Suppose a guy named Chucky Darwin had a theory that there’s no such as “authorship.” After all, that would smack of mystical concepts like “consciousness” and “purpose”. So in order to explain the obvious appearance of things like books and magazine articles, he comes up with a hypothesis: all these things appear by chance. Stochastic shuffle of letters.

Update to A and B

“Rapid population growth toward the end of the Stone Age,

followed by the rise of agriculture and village life around 10,000 years ago,

triggered cultural changes that prompted genetic accommodations.”

“Evolution's Ear”

Science News 8/30/08

“The rapid cultural evolution during the Late Pleistocene

created vastly more opportunities for further genetic change, not fewer,

as new avenues emerged for communication, social interactions, and creativity.”

“Recent Acceleration in Human Adaptive Evolution”

John Hawks et al.

(Edited by Stephen Boydstun on 10/18, 12:33am)

Molecular Biology and Evolution 17:2-22 (2000)

"Population Bottlenecks and Pleistocene Human Evolution"

John Hawks, Keith Hunley, Sang-Hee Lee, and Milford Wolpoff

Excerpt:

Significant range expansion out of Africa occurred a half million years or more later than the first H. sapiens. Population size before then may have remained small, and this is not an insubstantial time span, being one quarter of the time H. sapiens has existed. An important date in behavioral evolution is 1.5 MYA because it is marked by the earliest appearance of the Acheulean (Asfaw et al. 1992), the ubiquitous hand-axe industry of the

Early and Middle Pleistocene. The appearance of the Acheulean involves dramatic behavioral changes. The earliest-dated Acheulean site is also the earliest site with significant butcher marks on the limb bones of megafauna and occurs just before the time of significant human colonization of the Old World tropics and semitropics. Before this time, humanity was limited to Africa and immediately adjacent sections of Asia such as the Levant. These are major changes in human paleoecology and paleodemography, and it is possible that in the half million or more years between the origin of H. sapiens and these changes, the human population was quite small and restricted to only a narrow ecological and geographic range.

 

Following these first significant range expansions, population size estimates are increasingly accurate for more recent times (cf. Birdsell 1972; Weiss 1984). Today, the human species numbers approximately 6 billion individuals, although as recently as the Early Holocene there may have been as few as 6 million (Coale 1974; Weiss 1984; Eldredge 1998). The pattern of population size change across the Pleistocene has come to be of critical interest, linking paleodemography with population genetics, paleoecology, and paleoanthropology.

 

Exponential expansion of the human species has certainly been ongoing since the inventions of agriculture and domestication early in the Holocene (Pennington 1996). It seems likely that this expansion began even earlier, as reflected by increasing site densities and complexity of material culture during the Late Pleistocene (Birdsell 1972; Gamble 1987; Klein 1989). Humans became a colonizing species early in the Pleistocene; humanity was first restricted to some parts of Africa, but by 1 MYA, populations had spread widely and occupied the tropics and some temperate regions of the Old World. The archaeological record shows that these range expansions have continued since (Butzer 1971; Ward and Weiss 1976; Soffer 1987; Gamble 1994; Lahr and Foley 1994). In spite of oscillating population sizes across the temperate zones everywhere, perhaps corresponding to the glaciations and their effects (Gamble 1987; Jochim 1987; Roebroeks, Conrad, and van Kolfschoten 1992; Mussi and Roebroeks 1996), the archaeological record reflects increased habitat specialization and continually larger population numbers worldwide. However, the oscillations were significant. For instance, both central/western Europe and southern Africa were largely depopulated in the Late Pleistocene, Europe several times, according to Klein (1989, 1994). [Emphasis added.]

 

Because of the pattern of population increase suggested by the distribution of dated archaeological sites, traditional estimates of past population size have been based on assumptions of long-term exponential growth (Keyfitz 1966; Coale 1974; Biraben 1979). Weiss (1984), in his modeling of past population parameters, postulates that the often-observed hunter-gatherer population density of 0.28 per km2 (Tindale 1940; Birdsell 1958; Hassan 1981) can be applied to estimating population size from the areas of habitation in the Pleistocene. From this, and the distribution of archaeological sites, his interpretation of Pleistocene paleodemography implies that peoples who inhabited the Paleolithic world lived in small groups with low population densities and a slow average rate of growth, an interpretation that has been continually confirmed (e.g., Stiner et al. 1999). Weiss (1984) estimates a population of about 0.5 million between a half million and a million years ago, and about 1.3 million in the Middle Paleolithic. However, all of these estimates have high probable errors (Petersen 1975), not only because of the difficulties in applying archaeological information to demographic questions, but also because of the evidence of significant population size fluctuations.

 

PENNINGTON, R. L. 1996. Causes of early human population growth. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 99:259–274.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Dec. 27, 2007)

“Recent Acceleration of Human Adaptive Evolution”

J. Hawks, E. T. Wang, G. M. Cochran, H. C. Harpending, and R. K. Moyzis

Excerpt:

Population growth in the Upper Paleolithic and Late Middle Stone Age began by 50,000 years ago. Several archaeological indicators show long-term increases in population density, including more small-game exploitation, greater pressure on easily collected prey species like tortoises and shellfish, more intense hunting of dangerous prey species, and occupation of previously uninhabited islands and circumarctic regions (40). Demographic growth intensified during the Holocene, as domestication centers in the Near East, Egypt, and China underwent expansions commencing by 10,000 to 8,000 years ago (41, 42). From these centers, population growth spread into Europe, North Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Australasia during the succeeding 6,000 years (42, 43). Sub-Saharan Africa bears special consideration, because of its initial large population size and influence on earlier human dispersals (44). Despite the possible early appearance of annual cereal collection and cattle husbandry in North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa has no archaeological evidence for agriculture before 4,000 years ago (42). West Asian agricultural plants like wheat did poorly in tropical sun and rainfall regimes, while animals faced a series of diseases that posed barriers to entry (45). As a consequence, some 2,500 years ago the population of sub-Saharan Africa was likely 7 million people, compared with European, West Asian, East Asian, and South Asian populations approaching or in excess of 30 million each (1). At that time, the sub-Saharan population grew at a high rate, with the dispersal of Bantu populations from West Africa and the spread of pastoralism and agriculture southward through East Africa (46, 47).

Bauer,

On your question of whether agriculture might form as a result of population increase, I did not pick up on these articles advancing that conjecture expressly, although there does seem to be at least one sensible possible path for such a causal relationship. Increasing population in the tool-making, hunting cultures could lead to further advances in linguistic communication and conceptual sophistication, and these advances could lead to more agriculture (and less hunting). But I expect economics and advances in warfare should be weighed in such an account as well.

Stephen

Bruce Lahn

Researcher on the genetic basis of human brain evolution, in particular:

1. The accelerated evolution of brain genes in the descent of Homo Sapiens
2. Identification of candidate “humanness” genes
3. Is the human brain still evolving?

“What Will Become of Homo Sapiens?”

  by Peter Ward

  Scientific American (Jan 09)

Stasis?

Speciation?

Symbiosis with Machines?

“Over the past 10,000 years, humans have evolved as much as 100 times faster than at any other time.”

My opinion: Ayn Rand and the Development of Evolution  (An analysis of Ayn Rand's discordancy between evolution and the faculty of reason).

The repetitive treatment of the apparent discordancy or incompatibility between evolution and rationality as posed by Ayn Rand herself through her rather confused statement that she was neither a supporter nor an opponent of evolution, poses a riddle of amazement on my part. Her statement evidently confused also as many of her adherents as it emboldened her opponents to the point of moving them  to believe that this was predisposing her toward a creationist view of existence. Prior to pronouncing it she should have held a long and deep conversation with an expert in biology or, at least, have thrown a look into the dictionary for a better understanding of the definition of evolution: Gradual directional change, especially one leading to a more advanced or complex form; growth and development, but, then, in view of her character, this would probably have meant to herself a lessening of her stature as a philosopher (Oh, human pride!).

To start with, mind you that I’m not in agreement with a few things she said, the above being one of them, for while practically all of what she wrote on reality, ideas and the resulting philosophy are absolutely correct, there’s an almost ridiculous minimum of her statements or her silencing her opinion, with which one just may not be in agreement, as I am. Sometimes she evidently refused to take am open stand or just had it wrong. I myself, once a heavy smoker, don’t agree at all with her having selected a cigarette, due to her being a smoker, which finally meant her becoming seriously ill and speeding her demise from the human population, as a symbol for “Atlas Shrugged,” and I also disagree with her opposition to a female becoming a country’s president (In spite of her arguments) as well as, being a heterosexual, I can’t agree with her considering homosexuality to be immoral and disgusting, for .sexual preferences and traits of any kind are a matter of personal preference, some of which we even inherited from our pre-human antecedents. Science and science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov, in one of his many thoughtful writings, clearly stated that humans should, once and for all, accept mankind’s manifold sexual likings, even those followed by S/Ms and their strict rules of behavior at their peculiar entertainment.

Further on, on the issue involving the death penalty – a matter I analyzed at length in my book (published per chapter on the Webpage of “Rebirth of Reason”) “Ayn Rand, I and the Universe,” -  I reached an up to now unknown law justifying its use in the case of willful murder, not for the purpose of vengeance against the act committed but as a measure of social health, Rand and Branden evaded the issue by stating that its treatment  corresponded to the philosophy of law, though its solution is quite simple indeed, starting from Ayn Rand’s own statement that “Pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent”.

Turning now to the matter of evolution, by the time she issued her statement more than sufficient evidence and proof had accumulated that life evolved from inanimate matter, simply because matter acts in accordance to physical and chemical laws that rule it and there’s nothing else available for atoms – to avoid, for the length of this article, to involve quarks and subatomic particles – to group or coalesce into molecules, molecules to form structures and the reunion of these composing more and more complex constructions, to finally reach the state of automatic replication, repetition, etc.. Once this level has been reached  – and sufficient scientific experiments exist to confirm it even for the most stubborn doubter – the road is open to proceed to the evolution of most primitive life. Basically, we can reduce a very long and detailed explanation to the statement that life is one of the possible states that matter can attain, as Hartmut von Bastian, a German science historian, summarized. The process – evolution IS a process – involves the evolution from inanimate matter towards ever higher levels, in an automatic development.

At the level of human life, the process, a long, long line of steps, started from lower animal life to what we now call a Bonobo, a simian having a rudimentary form of consciousness which could be called instinct, a word Rand disliked but used several times herself, and from there on to what nowadays is called homo sapiens-sapiens, The initial sequence of Arthur C. Clarke & Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” depicts mankind’s origin very well in a very condensed form. The faculty of reason followed from that point as a product of evolution. It’s an automatic development as everything else in Nature which, once a certain pattern has developed, cannot easily be reversed. Biology presents several good examples of remnants that remained with human beings, even if they’ve lost every practical use. Wisdom teeth are an example of these remnants. On the other hand, with an organism’s increasing complexity, some features become predominant. Have you noticed that while in the animal non-human kingdom, males display arrogant beauty to impress their humble females, while at the human level this trait is completely reversed? It could even be claimed that inventiveness originated with females, for while males were busy killing the needed meat, females grew vegetables at their humble living quarters. Original wheat isn’t the proud, high raising grain we know nowadays, but a small, almost crippled type of cereal. Females grew, collected and tasted the flour-kind content of the grains and – well, it could have happened thus – one of them got the idea of joining two higher growing stems or larger sprouts to see if something yielding larger amounts of the grain’s content could be obtained. Perhaps I’m wrong, but this or a similar procedure started what are now the enormous wheat fields worldwide.

Evolution itself occasioned the accumulation of enormous amounts of neurons, up to the point when thinking started to function and, by the time homo sapiens-sapiens had evolved, evolution, in the usually accepted sense, began to cease, for, basically, Nature’s automatic development of reason resulted in its relinquishing its operations to mankind, at a time when the first specimens of the new species must have been some “missing links,” still devoid of what would finally define mankind as the home sapiens-sapiens species. Most of the lower human specimens remained in a dead alley, a typical procedure of evolution that testifies for its automatism, but some of their mutant descendants continued to evolve toward higher levels of rationality. Evolution is a process from low to high, with many intermediate steps, a fact that has moved many to confusion and, evidently, Ayn Rand so too. Still, she had a well set notion of evolution’s activities herself for, in a comment mentioned in “Journals of Ayn Rand” and corresponding to July 18, 1945, she stated: “ Perhaps we are really in the process of evolving (my emphasis) from apes to Supermen – and the rational faculty is the dominant characteristic of the better species, the Superman.”

Does Nature’s giving up its activity in evolution to mankind mean that evolution in Nature has stopped? By no means, but it does mean that, having reached its highest automatic development by producing human beings, thinking organisms, it is now heavily influenced and limited by mankind itself. Our work in genetics and epigenetic testifies to the fact that we can and do direct its direction and its goals.

From the foregoing I can now return to the issue of the discordancy theme mentioned at the beginning of this article. No such discordancy exists, there are no contradictions involved between evolution and rationality, for the subject merely points out the development of the stepladder of evolution itself, from no consciousness to basic consciousness (what can be called instincts, however much Rand herself hated this term), and, from there on, to ever higher levels until full rationality was reached. We are far from getting to the end of the road, and perhaps it’s a road that will never end, and research on the development of evolution provides some not yet fully investigated hints that the brain of our species continues to grow. Still, evolution having delivered itself into our power, imposes a duty that should be quite clear now: the development of a peaceful and productive species with its main purpose of the pursuit of individual happiness; unless the lower placed Missing Links predominate and their Stalitlers reach their aim of destroying the whole species through the use of mysticism and brute force.

The issue remains on mankind’s decision.

Beyond the main theme of this writing there’s a piquant point issued by the slips of mind in the magnificence of Ayn Rand’s intellectual achievement, slips that were mainly related to her personal tastes, preferences and dislikes and which her adversaries bring to the fore with scorn and sarcasm, since they lack any valid arguments against the philosophy of Objectivism itself.

It could well be that her slips were a by-product of the enormous task she took up when she started the whole project of deducing from reality the fully rational philosophy she finally presented to the world, opposing all the fumblings that earlier wrongly as philosophers denominated writers had brought up. Perhaps she should have taken the time to avoid mentioning her personal likings and dislikes and perhaps her readers should better concentrate their attention to her main oeuvre, but then, again, her gaffes contain the spice of gossiping and the slightly scandalous that, a human trait, are preferentially exploited by the news and prominence media that may lead us humans to know more about the originator of such nattering and her work. Perhaps, finally, this will even help to spread the good news of Objectivism.