[HN Gopher] Discoveries made about human evolution in 2022
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Discoveries made about human evolution in 2022
Author : CharlesW
Score : 57 points
Date : 2022-12-28 19:18 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| dwighttk wrote:
| Pretty broad definition of evolution in the article
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| I'd add to the list of 'reasons why homo sapiens developed longer
| lifespans' the reason that grandparents sitting around the fire
| could teach young children. It's a social adaptation perhaps.
| Jensson wrote:
| Maybe to take care for grandkids if their daughter dies in
| childbirth. The chance of that happening is very high when you
| have many kids and each daughter have many kids, so having old
| people around to care for their orphan grandkids seems like a
| very advantageous evolution.
| googlryas wrote:
| Wouldn't the same effect be in play with family-living
| animals that aren't nearly as long lived? Like wolves for
| example. In fact all the other great apes only hit about 40
| years before succumbing to old age, whereas humans are nearly
| double that.
| eslaught wrote:
| Four-legged animals don't have the same degree of birthing
| challenges as two-legged ones because of the way the birth
| canal is shaped. Consider for example how horses are able
| to be up and walking (both baby and mother) of some number
| of minutes of birth. That's because the baby comes out more
| developed, which is possible because of the larger birth
| canal (in relative proportions). Human have to come out
| underdeveloped because otherwise we wouldn't be able to
| give birth at all, and then that makes human infants
| especially helpless out of the womb.
| sublinear wrote:
| I just can't help but comment on the strange notion of a "list
| of reasons why".
|
| The few correlations our feeble minds just happen to notice are
| not mystical decisions whereby nature slowly yields to the will
| of its creatures over many generations. Asking "why" is just
| anthropomorphizing for the sake of it.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/7QUf0
|
| http://web.archive.org/web/20221228193549/https://www.smiths...
| euroderf wrote:
| OT, but.. How can you discuss beer without mentioning cats, as
| guardians of stored grain ? And then at what point did the cats
| begin giving us toxoplasmosis, possibly distorting aggregate
| human behavior ?
| scrozier wrote:
| Even the Smithsonian seems to have succumbed to "internet
| writing." Poorly edited, many concepts not well developed, etc. I
| guess I'm officially a grumpy old man.
| [deleted]
| camdenlock wrote:
| Had the same thought while reading. Kept checking to make sure
| I wasn't reading BuzzFeed by mistake.
| thgs wrote:
| Well I agree, this was poorly developed. Maybe I am getting old
| too
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| at least we're not alone in our antiquity and grumpiness
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| A theory of evolution in conscious experience:
| https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/enigmas/enigma-of-mind-...
| deepzn wrote:
| Just as a side note on the article, which has many cool bits (but
| indeed sparse and not well organized), the pictures of the teeth
| of the ancient human, and the bits about diet and how it shaped
| evolution got me to really appreciate how teeth have evolved.
|
| With different teeth having different functions, the incisors for
| tearing apart food, to the molars that are flatter with different
| grooves in them for chewing food. Evolution, really is amazing.
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