Howdy mates?
Hope your enjoying the election years as much as I have.
Now I had to tell you about my recent WOW moment.
First the preamble.
If you're not a student of palaeoanthropology you're not a true level 6 atheist.
That discipline is an atheist's bread and butter. The discipline is dynamic. So you're always a student even if you have a PHD on the subject.
Now the missing link @#$%& is beyond dispute.
@#$%& they recently found the link between Australopithecus and Homo erectus. It was the find of the century. But JFGI if you want more info on that.
Ok Homo Hablis maybe developed tools as far as we know... in circa 2000000. But that's an exaggeration of course because a plethora of animals use tools.
So let me reintegrated.. We developed complex tools And from there in 2 millions years we went from an apple size brain to a melon size brain in an evolutionary blink of an eye.
Now this @#$%& always @#$%& me up as a youth. How can you explain that rapid progression of the brain and still call it natural selection.
It took me a while of studying. But the masters always come up with an answer I can totally believe i.e. that got a shitload of evidence and a great hypothesis.
Climate change, diet change and sexual selection.
Let me start with sexual selection. This( and I may be biased in stating this) is the strongest force of life. Noobs and experts know the cliché' examples but they are none the less accurate. The lions mane, the peacock feathers the giraffe's neck the human breast and human penis... all products of sexual selection, a force that can change the makeup of a species, in evolutionary terms, overnight. Suffice to mention that without sex none of us would in the here and now ( except maybe for some of you millennial. It's a Brave New World)
And that is one of factors that gave us our big brains.
Ok...Once upon a time there was a mutation and like most mutation it was benign . It had no purpose until then the world changed. The mutation, a slight growth of the cortex and you could think in abstracts...thrived .It was like eating from the tree of knowledge and Eden fell but it still helped the proto humans survive.
You're able to consciously manipulate nature. You adapt to the changing environment when all around you perish.
Imagine yourself in that position. You survive because you make better tools or develop ways to hunt effectively.You can feed the troop in the harshest of times. You're essential to their survival.
Brains over Brawn. Power over life and death..
And what happens next?
With true power comes lots of p.....
Progeny ( that's for the Trump fans)
And if you have ten that survive, there's bound to be a couple with your brains. And so on and so on for generations.
Add to that lots more protein because of your innovations and BANG! Mutant brains and the fuel to grow them.
So we get what Stephen Jay Gould called Punctuated Equilibrium.
The brain grow exponentially on a feedback loop.
This @#$%& is paleo-anthropology 101.
The Wow moment for me today have everything to do with what I've written.
I know if I d kept being the student, this doco wouldn't have Wow'ed me so much. But picture this. There's evidence that there was a great ice age over 100,000 year ago and genetic evidence backs up the theory that humans were as endangered as mountain gorillas Bengal tigers and white rhinos, during that time because of this climate change. There was between 1000 - 500 of us left. Man I thought Tabu eruption was bad but they have evidence that during that period the Sahara desert double in size.
Decimating the Cradle of Humanity.
So what do the clever chimps do.
We go to the shore.
This doco showed with evidence dug up in Eastern Africa that we became truly human at the shore.
Again because climate change, change of diet and.... Art.
Here a quiz folks. What does almost every culture consider brain food?
All together now! SEAFOOD! EFAs you mussel @#$%&!
EFA's altered our brains. Now folks I was in the natural products industry for over a decade and the best peer reviewed evidence for natural products was for omega 3 6 and 9 it's impact on brain development and brain health is almost unquetionable. Yet this was still a wow moment for me. I was kicking myself for not connecting the dots.
The doco showed evidence of a technological revolution .. hell a human paradigm shift. Hooks,, needles projectile weapons and cave art. Symbolism and language. At the shores of East Africa.
The zinger for me that the doco reminded me of was the fact that we are natural water monkeys. We have ancient cultures that still exist where individiuals can hold there breath for 5 mins underwater at 25 metre depth. And scientific evidence shows that anyone human can do the same with practice. Have you seen the footage of those crazy mothers chucking their six month old babies in the pool and the babies swimming under water like its second nature.
Or those competition divers ( I love the Big Blue) holding there breath for 10 or more minutes.
That is an evolutionary trait.
So that was my Wow moment. Seafood and the Shore that is what humanity is made of.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/25/2016 06:08PM by Fascinated_foreigner.