Questions tagged [human-evolution]
The study of evolution with a particular focus on questions about the evolution of modern humans.
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(Soft) Lay Survey of human natural history
I am looking for an introduction to the natural history of humans. I had originally thought Sapiens until I found out it is more a history and archeology book of dubious scientific accuracy. The Sorts ...
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Can there be significant new changes in physical features of Humans due to evolution in 10000 years of span? [duplicate]
Humans migrated from Africa about 60000 years. And in these years humans physical features undergone significantly in terms of skin color, hair, eye color and facial features.
So, with this we can ...
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Is the backward positioning of photoreceptors bad design?
(Several questions have been asked about this topic but most are quite old and there has been at least one study since then that has attempted to answer this in a new way)
Since photoreceptors are ...
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Do technological developments terminate the evolution of human species? [duplicate]
One of the most agreed upon mechanisms for evolution is natural selection. Changing environmental conditions necessitates development of variations that enable the survival of that particular species. ...
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Are there "old" neuron types in the neocortex?
"Old" may mean a neuron type that appeared early in the tree of life, and it may mean – going together – that it comes early in the lineage tree of neuronal cells, rooted in the fertilized ...
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Why do many humans, including myself, find cats so cute? [closed]
After all, they are descendants of big, dangerous lions and other wild cats, which doubtlessly have eaten many humans in the past, and probably continue to do so in some places even today.
Yet we for ...
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Genetic variance for a behavioural trait among human populations
From this article from The Guardian:
We instinctively assume that differences in behaviour that are in fact due to culture must be linked to – even caused by – characteristics of appearance. That ...
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Was there ever a very first Homo sapiens?
My friend keeps saying that there was a first Homo sapiens. Meaning, there was a very first human being that was ever born.
I can't really understand what she means to say from a selection/gene ...
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Isn't it an evolutionary disadvantage to have a single organ perform so many essential functions?
This is in reference to the human liver, responsible for not only the production of bile, but also the filtration of blood, metabolization of drugs, detoxification and so on. Liver failure is often ...
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Which theory has more evidence, humans appeared in Africa 200,000 years ago, or there were already humans in Europe at least 210,000 years ago?
This theory
Modern humans originated from a woman who lived in modern day Botswana
says
Every person alive today descended from a woman who lived in
modern-day Botswana about 200,000 years ...
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Biological & Evolutionary Reasons for Palm (Bi)Symmetry
The fingers of the human palm exhibit a (bi)symmetrical pattern with regards to their size, in the sense that the thumb and the pinky are almost the same size, and the same holds for the index and ...
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Has human intelligence evolved as a costly male signal?
In this video at 42:06, Daniel Dennett posits that our big brains are:
The human artifice or version of the peacock's tail.
Peacocks have sexual dimorphism - it's males who exhibit the costly signal ...
anon
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What is the scientific consensus on whether humans were monogamous during the period of evolutionary adaptedness?
The book The Mating Mind by Geoffrey Miller asserts, as part of its thesis, that humans were not monogamous in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness.
I found the book vivid and persuasive, but ...
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Does Japan have an ageing population? [closed]
I often hear Japan has a declining/ageing population.
It seems to be the prime example for this kind of thought.
Yet after moving to Japan and after having been there for travel several times already. ...
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Do pale skinned people show other low light adaptations?
So, pale skin is, fundamentally, an adaptation to living in low light conditions. Pros: reduce energy spent on producing melanin, increase vitamin D production. Cons: more vulnerable to sunburns and ...
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Why do women process oxygen faster than men?
https://www.newsweek.com/women-are-better-athletes-men-study-about-gender-fitness-says-736047 is the source that I use. Is it reliable?
Why did men and women evolve that way? What's the evolutionary ...
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Human evolutionary innovation for rapidly restoring glycogen, and link to cardiovascular disease?
I'm a physicist, not a biologist, but I'm interested in human evolution and its link to the physiology of endurance sports. Circa August 2019, I read an article in the newspaper whose contents I'll ...
user4617
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Is there a name for survival of the fittest in a single family? [closed]
Imagine a case where the children of a bird each have a 50% chance of being born blind.
But the bird always has on average 4 chicks. So on average 2 will be blind and 2 sighted.
(Perhaps this could ...
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What are the evolutionary reasons behind men being taller than women?
Human men and women are sexually dimorphic: there are some phenotypic differences between men and women.
Men being taller than women is an accurate stereotype. Overall, men are on average 13 ...
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Why has reproduction evolved as a choice? [closed]
From an evolutionary perspective, the purpose of an organism is to pass along its genes through reproduction. However, as humans we have a choice if we want to reproduce or not. The good feeling from ...
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Is the Lucy fossil really what scientists claim it is?
The New Scientist has an article talking about how a baboon bone was found in the Lucy skeleton.
Creationist sites like this, https://christiannews.net/2015/04/23/evolutionary-embarrassment-part-of-...
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Have humans evolved to live longer?
Do people live longer only because of better hygiene, medicine, society etc or also because they're slowly evolving to live longer under same circumstances?
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Is it tautological that all living humans descended from a single male and single female human ancestor?
Many popular science articles cite high sequence conservation of mitochondrial DNA and the Y chromosome among living people as evidence that all humans are descended from a single male and single ...
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Why do we develop addiction? [duplicate]
Recently, while on the train, I saw a person not holding the handrails on purpose. He decided that playing a game with no outcome whatsoever was more important than his safety. In fact, he bumped into ...
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Why are (some) male humans sexually attracted to the breasts of female humans? [closed]
Many male humans are sexually attracted to the breasts of female humans. Is there an evolutionary reason for this?
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Does eating hard food really cause wisdom teeth to erupt properly?
According to the article Bad molars? The origins of wisdom teeth, in our evolutionary history, people were eating harder food like nuts and had unimpacted wisdom teeth. Later, that article appears to ...
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What proportion of the people who lived 1000 years ago have genetic descendants alive today?
For context, I've been wondering about this for a paper I'm writing (in philosophy). Really, I want to figure out the chances that someone alive today will end up still having descendants 1000 years ...
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How to interpret a phenotypic frequency density plot
I just read a paper that ran an evolutionary agent-based simulations aimed to test how genetic preparedness and social learning affect survival in various environmental conditions (changing ...
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Why has the human eye evolved to become sensitive only to the visible light? [duplicate]
The human eye has evolved to become sensitive only to visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Why? Why is infrared vision disfavoured for us by evolution but not for some other animals? I am not ...
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Rationale behind Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA)?
My main question is this -
I heard Richard Dawkins say in a video that after 1000s of years, any given individual alive today will be either an ancestor to ALL of the humans (in that future time) or ...
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Evolution versus Creationism [closed]
If nature, or any aspects of it, are intelligently designed, how could we tell? How would we be able to test that hypothesis?
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If an ethnic group holds nearly 100% of a particular haplogroup, does it means that people who have this haplogroup are their descendants?
Let me give you a hypothetical example. If the Egyptians were 100% E3b1, and the Levantines 50%, and the Anatolians 25%. Does this indicate that the Levantines and Anatolians are descended from ...
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Would prehistoric humans have been considered negroid or australoid by modern standards? [closed]
What are your thoughts about this?
For myself I think that the subject statement is rather obvious isn’t it, since Africans, & especially Australian Aboriginals, have the most archaic features &...
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If mammals evolved to be nocturnal, then how did we get so staunchly diurnal in such short time?
Much of human health revolves around sleeping well through the night. We know about circadian and body temperature rhythms which make us sleepy at night, peak melatonin production in the middle of ...
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How can skull size difference alone explain behavioral differences using evolutionary theory?
I just started Robert Sapolsky lectures series on Youtube on Human behavior biology, and on the second lecture, at this point, he is explaining how evolutionary biology can be used to predict lots of ...
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(secondary) human/primate advantages over other animals? [closed]
I am trying to understand the advantages that humans have over other species, besides what you could call 'sentience-critical'.
What I mean by this is, the first set of answers you'll get is "more ...
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Why don't primates have galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose (alpha-gal), but other mammals do?
I read in wikipedia that:
Galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose, commonly known as alpha gal, is a carbohydrate found in most mammalian cell membranes. It is not found in primates, including humans.
My ...
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How valid are Koestler’s criticism of evolutionary theory?
I recently read Arthur Koestler's 1967 book The Ghost in the Machine. In it, Koestler criticises the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution—beneficial random mutations preserved by natural seleciton—as ...
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Why would pedophilia exist? [duplicate]
From an evolutionary perspective, why would anyone ever be sexually exited by small children who could not possibly have started puberty?
Is it a confusion between some combination of sexual and non-...
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Skin Colour in "Northern" Regions of The earth
Question: Netflix has recently produced a two-part miniseries, The Evolution of US, that examines the evolution of "man". The topic of of human skin colour was covered and it was stated that 'lighter ...
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Why is melanin black? [duplicate]
I understand that the function of melanin is to protect individuals from sunlight, and that people living in sun exposed areas are darker due to increased production of melanin. But why is the melanin ...
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quadrupedalism in human [closed]
Recently I saw a BBC documentary on a family from a remote village in turkey where one couple has 18 children and out of which 5 are walking on four legs. These children are 28-34 yr old & have ...
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Does drying meat in the sun make digesting it easier?
I was looking into the relationships between man, fire, brain size, evolution, etc. and I learned about other methods of food preparation that eased digestion, but did not use fire. Then, this ...
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What is the evolutionary advantage of getting hard nipples when being aroused? Why can they even be stimulated sexually?
I try to understand the evolutionary advantages of the body reactions of nipples and penises/vaginas. I'm confused, because I can explain the evolutionary advantage in a logical & consistent way ...
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Why don't vegetables taste good despite being healthful? [closed]
This is more a question about the evolution of taste than about the chemical composition of vegetables. Why don't vegetables taste good despite being healthful?
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What is meant by "50% related to sibling" versus "95% related to chimpanzee"?
Obviously I am more related to my sister than to a chimpanzee, so what do these different percentages actually refer to?
Here is my preliminary research:
https://genetics.thetech.org/ask-a-...
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What makes red meat less healthy than seafood, after millennia of evolving to eat meat? [closed]
We are told that red meat is carcinogen; fish and white meat are not. What make us not "compatible" to red meat after thousands of years of evolution and meat eating, and yet seafood is opposite ?
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Are mosquitoes actually louder than similar flying insects, or have we evolved to hear them?
I've come across many flying insects smaller than the common housefly, but (anecdotally) the only such species that I can hear from an appreciable distance away is the mosquito, with its distinctive ...
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Are there any open phylogenetic projects that don't require coding to make a contribution
I am stay at home learner, not pursuing education formal education and currently doing a part time job. I've however completed masters in biotechnology and I'm studying to pursue PhD in molecular ...
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Does natural selection in humans work out in "best outcomes" or do e.g. subjective biases affect it?
Does natural selection in humans work out in "best outcomes" or do subjective biases affect it? That is, how much is natural selection "guided by nature" and "guided by humans"?
E.g. given "fully ...
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