxes for the first time, one jumped in my arms and licked my face. The difference between the experimental and the control foxes were remarkably like the differences between wolves and dogs.

Belyaev had done it. He had taken a population of wild animals and essentially domesticated them. And not just that, he had figured out the mechanism by which it happened — not by intentionally breeding for each physical trait, but by selecting only for behavior. That is, by allowing to breed those animals that were friendly toward people.

There was one more change I was interested in when I tested the foxes in 2004. My team's previous research had shown that dogs are remarkable at reading human communicative gestures. Dogs were better than wolves, and better than even humans' closest living relatives, chimpanzees . The question was whether Belyaev's foxes would share this talent for reading human gestures.

They did. This had huge implications to how scientists think about the domestication of dogs. The most common assumption is that some hunter-gatherer with a soft spot for cuteness found some wolf puppies and adopted them.

Instead, the foxes raise the real possibility that natural selection may have shaped wolves into the first proto-dogs in a very similar way without intentional human intervention or control. Ray Coppinger of Hampshire College and others have speculated that as humans began forming more permanent settlements over the last 15,000 years, a new canine food source appeared that led directly to the evolution of the dogs we know and love — garbage.

Only those wolves who were least fearful and nonaggressive toward humans would be able to take advantage of that new source of food. It would not have taken many generations for those friendlier wolves to undergo physical changes, like coat color. Soon, the wolves stopped looking like wolves. Many would have splotchy coats, and some would have even had floppy ears or a curly tail. Like the foxes, they too accidentally became more skilled at responding to the behavior of humans, and a new relationship began.

It's not always easy being an evolutionary biologist in this day and age. But whenever I start feeling sorry for myself, I think of Belyaev, working undercover with death never far from his door. Belyaev's quiet heroism is something to aspire to, and although the true magnitude of his discoveries was not realized until after his death in 1985, his work was an invaluable contribution that will have implications far into the future.

Hare's most recent Op-Ed was Dogs Show IQ Tests Aren't So Smart. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This article was originally published on LiveScience.com.

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Darwin’s Dark Knight: Scientist Risked Execution for Fox Study (Op-Ed)

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