evolution
razib | October 20, 2009Evolutionary ideas have been around a long time, at least since the Greeks, and likely longer. I accept the arguments of researchers who suggest that humans are predisposed to Creationist thinking; after all, cross-cultural data shows the dominance of this model before the rise of modern evolutionary biology. But this does not mean that the possibility of evolution would be totally mystifying to the human race before Charles Darwin's time. After all, it may be that humans as a species have a predisposition toward theism as well, and yet all complex societies produce atheistic movements as…
razib | October 19, 2009If you're at ASHG, a session you might want to attend, Scale Effects and Recent Brain Evolution: Theory and Preliminary Evidence. Here's the abstract:
What forces have driven human evolution since the grand human diaspora? In this paper, I argue that the scale effects so central to endogenous growth theory in the field of economics (e.g., Kremer's widely-cited "Population Growth and Technological Change: 1,000,000 B.C. to 1990," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1993) have been important drivers of human brain development since the diaspora. Scale effects have made prominent appearances in…
emjohnson | October 18, 2009Grand evolutionary dramas about human origins capture our imagination and the stories provide context as to how we view ourselves. They are the scientific version of creation myths. However, unlike Adam and Eve being fashioned in the garden or humanity being vomited up by the giant Mbombo (as the Bakuba people of Congo believed), scientific origin stories are rigorously critiqued based on the best available evidence.
Friedrich Engels, a sociologist and future collaborator with Karl Marx, wrote one of the earliest scientific human origin tales in 1876. In his essay "The Part Played by…
grrlscientist | October 18, 2009tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"How does one distinguish a truly civilized nation from an aggregation of
barbarians? That is easy. A civilized country produces much good bird
literature."
--Edgar Kincaid
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited by me and published here for your information and…
razib | October 17, 2009From the comments:
Jizya is only a financial tribute / aid to the Muslim State which is in-charge of safeguarding the security of the state and non-muslim's lives and properties on their behalf.
Non-muslims pay Jizya BUT they are EXEMPTED from any other taxes which muslims pay in a Muslim State i.e. Zakat, Khums etc.
As compared to taxes which the Muslims are subjected in a Muslim state, the amount of Jizya is very low.
As such, Jizya should not be interpreted as "Additional Tax" imposed on non-muslims. It is rather a "lesser" obligation as compared to that of a Muslim.
I've heard this…
razib | October 17, 2009Another episode with me interviewing John Hawks on Bloggingheads.tv. Mostly we're talking about about Ardipithecus. The last 1/3 is about Indian genetics. We recorded on Thursday, but since then I've changed my mind on some issues and now disagree with some of what I said. I will likely post on my revisions soon, though have a rather low degree of certitude as to the accuracy of what I suspect, so I am poking through the literature to see if I can become more confident, or just falsify (if you missed my last discussion with John from two weeks ago, it's here).
oracknows | October 17, 2009I knew it! I knew there had to be an explanation that young earth creationists could come up with for all that evidence in support of evolution:
(WARNING: Borderline NSFW, depending on your job. Definitely offensive to fundamentalists.)
It's so obvious. Why didn't I think of it before?
pharyngula | October 16, 2009One of my favorite examples of the step-by-step evolution of molecules has been the work coming out of Joe Thornton's lab on glucocorticoid receptors. It's marvelous stuff that nails down the changes, nucleotide by nucleotide.
It's also work that Michael Behe called "piddling", despite the fact that it directly addresses the claims of irreducible complexity. Have you ever noticed how the creationists will make grand demands (show me how a duck evolved from a crocodile!) and then reject every piece of fossil evidence you might show them because there are still "gaps"? This is the converse of…
pharyngula | October 16, 2009I was just catching up on a few blogs, and noticed all this stuff I missed about Jonathan Wells' visit to Oklahoma. And then I read Wells' version of the event, and just about choked on my sweet mint tea.
The next person--apparently a professor of developmental biology--objected that the film ignored facts showing the unity of life, especially the universality of the genetic code, the remarkable similarity of about 500 housekeeping genes in all living things, the role of HOX genes in building animal body plans, and the similarity of HOX genes in all animal phyla, including sponges. 1Steve…
laelaps | October 16, 2009
Three restorations (top, left side, and bottom) of the skull of Andrewsiphius. From the Journal of Paleontology paper.
During the past 30 years the evolution of fully aquatic whales from terrestrial ancestors has gone from one of the most enigmatic evolutionary transitions to one of the best documented. Evidence from the fossil record, genetics, and embryology have been combined to document how early whales walked into the sea, but what often has gone unnoticed is the diversity of early whales. In a new paper published in the latest issue of The Journal of Paleontology, cetacean experts J…
razib | October 15, 2009Owen Lovejoy has some theories which he is using to process the data from the spate of Ardipithecus ramidus papers. When it comes to the argument about social structure based on the anatomy of the extant remains I'm skeptical. I just recorded a diavlog with John Hawks which is 2/3 devoted to Ardi-issues (should be up Saturday), and he pointed out that Lovejoy has been laying out the case for a monogamous social structure for early hominins for years. This is why I'm not that surprised that some of the numbers he cites from the literature are off. He's probably quoting older values, and hasn't…
clock | October 15, 2009DARWIN ON FACEBOOK: HOW CULTURE TRANSFORMS HUMAN EVOLUTION
AFTER HOURS EVENT FEATURING ANTHROPOLOGIST PETER RICHERSON
WHAT SciCafe presents Darwin on Facebook: How Culture Transforms Human Evolution, featuring Anthropologist Peter Richerson.
Help celebrate the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species with a night about Darwin, culture, and social media. Come hear anthropologist Peter Richerson of UC Davis explain how social networking sites like Facebook may affect the course of human evolution as he launches a discussion about how our success as a species owes much to our…
laelaps | October 15, 2009
My new favorite illustration from the technical literature; a baseball player compared to the glyptodont Doedicurus clavicaudatus. From the Proceedings of the Royal Society B paper.
In the introduction to his most famous work, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, the Victorian naturalist Charles Darwin began by writing;
WHEN on board H.M.S. 'Beagle,' as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent. These facts seemed to me…
pharyngula | October 15, 2009
It's yet another transitional fossil! Are you tired of them yet?
Darwinopterus modularis is a very pretty fossil of a Jurassic pterosaur, which also reveals some interesting modes of evolution; modes that I daresay are indicative of significant processes in development, although this work is not a developmental study (I wish…having some pterosaur embryos would be exciting). Here it is, one gorgeous animal.
(Click for larger image)Figure 2. Holotype ZMNH M8782 (a,b,e) and referred specimen YH-2000 ( f ) of D. modularis gen. et sp. nov.: (a) cranium and mandibles in the right lateral view,…
razib | October 14, 2009Reading the papers on Ardipithecus ramidus which just came out in Science one of the take-home points that jumps out at me is that extant apes may be very misleading analogs to extinct hominins. Here is Owen Lovejoy:
In retrospect, clues to this vast divide between the evolutionary trajectories of African apes and hominids have always been present. Apes are largely inept at walking upright. They exhibit reproductive behavior and anatomy profoundly unlike those of humans. African ape males have retained (or evolved, see below) a massive SCC and exhibit little or no direct investment in their…
pharyngula | October 14, 2009The Smithsonian Institution is opening a new Hall of Human Origins in mid-March.
It's crazy — they've spent $20 million on exhibits describing events that occurred before the universe even existed 6,000 years ago!
oracknows | October 14, 2009As I mentioned on Friday, I'm in Chicago right now attending the American College of Surgeons annual meeting, where I'll be until Wednesday afternoon, and may not be able to post anything new before Thursday afternoon or Friday. If there are any of my readers who happen to be surgeons attending the meeting, drop me a line and maybe we can get together. In the meantime, here's a blast from the past from the past. This post first reared its ugly head almost exactly three years ago; so if you haven't been reading at least three years, it's new to you.
It seems like only yesterday that I was…
oracknows | October 13, 2009As I mentioned on Friday, I'm in Chicago right now attending the American College of Surgeons annual meeting, where I'll be until Wednesday afternoon. If there are any of my readers who happen to be surgeons attending the meeting, drop me a line and maybe we can get together. In the meantime, here's a blast from the past from the past. This post first reared its ugly head almost exactly three years ago; so if you haven't been reading at least three years, it's new to you.
Alright, I'll come right out and admit it up front. There was no part one to this piece. Well, there was, but it wasn't on…
razib | October 13, 2009I'm talking about coeliac disease:
Coeliac disease is caused by a reaction to gliadin, a gluten protein found in wheat (and similar proteins of the tribe Triticeae, which includes other cultivars such as barley and rye). Upon exposure to gliadin, the enzyme tissue transglutaminase modifies the protein, and the immune system cross-reacts with the small-bowel tissue, causing an inflammatory reaction. That leads to a truncating of the villi lining the small intestine (called villous atrophy). This interferes with the absorption of nutrients, because the intestinal villi are responsible for…
razib | October 12, 2009I've talked about menopause before. One question in evolutionary anthropology is whether it is an adaptation, a derived trait in our species which emerged due to the force of natural selection, or simply a physiological byproduct of some other phenomenon. The key point is the peculiar asymmetry in male and female reproductive potentials; males decline gradually over time, while the general suite of female reproductive function simply shuts down at during middle age. Eric Michael Johnson reviews a new paper by the redoubtable Virpi Lummaa, Fitness benefits of prolonged post-reproductive…